Managing Fear In Turbulent Times

This session works with the fear and uncertainty so many of us are carrying. We practice cyclic sighing to calm the nervous system, then use a simple technique for looking at our fears without getting swept up in them: picturing the thought as an image across the room in a frame and tracing around it with our eyes.

We also look at practical ways to support the nervous system during hard times, including small moments of nurturing and movement to release stress and come back into the body.

Transcript

The focus of what we're doing today is working with turbulent times and calming the fear that we feel through uncertainty and through times that seem to be getting more difficult. We are all in these little bit different situations, But we're all living in this global situation. So I live in Canada, And I have a lot of American friends, And I know a lot of you are American. We have so much kindness and connection towards each other all over the world, And yet what's happening politically is very difficult and is causing a lot of fear. So I guess I wanted to give a shout out to uncertainty, What a tremendous impact uncertainty has on our nervous systems. We can deal often with adversity. But uncertainty is much harder. So let's take a few regulating practices, Starting with cyclic sighing. It's that deep double inhale through the nose. So lungs are pretty full. And then we purse our lips like we're breathing out through a straw and let the exhalation be longer than the inhalation. Inhale. Again Long slow exhale. Let's do that for a couple of minutes. And as you breathe out, Let your shoulders relax. If you're pinching your teeth, Let that relax. And as we're doing that and coming into the practice, Just also notice who's here with us. That we're not alone. We have a lot of like-minded, Kind-hearted people here with us that are doing this practice. Double inhales. And as you're releasing your out breath and softening your body, See if you could release or let go some of the fear. Fear has a big future component. There might be present moment fear of, I'm not sure if I'm going to afford groceries anymore, Or I might need to get a second job, Or. You know, There's all of the things that are going on for many people. Or maybe it's somebody you know, Maybe you're situated a little bit, You've got a bit of cush still, But other people that you know are thinking, Well, You know, Maybe it's time to buy a cheap RV and let my apartment go for a while. There's so many people that are in trouble financially right now. So as we're breathing, Let yourself release the whole thing. Let's let all of that go to our mind for a few more breaths. To bring our awareness from other people, From our own situation, From the world, And right into this body that we're in. What does it feel like to do that big inhale? And then to let it go. And when we're breathing out like through a straw, We can often exhale much longer. The longer exhales activate our parasympathetic nervous system, Help us relax. So our body's like, Oh, Okay, It's okay for me to relax here. And then notice what it feels like if you move your body. And notice how that affected you. So what we're working with today is calming fear when we're not certain that we're gonna be okay. This uncertainty is part of what drives the catastrophic thinking. So if I don't know what's gonna happen, Then I'm trying to prepare for all the possibilities, All the eventualities. When we're afraid, We plan. We try to get it organized. Or we might go into more of a freeze. We might go into an anger, All of these survival responses. We might go into flight. I can't go there. I'm going to kind of ignore it because I just can't cope. So if you were to touch into where are you now, Like in this moment, Are you in a survival response? If you are, Are you in a fight, Flight, Freeze? Also just generally lately. Right now you might be feeling a little bit more grounded with the breathing. And then we bring up the fear and the uncertainty and it's like, Okay, That wasn't very far away. Here it is right here back now. There's a situation that's causing a survival response. So when we feel threatened, Our nervous system brings forward these responses. And then we have many, Many tools that we can use. So we might do cyclic sighing. We could put our hands on our heart. Offer ourselves some warmth with both our hands. So to get specific, What is it that you're afraid of? So for many of us, It's the economy. Could be the environment. Could be something very personal, Like a personal health issue. Of course, We all know how stress affects our health. Makes everything more intense or worse. If you had to say, I'm afraid, And these are some of the things, I'm afraid that. . . Let's give that a minute. And notice what's happening in your breath. What happened in your body? Do you have a sensation or energy? Fear often shows up in our guts. Or we might clench somewhere. If we're really at a survival level, Food, Housing, Security, Then living up to a full potential isn't going to happen until we have that base. So one of the costs of this economic crisis, For instance, Is that we're losing out on our creativity. On our open-hearted willingness to help other people. Our compassion, Our excitement, Our juiciness, Our going out and dancing. Sometimes we'll try to maintain that during a crisis. A lot of those things go away because we don't have the bandwidth. But when we're in a survival response, We're really caught up in that. Thinking about what are some of the things that you're afraid of, Let's take a moment. We could broaden that. A little bit too to some of the almost like the secondary effects of being a survival response. If there's something more immediate, Then let's stay there. I'm afraid I'm going to lose my house or my job. Sometimes naming it can help. You have images, Or if there's words, You could kind of see them written out. Let's take a look at those. Put them on the wall on the other side of the room. So open your eyes if your eyes are closed. Pick a spot over there and put the images over there. You might have a collage of them. It might be one thing. And look at that and notice these are the thoughts I have in my mind right now. I'm going to just pay attention to those thoughts for a bit. Either a symbol or an image or the words written out. Take a moment to really look at that image. Put a frame around it and then look at what's in the frame. And notice how your body is responding. You might have stopped breathing, You might be holding your breath. We could take a few more breaths. Might be helpful to just move around a little in case we go into a freeze. So with those words over there, Food, Fear, Whatever your words are, Let's take a look. So here's the words. This is a representation of what I'm afraid of right now. These are some of my concerns. These are some of my fears. And put them in a frame, So you're seeing the frame, Whatever's in the frame. And then notice that there's space on the outside of the frame. Just take your eyes around the empty space. And let your eyes roll one direction clockwise and counterclockwise. So rolling our eyes around is a bilateral brain stimulation. It helps our brain recognize that's actually not happening right now. What's happening right now is I'm looking at a thought. I've brought forward some thoughts about what I'm afraid of, And this is what they are. And they're over there, Several feet away from my body and my brain. That I can see them and they have an impact and I can feel it. So maybe as I'm doing that, I want to pause here and take a couple of more big cyclic sighing breaths. Double inhale. Let your body release slowly. Long exhale. And notice what's happening in the frame. So we've had our eyes go around the edges a couple of times. And now we're taking a few breaths. We can notice that there's distance between me and where that image is. Our brain gets connected to our thoughts. Our brain believes our thoughts. So if we have thoughts and we're, Especially if we have catastrophic thoughts about the future. Our brain believes that, So this is a way to help our brain out. It's like, Actually, This is an image. These are shapes, Colors and shapes. Words sometimes have sound, We might hear sound, Or we might see words like they're written out. We're not helpless because we can, As soon as we recognize, That's the beauty of somatic mindfulness, We come in, We notice what's happening in my body, My breath. What are the thoughts in my mind? And then we can do something about it. So we breathe, We move, We put that over there and do framing and tracing. Step back a little here again. And how do you feel now? This is more like a time-release vitamin than a magic pill. Sometimes it's dramatic change. We look over there, We trace it around and we're like, Wow, I was really caught in a catastrophic thought stream there. When we come back into our body. What's happening in our body right now. So if you're breathing with a full breath, A long exhale, See if you could allow your breath to be continuous and smooth so you're not holding your breath. And how much aliveness do you feel in your body? So when you think about how I feel in my body, What's going on in my mind, My heart, My energy, Sometimes it just feels like, Oh, There's so much here. I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed. So how could you support your nervous system right now? I think that's something really important. One of the ways we can do that is we can give our nervous system less pressure. So if you have a normal kind of this is my life, This is what I do, Kids are in activities, Or I go to these things, Or I work 50 hours a week, Or whatever it is, If you take your normal kind of baseline of activity, How is that for you now? So a lot of people are finding that as we get more stressed and more worried, As we experience more disconnection with neighbors and other people in our world, Our nervous systems need more care, But it also takes our nervous systems a lot more energy. So when we're trying to keep some stability and some kind of normal patterns in our life, It takes us more energy to do that. So if you're noticing that, You know, I used to really look forward to getting together with my friends on Sunday mornings for brunch or whatever that might be. And now I'm kind of feeling like I just want to stay home this weekend and watch TV or stream some series. That's normal. It's what we could expect when our nervous systems are working pretty hard. We don't have the strength, The resilience, The juiciness, And the aliveness that we would normally have. How could we have some practicality around that, But also some compassion? There's nothing wrong with me that I'm reducing some of the time I spend with difficult people, Because it's too much, I can't. I used to be able to handle it and I can't anymore. I feel like I should get out for a run every day or three days a week and I'm having trouble doing that now. A lot of how we feel is the effect of stress, Anxiety, Fear. So how could I offer myself some more nurturing things? Maybe it's that I'm going to make a warm soup and have it later. So sometimes we'll nourish ourselves by cooking or food. Sometimes it's, I'm really gonna spend more time on the couch cuddling with my dog. Whatever that is for you, So let's take a moment to think about that. How could you nurture yourself more? So we could remove some stress and we could add some support. We don't have anything to say about a lot of the stress that's happening here. We can organize with other people, We can make longer term changes, But right now, We're in the situation that we're in. So personally, Maybe I could let go of something and then I could bring in something that's more supportive. What would that be? And check in with your body as you're thinking about these things. I know I would have less stress if I could get out and exercise more often. And your body's like. . . No. Or maybe it's more specific then. Maybe it's, I could put on some dance music and dance for five or 10 minutes when I get home from work. It's like, Oh yeah, Maybe that. So let's give us a couple of minutes here. How could you bring more life and enjoyment into your life right now, Even with the fear, The anxiety, All the uncertainty? What are some things that you could do? And let yourself feel those. Feel it in your body, Visualize it in your mind. And if your mind is arguing with you and saying, I don't have time for that, Or if you feel like you can't rest, That is our nervous system. Also, Our nervous system, If you have a perfectionist, Driven by perfectionism. That's a trauma response. That's a nervous system response. I'm not worth anything unless I'm producing or I'm doing things perfectly. I don't feel like I've done enough or there's not enough hours in the day at the end of the day that I could relax my body and let myself know it's the end of the day. I'm entitled to rest now and actually I need to rest and I'll be more productive tomorrow if I do. Also, I'm a human being. It's okay for me to pull back, To nourish myself, To be honest. Right now, It's pretty tough for a lot of people. So this particular session, We've been working mostly with ourselves. But obviously, A lot of our stress also comes from seeing the violence and the uncertainty and the impact of what's going on in other people. One thing that happens in a survival response is our heart shuts down. We don't have as much access to our humanity. I often say do something for your nervous system every day. If you're feeling like you've got all of this anxiety and fear and stress, Let's finish our practice with some cyclic sighing. So deep double inhale through the nose. Exhale like you're breathing out through a straw. And let your exhalation go long. As we're working with this, We could look around and see what help there is. There's all these guided practices. There's a lot of support and whatever it is that was coming forward for you when we were thinking about how can I nurture myself. What could I reduce? What are the stresses I could reduce? Catastrophic thinking is one. We could be really alert for when we get in that trance of catastrophic thinking and do something to pull back. So that's one thing you could do. And what could I nourish myself with? So maybe it's put on a couple of dance tunes. And do something with your nervous system. Remember to do these breathing practices. Tune in, Offer ourselves some warmth and support. And another really good way to work with fear and anxiety is movement. Couple minutes of shaking, Like shaking the tree. The world we're in is not something that one person can do much about. Can do something a lot about our own nervous system.