Best Of

I've heard anti-anxiety are difficult to taper off because anxiety is a by nature a uncomfortable experience. Seems reasonable to try to reduce as much as possible and see what happens. I take Prozac and my doctor (* I'm his patient for six months now) asked about how my mood is and I said it's usually only a problem when I have psychosis, but that I thought it (medicine) helped me to take the edge (not worry or feel stress etc) off of things like the occurrence of the pandemic. He recommended to taper my dose to one half. I've been at one half around 4 weeks and that's the span of time where all of the effect should be felt now. SSRI is a different time frame to notice the effects than anti anxiety. Anyhow I'm feeling some good effects that are hard to explain and also some other effects: harder to wake up in morning and some more irritability. I won't see my doctor for another month and I'm not sure if I'll want to keep tapering that medicine? Maybe I will just to test out what will happen to my mental experience. Anyhow hope the best for your practices which sound like good ideas and virtuous reactions to your experience.

@how said:
They learned within their experience of anxiety/depression, to shift their practice accordingly from its current expression of a mentally dominated imbalance to one that's more physically orientated. This offers to bring some balance to an imbalance.

Thank you very much @how. I have not done breath counting or following for years, but tried it yesterday, and it definitely had a calming effect, including of the body, which is what I require. For years now I've found it difficult to meditate but found great benefit in sports - for the same reason you state - that it ground me back to the body and taught me a lot. This is why I am prioritising sports and physical health at the moment. I will aim to experiment more with breath counting/following.

• • • • *

Yesterday I did everything that I said I would do, except that for one of the 45 minute sessions I avoided a difficult task and did an easier one, and that the sports ended up to be (only) 10 minutes of vigorous stretching/dancing at home. So, realistically, I'd say I did 80% or 90%. Still a good score.

I noticed a lessening of anxiety as a consequence of doing the things that needed to get done. Going forward, I would like to do what I call "ping-pong" - doing immediately what needs to be done, "returning the ball", and not avoiding or postponing.

I experimented with drinking black tea in the afternoon (Earl Gray for all of you British folk . It seems to be a much better choice for me than coffee.

I lost a bit of weight as a result of the hiking - hooray! I keep noticing a strange phenomenon where weight-loss as a result of sports seems to occur mostly 2 days after the sport, not immediately on the next day.

• • • -*

The plan for today is to:

• morning routine: journal (here + gratitude in my journal), 10 minutes of counting/following the breath, cold shower, smoothie, 5 minutes vigorous stretching
• go to the gym (now in the morning)
• 5 45 minute work sessions with 15 minute breaks
• 1 45 minute session for personal chores
• evening routine: do a "what was good, what was bad" analysis of the day at 8pm + clean up for 10 minutes + 10 minutes of counting/following the breath.
• Do not exceed 1/4 of the anti-anxiety medication and do not drink coffee in the afternoon
• General approach: "ping pong" - do not avoid doing what needs to get done

The anti-anxiety medication that I take (and am attempting to eliminate) is a very low dose even at 1x. So the 1/4x that I am taking now is mostly a placebo dose. A few weeks ago I tapered down to 0x and that's when I had quite some disturbances. Considering the very low dose, it must be nearly completely a psychological "crutch" where the mind then gets scared of not having that "crutch" any more so puts on a "show". I noticed that same phenomenon when tapering off cigarretes (the next big thing I need to tackle), I could get down to 5 a day no problem, but when trying to get to zero experienced disturbances.

@marcitko said:
For years now I've found it difficult to meditate but found great benefit in sports - for the same reason you state - that it ground me back to the body and taught me a lot.

I think you are totally doing the right thing by being mindful of what is beneficial to you. Meditation is not right for everyone, doing it in small quantities may be exactly what you need.

The first Mooji video of @Jeroen's post might help with the anxiety. It instructs a sort of "one task at a time" behavior. When focused like that, on just whatever one task you're doing, the mind isn't thinking about anxiety inducing things. I found even the first three minutes alone to be a good calming practice and reminder how much the mind is all over the place. I might experiment with watching it before doing a task to see if it helps keep me focused.

There was also a post on Bare Awareness a while ago by one of the other forum members. It came in useful for anxiety reduction too.

https://www.buddhistdoor.net/features/bare-awareness-or-bare-attention/

@marcitko
This is probably not new info for you but hopefully is as interesting for you as it is for me. How to allow what we might think is a deficit to become training's asset?

I have practiced in the company of a number of folks in the sangha, whose own training with anxiety/depression was spoken of as the major motivation for why they ordained in the first place.
It would appear that their relative successes at addressing anxiety/depression all tended to share some common ground.

They learned within their experience of anxiety/depression, to shift their practice accordingly from its current expression of a mentally dominated imbalance to one that's more physically orientated. This offers to bring some balance to an imbalance.

Most commonly, they used the very force they used to think of as their affliction, as a governor to determine the degree to which they focused upon the physical following of their breath. When and to the degree that the anxiety/depression eventually lessened, was the degree to which they would return to their regular meditation practice. This correlating cycling between concentration and meditation not only strengthened their overall practice but it allowed them to see that what they formally thought was an affliction, was actually their teacher.

Here, where one might of formally been subject to a myopic focus upon the self, a more balanced and spacious expression of selflessness becomes possible.

While the difficulties behind these discoveries never seemed to completely disappear, and they needed to remain ever wary of their potential susceptibility to them, the habits that once beckoned out to those difficulties became the new habits of acceptance and even gratitude for the teachings they offered.