Anxiety can be exhausting. The mind may become caught up in worry, anticipating what might happen next or repeatedly going over things that have already happened. At the same time, anxiety can be felt physically through tension, a racing heart, restlessness or a persistent feeling of unease.
When the mind is already busy, sitting quietly with it may not sound particularly appealing.
Yet meditation has a long history of being used to develop a different relationship with the mind, and there is growing interest in whether this may also help people experiencing anxiety.
The modern research is still relatively young. The contemplative traditions from which meditation comes, however, have been exploring the nature of the mind and the relationship between thoughts, emotions and experience for centuries.
This provides an interesting meeting point between an ancient tradition and a developing area of modern research.
Why might meditation be relevant to anxiety?
Anxiety is more than a worrying thought. It can involve thoughts, emotions, physical sensations and patterns of attention, which can combine to create a cycle that is difficult to step out of.
Meditation may be relevant because it can change our relationship with what is happening in the mind. This is different from simply trying to make anxious thoughts or sensations disappear.
In fact, trying to push difficult thoughts and feelings away can add to the anxiety. Tergar teachings describe both identifying with difficult emotions and resisting or pushing them away as responses that can keep us caught in a cycle of dissatisfaction or suffering.
Mingyur Rinpoche has also spoken from his own experience of panic, saying that he learned that “aversion only makes anxiety stronger and more solid.” Over time, he found that relating to his anxiety differently gave him another way of meeting the experience.
Within the Tergar tradition, awareness is at the heart of meditation. Meditation is understood as becoming more familiar with awareness itself, rather than needing to create a particular state of mind.
This offers an interesting perspective on anxiety. Rather than seeing an anxious mind simply as something that needs to be quietened or pushed away, meditation can help us become more familiar with the mind and its patterns.
What does the research tell us?
Research into meditation and anxiety is still relatively new compared with the long history of meditation itself, but the findings so far are encouraging.
A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis examined 37 studies involving more than 3,000 adults and found that second-generation mindfulness interventions significantly reduced symptoms of both anxiety and depression. The effects on anxiety were particularly evident in clinical populations.
This is only one part of the picture, and research is still developing. But it provides useful modern evidence for something that contemplative traditions have explored for a very long time: that the way we relate to our thoughts and emotions may influence how we experience them.
A tradition with a much longer history
Long before meditation became the subject of psychological research, Buddhist contemplative traditions were investigating the nature of the mind and how our relationship with thoughts and emotions can change.
The Tergar tradition comes from this lineage of Tibetan Buddhist meditation. Its teachings place considerable emphasis on awareness and on recognising the mind's capacity for awareness even when difficult thoughts and emotions are present.
This is particularly relevant to anxiety.
If anxiety is experienced as something that has taken over the whole mind, the possibility of becoming aware of anxiety rather than being completely absorbed in it represents a different way of understanding the experience.
It is not necessarily about getting rid of anxiety. It is about the possibility of relating to it differently.
Mingyur Rinpoche's experience with panic
This is not simply an idea that Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche teaches to others. Anxiety and panic were part of his own childhood years.
He has spoken openly about experiencing severe panic attacks as a young person. Ordinary situations could trigger intense fear, including storms and travelling on the bumpy buses of Nepal. He tried different ways of coping, but found that attempts to push the panic away did not resolve it.
His father, the meditation teacher Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, encouraged him to relate to the panic differently.
Over time, Mingyur Rinpoche came to describe what happened in a memorable way:
"My anxiety accompanied me like a shadow, but when I got to know it through awareness we became very good friends."
There is something powerful in this description. It does not suggest that anxiety was simply switched off. Instead, it describes a change in his relationship with it.
His experience illustrates an important aspect of the meditation tradition: difficult emotions do not necessarily have to be regarded only as problems to eliminate. They can also become part of our understanding of the mind.
Meditation and the overactive mind
For someone with an overactive mind, one of the potential benefits of meditation may be the opportunity to become less caught up in the constant stream of mental activity.
This does not mean that thoughts have to disappear.
The Tergar approach describes awareness as something that is already present, even when the mind is busy. The practice is about becoming familiar with that awareness rather than trying to manufacture a special mental state.
For someone experiencing anxiety, this offers an alternative to continually trying to control or suppress what is happening in the mind.
A different way of thinking about anxiety
It is tempting to think of meditation as a relaxation technique. Relaxation may certainly occur, but the contemplative tradition points towards something broader.
Meditation can be understood as an opportunity to become more familiar with the mind as it actually is: sometimes calm, sometimes busy, sometimes anxious and sometimes joyful.
The research is beginning to explore some of the effects of this process using the tools of contemporary science. The 2026 systematic review provides encouraging evidence that mindfulness-based interventions can reduce anxiety, while the much older contemplative traditions offers a deeper understanding of why changing our relationship with the mind matters.
For Mingyur Rinpoche, this was not simply theoretical. His own experience of panic became part of his understanding of meditation and of the mind.
His story offers a powerful illustration of the possibility that our relationship with anxiety can change.
And that is one of the reasons meditation is worth exploring when the mind feels anxious or overactive.
Without meditation, our mind is like a crazy monkey that we cannot control.
— Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
Email: christchurch@community.tergar.org
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