Find Solid Ground: A 30-Second Exercise to Stop a Panic Attack

It can start anywhere. In a crowded supermarket queue. In the dead quiet of your office after everyone else has gone home. Or, as it did for a client I’ll call Clare, on a vast, empty moorland under a featureless grey sky. Clare, a trainee doctor, was hiking solo in the Peak District. Her life was a blur of hospital corridors and relentless demands, and the high moors were her antidote: a place of big skies and simple, physical truths. Then, the weather turned. A thick, wet fog rolled in, slamming shut like a heavy door. One minute she could see for miles; the next, her world had shrunk to a five-metre radius of featureless, swirling grey. The path vanished. Her map was suddenly useless. Every direction looked the same. A cold knot of panic began to form deep in her stomach. She walked a few paces, then stopped, convinced she was now facing the way she had come. She turned, walked again, and the feeling of being utterly lost intensified. Her heart rate kicked up a notch, her breath catching in her throat. This was the start of a spiral, a familiar and terrifying internal whiteout that felt just as disorienting as the fog pressing in on her from all sides. Her internal smoke alarm was beginning to shriek. Her mind, the very tool she relied on to diagnose complex medical conditions, was now the source of the chaos, serving up a frantic, catastrophic monologue: You’re lost. You’re going in circles. You’re not going to get out of this. So she did the only thing she could. She stopped. She closed her eyes against the disorienting grey, and she intentionally focused all her attention downwards, into the simple, undeniable, physical feeling of her heavy hiking boots planted firmly on the solid, peaty ground. This single, deliberate act changed everything. It was the first step in stopping the panic attack from taking full control. It is a step you can learn, right now.

The Real Problem Isn't Your Thoughts; It's Where You Put Your Attention

In a moment of rising panic, your mind becomes a time-travelling chaos machine. It is a brilliant storyteller, and its favourite genres are tragic histories and terrifying science fiction. It drags you into regrets about the past (“Why did I come here alone? What a stupid decision.”) or anxieties about the future (“What if I have a full-blown panic attack? What if I collapse?”). This torrent of thoughts feels like the problem itself. But the thoughts are not the core of the problem. They are the symptom. The core of the problem is that the storm of thoughts has hijacked your attention. Your body, however, has a secret superpower: it is incapable of time travel. The physical sensations of your body are always, and only, in the present moment. The feeling of your feet on the floor is happening now. The feeling of your breath is happening now. The solid weight of your hands in your lap is happening now. This gives us a profound insight into a new strategy. To stop a panic attack, you don’t need to win an argument with the chaotic, time-travelling thoughts in your head. You just need to move the location of your attention. You need to shift your focus from the terrifying, imagined story of the future to the simple, solid truth of your physical body in the present.

Introducing the Somatic Anchor: Your Body's 'Home Base'

To do this effectively, we need a pre-planned destination for our attention. We need a ‘home base’. In somatic therapy, we call this a Somatic Anchor. A Somatic Anchor is a specific physical sensation, somewhere in your body, that feels neutral or even mildly pleasant, that you can wilfully direct your attention to at any time. Think of it like a ship caught in a storm. The storm is the panic attack—the huge waves of terrifying feelings, the howling wind of catastrophic thoughts. A novice sailor might try to shout at the storm or try to wrestle the wheel to control the ship. But an experienced sailor knows you cannot control the storm. The first and most important job is to stop the ship from being swept away and smashed against the rocks. The first job is to drop anchor. The anchor doesn’t make the storm go away. But it tethers the ship to the solid, unmoving seabed. It provides stability in the chaos. It stops the ship from being swept away by the overwhelming power of the waves. For Clare, her anchor was the feeling of her feet on the ground. For you, it might be the steady weight of your hands in your lap, the feeling of your back supported by your chair, or the gentle contact of your clothes against your skin. It is your personal, internal 'safe harbour', available to you at any moment.

The Science: How a Simple Sensation Can Stop a Panic Attack

This process of ‘dropping anchor’ is not a distraction technique or a vague spiritual concept; it’s a direct, neurobiological intervention. It works by taking conscious control of two key systems in your brain and body.

1. The Attentional Spotlight

Your attention works like a spotlight in a dark theatre. Your brain is bombarded with information every second, but you can only be consciously aware of what that spotlight is shining on. The panicked ‘Feeling Brain’ (your amygdala) is a master stage-hog; it loves to hijack this spotlight and fix it on the perceived threat—the racing heart, the catastrophic thought—plunging everything else into darkness. The skill we are learning is how to become the stage manager. It is the practice of taking conscious, executive control of that spotlight. You are learning that you have the ability to move it away from the chaotic ‘story’ of the panic and shine it deliberately onto a calm, boring, neutral sensation in your body. Your brain cannot shine its spotlight on two things at once with equal intensity. By choosing to illuminate the solid ground beneath your feet, you are choosing to take the light off the monster you imagine is lurking in the shadows.

2. The Vagus Nerve: Your Body's Braking System

To understand the second mechanism, we need to quickly revisit your nervous system. It has two main branches: the Sympathetic Nervous System is your body’s ‘accelerator’, preparing you for fight or flight. The Parasympathetic Nervous System is your body’s ‘braking system’, promoting rest and calm. Your panic attack is a stuck accelerator. The Vagus Nerve is the main information super-highway of your braking system. It's a vast network of nerve fibres that runs from your brainstem down through your chest and into your abdomen. Crucially, it is a two-way street, constantly sending information from your body back up to your brain. When you deliberately slow your breathing and direct your attention to a safe, grounded sensation in your body (like your feet on the floor), you are sending a direct, ‘bottom-up’ signal of safety up the Vagus Nerve to your brain. This signal arrives at the brainstem and essentially tells your amygdala, ‘All is well down here. Stand down. The body is safe and grounded.’ It is how a bottom-up signal of safety can override a bottom-up signal of threat. You are not arguing with the panicked Guard Dog anymore. You are giving it a physical cue that it understands. You are finally speaking the right language.

Your 30-Second Anchor Drop: A Step-by-Step Guide

This is our first practical exercise. The goal is not to achieve a state of perfect calm, but simply to practice the skill of directing your attention. Before you begin, set your intention. Your intention is not to "succeed" or "feel good." Your intention is to be a curious, gentle, and patient scientist, simply observing your own experience. We will frame this as a "fire drill"—something to be practiced when you are calm, so the skill is available to you in a crisis.

A Practical Guide to Finding Solid Ground

1. Find Your Position: Find a comfortable position in your chair. Let your back be supported and place your feet flat on the floor, about shoulder-width apart. Let your hands rest gently in your lap. You can close your eyes if that feels comfortable, or simply lower your gaze.
2. Take One Breath: Take one slow breath in through your nose, and an even slower breath out through your mouth, as if you are gently blowing out a candle.
3. Scan Your Body: Now, begin to scan your body with your ‘attentional spotlight.’ Imagine a warm, gentle beam of light moving slowly through your body, just noticing what is there without judgment.
4. Choose Your Anchor: Your mission is to find one place in your body that feels even a little bit neutral, calm, or pleasant. There is no right answer. The most common and reliable anchors are:
   • The solid, grounded feeling of your feet on the floor.
   • The steady weight of your hands resting in your lap.
   • The gentle contact of your back against the chair. Pick one spot that feels most accessible to you right now.
5. Rest and Explore (The 30 Seconds): Now, for just 30 seconds, bring your full ‘attentional spotlight’ to that one spot. Get curious about its purely physical qualities. Don't label it as 'good' or 'bad'; just investigate its texture. Is it warm or cool? Heavy or light? Is there a subtle vibration or a sense of stillness? Your only job is to investigate this sensation as if it's the most interesting thing in the world. This is your Anchor.

Building the Muscle: The 10-Second 'Rep'

An anchor is a skill, and like any skill, it gets stronger with practice. The goal now is to build the muscle memory of finding your anchor, so it becomes fast and automatic. Your Practice Plan: Five times a day, just 'drop anchor' for 10 seconds. You can do it at your desk, on the bus, while waiting for the kettle to boil. Just take 10 seconds to bring your full attention to the feeling of your feet on the floor or your hands in your lap. We are building the neural pathway for finding the 'Safe Exit' until it becomes a well-worn path.

From an Anchor to a Safe Harbour: The Full System

You now have a powerful, physiology-based tool to find stability in the middle of a storm. This skill of ‘dropping anchor’ is the single most important foundation for all other anxiety regulation work. It is the first and most critical step. But an anchor is just the first step. It stops you from being swept away, but it doesn't teach you how to navigate the storm itself, how to work with the waves of difficult feelings, or how to deconstruct the unhelpful thoughts that create the storm in the first place. That requires a complete, systematic training plan. It requires a ‘bootcamp’ for your nervous system. This full training plan is the subject of my book, The Faulty Smoke Alarm. It is a complete, step-by-step guide to recalibrating your internal alarm system for good, following the real journey of Rebecca, a client who used these exact skills to go from a life of confusion and overwhelm to one of quiet confidence. The journey begins with mastering this foundational skill of anchoring. To support your practice, I want to give you the first three chapters of the book, absolutely free. In them, you will get a deeper dive into the science of anchoring, listen to Rebecca's story of finding her own anchor, and receive a guided audio version of the 'Anchor Drop' exercise to accelerate your learning. Enter your email below to receive your free chapters and begin the work of building your own, personal safe harbour.