Meditation & Relaxation Techniques

[clay11]

Hello everyone, i am new to this site and have recently struggled with anxiety/ panic attacks since April. I prefer to avoid medications and try to learn to deal with it myself. I would like to know some Meditation and/or Relaxation techniques to use in order to put myself in a more relaxed state of mind and avoid the anxiety. Any tips or techniques are appreciated.

Thanks

[Persephone]

I'm not sure about the whole meditation thing, but something i do to try to help me sleep sometimes is listen to instrumental, relaxing music while im in bed, in the dark. I'll give some youtube links to the sort of thing I'm talking about. It may sound a little silly but I often have very very bad dreams, and if i listen to these just before I go to sleep it helps a little. Play the music through headphones if you can, on an ipod or mp3 player would be best but that is only so you can turn it off easier before you sleep. Have the music loud enough so that it fills your mind, and cancels out all noise or thought, but not loud that it is disturbing your relaxation. There are ways you can get songs directly from youtube on your ipod/ itunes/ mp3 player, just google it and im sure you'll find them. Give it a go anyway, I'll email you some links, I can't post them here yet hehe.
hope this helps :) good luck x

[jon mike]

If you have an phone compatible for apps, there's a great app I use called lightning bug, you have to pay but I think its great for meditation and reading to. Also something I do which someone told me about is putting your hands behind your head and pop your thumbs in your ears. Sounds daft but really works for some people :-)

[stevie]

I know this is kind of obvious, but camomile tea is very relaxing. It's bascially become the only thing I drink (which I'm sad about because I miss my coffee :-) oh well..). But it is very good at relieving the stressful feeling. Personally, it won't work if I'm the middle of a panic cycle.. but it will help if I feel one coming on...
Best of luck!