Anxiety often helps us get stuck in habits we don’t want. This mindfulness practice allows us to calm racing thoughts by allowing us to pause for embodied awareness.
Over the years, as I’ve studied how habits work in the brain and the ways in which mindfulness can help, I’ve realized that curiosity is a simple tool that helps people — regardless of language, culture, and background — direct their embodied experience. Curiosity lets us tap into our natural capacity for wonder and interest, and puts us in that sweet spot of openness and engagement. With this state of mind, we are more empowered to help ourselves break old habits and form new ones.
Let me walk you through a simple curiosity exercise. Doing this 2-minute exercise can act as a sort of panic button when trouble hits.
Step 1:
Find a quiet, comfortable place. You can sit, lie down or stand. You just need to be able to pay attention without being distracted.
Step 2:
Recall your most recent run-in or incident with the Habit Loopyou find yourself coming back whenever you are worried or upset.
See if you can recall the scene and relive the experience, focusing on what felt right when you were about to act out your habitual behavior. What made him want to go ahead and “do it”?
Step 3:
Check in with your body. What sensation can you feel right now?
Here is a list of single words or phrases to choose from. Choose only one – the one you feel most strongly about:
- Tightness
- pressure
- Contractions
- restlessness
- Shallow breathing
- is burning
- Stress
- Clenching
- The heat
- Pit in the stomach
- Buzzing/vibration
Step 4:
Notice where this feeling is in your body. Is it right or left? Front, middle, or back of your body? Where do you feel it most strongly?
And did you notice anything about what part of your body you felt? Did a little fun help you get closer to that sensation?
Step 5:
Explore what else you can feel in your body. If the sensation is still there in your body, see if you can be curious and notice what else is there. Are there other feelings you are experiencing? What happens when you want to know about them? Do they change? What happens when you’re really interested?
Step 6:
Follow them for the next 30 seconds – don’t try to do anything to or about them – but simply observe them. Do they change at all when you observe them with an attitude of curiosity?
Whenever I do this exercise, I like to use the “hmmmmm” sound. Hmm When you are passionate about something you naturally emit (and not to be confused with the traditional mantra “Aum”). I find that saying “hmm” to myself gets me out of my head and into the direct experience of being curious. This allows me to bring a playful, even cheerful attitude to what I’m doing. It’s hard to take yourself too seriously when you’re hmm-ing.
The purpose of this short exercise is simply to give you a taste of curiosity and support your natural ability to be aware of what is going on in your body and your mind at any given moment, rather than getting stuck in a habit loop. If you’ve noticed that by being curious you’ve gotten even a microsecond more in tune with your thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations than in the past, you’ve taken a huge step forward.
Sometimes I get the question “What if I want to know?” My answer is to use the “hmmm” sound to drop right into your experience. Ask yourself: “Hmm, what does it feel like to not be curious?”
It helps people move beyond their thinking, moving the mind into an interesting awareness of their direct feelings and emotions in their bodies and out of their thinking heads and into their feeling bodies.
Find more information and science-backed ways to work with your anxiety Anxious Application App.
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