"Meditation is a practice where an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing their mind on a particular object, thought or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm state."

I used to drown in my social anxiety in high school. I cried before every first day because I was worried about having the wrong schedule/not being in the right place at the right time. I feared being embarrassed in front of people. It would get so bad I would second guess myself and actually caused my heart rate to rise and my face to get hot. But then I learned a really good trick to dealing with it.

Meditating really helped me deal with anxiety. It takes a lot of practice but it is possible to do it on the fly before a speech or speaking in class. The key is to clear one's mind and focus on one thing. For me, when I feel my heart rate rising when thinking about speaking in class, I focus on my breathing and think of cool winter breeze to help my face not feel hot.

But, long term meditation is better. After a stressful day, it's nice to sit down, close my eyes and focus on my breathing. Before doing school work it helps to clear your mind and eliminate all outside distractions. A lot of people find it really hard to get into meditating but normally they are going about it all wrong. Meditation should not cause you to have an anxiety attack, but it should do the complete opposite.

When you meditate you align your chakras. Within the body, people have seven chakras. Chakras are connected to separate body areas. The chakras in simpler terms are the crown, third eye, throat, heart, solar plexus, sacral, and root (starting at the head and going to the feet). Aligning your chakras allows you to keep your body in check, which means you aren't focusing on one certain aspect of your being. It takes a lot of practice to perfectly align your chakras but in the long run, it releases stress and gets rid of anxiety.