Anxiety strikes us in many ways.
Fear can dominate our lives and minds at certain times in our lives, secretly creeping in.
We may find stress in our dry eyes, dry mouth, our shaky limbs, sweaty palms, tight bellies, shakiness of the breath, disturbed sleep or a general feeling of unsteadiness in heart, belly and body.
We may find ourselves trying to control situations and the people around us to prevent that inevitable feeling of loss or lack of control in our bodies and lives.
Anxiety heightens amidst the threat of potential loss for a future that we imagined to be true.
Anxiety is heightened even more when we project our remembered past onto a future that we can not control and definitely cannot see.
There are a few meditative ways we can embrace our angst or fear and use it to liberate the mind:
1. Listen when the “The body is saying no”. We must listen to our false beliefs which may be governing our anxious bodies, perhaps even questioning the choices we are making guided by these false beliefs, which may actually harm the self and others, even by thought alone. Self enquiry can help, so can staying present with self, taking space to be with anxiety, rather than avoiding it. Listen to the body when it is saying ‘no’ and feel it fully.
2. Know that the anxious body has wonderful energetic potential. It can be an opportunity to enter into the body of presence or formlessness. A gateway to open up the great field of energy within, where we truly accept our lack of control and enter into a field of infinite possibilities, where life always begins anew in every moment.
When anxious, see if you can get down on the ground and practice shavasana to enter into this field. In fact, I feel that this is the way that we can use anxious feelings to our advantage – to unblock kundalini in sushumna and sit with that powerful movement of energy and potential.
Desikachar relates the anxious mental state to ‘blocked kundalini’:
“If the mind is without peace or clarity, the kundalini is lying curled up, blocking sushumna. If the mind quiets, it is less obstructed by kundalini, and we may perhaps experience a state of being in which the mind is operating on the level of clear sight and true understanding. All that really means is that prana is rising higher in sushumna and can now flow freely through places that were previously blocked.”
3. The anxious body may be reminding you that you are not present, nor being truthful with yourself. You are playing out some movie in your mind, believing in all its stories and exhausting your body with all its mental projections. Sometimes being truthful with yourself means letting go, which is painful and may invoke fear. Fear can be our friend and THE gateway into ‘infinite possibility’.
As we come to practice in this way, let me remind you, that there is not one teacher who ever liberated themselves by having a joyous, pain free existence. Your anxieties, your pain and suffering, however small or large, are the best teachers you have. They are the reminders, the pointers to a lack of presence in your life.
This way we can ultimately enter into….a field of infinite possibility.
Recorded live-stream: How to use Anxiety to Liberate the Mind
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