Anxious? Welcome home

Tenderfoot Yogi Podcast and Audio Blog: Perspectives and Insights for Ease in Your Awakening

What if anxiety is a good thing? Of course if you have felt anxious before or feel anxious right now, then you are most certainly rolling your eyes at me. No one will pretend that feeling anxious feels good. It’s quite awful actually. It’s so awful, that once we’ve felt it, we will do almost anything to avoid feeling that way again. It’s frightening. Even terrifying. I’m not speaking of a bit of nervous energy before giving a presentation, or some butterflies before a sporting event, although both of these qualify. I’m speaking of a generalized sensation that has us unsure whether everything is really OK – a sensation that grabs hold of us and seems to overtake us. These are fearful moments, and with lack of another perspective, all we know to do is to push the moments away. But we need not push. Because there is a completely different way to look at this. Here is what I’m learning…

Listen to the Podcast version of this post below

A hospital bathroom

At the risk of making this post overly personal, I’m going to tell you a short story. You see, my awakening into this new way of being could have happened much earlier. I could have woken up when I was just 26 years old, instead of 13 years later. I was working in a hospital in Washington D.C., my second ‘real’ job out of college. I began experiencing chest pain that would radiate down my arms. One of the units I worked on in the hospital was the cardiac unit, so my active mind was all too familiar with the signs of an unhealthy heart. For months that felt like years I walked around with a generalized fear that something was very wrong. I was having trouble sleeping and eating as well. And I didn’t love my job. It was stressful and had become unfulfilling and there was a part of me that knew it was time to move on, but I didn’t know to where I should move. One day I found myself wandering to a rarely used wing on the 5th floor of the hospital. I went into a staff bathroom and sat on the floor against the door. I sat for a very long time, trembling with my head in my hands. I was afraid. There was no other word for it. I could not put my finger on what it was. But I was afraid. I was just…afraid.

Distraction

It turned out that my chest pain was due to acid reflux. Once the diagnosis came in it was easy enough to place together with other symptoms and it made sense to me. I saw a gastroenterologist, had a ‘minor’ procedure and was placed on a medicine that he assumed would be for the rest of my life. It would take me until my early 40’s to get myself off of it. Incidentally, if you’re curious about how I got off of that medicine, and about how your body is designed to heal itself of our various physical ailments, I spoke about it in the post it’s time to heal your ailment a few months ago here on Tenderfoot Yogi. At the same time, I decided to go back to graduate school. So, with my chest pain addressed and a new goal and direction into which I could divert my energy, all returned to normal. It’s a bit too harsh to call this new direction a distraction, as it was apparently my path and has led me to where I am today. But it remains true that I could have answered my call then to awaken – to begin working with my mind and gaining the lightness and freedom and meaning for which we are all destined. But I didn’t.

The Hudson River

A few years ago on Father’s day, my older brother and I surprised my dad by getting the three of us together for a few days. My dad was coming to visit me anyway, so all it took was my big brother to get himself up to New York from Florida and for me to take a few days off from work. I took my dad and my brother out to my favorite swimming hole at a spot on the northern Hudson River. We had to hike a short path that then opened up to some beautiful flat rocks, and then a pristine swimming spot in crystal calm water on the river. We were the only ones there. We negotiated our way into the water and began to swim. After just a few moments I noticed that my dad, who is a fine swimmer, did not look right. His face was tight and pale and he was breathing fast. He turned around and began clumsily swimming, quite desperately it seemed, back to the rocks. I caught up to him and began reassuring him and helped him back to a nice flat rock. He was fine. For whatever reason, he had panicked in that open water. I could relate.

Fear

My fear of having a heart attack when I was 26 and my dad’s fear of drowning in the Hudson had just one thing in common. Our minds. They were both the same. This is how our runaway minds respond to fear. The ancient Persian mystic poet Hafiz wrote, “fear is the cheapest room in the house. I’d like to see you in better living conditions.” Neither my fear or my Dad’s was rational. Fear rarely is – rational. And anyone who has ever experienced anxiety knows that while it can be related to a particular fear, the most paralyzing kind is where there really isn’t anything in particular to be afraid of at all. Once we’ve felt anxious just one time, it becomes more about feeling anxious about being anxious. Our mind is running away from us and we are grasping. It’s something that we don’t want to feel, so we push it away, and as we’ve spoken before, the pushing only makes it stronger.

New terminology

So let’s start by letting go of the word ‘anxiety’. If we could say this word to describe a natural state of nervousness or underlying fear that we humans find ourselves in from time to time, then this would be fine. But unfortunately more often the word is misunderstood as a condition of some kind, and this opens the door for we humans to identify ourselves with a label – which is almost never helpful. So maybe it’s more helpful to say the word ‘anxious’ – as in the phrase “I was feeling anxious.”

Something so right

It is said that one of the signs of spiritual awakening is a general sense of something new inside us. Something that wants to be realized. Something that wants to be known. It makes sense that this something may feel like energy, a new energy within us that initially, we aren’t quite sure what to do with. Does this sound familiar? But how easy would it be for us to associate this otherwise beautiful sensation with there being something wrong? All too easy it seems.

Something so wrong

How often does the average adult who lives and breaths hear the word ‘anxiety’ in context of a condition that is treatable, versus hearing the word ‘awakening’ as a beautiful human experience that is to be embraced? Without any real awareness that it is possible to be called to open ourselves beyond what we have come to know, it is easy and I think quite common to interpret something that feels like a vague restlessness as fear. And fear is bad. So we begin to worry. We are confused, so we become concerned. We live in a society where prescription drugs are marketed on television and in the sidebars of our web browsers. This thing that we feel inside that we cannot put our fingers on and that does not feel familiar in any way must be a cause of concern right? There must be something wrong, otherwise why would there be so many fixes available?

Absorbed in the something

Have you ever noticed how much more frightening the anticipation of the thing is than the thing itself? A long plane flight. A speech. A social gathering. If we cultivate some space in our minds, a bit of detachment from our thoughts, then we begin to see the freedom from these fears. We can’t know that we are pushing something away if we are so absorbed in the something that we can’t see it. And this is how we awaken to the part of us that is waiting for us beneath and above our chattering minds. So let’s get quiet. This is mindfulness.

A helpful tool

There is no substitute for a sustained meditation practice to help us get to know our minds, and to discover the truth that lives beyond our patterns of reactivity, anxiety, fear, and worry. But there are certainly many other tools that can help us gain some calm – even in a moment when we’re feeling anxious. We all get overwhelmed from time to time. For example regular exercise is essential, and mindful walking in particular – outside in nature if possible, is a wonderful cure. But the tool I want to share has to do with working with our breath. In yoga practice there are many techniques to regulate our breathing, called pranayama, and one in particular called alternate nostril breathing is worth you looking up. This is the first tool I would suggest – just Google it or search youtube. It does not matter whether you’ve begun your yoga or meditation practice – anyone can learn this technique. It slows you down, centers you, and helps to cultivate calm. Like most things, it’s most effective if you do it regularly, when you’re both calm and otherwise. Your anxious feeling is temporary – it’s true. And sometimes a simple tool works to remind us of this, and of who we truly are.

It’s time to begin

For the most part we all just want to mow our lawns. Or cook for our friends. Or build a tree house with our kids. Or see the ocean. Or have a glass of wine and laugh with a loved one. Or enjoy a bowl of popcorn in front of a good movie. Preferably all of the above. And we’d like to do this in a light, relaxed, fun way. Oh, and it would also be nice if we felt that our lives were meaningful. And all of this is possible, and more. But we do have some work to do. We need to begin working with our minds. To learn to make friends with our minds but also learn to put them on their leashes. For in learning to work with our minds – our minds that love to jump to conclusions and label things and seek instant relief and gratification and generally help us be afraid of almost anything – is our freedom. Is our path. Our path home. Welcome home.

For what it’s worth, and for the knowing that all is well.

The post Anxious? Welcome home appeared first on tenderfoot yogi.