Meditation for Stress and Anxiety I have read much about meditation and stress and anxiety, but I'd like to have an experiential perspective from people on here. 

1) What's the Buddhist view about stress? What are the solutions to stress? [I don't mean suffering as in dukkha but the physiological reaction of stress linked with cortisol, or just the feeling of being stressed.]

2) Same thing, but with anxiety.

3) How much are stress and anxiety, or their exacerbation, barriers to spiritual practice?

Thank you.
How much are stress and anxiety, or their exacerbation, barriers to spiritual practice?


Stress can be broken up into mental and physical phenomena such as thoughts, emotions, muscle tension, pain etc. They are just impersonal phenomena arising and ceasing on their own accord. 

Anxiety is a variation of the 4th Hindrance of restlessness and worry (uddhacca-kukkucca). The hindrances are barriers that block one from progressing on the Path, unless one practices to understand and overcome them.

In Vipassana meditation one treats all objects the same. No object is more or less important than the previous or next object.

Just note the phenomena a couple of times and return attention to the abdomen (Burmese Method).