Mantras for Managing Anxiety

For centuries, Hindu meditators have chanted mantras to obtain and deepen a state of focused spiritual connection. Now modern medicine manages anxiety disorders with mantras.

Sanskrit combines the words for mind (man), and vehicle or tool (tra) to form mantra: a tool or vehicle to drive the mind into a desired state. “Om” is perhaps the simplest and briefest mantra. A number of other religious traditions similarly utilize repeated vocalizations of chanted spiritual phrases as an act of soothing and grounding one’s mind — whether saying the Rosary, chanting Jewish prayers, or reciting Koranic verses. Iterating affirmative, secular, phrases appears to evoke similar states of focused relaxation.

More than fifty years ago, cardiologist Herbert Benson began studying and popularizing the physiologic benefits of eastern meditation practices. In research for his best selling book, The Relaxation Response, he and his colleagues demonstrated that meditation activated the parasympathetic nervous system and induced a state of deep relaxation. Studies showed that reciting a mantra relaxed even inexperienced meditators, and that the relaxation deepened as individuals became more practiced at their meditation. Mantras appeared helpful whether in Sanskrit or the person’s native tongue.

While much of the early meditation research focused on health benefits for the general population, or for populations with specific physical illnesses, more recent findings have examined aspects of meditation for mental health conditions. A 2018, multi-site study conducted on 173 combat veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) compared mantra therapy to an active treatment group using a “present-centered therapy” known to be effective for PTSD. The mantra therapy treatment group improved as much as, and on some measures, more than, the standard treatment group.

The mantra therapy consisted of eight one hour sessions teaching and practicing mantras, slowing one’s thoughts, and focusing on just one thought at a time. Rehearsal of the mantra to the point that it becomes “second nature” appears to be important. The panic response involves not just increased heart rate and shallower breathing, but shifts in the blood flow within the brain, with resources being shunted away from higher cognitive centers. Heightened anxiety really makes it harder to think, and harder to employ tools developed in a calmer state, unless they have been overly reinforced through repetition.

For the last half century, psychiatry has focused largely on neurochemical treatments. For treating anxiety we developed serotonin reuptake inhibitors like Prozac, Lexapro, and Zoloft, as well as medications like valium, klonopin, and xanax, that work quickly on GABA receptors in the brain. Although medications provide benefits for many, they also can have side effects, and may actually be an indirect target for restoring brain function.

Increasingly we are studying patterns of brain connectivity, rather than focusing more simply on neurochemistry. People with anxiety and depression appear to have a more robustly wired, and overactive “default network”. In early functional brain imaging studies, researchers would ask subjects to engage in a specific task and then compare that to the “default” state, where they were instructed to lay there and “not think of anything in particular”. Rather than just “shutting off” or “doing nothing”, the subjects engaged in a ruminative, inward-focused state of random thoughts — the product of activity in the “default network”.

In Hindi traditions, the mantra is thought to reverberate at a certain frequency, and the sound vibrations bring the soul into resonance with god and the world. Western science has yet to decipher what aspects of mantras are crucial to their efficacy. Do mantras employ a form of semantic satiation, where repeating a word over and over again makes it lose its meaning? (You may recall the childhood game of repeating a word like apple, apple, apple… until the sound itself becomes bizarre and detached from any content.) Others think that the sound and meter of the language induce physiologic patterns in heart rate and breathing. Still others focus on the importance of the meaning of the words themselves.

When I use mantra-based techniques for anxiety, I urge people to start with any meaningful and well-practiced religious traditions or prayers they may know. The majority of individuals I work with prefer to use simple, non-religious, affirmations as mantras. These messages help them hold on to simple truths that anxiety works so strongly to refute. Keep it simple. I recommend starting with a mantra that sounds good to you; it will be harder to practice if cacophonous. If it brings a smile to your face, all the better.

Some of these suggested mantras come from popular music of decades past. Maybe part of the power of folk rock or disco were the mantras they instilled in listeners. Pick one from the list below, or come up with your own. I recommend working with just one until you know whether it works or not for you, rather than trying to simultaneously learn several.

I am peace.

This too shall pass.

I am brave.

Life gets better.

I’ve got this.

I am woman, hear me roar. (Thanks to Helen Reddy. Easily adapted to “I am human.”)

I am strong. I am invincible. (Helen Reddy again.)

I will survive. (Thanks to Gloria Gaynor)

Time heals all wounds.

I can’t overemphasize the importance of practice. And repetition. And reiteration. Over and over again. You want this so well rehearsed that even the biggest panic attack can’t shake it from your head. And start using it when you feel low levels of anxiety creeping up. No need to wait until panic is upon you . Your mantra will be effective in averting full blown panic.

And take some care in choosing your mantra. I worked with a corporate bro who really liked “I’ve got this.” Until COVID-19 arrived. Then he had to change his mantra, because he didn’t want to get this.

Chanting out loud, whispering to yourself, and reciting internally, all seem effective ways to use a mantra. I’ve had many people who felt silly or foolish when they started practicing — it evoked the very anxiety circuitry that it was meant to calm down. I remind them of the power of repetition, that if they can just get over their initial discomfort and say it enough times, they will change the state of their mind. Practicing in privacy helps at the beginning.

We live in an incredibly stressful era. Real problems abound. Yet almost all of us also have good things happening in our lives. We have to get through the bad moment in order to remember and appreciate the good. Life will give you plenty of opportunities to practice your mantra.