Release fear live in the present moment.
Does belief have more power than the medicine itself?
The mind is the most incredibly powerful tool. It’s what allows us to have sentient awareness. The mind gives us the most powerful thing that makes us human and that’s to be able to verbally communicate.
The mind is also the route to finding solutions in our lives. This incredible attribute of problem solving has a few downsides too.
The mind can create a separate reality and construct in our imagination the future things that may happen. But, when taken to the extreme, it can become stuck in loops of fantasies and sometimes, nightmares.
Our extremely imaginative brains can create scenarios that have never existed, no longer exist and most often, will never exist!
You might be led into living in the past. Living in a revelry or dreamlike state feeling nostalgia for things that have happened before. The mind allows you to feel all those things whether they’re pleasing or not so pleasing.
Fear driven into the mind becomes catastrophic.
If you’ve ever experienced traumatic moments in your life, either single events or perhaps even stress for a little bit too long, it can leave the mind trying to find solutions. It is this that leads to anxiety over the future. The mind simply can’t cope and the body reacts by going into states of hypervigilance.
Imagine being able to release any regret or shame held from the past or fear of the future. That is the real power of having a personal practice. To release irrational fear.
The Scream, 1893 Edvard Munch
My fears, for most of my life, manifested in catastrophic thinking.
The fear that I felt in me went up into my head, and I tried to reason with it.
My reason was that if I could make a good enough plan then I could control all the elements in my life so that I would not be placed in a situation where I would feel pain.
This became exacerbated when my children were born, and my body and mind went into hyperdrive. As though all my fears had suddenly been realised. My triplet daughters were born by emergency C-section when they were just 26 weeks old. It was a catastrophic birth and the oldest of the triplets sustained a serious laceration to her head from the obstetrician’s knife.
This triggered me into trying to over control every single situation so that I could, in an attempt to prevent anything further from happening to them. Unfortunately, this led to deep anxiety and depression in me. During the day, I was manically trying to meet all their needs as their full time carer.
I would be trying to take every possible action to ensure their best interest at the cost of everything else, especially my health. My greatest fear was that, I just wouldn’t do my best job for them as their father.
It has taken very deep shadow work to let go of my need to control anything in the future. I’ve come to realise that the true preparation for life is present moment awareness.
Fear has no place when one is present making choices in the now
With fear I felt shame, and I needed to develop forgiveness for myself and for anyone else I felt had done me or my children wrong.
The fear and fearful thoughts, both conscious and subconscious, caused hesitation, prevented me from taking action and made me unable to move forwards. Fear can be all consuming in and of itself:
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.”
There is nothing truer than this. The rest of the quote is equally powerful. This demonstrates the immense possibilities we have, as human beings, to differentiate ourselves from animals, and also to elevate our consciousness.
The rest of the quote is:
“Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And, when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
– Frank Herbert, Dune
Open to the little death and through it re-birth.
Fear is part of a natural response, an important system designed to keep us safe. The feeling of fear can be triggered by an external or internal element. The feeling or emotion itself should only last a couple of minutes, allowing us to protect ourselves and make ourselves safe.
When fear becomes connected to thoughts, memories or patterns in childhood, it can develop into a crushing presence. Unabated fear left to move into thoughts and memory patterns becomes what we know as anxiety.
It is estimated that 10 million people in the UK have phobias
When we were young children we may have developed fear of the dark or of things that may lurk in darkened corners, maybe even fear of our own souls or otherwise. It may be that some of this imprinting was related to the responses and behaviours of our family members or caregivers.
Fear can drive us into catastrophising and overplanning for every possible dangerous scenario or event.
You can break Free!
If you notice yourself going over past events and trying to find solutions for them, or creating different outcomes, then you’re blaming yourself for the real outcome. You’re feeling regret and shame over what has been. To release this, you must cultivate the conditions for forgiveness to manifest. Forgiveness for other people and then, ultimately, forgiveness for yourself.
Some of the most powerful things that we can learn from past experiences is to make decisions in the present moment. To take actions in the present moment that make life safer, now. Through developing better communication with self and others in the present moment. A committed practice of putting in place boundaries for ourselves and for other people.
I wanted to offer you a few practical steps for dropping more into present moment awareness and some of the things that I found most powerful for cultivating presence.
Step 1
Release the future. Destroy all your to-do lists.
As we’ve discussed, the mind will endlessly seek solutions. We have developed incredible skills in communication including the ability to read and write. Unfortunately this has meant that we’ve created the ability to infinitely write down all the problems that we face and try to find solutions for them. Hence “to-do lists”.
As soon as something is written down on a list and crossed out we forget about it and the mind jumps to the next thing that has to be solved. This first step is to entirely release the future. Either the night before, the following day or in the morning write down only the things that you’re going to achieve that day. And, give yourself plenty of time to do that. Then, at the end of the day you simply write out a list of what you have achieved today.
Swapping a to-do list for a completion list.
Step 2
Manifest a new one.
Plan and vision but don’t get caught in creating possibilities of what may be. It’s great in life to have a vision of the future and to have goals. To get the real benefits of a creative process is to learn to have a vision for the future but not an extensively structured plan.
Any plan is always going to have flaws. Can you accept that? The mind often can’t. We are simply too complex to figure out all eventualities. Let yourself release the black and white perceptions of perfection or imperfection. Make an agreement with yourself that good is, good enough, and that everything changes.
Step 3
Learn to be here now. Sitting practice.
A simple sitting meditation practice for five minutes has an enormous impact on the whole rest of the day. Overtime, your sitting practice can slowly stretch and get longer.
Decide a time of day to sit and meditate. Make a space in your physical environment to do so and sit there for that period, no matter what. Even if you find yourself just going over stuff in your mind, to be sitting with your eyes closed focusing on your breath invites enormous change.
Step 4
Allow presence to ripple out. a moving practice, walking and mindfulness, yoga, maybe some gym exercise.
A sitting meditation gives you the opportunity to be with the present moment with a single focus. Whether your focus is on a candle flame or on your breath, or may be the movement of your belly as you breathe.
You may have heard of 3D box breathing? You can click here to be guided through a video of me guiding you through this practice. Every single second that you bring your mind into a state of present moment awareness and calm, can begin to ripple out and positively affect the rest of your life.
You can slowly move towards a state of being where you’re simply with the present moment and you don’t think continuously all day. I know at the moment, that may sound unbelievable.
I too didn’t think it was possible.
The next step once you have found present moment awareness and the mind has quietened is to allow it to ripple out into the rest of your life, by slowly bringing in movement of the body with stillness of the mind. and you can do this whenever you’re moving.
you said “doing thi spractice” I have changed it, but please check it aligns with what your video is of
Step 5
The mind is not the enemy. Your mind is the most incredibly powerful tool.
It is the seat of solutions and creativity. When harnessed as the processor it is designed to be, it allows you to drop into the present moment and make the best possible decisions that you can choose for yourself on your journey.
By listening to your mind on a deeper level you can start to unpick the patterns and cycles that are not serving you and consciously choose to keep those that do.
Accept it, know that the mind and the ego are not the enemy. It is a part of your whole being and when you integrate it you can feel more whole too.
Step 6
Forgive everyone and then yourself.
Self-forgiveness is last and often the hardest. Simply not thinking or feeling the shame and regret by distracting yourself from them or pushing them away is not the same as true embodied forgiveness.
This is much more simply said than done. The journey to deep self-forgiveness begins with simple practices of bringing your awareness to the little things you naturally forgive others for each day or things you allow to simply be in your environment.
Step 7
Unlock and release tension through somatic and energetic work. Connected breathing, movement, conscious dance and sound therapy.
Somatic practice means techniques that work at the level of the body. Breathwork is a deeply somatic process. Connected Breathwork can access your mind, body and soul.
