Living with fear and anxiety is challenging.
It can really take away your sense of inner peace,
Freedom and joy.
I have several meditations on transforming anxiety,
But in this talk we will simply explore it a little,
To better understand why it manifests in your life the way it does.
So what anxiety is actually,
Is a fight-or-flight response in the body.
It's a deep-rooted animal instinct that we will probably never be rid of as human beings.
But we no longer have to run from lions and tigers,
So a lot of it's unnecessary,
And we hold it embedded in the body for prolonged periods of time that causes a lot of uncomfortable disturbance.
It really takes away our sense of inner peace,
Harmony and joy.
Anxiety is actually just a symptom of what's going on underneath.
But I'm sure I don't have to tell you how uncomfortable being engulfed by fear and anxiety is.
When this fight-or-flight response kicks in,
It causes the brain to send cortisol to the body to make it instantly ready to fight,
Flight or freeze.
This causes the heart rate to escalate,
The body to tense up,
Including the muscles and stomach,
And we can even feel nauseous as the body is ready to purge to make it lighter to run away.
We can sweat and tremble and have a deep sense of impending danger,
Panic or doom.
And what often happens is an unhealthy cycle starts to form where you notice these reactions in the body and so your mind begins to worry about it,
Worry about how long it will last,
And this worry further causes these reactions in the body.
This cycle of reaction keeps the fear alive and causes the anxiety to stay for long periods of time where we begin to take it as truth or reality about ourselves.
But have you ever noticed this in your life?
There may be a time where,
For whatever reason,
You feel really full of fear and anxiety about your life and your situation.
It doesn't seem to want to shift.
And then you do something,
Maybe like yoga or a retreat or a walk in beautiful,
Peaceful nature,
And somehow that feeling of dread lifts and you might feel okay for a couple of days.
Well,
Actually,
Your life is still the same.
That's not changed.
It's just your perspective that's transformed.
And probably the cycle of reaction was broken for a little while when you really let go and relaxed in the nature or whatever you did.
But I guess we don't have the luxury of just chasing peaceful,
Good experiences all of our life.
So we need to find a way that generally changes the way that we respond to anxiety and fear in the body and mind and gradually transform the way that we live with it into what feels more healthy,
Manageable and peaceful.
I've realized that fear and anxiety affect people in many different ways.
Sometimes it can be that we're just filled with a prevalent sense of fear and dread for a consciously unknown reason.
Where we really just want to lie on the bed in a fetal position,
Under a blanket and be quiet.
Others might have a racing mind with a really high heart rate and tension in the stomach.
Whatever way it specifically manifests in your body,
We can often wallow in the worst-case scenario.
A lot of the time what we fear isn't something that actually,
Literally exists right now.
It's a fear about something that may or may not happen.
But we can get lost in these thoughts or feeling in the body and begin to believe them as truth.
I guess the question could be,
But what do I do about it then?
How do I break this cycle of reaction and begin to feel happier?
Well,
There's tons of tools out there that can help ease symptoms in the body or help you temporarily feel better.
But although these tools are wonderful and very helpful sometimes,
I feel like it's just putting a band-aid on a wound.
It's not helping to actually go deeper and heal the wound from the inside.
By working with others,
What I've found makes a true and lasting difference for people is to gradually heal and to transform the way that you hold the experience of fear and anxiety and how you naturally respond to it.
Fear and anxiety needs to be held with allowing,
Compassion and love.
Understandably,
We feel a lot of resistance to any fear or anxiety.
But this resistance kind of fuels the fire.
Any judgments or trying to stop feeling the way you're feeling or wanting to change it creates further inner conflict and actually gives more power to the anxiety.
Holding the experience with as much kindness and compassion as we can is much more healing and gives us the stable ground to allow transformation to begin.
Gradually,
Those habitual patterns change.
The fear or anxiety loses its power over you.
It stops holding you back and you feel a much greater sense of inner peace and joy.
Doesn't that sound wonderful?
But of course,
To be able to do this,
There's a journey of deepening into ourselves and our experience as we learn how to be with it in a better way.
In my course Transforming Fear and Anxiety,
I guide you on this journey.
Each of our journeys is personal and unique and so having someone to go on the journey with you is really helpful.
The course gives you that time to deeply self-explore,
Heal and transform.
So please feel free to have a look.
Thank you.
Www.
Mooji.
Org
