Information Overload 151
The Exhale Practice
Instead of saying “Om” when you inhale and exhale, try say-
ing it only when you exhale; while inhaling , direct your attention
to your breath. As in the attention training exercise, by alternating
your attention to different stimuli, you are strengthening your abil-
ity to focus. This style of mantra meditation would look like this:
Breathe in: silence... Breathe out: “Ommmmmmmm.”Breathe in: silence... Breathe out: “Ommmmmmmm.”The next time you try practicing the nonjudgmental breath
exercises in chapter 4, try out these two mantra meditation exer-
cises. Try to spend five minutes with each style. If you practice this
in concert with the attention training exercise, then you will be well
on your way to achieving mastery over your concentration, making
it less susceptible to cognitive biases and unhelpful emotion regula-
tion strategies.
•••In this chapter, we introduced the concept of unconscious
cognitive biases and their role in anxiety. The idea behind
cognitive biases hinges on the distinction between con-
scious and unconscious processes, or, put another way,
implicit and explicit attention.
There are many mental acts of which you are explicitly
aware and can visualize. W hen it comes to anxiety, you may
be able to imagine a humiliating speech or the worst- case
scenario of some future event. Many aspects of anxiety,
however, remain unnoticed, occurring behind the scenes
and away from your conscious awareness. Individuals who
experience high levels of anxiety tend to develop cognitive