How to use meditation to overcome the fear of driving?

What is Meditation?

Meditation has been in use since the beginning of time. People have always sought inner peace and physical relaxation, whether for reasons connected with spirit, self-realization or health.

What, then, is meditation? It has been described as just sitting and relaxing. Many people find their lives are so full of the demands of work, family, friends and organized leisure pursuits that they have no time to pause and " smell the roses ". In their bustle to "get on" they miss out on the simple pleasures of life.

The benefits of meditation come from regular use. If you are experiencing anxiety, you may find that meditating twice daily will be effective in restoring composure. Make time and space you can call your own, away from interruption, and use breathing and relaxation exercises to ease yourself into a state of meditation. Allow at least 10 minutes, ideally 20, for meditation in each session.

How to use Meditation for the fear of driving?

Although you won't overcome your fear of driving using meditation alone, it can be practiced to teach your body how to more quickly and easily relax. Once you can relax at will, you will be able to relax and better use specific techniques designed to battle your fear of driving more directly.

The key to using meditation lies in recognizing that you actually need it. Once you stand back and see clearly what is happening to you, what your life has become, then you can see you need a way out.

Meditation needs to be done like regular exercise. In fact you might say you are exercising the ways in which to relax:

The very first step involves switching off, like switching off a light in a room, and concentrating on the relaxed, empty inner spaces in your head and body. This stage ( put crudely ) means sweeping out all the noise and mayhem and chaos of everyday life and getting ready to enter the world of meditation.

The second stage involves being carried along what one teacher calls "moving but going nowhere in a perpetual state of being ". Perhaps the best way of evaluating is by hearing what people have to say about meditation. "As good as a holiday" or "like a wonderful deep refreshing sleep" is what most practitioners say. If you are to get its full benefits then you really must make sure that you do it regularly every day, at certain times. Like all forms of exercise the more you do it, the better you are at it; the quicker you can switch off and enter that state of total energizing, refreshing relaxation.

Simple meditation technique based on "A guided visit to a country house"

If you want to meditate seriously, you would do well to find an experienced teacher to guide you. However, there are many meditation techniques that you can practice alone, often with good effects like the following exercise.

Imagine that you are visiting a beautiful country house...a really beautiful old country house with magnificent sweeping lawns on a warm and sunny afternoon. You are standing on the staircase landing and as you look down across the entrance hall you can just glimpse, through the open doors a gravel driveway, and the sunlight on the gravel.

Now you are moving down the last ten steps to the hallway, relaxing more and more with each step down.

10 Taking one step down, relaxing and letting go...
9 Taking another step down, feeling at ease...
8 Becoming more relaxed, letting go even more...
7 Just drifting deeper...and deeper...
6 Becoming calmer... and calmer...
5 Counting to relax, continuing to let go and feeling good...
4 Relaxing...even more...letting go even more...
3 Sinking deeper...drifting even further...
2 Enjoying those good feelings... of inner peace and relaxation...
1 Nearly all the way down now, feeling very good...really relaxed...

You are wandering across the hallway now, towards the open doors and the gardens beyond. As you stand there you notice the lush green lawns, so flat and well clipped...and you can feel the warmth of the sun on your head and shoulders as you enjoy the lovely garden. There are flowerbeds with the beautiful splashes of color...and you enjoy the peace and serenity in this beautiful garden.

A little way down you notice an ornamental fish pond. You decide to wander down and have a look at those fish. Sometimes they seem to disappear behind the weeds but always they reappear, with their scales catching the sunlight, red, gold, silver and white. And as you watch those fish your mind becomes more deeply relaxed.

When you meditate your mind is clear of distracting thoughts, you gain new perspectives and new ways of handling stress and other problems.

While there are many ways to meditate, the goal is the same...inner peace.

Remember, there's no right or wrong way to meditate. What really matters is that meditation helps you with stress reduction, helps you relax and have less anxiety overall, which leads to the ability to relax while driving and utilize more aggressive techniques for conquering your fear of driving.