RISE To Heal Anxiety

Anxiety is not what it appears to be. At any given moment, we may attach our anxiety to specific and valid fears. But when we zoom out, we realize that none of these things directly causes our anxiety. It exists unmoored in our systems, attaching itself to whatever may strike fear in our hearts. Anxiety is something much deeper than we imagine it to be. It is the subconscious fear of feeling emotions that we believe will overtake us, such as grief, terror, and shame.

What we call anxiety is the underlying pressure of habitually—and often subconsciously—avoiding the full experience of our most intense and acutely uncomfortable feelings. These emotions remain in our systems, unable to resolve. To heal anxiety, we need a vital skill that most of us never learned as children: how to allow our most uncomfortable emotions to move through our bodies, instead of bracing against them.

You don’t have anxiety because of personal weakness. You have anxiety because you, like all of us, experience intense emotional pain—and no one taught you how to feel it. Our families and cultures teach us to avoid and numb the fear, shame, and grief that naturally arise in our bodies as we move through life. As the world becomes more uncertain and destabilized, our feelings intensify. Our habits of bracing against the waves of emotion are breaking us.

Healing anxiety means learning how to allow our most uncomfortable emotions without shutting them down. Through practice, we develop the capacity and resilience to know that they will not annihilate us. Instead of meeting our feelings with control, we must learn how to meet them with softness and care.

In this 6-day course, you'll encounter four practices to help you meet your anxiety with radical acceptance and love, allowing it to release and transform. Through the RISE practices, you will learn Relational, Imaginal, Somatic, and Expressive methods that profoundly shift your approach to anxiety.

Like all of Catherine’s work, this course is gentle, trauma-informed, and anti-oppressive, viewing our personal healing as an aspect of collective liberation.

Catherine looks forward to connecting with you in the classroom as you move through the RISE practices for anxiety.

Musical artist credits: Intro - Silver Maple; Lesson 1 - Amaranth Cove, Peter Sandberg, LUCHS; Lesson 2 - LUCHS, Gavin Luke, Amaranth Cove; Lessons 3, 4, and 5 - LUCHS, Hanna Lindgren; Lesson 6 - Jamiel Conlon, David Edwards.

***Disclaimer: This course contains invitations to gently intensify uncomfortable emotions and body sensations. If you have a history of anxiety, panic, PTSD, or other conditions, please have a trusted professional support available.

Lección 1: Anxiety Is Not What It Appears

This first lesson creates the container in which you will explore the relational, imaginal, somatic, and expressive practices for anxiety. In this session, I share a short personal story of my own experience with anxiety, followed by a perhaps surprising definition of anxiety that I’ve found to be the most evocative and helpful for myself and the people I work with. Held in this container, you will be ready to begin the RISE practices that follow.

Lección 2: Relational Practice: Attuned Touch

Either with a trusted person or an imagined companion, the practice of attuned touch invites us to open and receive nurturing presence. Anxiety thrives in loneliness, reinforcing our shame and preventing the release of stuck emotions. In this practice, there is a clear giver and receiver—the receiver being the one seeking healing for anxiety. With loving and grounded intention, the giver offers simple, attuned touch in a way that feels the most supportive to the receiver, allowing a state of deepening safety to emerge.

Lección 3: Imaginal Practice: Anchor In Your Loving Adult Self

This potent visualization practice invites you to imagine and embody the most loving version of your adult self who is able to hold your anxiety with skill and tenderness. "Imaginal" refers to the conscious dream state popularized by Carl Jung—a space between waking consciousness and the unconscious mind. By engaging our imaginal realm with healing intention, we unlock inner resources that allow us to meet our anxiety with confidence and compassion, and become able to discern our true self from the noise of our minds.

Lección 4: Somatic Practice: Held By The Earth

This practice of deep relaxation invites you to release the weight of your bones into the loving support of the earth. By shifting our attention toward the physical sensations of being held, our minds can open and release the spirals of anxiety. Before you do this practice, locate a space where your body can comfortably lie on a firm surface, such as the floor, with your knees bent. You can also do this practice by feeling the support of the earth through a chair, if that is more accessible for you.

Lección 5: Expressive Practice: Voo Sounding

In this practice of guided sounding, you will experiment with making the low, sustained sound of "voo" deep in your body. Popularized by trauma therapist Peter Levine, the vibration of "voo" can stimulate our vagus nerve, creating a state of visceral safety in the body, opening us to release emotion or movement that has been frozen within us. Think of it as becoming your own sound healing instrument. For this practice, locate a private space where you feel comfortable experimenting with volume.

Lección 6: Integration And Closing Practice

This final lesson is a brief overview of what you've learned thus far through the four RISE practices, centering the through-line of radical self-compassion as the most potent medicine for anxiety. In the intimate closing practice that follows, you will become the holder and the held, meeting the tender undercurrent of your anxiety with the deep nurturing of your most loving self.