Tap Curiosity

Welcome to Day 3 of the Anxiety Challenge with Martha Beck.

In this challenge,

You'll explore gentle and creative ways to calm your body,

Quiet your thoughts and ease anxious feelings.

Let's jump into today's session.

Hello and welcome back to Day 3 of the Anxiety Challenge here on Insight Timer.

Yesterday,

We explored how anxious thoughts can act like false alarms,

And we practiced shifting our focus toward calming images.

Today we'll play with a new idea,

That the opposite of our frightening thoughts might just be as true or even truer,

And that exploring those opposites can open a portal to peace.

So,

Begin please by breathing deeply and regularly,

Shaking out any tension and finding a comfortable position,

Standing,

Sitting,

Lying down.

Close your eyes for a moment,

And imagine that you're walking down an ancient path in a dark forest.

There are huge,

Thick tree trunks all around you,

And the canopy which is high above you is so dense that the forest is almost dark.

There are ruins here,

Covered with roots and with moss.

And as you walk down the path,

You come to a wall that blocks your passage,

And in that wall is a door.

Now something about that door makes you very,

Very curious.

You have a feeling that something interesting is on the other side,

But you're also a little nervous about opening it.

You're also a bit scared.

In fact,

Stand there in that place and let your usual anxieties come up in your mind.

You might notice that as you begin to feel anxious,

You also think familiar thoughts.

For example,

This could be dangerous.

I could get hurt.

I'm not safe.

Now as you think these anxious thoughts,

They appear magically in glowing letters on the ancient door.

They glow,

And then they fade.

And then they spell out something completely different.

On the door in glowing letters,

This sentence appears.

The opposite of my frightening thoughts opens the portal to inner peace.

Now,

This makes you very curious.

So you reach out and you touch the ancient lock,

And the door swings open.

And you walk through into the most beautiful garden you've ever seen.

It's bright and sunny,

Full of butterflies and hummingbirds and babbling brooks and bird song.

And everywhere you look on the flowers and the stones and the tree trunks,

You see these glowing letters that spell out the opposite of all your frightening thoughts.

So this could be dangerous turns into this could be safe.

I could get hurt turns into I could get healed.

I'm not safe turns into I am safe.

And walk through this garden,

Not necessarily believing everything,

But allowing yourself to be curious about everything you see.

How might these positive thoughts actually be just as true as your anxious thoughts or truer?

Let yourself play with them the way you played with new ideas or beautiful stories when you were a child.

Just entertaining them helps shift your mind out of its usual anxieties,

Which always hurt you and take you into a state of curiosity and possibility,

Which can help you very much.

So if you can spend even a few moments really visualizing this beautiful garden,

If you can think of one opposite to an anxious thought that might be just as true or truer,

You have opened the portal to inner peace and made a huge step toward resolving your anxiety.

If you repeat this exercise,

Your curiosity will grow and so will the state of calm that comes to you as you walk from the dark wood into the beautiful garden and find what your life could be.

Thought for today,

The opposite of my frightening thoughts could be the portal to inner peace.

As we end today's session,

What opposite thought felt surprisingly calming for you?

Share one phrase that opened a sense of peace in the challenge forum.

Tomorrow in day four,

We'll playfully create an anxiety monster and then disarm it with silliness.

Please come prepared with a piece of paper and something to draw with,

A pen,

A pencil,

A crayon.

I'll see you then.