Rating Anxiety in the Body

Learn to Sense, Rate, and Understand Your Anxiety

Do you ever experience feelings of anxiety? If you do, you’re not alone. Millions of people experience symptoms of anxiety at some point in their lives; and, for many people, these feelings are ongoing and chronic.

When we have these kinds of sensations, our rational, left brain, Western approach tends to follow a certain pattern. Generally speaking, we’ll seek to analyze the feeling in a logical, rational way. We’ll ask ourselves questions about it, and may become worried if we’re unable to readily and easily explain it. This tendency can be unhealthy, and is often quite unhelpful when we’re attempting to overcome a moment of intense anxiousness.

Understanding how anxiety feels in your body

Rather than taking this cerebral, left brain approach, this mindfulness exercise will help you to “drop into your body” and understand your feelings of anxiety in a completely new way. Instead of waiting until you’re experiencing a severe anxiety attack (at which point it’s difficult to do anything to overcome the situation), this technique will allow you to check in with yourself early on, as soon as you start to feel anxious or unsettled.

In this worksheet, you’ll be asked to use a variety of techniques to “check in” with your body. Specific physical postures and breathing techniques will help you get in touch with how your body’s feeling, and where the feelings of anxiety are located.

Rating anxiety and overcoming it with mindfulness

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the experience of anxiety itself, and lose sight of ourselves. With this mindfulness exercise for anxiety, you’ll be able to check in with your body and come to a better understanding of how you’re feeling. You might be amazed at how helpful this can be. Rather than being stuck in the logical world of the left hemisphere of your brain, you’ll get in touch with what’s going on in your body. This will ground you, and assist you in managing feelings of anxiety.