JOL magazine issue on Panic Attack

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Excellent articles on letting you know about panic attacks and how to make friends with them...
好棒的理解恐慌与恐慌为友文章等待阅读
http://hk.tergarasia.org/ebook/jol-magazine-2018q2.pdf

Good extracts from the magazine articles with good points on handling panic attacks.
Good for everyone who once in a while may suffer from mild anxiety or nervousness such as going for interviews or facing new events...

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Welcome to come, Welcome to go

My practice slowly transformed my theoretical understanding into experiential understanding. I started to glimpse the real problem: that the mind’s dualistic fixation creates a strong sense of self, and this mistaken perception is the source of my anxiety. 
On top of that, years of experiencing panic attacks created habitual neural pathways that made it worse. I started to recognise my own mistaken perceptions (the mind’s fixation on permanence, singularity, and independence), and used them to analyse the problems that I encountered in life. For example, when I travel, I have a fear of fainting during the voyage. I addressed this during my meditation practice, and learned how to address the fear: I told myself that just because I had fainted once during a trip did not mean I would do so again.

Each occasion is different. This is a very good method for healing trauma. I had to re-educate myself, training to form new neural pathways by telling myself that the idea that “I will faint on the way” is invalid. I would repeat this to myself three times, then continue meditating without being critical of my own thoughts or feelings. I was also able to use the idea of nonsingularity (multiplicity) to investigate my bodily discomforts. 
My panic attacks usually bring on a chain of bodily reactions. 
In the past, all these feelings and sensations seemed like one huge, solid object. Anxiety made me feel faint, and feeling faint made me anxious, in a vicious cycle. 
Now I can separate these things: the tight feeling in my forehead and face; the pain in my back; feelings of suffocation, fatigue, shortness of breath and chills. I have learned to see each of these as separate elements. I can see that panic isn’t one great massive emotion, but rather is composed of many small parts. When I gradually relax and examine these small parts, handling the problem becomes easier and the bodily discomforts subside.  

The meditation on emptiness is also an excellent practice. One time when panic struck, I used it as my object of meditation and suddenly the feeling of panic became dream-like. When I saw that panic was only the result of causes and conditions, neither permanent nor singular, then “phat!” – like a needle popping a balloon – this once seemingly huge and real thing immediately disappeared and I saw that there was nothing there. Then when panic comes again, there was nothing to fear. Healing doesn’t mean that panic no longer comes, but that it doesn’t matter even if it does come. 
If it recurs, it’s time to practise. 
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Then I realised that my earlier trauma in the metro, and a few other occasions of similar experience, were the reasons for my strong fear of long journeys. It occurred to me that my fear of travel was simply my neurons acting to protect me, based on this memory. They were telling me to be careful, using anxiety as a way to “kindly warn” me each time I left the house. Haha! There was no need to blame the neurons: they were only wishing for me to be happy and free of suffering.
The only problem was, they did not know the way to attain happiness. As I became aware that our bodies and our experiences are all impermanent, I began to understand that the source of my panic was my fixation on having absolute control, including control over my body. 
By the time I finally returned to Hong Kong from Thailand, I was exhausted but my panic had subsided. 

Meditation is a wonderful journey, and the road ahead is still long. I’m very grateful to the teachers and fellow students along the way. “Please practise”, the title of one of Rinpoche’s books, is truly a reminder of our path to happiness. 

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Not an enemy but a friend
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In meditation, we simply become aware of emotions rather than trying to suppress them. The emotions then become objects of awareness, and supports for our meditation practice. In the end, we find that the recognition of awareness is more important in our lives than the emotions themselves. ...

A panic attack is a manifestation of a medical condition called anxiety disorder. Attacks are usually spontaneous, and seem to happen for no reason. During such an attack, a person can feel as if they are going to die; they sense that they are trapped and losing control of their body and thoughts. The medical community has not been able to pinpoint the cause of panic attacks.
Various theories have linked them to genetic predisposition, environmental factors, past experiences or a combination of all three. Such attacks are not life-threatening and are curable with professional help. But if they are not well managed, the patient can develop many other problems arising from them. As an integrative medical doctor and also a meditation student, I encourage my patients to give meditation a try.

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How does awareness meditation work? The explanation is not simple, but some neuroscientists have shown that meditation actually changes the structure of our brain. The point is that meditation can change our perceptions, and perceptions affect our experiences and behaviour. Behaviour in turn reinforces experience, while experience reinforces perception. Therefore, with regular meditation practice, we can free ourselves from our mental traps, and in the long run change the structure of our brains. This is called neuroplasticity – the brain’s capability to change or rewire itself.

I have seen for myself many positive changes among people who practise meditation. Victims of panic attacks have turned their lives around once they learned to help themselves in this way. They became free of their panic, and were able to sleep better and to feel more peaceful and joyful.

I believe that, as a method of practice, meditation goes far beyond helping us to become just “okay”. It can help us reach our full potential as people. 
As Rinpoche puts it in Joyful Wisdom, meditation helps “awaken our capacity to approach every experience – grief, shame, jealousy, frustration, illness and even death – with the innocent perspective we experience when looking for the first time... the moment of pristine awareness that transcends any distinction between experience and the experiencer”.


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Happy reading...
http://hk.tergarasia.org/ebook/jol-magazine-2018q2.pdf