Anxiety can feel like a relentless inner storm. Lots of people try meditation and quit because their thoughts just won’t settle.
The Urban Monk article “Meditation for Anxiety When Your Mind Won’t Shut Up” tackles this directly and reframes meditation not as escaping thoughts but as changing how you respond to them.
The first core idea is that meditation isn’t about stopping your thoughts. Trying to do that is like trying to stop the weather. Instead, meditation helps your brain respond differently to stress.
Neuroscience shows that regular practice makes your fear centre (the amygdala) less reactive, strengthens connections to rational thinking (the prefrontal cortex), and activates the parasympathetic nervous system which is the body’s calming “rest and digest” mode.
The article breaks meditation for anxiety into different techniques for different kinds of anxious experiences, because a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t really work when the mind’s racing or when anxiety shows up physically or socially.
Here’s how it lays it out:
- Breath-Focus Meditation for Racing Thoughts — instead of clearing the mind, you give it something simple to anchor on: counting inhales and exhales. When thoughts intrude, you notice them and return to the breath. This trains attention rather than suppressing thought.
- Body Scan Meditation for Physical Tension — anxiety often lives in the body, and systematically scanning from your toes up helps you notice and release tension without judgment.
- Loving-Kindness Meditation for Social Anxiety — this involves directing phrases of goodwill toward yourself and others, which can ease harsh self-criticism and reduce social stress.
- Walking Meditation for Restlessness — if sitting still feels impossible, slow mindful walking while paying attention to bodily sensations can be deeply grounding.
- 3-Minute Grounding for Acute Anxiety — a quick sensory exercise (noticing things you see, touch, hear, smell, taste) that pulls attention back into the present moment.
The article also tackles a hard truth: meditation sometimes feels worse before it feels better. When you first start, you can become more aware of anxiety you were previously distracting yourself from, and that can feel uncomfortable.
That doesn’t mean you’re failing, it means you’re noticing what was already there. For most people, this initial discomfort fades with consistency.
The Urban Monk also highlights something less talked about: anxiety can be rooted in the gut–brain connection. About 90% of serotonin (the neurotransmitter linked with calm) is produced in the gut.
If your microbiome is disrupted, meditation alone may not be enough until underlying physiology is addressed.
So how do you build a practice that sticks? The article recommends starting with really small, regular steps. For most people, 3–5 minutes a day at the same time is far more powerful than occasional long sessions.
The emphasis is on consistency over duration. After a couple of weeks, you can gently increase time and experiment with techniques that match your specific anxiety pattern.
At the end of the day, the article frames meditation for anxiety as a relationship with your mind, not a battle with it. You’re not trying to silence thoughts, you’re learning to see them with less charge and build resilience in how you respond.
That shift alone can be calming in itself.
To read the full Urban Monk article click here
