7-minute guided letting go practice for anxiety — beside your desk

About this practice

When anxiety shows up beside your desk, this 7-minute letting go session gives you somewhere to put it down. A guided session of about 7 minutes, suited to all levels. Nothing is recorded and no account is needed.

What this works on: anxiety

Anxiety is your nervous system treating a thought as a threat. Adrenaline and cortisol rise, the heart speeds up, and the body prepares to act on a danger that is mostly in the future.

It tends to show up as:

• A tight chest or a knot in the stomach
• Feeling keyed up but unable to say why
• Checking things more than once

Slow exhaling directly signals safety to the vagus nerve, which is why breathing is the fastest route down from a spike.

Doing this at your desk

• Feet flat, back supported, screen away from your eyeline
• You can do this with your eyes open if the office makes closing them awkward
• Unclench the jaw and drop the shoulders first, before anything else

Nobody needs to know you are doing it. Keep it invisible if that makes it possible.

How letting go works

Letting go is about loosening grip rather than dropping things. It works on the effort attached to a problem — the holding, rehearsing and bracing — which is separable from the problem itself.

• Pick one thing you are gripping and loosen a single finger
• Release the effort with the exhale, not the issue
• Set down temporarily; you can pick it up again after

What happens, minute by minute

1. 0:00Find one place in your body that already feels fine. Use that as the starting point.
2. 0:15With each exhale, let a little of the effort go. Not the problem — just the effort.
3. 0:30If some part of you is resisting this, that resistance is worth noticing too.
4. 0:44Everything that happens in the next few minutes is allowed to happen.
5. 0:57Feel your breath move down your back, all the way to your lower ribs.
6. 1:11Let each breath out be a small letting go of the muscles around your ribs.
7. 1:25Feel your knees. They're just hinges, but they've worked hard.
8. 1:37Let your whole body be as heavy as it wants to be.
9. 1:50Notice your lower back. Let it curve however it curves.
10. 2:02When the hum of anxiety arrives, name it once, quietly, and go back to the breath. Naming is not fixing, and that is fine.
11. 2:21the alarm in your body may quiet down, or it may not. Either is fine. We are practising staying, not performing calm.
12. 2:39Start at the top of your head. Notice the scalp, which you almost never notice.
13. 2:53Remain here for a few more breaths.
14. 3:03Let your breathing find the rhythm it uses when you're almost asleep.
15. 3:16If you're sleepy, sit up a little. Or let the sleepiness be there.
16. 3:29No words for a moment. Only the next breath.
17. 3:40You have been carrying this competently for a while. A few minutes off will not undo that.
18. 3:55Notice any tension that arrived while you weren't looking.
19. 4:06Notice the small gap after each exhale. Rest there for half a second.
20. 4:19Silence. Let your shoulders drop again if they've crept up.
21. 4:31You have been carrying the restless edge of worry for a while. You can set it down for the length of this session and pick it up after.
22. 4:51Picture that tight feeling that something is wrong as a weather front passing over. You are not the weather. You are the sky it moves through.
23. 5:10Breathe as if you had all evening. There's no rush in this part.
24. 5:23If you're counting the minutes, that's fine. Count them and come back.
25. 5:36Notice the tone of your own inner voice. Is it kind?
26. 5:48Pause here. Count three breaths if you need an anchor.
27. 6:00We are not solving anything in the next few minutes. We are setting it down, temporarily.
28. 6:15Before you move, notice one thing that's fine right now.
29. 6:27Come back slowly. There's no prize for finishing fast.

Questions people ask

Meditation is a practice, not a treatment. If you are dealing with ongoing distress, please also reach out to a professional.