For Our Military Heroes : The Room of Silence

The Room of Silence Exercise

Sit up in a chair, close your eyes and breathe out slowly three times.

Remember, just the act of long, slow exhalations and brief inhalations will reduce anxiety. You are doing The Room of Silence Exercise to quell or stop anxiety, and it takes up to 15 seconds. Use it whenever you feel anxious. 

• Imagine yourself in a room together with the feeling of anxiety.
• Turn your back on the anxiety and find the door to the right out of that room to go into another room.
• If there is noise/cacophony go through that door to your right, eventually coming to a room of silence where the noise has stopped.
• When you come to that room of silence, look around and see what you discover there.
• You may have to go through door after door after door in each room until eventually you come to the room of silence and when you do, the anxiety is gone.
• See what you discover in that room.  And when you are finished, you can breathe out and open your eyes. 

Why This Works

     The reason I ask you to discover what you may see in that room of silence is because, by itself, it may serve you as a reminder of how you can be free of anxiety.

    The next time that the anxiety comes, you may not have to go through all the rooms. Just by recalling what was in the room of silence may be enough to stop the anxiety.

    It will remind you of a time you shed the anxiety and left it behind. The memory is both powerful and pleasant and can stop the anxiety state almost instantaneously.

    What you find in the room of silence is what you find. There is no predicting what will be there. What is there is what you need. 

For more imagery exercises for everyday problems, see my many books and cds on mental imagery and visualization. 

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