I love mantras! I use them and encourage others to use them. Mantras are wellness tools that you may find surprisingly helpful!
What are mantras? They are usually sounds, words or phrases that are often repeated like a chant. Mantras have their beginnings in some religions but they have found their way into stress reduction and holistic living techniques. Who doesn’t need help with stress reduction!
If you have never tried using mantras, you should! Why? They are easy, fun, and inexpensive. And they work as stress relievers or coping mechanisms, to comfort and soothe us in difficult situations. Anything that helps us to de-stress helps us live our best life.
Everyone experiences stress in their own way and, hopefully, uses coping techniques that work for them. People with chronic medical conditions like bleeding disorders or autoimmune diseases are often targets of stress for many reasons, including long-term physical issues, complex treatment programs, disabilities, and illnesses. Additional stressors may include pain, insurance concerns, physical limitations, and mental health pressures. Fortunately, many people living with such chronic conditions may find physical and emotional relief with approaches such as the use of mantras, meditation, yoga, visualization, and their inspirational holistic treatments.
Mantras are very helpful as “starting” therapies. They can be and should be very personal. A mantra should mean something to you so that it releases a therapeutic effect, whether that be calming, soothing, energizing, or positive in some way.
The mantra I use most often is: Let it go! That simple phrase usually means “Forget it and move on.” I take a minute to chant my mantra to myself when I am in a place where I may react emotionally to a stressor. If something or someone upsets me, I will take a moment to focus and say the mantra to myself. Because I have used my mantras many times before, they connect with the positive emotions I have associated with them. While I let the negative feelings drain, it also gives me a moment to take a calming breath. By that time, I usually have let it go! I can think about the event later but, in the meantime, I have usually lowered my stress level and addressed the issue in a reasonable way.
If you would like to use mantras for your emotional wellness, you may find these suggestions helpful:
- Choose a word or phrase that carries a personal message for you and make it your own.
- Say the phrase out loud and repeat it silently to yourself. Is it easy to remember and meaningful to you?
- Repeat the phrase so that it sinks in and becomes an automatic reaction.
- A mantra that is meaningful to you will hopefully become associated with a positive emotional reaction. That reaction could be excitement, serenity, silence, reassurance, or almost anything that is positive for you.
- Avoid mantras that give you negative or stressful reactions.
- Your personal mantra should make you feel better in some way, and not cause harm to anyone.
You can have many personal mantras! I actually collect mantras. I write down some that I want to remember. But the best ones I use are short, sweet, and easy to recall, like let it go. The words do not matter – the meaning for you matters. A mantra that a hemophilia mom shared with me years ago was one of the best I have ever heard and I share it with others often: I know who I am and I am enough.
Doesn’t that say it all!
Live your best life!
Examples of other mantras:
- My life is good
- I create my own path and walk it with joy
- Love radiates out from me in all directions and returns to me multiplied
- I feel. I exist
- All is well, right here, right now
- My potential is limitless, and I choose where to spend my energy
- I am enough
I love myself. No matter what!
I am not afraid to be wrong.
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