Fear and anxiety can be really challenging to live with as it can really overpower a sense of happiness and contentment.
To begin to transform the way that you live with it in your life,
It can be really helpful to unpack its nature a bit and see what's actually happening.
Differentiating between anxiety stories and the sensations of it in the body is really helpful.
Sometimes you might feel a gradual movement towards feeling anxious and you don't know how to stop it.
But often you could experience fear or anxiety like a sudden flooding of symptoms in the body and mind.
Either way,
By the time you notice it in your body,
It's usually already uncomfortable.
What often happens is we get trapped into a cycle.
Example,
When we notice symptoms,
We might further then compound it with worries like,
Oh no,
How long is this going to last?
I don't want to be anxious.
How do I stop it?
Etc.
And this causes your body to respond again to a threat.
Your brain pumps out more cortisol,
Your heart rate increases even more and your stomach tightens more.
So you can get stuck in a very unhelpful cycle of reaction.
What's needed is a way to simply break the pattern in this deep-rooted habitual cycle.
Sometimes all it takes is to differentiate between the actual sensations in the body and the stories in the mind.
Normally we just bundle them all together and we call it fear or anxiety.
But by looking into its true nature and differentiating between these,
You can begin to change your perspective of it.
So let's give that a try in the meditation.
As we move into the meditation,
Take a little time to get yourself sorted.
Find a comfortable position where you can feel awake but your body feels supported and relaxed.
Gently close your eyes if you wish.
Breathe naturally and give yourself a moment to settle.
In the meditation I'll give you some guidance and then I'll leave spaces of silence.
This is so that you can really drop into your own space and feel what is happening for you in the moment.
Let's begin with a few deep breaths together to allow your mind to calm and your energy settle.
Take a deep breath in and exhale really slowly,
Feeling your body relax as you breathe out.
Another deep breath in and a long exhale,
Letting your body relax.
One more time in and a long exhale,
Deeply relaxing the body.
And now you can just breathe naturally,
Noticing the feelings and sensations of it in your body.
The sensations of it coming in and out of your nostrils,
The feelings and sensations of your lungs,
Ribs and belly,
Rising and falling as you breathe.
And each time you breathe out,
Feel your body relax and calm.
You could have the sense that just for a moment as you breathe out,
Your body kind of melts into the ground below you,
Moving your awareness slowly down to the ground.
It might be a chair or a bed,
It doesn't matter,
Noticing the sensations of it against your body,
The pressure of it pushing up against you.
Become aware of how it holds you and supports you,
No matter what,
With a sense of steadiness and safety.
And as much as you can,
See if you can let yourself really trust it and allow your whole body to deeply relax into it as you breathe.
From the ground,
Move your awareness up into your body.
Notice the shape and space that it holds.
Going a little deeper,
Notice the feelings and sensations in your body.
As my mentor Rob says,
You can search around the body,
Kind of like you're inside a dark cave,
And you're slowly shining a torchlight around the cave to see what's there.
Allowing yourself to be curious and letting whatever you notice just be there as it is.
No judgments,
No need to change it or stop it,
Just allowing and being.
Let's take a moment to bring up a situation for yourself where you feel a sense of fear or anxiety.
If you feel it right now,
That's great,
We can use it.
If not,
Then try to bring up a past situation where you felt deeply fearful in this way,
And let yourself really be there and feel it for a moment.
Now try to drop any stories and labels entangled with it,
And just notice the raw sensations in your body.
Where do you feel them in your body?
What are the raw sensations of it in the body,
Without even labeling the sensations or getting sucked into them?
Just letting them be there if you can,
And noticing with a sense of bare awareness.
If you notice any tension in the body,
Secondary to the fear or anxiety,
Take a deep breath in,
And as you breathe a long slow breath out,
Let that tension in your body relax and melt away.
And then gently bring your awareness back to noticing the raw sensations of the fear in your body.
As you're watching these sensations in the body,
You might feel yourself kind of being pulled out by stories that surround them,
And are entangled with the fear or anxiety.
It might seem really important even.
If you notice this,
See if you can gently separate the two,
Dropping the story,
And the labels,
And the perspective around it,
And gently come back to what you're actually noticing in the body right now,
With a sense of bare awareness.
You might notice that when you separate out the story from the sensation,
It changes the intensity or the meaning of the sensation.
Holding your space with as much compassion and love as you can,
There's no need to judge yourself,
Or there's no need to stop anything.
However it is for you,
It's okay.
As the meditation comes towards an end,
Reflect for a moment whether you could notice the two aspects of this fear or anxiety.
There's the sensations of it in your body,
And the story that we entangle with it,
And they can kind of feed each other,
Fuel each other,
But we can also just let the stories be stories,
And let the sensations be raw sensations in the body.
Separately they aren't quite as overpowering.
Essentially,
Sensations in the body are just sensations.
It's the story that feeds it that turns it into a complex powerful thing,
And that can actually feel like a solid sense of yourself.
So by separating the stories and their sensations a bit,
You can help to break that cycle of interfeding that goes on,
And gradually you can get to understand these feelings of fear or anxiety in a very different way.
This practice is part of my course,
Transforming Fear and Anxiety.
If you found value in it,
And would like to explore more,
Then you're welcome to have a look at the course.
Thank you for meditating with me,
And hopefully see you there.
