5 Minutes To Move From Anxiety To Presence

When anxiety pulls you into future worries, this short practice helps you return to the safety of your body’s presence. Using sensory grounding and a gentle ‘three doors’ approach, you’ll shift from predicting the worst to meeting the present moment more calmly. This is for when you need to be reminded that the present moment is where your power lives.

Transcript

Hello,

This is Zia.

Let's spend a few minutes helping you gently expand from fear to choice.

When anxiety locks its claws into us,

Part of its strong message is that there is no other outcome possible than the one we are thinking of.

This short practice can help remind our stressed minds that we can conjure up other possibilities while we move into karma presence.

Begin by noticing your feet.

Feel the temperature,

Cool or warm against your socks,

Or barefoot to the air around.

Notice the pressure.

Notice where your weight settles heaviest.

Perhaps into your heels or into the gripping of your toes.

Let your mind search for the textures and explore them against the bottom of your feet.

Is there fabric,

The cool floor,

Or perhaps you feel the inside of your feet as a faint buzz that tells you you're alive.

No need to change anything.

Just let noticing your feet remind you,

This,

This is where I live right now.

This is where I am right now.

Begin to imagine yourself standing in a hallway.

There are three doors in front of you.

Behind the first,

Your worst case future,

Pulsing with the old fears.

Behind the second,

A more neutral outcome,

Ordinary,

Unremarkable.

And behind the third,

A better possibility than what you can imagine right now,

Soft and shimmery at the edges.

Place a hand on your belly.

Breathe into the space where these futures haven't happened yet.

Now step back from the doors.

And once again,

Feel your feet firmly here where the hallway begins.

The doors don't disappear,

But you're no longer pressed up against them.

You are the one who can choose which one to knock on.

Your nervous system is learning.

The future is not a shadow from the past.

Each breath in your belly,

Each sensation underfoot,

Rewires the habit that said,

I must predict to protect.

Now it whispers,

I will meet what comes from this moment here.

Let your mind rest now in the presence of the future.

Let your mind rest in this new grounded awareness.

The old doors may still call.

And you'll remember,

You are always standing where the real power lives,

Here,

Now,

In the present moment.