DEALING WITH ANXIETY AND FEAR
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Dealing With Anxiety And Fear by Sharon White p.4 Breaking Barriers. Coping With Anxiety And Fear How To Relieve Anxiety And Fear Anxiety And Fear. Issues Of The Soul Natural Anxiety Relief And Meditation Give Birth With Confidence – Fearlessly The Power Of Love When Love Arrives Fear Departs Shaking Without Fear Anxiety And Fear VS Joy And Happiness Fear Has No Place Here The Lies That Keep Us Safe And Stuck How Does Yoda Nidra Help Stress And Anxiety? Stop Panic Attacks Or Live With Them |
Dealing With Anxiety And Fear
When we bring out a new magazine I like to tap into the energy of what is happening with the group consciousness.
I have been on retreats with three of our experts over the last two weekends and there seems to be a common theme that is coming up for a lot of people right now.
The topic that came up for many people seemed to be abuse, breaking ancestral ties and underlying all this was fear & anxiety. I meditated on the topic and self-sabotage also came up strongly too.
Right now the energy is moving fast and things that no longer serve us are falling away but many of us still cannot see what the future holds.
It is as if the past is shifting but the future is not yet ready to open the wonders it hold for us. Because of this, many people I am talking to right now have this ‘stuck’ feeling. They don’t know what to do next.
Many are in a dark place. So, what is fear and what are the effects of fear? How do we go about dealing with fear and anxiety? Are there any exercises to overcome fear?
When we have fear and anxiety we tend to get ‘stuck’ in our life. It can show up in many ways but it can show up as a feeling of not being able to move forward.
You may be feeling this stuck feeling in your relationship. Maybe you want to move on but feel you can’t for some reason. Maybe you are not in financial flow and whatever you do you just can’t seem to get your finances flowing.
Maybe you are looking for a job but nothing is opening up for you. Maybe you can’t find the right people to work for you. Maybe you can’t find clients.
Maybe you can’t communicate with the people around you and get understood. Maybe you just can’t find clarity. Maybe you can’t get your health on track.
Whatever it is for you in your life, underneath the ‘story of the drama called life’, there is emotion and energy.
This emotion and energy, when worked with, understood and cleared, can help us bring clarity of what is keeping us ‘stuck’ so we can move forward.
So how do we do this? Sometimes it can be working with energy and cutting ties from your ancestors. Sometimes, it means going back over your life to find the triggers that keep you stuck.
It could be that you need to do some energy work with an expert to help you see what is keeping you ‘stuck’.
It might simply be that you need to talk to someone to get some clarity on where you are right now to see the opportunities open to you, as we can’t always see what is open to us when we are feeling stuck.
Maybe you need to make a decision to create change. There are many ways to get clear.
It is good to know that these stuck emotions can cause dis-ease with your body and if they are not addressed may cause illness on a physical, mental, emotional or spiritual level.
For example; when we have fear we produce adrenaline (it is produced in the adrenal glands, and makes us fight, flight or freeze). Over a prolonged period of time, this can lead to physical health problems.
Problems with adrenals are getting more and more common as many of us are more and more stressed, which triggers the fear response in our bodies.
Some people suffer from agoraphobia or have panic attack symptoms, or suffer from a panic anxiety disorder. If this is an issue for you, as well as looking through this magazine, check out our other magazine on relaxation.
Many traditional therapies give you pills to suppress the emotions but is this really helping you long term? Do you think that clearing the underlying cause will be more beneficial to you as opposed to simply masking the emotion?
Do you want to know how to overcome fear and anxiety? Do you want a natural treatment for anxiety?
If you do, read on as our experts in this magazine will help you understand what is happening and give you tips and strategies on getting ‘unstuck’.
They will show you how to treat anxiety to enable you to move forward towards the life you want.
Founder of Global Healing Exchange and Holistic Living Magazine
Please use the information you learn in these magazine as a guide.
This content is not medical advice and is not intended to replace the advice of healthcare professionals.
Always consult your doctor or other healthcare professional before beginning or making health changes.
You should never disregard medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read in this magazine.
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Breaking Barriers. Coping With Anxiety And Fear
In the mid 1880’s serious thought was given to breaking what was seen as an impenetrable barrier; the four minute mile. The best athletes, the most brilliant coaches across the world all attempted, and failed to break this barrier.
It even got to the point that experts had predicted how and when it would be broken; 20 degrees centigrade, no wind, a hard, dry clay track and a large boisterous crowd.
And yet people still failed. The athletes came up short. They kept coming perilously close; the Australian John Landy ran a series of races around the 4.02 mark. Yet everyone kept failing.
On the day of the fateful race, 6th May 1954, Bannister spent his morning working at the teaching hospital where he was training to become a doctor.
Sharpened his spikes and rubbed graphite on them waiting to get the train to Oxford for the 6 pm race.
The crowd was small, about 3,000, the wind had been howling for most of the day, it was cold, it was wet… a typical English day really; and not what the experts had been predicting.
Norris McWhirter, he of Guinness Book of Records fame was the announcer:
Ladies and gentlemen, here is the result of event nine, the one mile: first, number forty one, R. G. Bannister, Amateur Athletic Association and formerly of Exeter and Merton Colleges, Oxford, with a time which is a new meeting and track record, and which—subject to ratification—will be a new English Native, British National, All-Comers, European, British Empire and World Record. The time was three… |
The crowd went wild!!!!
The record had finally fallen. And then it fell again, John Landy broke it again 46 days later taking another second of the time.
And then again and again. Within a year, three runners broke the record in the same race and over the last 50 years more than 1,000 more people have breached the barrier.
What happened? People didn’t get fitter magically, or stronger, but something changed. That change was someone did it. The mental model people had, that the 4-minute mile was impossible, was no longer there.
Just because someone had done it meant that anyone can do it.
There had effectively been a mental block, a fear, stopping people from breaking the impossible.
While these athletes weren’t necessarily racked with anxiety, there was enough negative thinking around the problem that they were stopping themselves.
This is true for so many things in our lives; how many times do you hear someone say their job is bad, their relationships are crummy and yet they don’t do anything about it.
They live in fear of what will come if they change. They are anxious over the change.
Yet, the real question should be, how bad does it have to get before they change? Redundancy? Violence?
People need to draw red lines that once they cross they will change. They will overcome the fear and the anxiety. Sir Roger Bannister did, he saw the 4-minute mile as the barrier he was going to cross.
Once you draw your lines and plan out the future, you too can change. How do we go about dealing with fear and anxiety? You can ignore the fear. You can overpower the anxiety.
All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience. Henry Miller – The Wisdom of the Heart 1960
Editor-at-Large
Please use the information you learn in these magazine as a guide.
This content is not medical advice and is not intended to replace the advice of healthcare professionals.
Always consult your doctor or other healthcare professional before beginning or making health changes.
You should never disregard medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read in this magazine.
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How To Relieve Anxiety And Fear
Fear is inside of us all, it is a survival mechanism. When your senses identify something that might pose a threat or if it sees a stressful situation, your brain activates a set of reactions that get you ready to either go into battle, freeze and stay still, or enable you to escape as quickly as you possibly can.
This reaction is in all mammals and known as the “fight, flight or freeze” response.
This fight, flight or freeze response helped our ancestors when their life was being threatened by a tiger, or they had to run to chase food but these responses aren’t useful to us anymore with the conveniences of our standard of living, we no longer have to run away from wild animals or go hunting for our food.
What Happens To Your Body When You Are Experiencing Fear?
Fear is regulated by a part of the brain called the amygdala. When this response is triggered it temporarily overrides all conscious thought, so that your body can redirect all of its energy to facing the immediate threat.
This physical response happens because it releases hormones and neuro-chemicals causing an increase in breathing and heart rate, it moves blood away from the intestines and sends more blood to the muscles to help you to run away or fight. All of your brain’s attention goes into fight, flight or freeze mode.
What Happens To Your Body When You Are Experiencing Anxiety?
Anxiety is a sense of fear that puts your body into a state of high alert. The emotional memories stored in the central part of the amygdala may play a role in anxiety disorders involving very distinct fears, such as fear of heights or spiders.
The hippocampus is the part of the brain that encodes threatening events into memories.
Anxiety puts us in a heightened sense of awareness so we’re prepared for potential threats. As with fear, it is there to give our body a message that something is not right but it is designed to be a quick response and then switch off again.
What happens when you start to feel excessive anxiety, or you live in a constant state of anxiety is your body never turns off your fight, flight or freeze response, and you live with the physical and emotional effects of anxiety on a day-to-day basis, even when there’s no cause for it.
What Happens To Your Body When You Are Experiencing Relaxation?
For a long time relaxation techniques like meditation and yoga have been known to help with anxiety disorders. We now know that anxiety disorders show an imbalance in the chemistry of your brain. Relaxation techniques can also influence your brain’s chemistry.
As mentioned above, the sympathetic nervous system responds to stress and fear by releasing stress chemicals into the bloodstream, including adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol.
This gives your body a fast response to fear, but shutting down the stress system takes more time.
How Can Relaxation Techniques Help Reduce Stress?
Simply put, by choosing to relax your body, it helps to switch on the parasympathetic nervous system which helps the sympathetic nervous system to begin switching off, therefore counteracting the large amounts of stress chemicals in your body.
Relaxation and meditation helps to slow down brain waves, which regenerates the brain’s chemistry and helps to give you a calmer state of mind, even after the relaxation or meditation ends.
How Can Hypnotherapy Help With Fear & Anxiety?
Hypnotherapy may help you develop the ability to access the calm state of mind that you will need to overcome the sometimes overwhelming emotions you feel when suffering from fear & anxiety. These emotions may come up for you on a daily basis.
Hypnotherapy accesses the subconscious mind rather than the conscious mind which means the hypnotic state allows you to explore any painful thoughts, feelings, traumas and memories that you may have hidden in your subconscious mind.
There are often triggers for fear and anxiety that may have stemmed from your childhood, or a learnt behavior from your parents. If one of your parents suffered from anxiety, you are more likely to have learned how to ‘do’ anxiety from them.
If you suffer from anxiety, you are likely to pass this onto your children. Think about that. Now think about finding a tool to help you manage your anxiety.
How would that make you feel? Once you have the tools to help yourself, you can then help the people around you whose lives you may have been affecting.
Self-Hypnosis Is A Great Place To Start
Self-hypnosis is widely used to help many ailments. It works especially well with anxiety as most of the healing for anxiety is to get your body into a state of relaxation, so you can switch off the stress response and that is what hypnotherapy does.
Self-hypnosis means you have to start an act of self-love. It means giving yourself time to heal and knowing you are worth it. It takes commitment, dedication and practice. Each time your mind wanders off, you learn to gently bring it back to stillness.
Once that goal is achieved you can then begin to direct your mind to make the necessary changes it can learn to put your body in a state of relaxation, rather than a state of stress. You can do this by using visualisation techniques.
You can visualise yourself relaxing, until you are actually relaxing.
The conscious mind cannot tell the difference between reality and your thoughts and dreams. What does this really mean?
When you focus on fear & anxiety, your subconscious mind believes that is what you have and want and the fact you are focusing on it, encourages your subconscious to bring you more. The same is true with relaxation.
When you focus on relaxation your subconscious mind believes that is what you have and want and the fact you are focusing on it, encourages your subconscious to bring you more.
So in knowing this and knowing how simple the techniques are and that you can buy or download self-hypnosis CDs on the internet, (and we have free downloads for our members) what is stopping you from starting to use self-hypnosis starting now?
Maybe you need to go a layer deeper and work with a therapist to help you stop the self-sabotage that prevents you from loving yourself and learning to relax.
Maybe you need help from a therapist to identify some learned behaviours you may have picked up during your childhood.
Maybe you need help in removing the blocks that prevent you from living the life you truly want and instead being stuck in anxiety and fear.
Maybe you need help in helping your body reset new triggers for relaxation.
Whatever you need I would love to help you on your healing journey. I work with clients to uncover the beliefs, conditioning and release traumas that are preventing them from living their best life.
If you feel like I could be the therapist for you please contact me.
SHARON WHITE
Subconscious Mind Expert
Click here to work with me.
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Anxiety And Fear. Issues Of The Soul
In my study and work with Anthroposophy (the work connected to Rudolf Steiner) over the past 25 years, Fear, along with Doubt and Self-Hatred, have been quite central to all that I have been involved with.
Rudolf Steiner named these three aspects of Fear, Doubt and Self-Hatred as ‘The Three Beasts’.
They are the three main aspects or energies that appear before, and within us, and stop us from becoming more present and conscious in our lives.
Courage, Clarity and Self-Love, are the only real antidotes for these. It is these things alone that can most help us to overcome and tame these beasts.
Courage can overcome and tame Fear, Clarity can overcome, and tame Doubt and Self-Love can overcome and tame Self-Hatred.
Right Now, I would like to focus on the topic of Fear. In with that I will add its smaller sibling – Anxiety.
What Does The Medical Profession Say About Anxiety & Fear?
In the good old DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition) here is the list of the ‘Disorders’ that they have connected with Anxiety.
Separation Anxiety Disorder | Selective Mutism | Specific Phobia | Social Anxiety Disorder (Social Phobia) | Panic Disorder | Panic Attack Specifier | Agoraphobia | Generalized Anxiety Disorder | Substance/Medication-Induced Anxiety Disorder | Anxiety Disorder Due to Another Medical Condition | Other Specified Anxiety Disorder | Unspecified Anxiety Disorder |
Here Is What They Say About Anxiety & Fear
Anxiety disorders include disorders that share features of excessive fear and anxiety and related behavioural disturbances. Fear is the emotional response to real or perceived imminent threat, whereas anxiety is anticipation of future threat.
Obviously, these two states overlap, but they also differ, with fear more often associated with surges of autonomic arousal necessary for fight or flight, thoughts of immediate danger, and escape behaviours, and anxiety more often associated with muscle tension and vigilance in preparation for future danger and cautious or avoidant behaviours.
Sometimes the level of fear or anxiety is reduced by pervasive avoidance behaviours. Panic attacks feature prominently within the anxiety disorders as a particular type of fear response.
Panic attacks are not limited to anxiety disorders but rather can be seen in other mental disorders as well.
If Anxiety and Fear are the same – and I propose here that they are – then it can only be overcome and tamed by using Courage.
It also means that any other means of trying to heal and fix anxiety is POINTLESS, which leaves us with a dilemma in how most of the population are treated and allow themselves to be treated.
I have underlined a statement above to highlight this mainstream approach. Avoidance is the polar opposite of facing our Fears with Courage!
What I am saying is, pills and medication will not take the Anxiety (Fear) away. This is true. The medication that is given to patients is not designed to ‘overcome and tame’, it is designed to numb it and put it to sleep.
This, in my opinion, is sugar coating the situation, pushing the issues aside, and I might even add, unethical in some (or many) instances.
More than one in ten Australians are said to be dealing with Anxiety and or Depression – the medical fraternity do not often separate them.
From the BeyondBlue Website: In any one year, around 1 million Australian adults have depression, and over 2 million have anxiety.
Nearly three million Australians live with depression and/or anxiety, which affect their wellbeing, personal relationships, career and productivity*. (*Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2008).
National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing: Summary of Results, 2007. Cat. no. (4326.0). Canberra: ABS.)
That is a staggering amount of people and a great market for Big Pharma! The adage – ‘A Pill for every Ill’ comes to mind.
With Anxiety and Fear this approach is a total waste of time if the true focus and outcome is to rid the client or patient of Anxiety or Fear.
Numbing it or covering it up and denying it, is not a results focused approach. On top of all that, the patient then must deal with the side-effects of the drug – which often leads to another (false) diagnosis of ADDH or Depression … I could go on …
Anxiety and Fear are issues of the SOUL – They are NOT Mental Health Issues – they are Soul issues! And until we work within the right framework and area, not very much is going to change.
Courage is not found in the mind – it is found in the soul and spirit – it is guided and inspired into by ACTION by the WILL forces.
Fear is most generally related to the past; to memories of a story, an implanted belief or an incident. This is then placed into the memory (sub-conscious mind) and triggered when a similar situation arises.
This triggers of the Anxiety or Fear and the person goes into a place of ‘CONTRACTION’. In this place of contraction, the person will feel ‘trapped’, ‘stuck’ or ‘frozen’.
The only thing that can bring them out is some sort of ACTION – and this takes COURAGE!
When I work with my students and clients I work directly with this knowledge and work with them to support and guide them to that place of finding and using their courage.
In this way they can firstly Face, and then Name the Anxiety or Fear and start to explore it.
They can then find the correct resources to help them to find the courage to ‘Go into Battle’. Courage is a Warrior – it often needs to work hard break the bonds of Anxiety and Fear.
Oftentimes the roots of these go back many years – sometime decades – and they can be very stubborn and fixed.
In my work as a therapist, it is often a good thing to look at why people still ‘choose’ to stay in a certain label or mode of being.
This is not often a conscious thing – it is often a deep old pattern that has developed into a common habit.
It may be that the person has a secondary-gain from staying stuck in a certain framework – even if this is no longer actually serving them now.
Old habits are difficult to change and when the ‘old self’ still believes that there is something to gain from it – it may never change.
Getting the person to see this is a good thing and will be one of the keys to helping them break free of their Anxiety or Fear.
If you research the ‘top ten fears’, you will generally get some of these in some combination as your result:
Speaking before a Group, Heights, Insects and Bugs, Financial Problems, Deep Water, Sickness, Death, Flying, Loneliness, Dogs, The Dark, Intimacy, Failure, Rejection and Commitment.
You may like to explore, write up and work with your own Fears. And remember, if you do, the only real way to overcome them is to find the one true resource – Courage!
Adrian Hanks is a Teacher, Writer and Speaker and a Life Mastery Mentor
ADRIAN HANKS
Life Mastery Coach
Click here to work with me.
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Natural Anxiety Relief And Meditation
What is anxiety? The dictionary definition is “A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome.”
Anxiety is a general term for several disorders that cause nervousness, fear, apprehension, and worrying.
These disorders affect how we feel and behave and can cause physical symptoms. Mild anxiety is vague and unsettling, while severe anxiety can seriously affect day-to-day living.
I think it’s important to discover what triggers anxiety in you, whether it is a healthy level life force that perhaps is a good trigger to action or whether it is debilitating and therefore stopping you from taking action and affecting your health, your day to day living.
My son was really stressed the other day and I offered him some support to come back to calm and he responded with “I don’t want to calm down…this stress is good, it’s a call to action and makes me move.”
I’m not saying anxiety, fear and stress are good things but it’s important to decide what the best course of action for you is.
I know for myself, when I become anxious it affects me physically in that my heart races and there’s a feeling of being frightened…when I enquire into what is the fear really, it’s usually to do with failure, not getting things right, and certain survival issues.
I am also acutely aware that it is all coming from my mind and, unlike my son, it does not push me to action, rather it stops me moving as I become almost taken over by the feeling and am unable to think clearly.
I remember once being in a singing group and having this feeling come over me and the teacher began talking about fear. He reminded us that FEAR was really False Evidence Appearing Real.
These days I always remember those words and for me that helps. At the end of the day it’s good to know that ultimately everything usually turns out ok and that often all the worry and concern wasn’t needed and certainly wasn’t helpful.
I do believe it’s important to know the difference between normal feelings of anxiety and an anxiety disorder that requires medical attention.
If you are suffering, there is nothing wrong with seeing a doctor and perhaps taking medication; please don’t rule this out, as a happy life is the most important attribute you can give yourself and it’s what’s best for your health.
Now having said that, the best results I have achieved have been through reflection, vigilance, planning and meditation. Once I took personal responsibility for how I wanted my life to be and how I wanted to feel, things seemed to fall into place.
When faced with potentially harmful or worrying triggers, feelings of anxiety are not only normal, but necessary for survival.
Ever since the earliest days of humanity, the approach of predators and incoming danger has set off alarms in the body and allowed an individual to take evasive action.
These alarms become noticeable in the form of a raised heartbeat, sweating, and increased sensitivity to surroundings.
A rush of adrenaline in response to danger causes these reactions. This adrenaline boost is known as the ‘fight-or-flight’ response.
It prepares humans to physically confront or flee any threats to safety.
For most modern individuals anxieties now revolve around work, money, family life, health, and other crucial issues that demand a person’s attention without necessarily requiring the ‘fight-or-flight’ reaction.
That nervous feeling before an important life event or during a difficult situation is a natural echo of the original ‘fight-or-flight’ reaction.
It can still be essential to survival – anxiety about being hit by a car when crossing the street, for example, means that a person will instinctively look both ways to avoid danger.
Anxiety disorders occur when a reaction is out of proportion to what might normally be expected in a situation.
Generalised Anxiety Disorder: This is a chronic disorder involving excessive, long-lasting anxiety and worries about nonspecific life events, objects, and situations. It is the most common anxiety disorder. |
Panic Disorder: Brief or sudden attacks of intense terror and apprehension characterize panic disorder. These attacks can lead to shaking, confusion, dizziness, nausea, and breathing difficulties. |
Phobia: This is an irrational fear and avoidance of an object or situation. Phobias differ from other anxiety disorders, as they relate to a specific cause. The fear may be acknowledged as irrational or unnecessary, but the person is still unable to control the anxiety. Triggers for a phobia may be as varied as situations, animals, or everyday objects. |
Social Anxiety Disorder: This is a fear of being negatively judged by others in social situations or a fear of public embarrassment. This includes a range of feelings, such as stage fright, a fear of intimacy, and a fear of humiliation. |
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): This is an anxiety disorder characterised by thoughts or actions that are repetitive, distressing, and intrusive. OCD sufferers usually know that their compulsions are unreasonable or irrational, but they serve to alleviate their anxiety. |
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): This is anxiety that results from previous trauma such as military combat, sexual assault, a hostage situation, or a serious accident. |
By now you would have an idea of what sort of anxiety it is that you are affected by, and often the ability to discern and identify the issue is already 50% of the way to healing and overcoming.
Creating situations in your life where you are less prone to the triggers is a wonderful planning tool that can alleviate a lot of unwanted fears and discomfort.
Ultimately all anxiety is coming from the mind, but how do we control our thoughts? We can’t control what thoughts are flowing through, but we can become aware of them and choose whether to engage with them or not.
For me this is where meditation comes in and has proven to me over and over that no matter what I am suffering and feeling disturbed by, as soon as I become quiet internally there is really no problem with anything that is arising.
Even the so-called anxiety, just becomes another experience in which I, the witness, am able to be present with and watch it physically in the body as it arises and passes.
There are so many meditation techniques that can support calm and invite peace within.
When anxiety arises in me I tend to use a breathing technique that is simple and can be done anywhere. If you can just take 10 minutes to sit quietly and begin to watch the breath.
Allowing the breath to slow down and observe the in breath, the little gap at the top of the in breath and then the out breath, with the little gap at the bottom of the out breath.
After several minutes you will discover a sense of inner peace and stillness.
Thoughts may continue to arise, in fact there’s no doubt at first, they will. But remember it is your choice whether or not you pick them up or not.
Continue to focus on the breath until the feelings of tension in the body subside.
If you take this practice up daily, perhaps at the start of your day, you will certainly find the mind will calm down over time and you will be more present and at ease in your daily life not matter what it throws at you.
Another great mediative tool to alleviate anxiety and fear is to take a few moments to experience the senses.
Sight – look at something directly. |
Sound – listen to sounds around you. |
Smell – smell what is here. |
Taste – notice the taste in your mouth and |
Touch – lay your hand on something and feel it….. |
Activating the senses deliberately like this will bring you into the present moment and in this moment everything is actually ok. Coupled with the breathing meditation this sensory activation can really help with fear and anxiety.
And finally go for a walk and tell yourself “Everything is going to be alright.”
PAVITAR DEBRA TURNER
Meditation Instructor & Transformation Specialist
Click here to work with me.
Give Birth With Confidence – Fearlessly
There is no greater experience for the human condition as fear and anxiety, these emotions generate much illumination and consideration for us.
Childbirth is invariably synonymous with fear and anxiety, whether it is in identifying fears, eliminating fears, or in the embrace and integration of fears.
Understanding that the powerful portal of childbirth can generate a diverse range and level of fears and anxieties for women as they approach childbirth, is vital to knowing how we as a society can support women to have a more confident and positive experience of birth.
There is a reason childbirth is otherwise known as “labour” it is the most profound and enormous physical, emotional and spiritual metamorphosis that a pregnant woman can undertake and encompasses the ultimate female rite of passage.
It is a journey from conceiving, nourishing and carrying her baby within her physical vessel, to birthing her baby into the physical world and coupled with that, the birthing of herself as a mother.
Throughout history, culturally it has only been in modern times that a heavy focus on fear and anxiety in relation to childbirth has evolved.
Modern birth practices have facilitated the disconnection of women from the wisdom of their bodies and encouraged distrust in the process of birth itself.
Current attitudes and practices surrounding birth that are often quite frankly not woman-centred are also giving rise to a generation of women faced with an alarming likelihood of facing unnecessary medical interventions during their births and in many cases experiencing birth trauma.
This increase in medical interventions and birth related trauma is perpetuating even greater levels of fear and anxiety for modern women leading up to and during their births.
I will first take a brief look at how this fear in childbirth has evolved throughout history and then offer some wisdom on how we can help mothers to work with their fears in the ways most suited to them to prepare for birth with calm and confidence.
The forefathers of “medical science” Hippocrates and Aristotle (400BC), in their writings interestingly make no mention of pain or distress as being associated with normal and uncomplicated birth.
Visual records of birthing 3000 years and more ago reveal images of birthing women on temple walls surrounded by midwives birthing in squatting, kneeling and more upright positions.
These images of birth engender a sense that birth is normal, about women, powerful, sacred and life affirming.
By the end of the 2nd Century AD and with the advent of heavy patriarchal and religious influence that saw questionable biblical translations resulted in the notion of the “Curse of Eve”.
This is a reference from the biblical passage Genesis 3:16 “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing: in pain you shall bring forth children”…this meant that the association between pain and childbirth was to become embedded into the culture of many western societies.
Many midwives, women healers and wise women were persecuted and executed in this time and as a result much ancient wisdom and knowledge about birthing was lost.
Over the following centuries – women become scared of childbirth and of dying due to fear and lack of care and support. Local shepherds were sent to assist women who experienced complications during childbirth as they were not considered ‘worthy’ of care from a physician.
Many women were denied access to adequate medical care – women and babies were left to die and women consequently became very fearful of birth and of dying during childbirth.
Fast forward to the mid 19th century where it was Queen Victoria who insisted that she be given chloroform when birthing, therein the use of drugs during childbirth began.
Over ensuing years – women began birthing on beds instead of birthing in traditional squatting and upright positions, as they were knocked out cold with chloroform, or believed it to be more dignified and easier and more convenient for the doctors to assist them.
Many women and babies died of ‘childbed fever’ due to childbirth being removed from the home and relocated to hospitals (which were very dirty places with very high rates of infection).
Doctors at this time did not have an understanding of appropriate hygiene/hand washing practices.
In the following decades where the over medicalization of birth really began to take root, women were often subjected to a lack of knowledge and tools, birthing on their backs with legs in stirrups, having their babies removed with forceps and also having their baby taken away from them immediately after birth.
Women in general have come to really fear birth and it stems from the fear of dying and experiencing trauma.
The fear has been passed down transgenerationally from mother to daughter to granddaughter until the fear and anxiety of excruciating pain and peril in childbirth has become ingrained in the psyche of most women and therefore a modern reality.
Fear and anxiety surrounding birth has also been perpetuated by Hollywood depictions of birthing mothers screaming in agony and demanding medical intervention and doctors to assist them to “deliver” their babies!
So much about the inherent beauty and power and normal nature of birth has been lost over time!
To be perfectly realistic and authentic, fear and anxiety can and often is a normal part of the pregnancy and birth experience. It is normal to have fears and anxieties surface for yourself and your baby during pregnancy.
It is normal to fear the changes that will occur when this new person enters your life, the changes taking place in your body and how this new soul is going to affect your relationships and world, as you know it before kids.
It is also normal that a mother may carry fears about how she will cope with the sensations of labour and her capacity to birth.
Physiologically we know that high levels of anxiety and fear, especially during early phases of labour can be unhelpful, these states activate the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system and the catecholamine hormones of adrenaline and noradrenalin that are released in states of high anxiety and fear can inhibit the function of the primary hormone of labour oxytocin.
The hormones of fear then interfere with the action of the birthing muscles and down regulate the mother’s own natural pain killers the beta-endorphins.
This can lead to a cascade of problems in labour, including increased pain levels, decreased levels of oxygen to the baby and a prolonged labour experience where the system often has little patience letting mother’s and babies birth at their own pace.
Addressing fears in pregnancy and in the lead up to birth so that they are not acute and overwhelming during the birth process is therefore an essential component to any birth preparation.
Owing to the history of birth we just looked at and the current mainstream culture of birth, many women are carrying a variety of conditioned fears and unhelpful beliefs surrounding birth.
It is a highly integral practice to give a mother the space, time and support to explore and integrate her fears before giving birth.
We know that at the precipice of most fears whether they be related to childbirth or not, there is a great opportunity to step into even higher levels of purpose and power and in childbirth this couldn’t be any more true.
Here are some ways to reduce fear and anxiety during pregnancy and labour:
Firstly feel confident to explore your fears, what are you most afraid of? What can you do to help alleviate any specific fears, e.g. through research, education, additional support. |
Find your most resonant birth tribe, doula, midwife, doctor, whoever is in alignment with your vision and goals for your birth, where you feel safe, respected and heard at all times. |
Complete an Independent Childbirth Education course that incorporates holistic and complementary therapies and tools for labour and birth. |
Use hypnotherapy, a major component of the Hypnobirthing AustraliaTM program to help you release unhelpful fears and patterns and to reprogram your subconscious with positive suggestions about your ability to give birth without fear or stress. |
Commit to a spiritual or meditation practice whereby you intentionally connect with your baby and partner regularly, regular relaxation in pregnancy has been shown to reduce anxiety and promote confidence and wellbeing. |
Visualise the birth experience you want, you must FEEL the emotions of the day and elevate them, imagine how you will feel when you see and touch your baby for the first time. |
Create a calm and sacred space in which to labour in, you need to feel private safe and undisturbed in order to birth without fear. Tools to create sacred space include, relaxing music, candles, soft lighting, aromatherapy, birthing affirmations, your own pillows, blankets and comforting items, images of you pregnant or statues of your favourite goddess. |
BREATHE… Learn how to breathe effectively during your labour and especially during your contractions, this will assist you to remain in the calming aspect of your nervous system, the parasympathetic division. |
Feel any fears that surface in labour, know that women all over are birthing with you and that everything you need to birth with confidence and without fear resides deep within you, claim your power and use it for your baby. |
Tremendous fear and anxiety doesn’t have to be a part of a woman’s experience of pregnancy and birth, with the right tools, knowledge and support she can realize her innate power, tap into the wisdom of her body and enjoy birth for the joyful and powerful initiation that it is!
“The empowered woman is powerful beyond measure and beautiful beyond description.” – Steve Maraboli
Hypnobirthing Expert
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The Power Of Love
For many thousands of years humankind has pondered the meaning of life. It may be one of the questions that we ask ourselves from time to time, when we perceive an imbalance or personal endeavour tipping the theoretical scales of self-measure, precariously on to the side of fear and misfortune.
Sometimes, despite our absolute best efforts, we find ourselves in situations which are unexpected or unexplained, which ebb and flow against the tide of our dreams, stopping us abruptly in our tracks for reasons unthinkable or unimaginable.
Our emotional responses to such life challenging situations can very often leave us feeling bewildered, anxious, overwhelmed and isolated by a deep-rooted fear of what the future may or may not look like.
Quite naturally, many of us will question the beauty and fragility of all that is and begin to think differently about many things, about ourselves, each other, our soul purpose, karma and not least of all, about life itself.
It is perhaps in our moments of greatest adversity that we find, unknowingly, the answers to many, many questions.
Answers that may help in some way to transform vulnerability into strength, heartbreak into opportunity, grief into love and so define who we are to be or not to be on our never-ending journey.
Perhaps, what defines us, is neither the acceptance of the answer nor the bravery of the question but simply the purpose to that which we surrender.
In previous articles, I have written at great length about the healing properties of language and how science is now showing us that the energy of our thoughts and intentions shape the world that we create for ourselves and co-create for each other.
Our choice of words, sentence structures, sub-structures and hidden meanings are becoming more and more important as we journey into a new Age of consciousness and super-conscious intelligence.
As an author and numerologist, I am fascinated by the vibrational eloquence of heart-centred language as a magical and profoundly simple expression of self-healing.
I love the fact that we call word construction ‘spelling’ as this resonates the magical qualities of language as a truly powerful creative medium.
Writing ‘Dreams, Rainbows and Butterflies’ I found myself experiencing a myriad of emotions and realised very quickly that in order to be honest with the reader.
I first had to be emotionally honest with myself. In order to be emotionally honest with myself I had to surrender unconditionally to everything I held lovingly in the ocean of my heart.
This was my choice and mine alone to make. As I immersed myself in the depths of honesty, I found a love that intensified with each metaphor of sharpest incision that cut through the denial of my own self-expression.
I searched my soul for inspiration and looked love and grief straight in the eye. Wherever I went, I could hear, see and feel love in ascendancy over all other things. At the time I had no way of knowing that this was the beginning of a very beautiful journey.
I held up the inflective mirror of equal and opposite, I asked the questions and began to feel the answers.
I let go and allowed myself to dream, to feel, to see and to know.
Losing my twin flame in the autumn of her life invoked so many feelings.
During the writing process, I began to sense subtle changes in the way my body reacted to thought, to memory, to language and how these changes became reflected in the words drifting silently of tear from leaf to leaf.
One day, I found myself day-dreaming and without realising I had written down my wife’s maiden name – Carole Wain.
I stared at it for a while and then started to rearrange the letters in her name. My body started to tingle, like a I’d been tapped with a magic wand.
I would learn years later that this quite hypnotic tingly sensation was in fact invoked by the purest expression of my heart chakra. I’d rearranged the letters to form two different separate words ‘cranial woe’.
Carole had had a brain tumour. Intuitively, I wrote down Carole’s birth date, applied a simple numerology calculation to determine that her life path had a vibration of 44/8.
Four is known as the seed in numerology and eight represents the vibration of abundance and infinity. Forty four is a Master number and personifies the qualities of the Master Therapist – the mirror seed of infinity.
What was I being shown? My body was now reacting more intensely to these vibrations and the tingling sensations became elongated. It made no sense and yet my body had revealed its purest sensitivity.
Several days later, I resumed writing with a renewed spirit of child-like curiosity.
I was writing about grief and love when it occurred to me that these emotions were activating the same meta-physical responses in mind, in body.
I wrote down the word grief and love separately and applied the numerology of each letter to form a two-digit root vibration. I also converted the root numbers back to their corresponding letters.
G7 R18 I9 E5 F6 7 + 18 + 9 + 5 + 6 = 45 DE |
L12 O15 V22 E5 12 + 15 + 22 + 5 = 54 ED |
Immediately, it was obvious that the root vibration of grief was the opposite and equal of love.
My mind had created the neurological chemistry and in symbiosis my body had responded with a physiological vibration to what I now know to be the heart-centred language of my thoughts.
My discovery of the numerological significance of both these words helped me to make sense of my emotional sensitivities.
I noticed hidden within the sum of the root vibrations of both words was another word. This word was deed – meaning endeavour, feat, effort and achievement.
Just out of simple curiosity I wrote down the word ‘Carole’ and calculated the root vibration of her name.
My mind and body reacted even more powerfully than ever before alerting me to another moment of beautiful significance. I started to cry.
C3 A1 R18 O15 L12 E 5 3 + 1 + 18 + 15 + 12 + 5 = 54 ED |
Carole was in deed my Master Therapist for Carole is the vibration love. As I streamed my tears she wiped my face and began to acknowledged the sensitivity of my own grief and love to see, to feel and know that each are both and equal and opposite.
My theoretical scale of self-measure was re-calibrating to balance love with love to be reflected in the conscious mirror of love herself.
As a species, we are awakening to the beauty, fragility and miracle of what it is to be humankind – to be imperfect, to be accepting, to be tolerant, to be forgiving and to be loving of ourselves and each other.
The seeds we plant in the garden of our consciousness keep safe the substance of our hopes and dreams.
Perhaps, if we all stopped for a moment to acknowledge the magical energy of heart-centred language, it might be just possible to re balance our global understanding of life to know once and for all it is no longer necessary to experience grief in order to make sense of the divine beauty of love.
Maybe, our greatest challenge in life is to surrender to life itself. To allow life to unfold before our eyes and so learn through love the lessons upon which our very existence is built.
I now know that love is the lesson of all lessons. It is my lesson.
It has always been my lesson. It will always be my lesson. By being emotionally honest with ourselves and those around us, our world of infinite possibilities transforms miraculously right in front of us to reveal the truth, the beauty and the power of love X
Author, Dreams Rainbows and Butterflies
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When Love Arrives Fear Departs
We’ve known for at least 2000 years that the antidote to fear and anxiety is love/courage/heart. I wish I could say to the reader that there is a long-lasting and permanent solution to negative feelings like fear, anxiety and terror.
The truth is however that if you really desire to live an exceptional life you must continuously step out of your comfort zone. The very nature of stepping out of your safe space makes you uncomfortable.
At least until the risk pays off and you normalise the new skills learned by stepping out. If you really want to play it safe in this life no one could fault you.
When you remain safely within your comfort zone, with the safe job and safe relationship, you will never become too challenged and people don’t expect more from you because this is all you’re willing to give. The choice is yours.
Often people who desire to play it safe have been wounded significantly prior to age 3. They suffer from terror, fear anxiety and in that order.
Instead of being taught to love themselves, believe in themselves, know that they are loved and respected, the family system made them feel unwanted, abandoned or suppressed – or possibly all of the above.
Organic Causes Of Terror, Fear And Anxiety
Unwanted Children – The Intuitive
This is the earliest wounding. It takes place prior to birth. The child felt unwanted in the mother’s womb. You might say the terror was existential. The child picked up on mother’s uncertainty and made the conclusion that he or she was unwanted.
Although the adult with this trauma is incredibly creative and intuitive, they often feel like they do not fit in. If they try to fit in they feel fear and anxiety.
It began with the family of origin and then school, generally in society and very painfully – within intimate relationships.
They tend to be uncoordinated with a weaker body and feeling the need to hold things together. They have cold hands and feet which means they have poor circulation.
They also easily leave their body which gives them a vacant and ungrounded appearance.
At the personality level their language is depersonalized which means they intellectualize their communication in a black-and-white way.
They often have different values than others, hold back their brilliance, are difficult to get to know, can easily live beyond time and space in the spiritual realm and have challenges with survival issues.
Their energy is hyperactive, ungrounded, frozen from within, and can very easily withdraw by splitting off from the present moment. In other words, they space out and often are not even aware of it. The talents they’re born with are staggering.
Once they transform their enormous terror and disconnection they experienced from before birth, they grace the world with; incredible intelligence, technical wizardry, intuition, creativity, deep perception, penetrating opinions, depth of meaning, intense focus, and are visionaries with the gift of reading other people with deadly accuracy. Is this you?
The healing journey for them is profound. They must claim their humanness and inner guidance by becoming more grounded and present day in and day out.
Once they begin to feel more real, they start fitting in by becoming part of a community, culture, team, organisation or even a healthy family of their own.
Once they individuate by surrendering to their humanity they feel unified and are able to make extraordinary and loving contributions instead of feeling like they’re going crazy because of the terror, fear and anxiety.
Abandoned Children – The Networker
This wounding takes place in the first year of life. This is also a critical time of the child’s development known as symbiosis.
Specifically, the first nine months of life is where the child bonds with the mother and the mother bonds with the child through touch, love, eye contact and feeding.
If this critical time is interrupted, it sets up the child for a lifetime of challenges beginning with degrees of abandonment. The mother may have loved the child very much.
In some instances, the mother is preoccupied with other young children under the age of five or she may have difficulty staying present with the baby or she may have difficulty bonding with the baby or connecting through breast-feeding.
First and foremost, this child is fearful and typically grows more fearful in adolescence and adulthood.
Often people who have been abandoned very early in life, learn to abandon themselves or very least set themselves up to be abandoned by others. This generates even more fear.
Although very intelligent and clever with great people skills, they lack the ability to metabolise and sustain their own energy.
Therefore, they collapse under pressure and fail to follow through with what they have committed to – with verbal denial and excuses. They play the victim.
Since they live in a scarcity mentality they often hold on for dear life, feeling a sense of greed, codependency, addictions, self-absorption and unable to take care of themselves.
Because of their high demand to be supported and loved they often lack boundaries and use sex for closeness and contact with another.
Energetically they have low-energy, live in their head and often feel depleted. They suffer from low self-esteem, procrastination, lack perseverance, talk too much, quick to anger, insecure, indecisive, never satisfied and believe the world owes them a living.
When they’re taught to stand on their own two feet, by taking their power back and becoming the cause of their own destiny on a mental, emotional, physical, energetic and spiritual level, they become self-satisfied, fulfilled, responsible and mature.
When they learn to love themselves, their fear goes out of the window.
They’re excellent networkers, communicators, intelligent, inspiring presenters, high social intelligence and great people skills, clever ideas, playful morale boosters, good collaborators, able to manage launches and break the group’s tension with a playful sense of humour.
Accordingly, when they learn to nurture and love themselves – which is their core issue – they stop feeling fearful of life and stop looking outside themselves for the solution. They become the solution and the captain of their own destiny.
Suppressed Children – The Humanitarian
This wounding takes place during the toddler phase of development which is 18 months until three years old. In psychology it is known as the autonomy stage.
During this phase the child begins to assert her independence from the mother or primary caretaker.
If the mother resists this natural stage of development by suppressing, controlling, manipulating, shaming or humiliating the child into an unhealthy bond with the mother or primary caretaker, the result is severe with life damaging consequences.
The child is forced to abandon their own needs to please the parent. Consequently the suppressed child becomes a people pleaser who avoids confrontation at all cost which leaves them living in perpetual fear and anxiety.
Although the humanitarian is pleasing and generous on the outside, they’re spiteful and complaining behind the scenes.
They often feel invaded and used on a physical or emotional level. They feel dependent on others and fail to differentiate between themselves and other people.
In childhood they were severely over controlled – including force-feeding and evacuation. Because; they felt they needed to hold everything in, they live in constant tension and anxiety which causes them to feel sexually impotent.
They possess a deeply rooted “boiling inside” including hatred and the love of negativity.
Their people pleasing evokes teasing from others because they were not allowed to stand up for themselves or get angry as a child. If they did get angry or protest they were shamed and humiliated by the suppressive parent.
The humanitarian hates being told what to do but they can’t say no – so instead say “yes or I’ll think about it.” They generally lack creativity because they’re not risk takers – due to the high anxiety and fear of being made wrong.
Once they are guided into confronting the suppression of their early life they begin to feel they are allowed to assert themselves and create abundant magnificence because of their warmth, boundless energy, heartfelt brilliance, diplomatic kindness, being fully present, great listeners, supportive, loyal, reliable and great interpersonal skills.
When they step into this degree of self-love there overcharged energy system begins to flow, life blossoms and the anxiety goes out of the window.
In conclusion I would like to say that the antidote to fear and anxiety and even terror is self-love. Meister Eckhart once said, “If you can’t love yourself no one can love you not even God.”
Accordingly that journey to self-love for those people that suffer a great deal from fear and anxiety can become painful and confronting – but I must say it’s worth it.
For those that have the courage it’s better to go back to the cause. In this article I wanted you to know the ideology of the three original causes of human fear and anxiety. Good luck in your healing.
ROBERT KIRBY
Mind/Body Transformation & Integration Expert
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Shaking Without Fear
Chronic fear and anxiety are debilitating. For me, it was physically exhausting, socially isolating, mentally confusing and emotionally draining.
While I had always been a sensitive child, it was a traumatic experience at boarding school that sent me into a near-permanent state of hyper-vigilance for the next four years and well into my adult life.
I wasn’t physically or sexually abused as so many others have been, but experienced a simple moment where I was body-shamed in front of my entire peer group.
It wasn’t so much what was said that rocked me, but rather that when it was said, all the kids around me immediately burst into laughter. It was an in-joke. Everyone had already known about it – everyone that was, except me.
In that moment, my self-confidence, sociality identity and sense of safety in the group were shattered.
I spent the remaining years at boarding school withdrawn and constantly on hyper-alert in the hope of avoiding anything remotely shaming ever happening to me again. It didn’t work.
Internally, my body began to reinforce a pattern of deep, unconscious tension – muscular bracing that wasn’t actually part of being scared and anxious as I had always thought, but was suppressing its release instead.
After completing University, I found work, travelled the world and had a couple of serious relationships. In my late 20’s though, my body started to shut down.
I was no longer able to do the exercise I had previously relied upon to keep me feeling good. My body was slowly grinding me down to the point I could hardly move. If something didn’t give, I was going to implode.
I tried meditation and an endless range of body-based treatments, both mainstream and alternative. Everything helped, including counselling and talk therapy, but nothing seemed to make a permanent change.
If I didn’t keep getting (and paying) for ongoing treatments, the underlying current of stress and anxiety continued to flow throughout my life, or more accurately, through my body.
Looking back now, I can see my body had been trying to release my fears and anxieties through spontaneous shakes and tremors most of my life.
One of my earliest experiences was at my very first piano concert, where my hands began to tremble ‘with fear’ as I walked onto stage.
It took all my mental effort to hold them still enough to hit the right notes, yet alone play with the touch or sensitivity I was known for.
A few years later, at a school concert in front of almost 1000 people, I performed a pretend horse-race call with a friend that I had written with all the usual gags like ‘Chewing Gum is sticking to the rails’ and ‘Shotgun is shooting through the field.’
The thing I remember most though, was afterward, people couldn’t stop talking (and laughing) about how fast my legs had been shaking under the table the entire performance.
I had been so focused on the script I had no idea they were moving at all.
All my life I had seen shaking as a symptom – something wrong with me, something to be reduced, hidden and ignored or better still, stopped entirely.
Never would I let my body shake or tremble; not when I was public speaking or when I was nervous.
Not when I was excited or fatigued at the gym. Not after a couple of seriously dangerous crashes on my bike in heavy city traffic, or even in my deepest grief after the death of my Grandmother, when my body wanted nothing more than to heave and sob and shudder and cry.
What I now know, is even though shakes and tremors often occur when we are nervous or traumatised, the shaking itself isn’t actually a part of being scared.
It is our body’s way of recovering from being scared; down-regulating the nervous system, dumping adrenaline, releasing defensive tension and most importantly, reconnecting us to our body through the physical movements of our discharging fight and flight responses.
Our body doesn’t shake with fear and anxiety, it shakes to be free of it.
This is the paradigm shift awaiting the western medical world – to catch up with the many cultures that have deliberately used these autonomic movements for health, healing and spirituality for millennia.
Cultures such as the Kalahari Bushmen who refer to themselves as ‘The Keepers of the Shake,’ and the ancient Samurai who meditated until their body began to spontaneously twist and turn itself back to the free-flowing and graceful movements they were famous for.
Bradford Keeney, in his book Shaking Medicine, describes it as ‘the oldest medicine on earth.’
Almost 10 years ago now, a friend introduced me to TRE – a simple but profound process that deliberately invokes this ‘neurogenic tremor reflex’ in a safe and controlled way.
I did the exercises and experienced a small tremor in my legs. I didn’t think much about it, as the movements seemed pretty small and insignificant at the time.
The next morning, I woke having slept more deeply than I had in the last 30 years.
Later that morning, sitting on the toilet, I was blown away when my heels were not held up off the ground in my usual tension pattern, but lay flat on the floor, feeling as if they were a foot below it instead.
In that moment, I knew these shakes and tremors had done something significant and amazing. Something other treatments, exercises and meditations hadn’t yet been able to do.
My life, and my body, had changed direction.
I investigated TRE further and practiced regularly – mainly in bed at night before going to sleep. By that stage my life included a partner, two kids and a stressful job teaching Pilates in a Physiotherapy clinic.
The more I tremored, the more relaxed I became. Finally I had a technique that was unwinding me from the inside out, shaking me to my core, but in a new and wonderful way.
My brain started to work better – I could learn things and remember names again. I began to jog and swim and ride again without getting injured or being debilitated the next day.
While my back had always been strong from Pilates, it still ached, though a little less each day…until it didn’t, after just a couple of months of regular TRE.
Life was no longer grinding me down, but ‘un-winding me up’ instead. I became more positive about the future and noticed how over time, I was developing more resilience as well.
I was starting to discover my ‘authentic safe self’ – the person I am when I am free from my habitual patterns of fear, anxiety and over-reactivity.
TRE isn’t the only practice that deliberately invokes this natural restorative reflex, but it is certainly one of the easiest. It uses simple muscle fatigue to access a deeper ‘neurogenic reflex’ found in all humans and most mammals.
A reflex that inherently knows how, when and where it needs to shake, rattle and roll to keep moving us towards ever increasing health and authenticity.
It wasn’t just the tremoring though, in TRE I also found a trauma-informed model of the body (and a body-informed model of trauma) that helped me understand why my body kept activating my fight and flight responses, even when it seemed it was serving no obvious purpose.
My body once again inviting me to shake off my past and shake free from my fears of the future.
TRE had awakened me to the natural phenomenon of spontaneous shakes, involuntary tremors and autonomic movements already inside me.
An ancient impulse, patiently waiting to help restore us to the inherent safety of the present moment, by reconnecting us to our vital, alive and pulsing human body.
Reminding us we can not only shake without fear, but be shaken into a future our conscious mind can barely begin to imagine.
Physiotherapist & TRE Certification Trainer
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Anxiety And Fear VS Joy And Happiness
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” – Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
‘Breathe. Rest. Receive. Integrate.’ – Philip Shepherd, Radical Wholeness
As with everything we encounter in our life, anxiety and fear can be something momentary, or they can be our faithful companions for a long time.
Making a conscious choice here might be difficult, when our faithful companions have become habitual, and have slowly and surely taken over our lives. And even though we might basically be joyful and happy individuals, periods of anxiety and/or fear might show up occasionally.
Sometimes, we are able to pull ourselves out of a low stretch without any help, yet when being fearful and in constant anxiety have become our daily practice, it might be hard to peel them of, as they feel comfortable and protective to us.
How can we help ourselves to be balanced, solid and grounded in trust and love? I believe we have the ability to train our awareness, so that we notice when we are slipping into constant worry, complaining and whinging mode.
Depending on where we stand on our individual path of life, we might be able to switch our thinking to more balanced thoughts, and change our mode into more joyful and positive without any external help.
Or maybe it would be sufficient to seek external help, somebody who could suggest a different path, be a lighthouse in our storm and just generally listens to us with compassion.
Somebody outside of our closest circle of loved ones and soul family could be the inspiration that triggers our system to really want to change and become more balanced.
We always have a choice, and we can make a new decision every day about taking over the responsibility for ourselves and for our life.
The degree of happiness/unhappiness might feel dependent on the people we are in relationships with; and often, we are influenced greatly by what happens in our family and work environments.
Yet in the end, it is us who either focus on our own healing, or get distracted by what is happening outside of us. It is quite challenging to be aware 24/7, and it is way easier to worry, whinge and complain about facts, circumstances and ‘What-if’s’.
It is a question of mind matters versus soul matters, and in today’s world we are asked to work our way through everyday life with our mind rather than our soul.
Are we aware of that little voice inside which is constantly talking to us, or are we drowning it out with our strong mind distracting us with things that are going wrong/have gone wrong/could go wrong?
A very good friend of mine once compared changing directions in our life with a huge cruise ship turning around.
It is a major move, and it might take ever so long to complete that turn-around – yet it is so worth it. We each are the captains of our ship, and we need to constantly remind ourselves of that fact.
We are the only ones who can decide to turn our ship into a different direction, and we do have the skills to make that move.
Patience and gentleness with ourselves are skills we can practice every day, to stay calm even in the midst of chaos in our lives and in our minds.
Our soul always knows the course to set, the direction to turn to, the way towards calm and balanced waters.
To stay with the picture of a huge cruise ship – it is a universe in itself. Everything we need is present on this ship, from the hospital ward to the engine room, from the jewellery shop to the post office.
Trained staff that knows what to do in any and every possible situation is on duty 24/7, there to aid us to run this ship smoothly.
There is at least one stage in a theatre on board, where the play of life is constantly played, by an entertainment team that has been booked for this cruise specifically.
What play is offered on your ship? Are you playing an active part in this play? What part? And can you change the script? We need to remember that we have control over our life, if and when we choose to take on this responsibility.
We are the captains, and we are also the directors, we can change scenes anytime, as well as changing the route of the ship.
How many guests (thoughts) have you got on board of your ship? Are they all nice individuals (thoughts), are they stressed out and complaining about let’s say the food in the main restaurant?
As the captain, it is your duty to show your presence. How are you showing up? Are you a calm, assertive and trustworthy captain? Are you steering your ship through peaceful waters or are you going through a storm front?
We can give our strong minds a direction of where to go with our thoughts. And for our brain, it doesn’t make a difference if what we think is real or not – for the brain, it is all real.
So what thoughts are we feeding our brain? Playful stories about a cruise ship, or worrying scenarios about threats, illness and financial breakdown?
I invite you to try working with your innocent, child-like fantasies. Maybe you can relate to the cruise ship scenario, maybe you can find a different story that suits you better.
If you were the main character in a Hollywood blockbuster – what would your plot be about? And if you were the hero in your movie – how would you control the bad guys (thoughts) and put them in their place?
‘You may say I’m a dreamer – but I’m not the only one’ – John Lennon said that. When did you engage in dreaming lately? And what are you dreaming about?
Please remember that you don’t have to do it all alone. Do a check-up of your present life situation, and see if you are taking time for yourself to breathe, rest, receive and integrate.
Find like-minded people who share a passion of yours, join a theatre group, start walking or knitting, dedicate some of your precious lifetime to the things you love.
Be your own best play buddy, and feel the joy when you light up doing the things that you love.
I wish you peace on your path, and that you remember to be ever so gentle with yourself.
Because soul matters.
Conscious Awareness Teacher
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Fear Has No Place Here
Why is it that most individuals automatically jump on the band wagon of fear so readily and irrationally? When something terrible or disastrous happens around the world, or it may happen closer to home, or even to ourselves on a personal level, we seem to collapse into this foreboding mindset.
In today’s world we are in more frequent situations where fear is used as a tool to manipulate, control and supress humankind (and our animal kingdom, I won’t leave them out).
Fear and anxiety is demoralising, it can hold you back from achieving and stepping forward in life, from being the best version of yourself.
We tend to play things safe, to keep from being hurt, feeling silly, being rejected, or even failing!
How often do we hear many of the much older generations (not all, though I know my 85-year-old mum does) saying how everything has changed around them, it isn’t the same and they fear for the younger people living in our world today.
How Fear Is Processed
Fear is an emotional element that triggers within your brain a response to a certain situation. The thalamus is a part of the brain that is responsible for relaying signals and for also prioritising.
It decides where to send incoming sensory data that is received via the nose, mouth, ears and skin.
Whether it’s an emotion such as standing on a ladder that’s only 2 steps up, seeing a spider on the wall, talking in front of an audience or even being threatened with a weapon.
It is a stressful stimuli that instantaneously shocks the adrenal system, sending hormones flooding through your body.
The ups and downs of life can be of personal growth or personal fears! Whatever dominates the most, is how we view change.
It can be either exciting or frightening, if you’re a person that has a lot of fear, you won’t like change.
You will do your best to try and build a world that you can control, try and predict and define your place.
So, however we look at it, change is inevitable. Use your mind to manipulate life for the purpose of not feeling fear.
Fear Is Just A Thing!
What we have to understand is that fear is a thing. It’s just another object in the universe that you are capable of experiencing.
You can do one or two things with fear: you can recognize that you have it and put in the effort to release it, or you can choose to hold it and try to hide from it.
Anxiety Is Another Disguise Of Fear
Some of us go through periods or bouts of anxiety, which is a form of fear, and this can literally debilitate and stop you from living a fulfilled life.
Fear is caused by the blocks in the flow of your energy, and the energy cannot come up to feed your heart.
Your heart aches, becomes weak and it is open to receiving lower vibrations, and one of the lowest of all vibrations is fear.
Breathe. If you must close your eyes (preferably not while driving or using equipment) take the time to breath gently in and out. The breath is our connection to life. It brings you back to a sense of the now and you. |
Look around you. Find five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, one thing you can touch, and one thing you can taste. This is called grounding. It can help you when you feel like you’ve lost all control of your surroundings. |
Forget Everything And Run Or Face Everything And Rise
“I shall put the fear of God in you!” “Fear thy wrath”! “I fear for my life!” Woah, even the word FEAR looks terrifying.
Some fears are good in certain cases. they can keep a person from harm or avoid a dangerous situation.
When you have a fear, insecurity or weakness inside of you, you will do everything to keep it from being stimulated.
In other words, you will change things in your life or events so that you do not have to endure and to prevent yourself from that struggle.
Confronting our fears is the greatest teacher and liberator of all. It is one of the most difficult and most important tasks of life.
Get comfortable with fear, invite it into your life.
Be accountable by preparing yourself, work out solutions, move towards your fear, or whatever frightens you, because I can tell you it becomes like an armour.
As you build up your courage the fear cannot penetrate that armour, its energy weakens, because you’ve stepped up to, into and through it!
Everything You Want Is On The Other Side Of Fear
Do not give the attention, time or energy to fear. Keep your thoughts positive, read positive affirmations. Learn to speak, think and emit a frequency of courage and strength.
Your world expands as your greatness and courage expands. You have the power to break through the challenges and obstacles that can stand in the way of your dreams, desires and happiness.
As an intuitive energy healer, I see the effects helping a client release fear or anxiety. Working through their negative beliefs, repeating patterns, past /life issues and so much more.
When you take that step to make a conscious effort of wanting to stand in your own power, really live authentically, having freedom, that’s where the real journey of your soul’s purpose begins.
Everything that you want is on the other side of your fear.
It’s all self-discovery learning as well. When you learn to let go of the negative self-talk, tell your truths, what your passions are and what’s stopping your growth and development, when you conquer your fears, whatever it is, however it takes you, bit by bit, day by day, this will catapult you into your absolute best version of you.
Forensic Healing is a proven therapy system superior to all healing modalities, because it:
• Profiles the client, identifying negative life patterns, archetypes, emotions, belief systems, and much more
• Clears curses, negative energies, rituals, and many other spiritual issues
• Activates spontaneous healing forces in the body for immediate changes
• Removes the negative conditioning stored in the DNA or cell memory
• Uses healing secrets from ancient healing scripts combined with the most-advanced scientific methods.
• Utilizes healing pathways that use physical, emotional, energetic or spiritual elements.
• Heals deeply at a soul level by targeting soul facets, fragments, DNA etc
• Places a blessing on the client at the end of a healing
• Educates and empowers the client to understand themselves so they leave with new information to progress in their life.
See Yourself Having A Dynamic New Experience
I look forward to hopefully meeting you, joining your journey and helping you in any way to ride the waves of growth, new beings and this wonderful life we truly can find inspiring and inspirational!
Forensic Healer
Click here to work with me.
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The Lies That Keep Us Safe And Stuck
When I told myself there aren’t any good single men out there, it was a lie that my subconscious self made up to make sure I stayed within my comfort zone, to not risk being loved. Because if I really had the courage to let men in to the depth of my heart, I might risk feeling unloved again, as I felt this way throughout my whole childhood.
When I dated men that were unavailable (didn’t want a relationship or were already in one) I realized, that when I want to meet a man, coming from a place of lack within myself, I will never meet a man that will be available and stand up for me physically or emotionally.
I realized that I had to dig deeper into myself and heal the gigantic black whole (from childhood neglect and abuse) I had within in myself, so I wouldn’t seek a man because I needed a partner.
It will be amazing to meet a man, and until then I am happy and content getting to grow the love connection with myself, every day.
When I recently told my self that the Danish health and self-development industry is not “my thing” because no one is doing inner work on themselves, it was yet again my subconscious self telling a lie, that would keep me hidden away from the 10% healers, therapists, coaches, authors, speakers – that needed my help.
We all have lies that we tell our self and other every day. Unaware of this of course.
You might have a problem with your partner and say to yourself or friends “my partner doesn’t care about me” it will most often be a lie that you keep telling yourself again and again.
Which then will become a reality for you, because that is what the law of attraction states “you will achieve what you keep saying to yourself”.
There is another layer in this, which is this;
“If your partner really doesn’t like you, would he or she be in your life”?
A question I will advice you to answer from your heart and not from your lower subconscious self-emotional part within you. If you even dig deeper into this issue you might ask yourself.
“Is this my current adult blueprint or is it coming from my childhood?… and from what age”?
And the next question will be;
“Am I seeing my mum or dad in this person? And what undealt issue do I still need to sort out within myself, so my relationship with my partner will heal itself automatically”?
When telling our self that we can’t lose weight, it is also a lie we tell ourselves, to make sure we stay put, and don’t risk feeling or looking good, when our subconscious self doesn’t feel valuable or good enough to receive positive attention.
When you assume your partner doesn’t like you, or your friends, co-worker, your boss or someone else, you’re most likely talking from your lower self. The part within you that you’re not aware of that dislikes her or himself.
And underneath this statement “he or she doesn’t like me” is the belief from your childhood, that because your parents scolded you, they didn’t like you.
Which most often is not true, because our parents loved us, the way that they were capable of and scolding is not necessarily a sign of hate, but their way of prepping you for going out to the big world, teaching you what was right or wrong.
There are times where scolding from our parents were a sign of inner battle, frustration, self-doubt and self-hatred that could even result in violent conduct.
Which is wrong, but nevertheless, this was the way that your parents expressed their emotions because they were unable to express with words how they felt.
I experienced this in my childhood. Daily physical and psychological terror and abuse, that made me personally punish my self with extreme physical training up until I was 28 years old, where I ended up in a wheelchair for a while.
Unaware of this, with my self-destructive self-abuse (orthorexia), I kept myself in a “well know pattern of punishment” which had completely worn me out, to such an extent, that I was burnt out and had post-traumatic stress, arthritis, two eating disorders and several sever allergies, at the age of 28.
I kept repeating the patterns that was deeply incorporated into my nervous system even before being born, as my father abused my mum when she was pregnant with me. Patterns of hate, doubt, fear and the feeling of being unwanted.
Therefore, we all keep ourselves stuck in the negative patterns that we have seen repeated by someone else.
Most likely our parents or caregivers. What they showed us, we will repeat again and again. Until we deal with the pain that caused the pattern.
Because behavioural patterns are strongly incorporated into the nervous system, that has been added to the pain that comes along, with feeling bad.
Our nervous system is smart! It reacts just as strongly to positive or negative feedback from what you expose it too whether it comes to positive or negative self-pleasure.
So until you stop repeating the same negative patterns, your fine attuned nervous system will crave more of this, until you change the destructive patterns with healthy patterns.
Which means doing good things for yourself and celebrate, whenever you’re doing something new and great, for example a dance or a, joyful bounce or a big bowl of fruit salad.
Just make sure you don´t celebrate your progress with unhealthy food.
We abuse our self because we think we deserve it at a deep level.
The lies we tell ourselves, the self-destructive behavior, the unhealthy eating habits and what we think of our self and others, has been incorporated deep into the nervous system.
And because the law of attraction also states “what you give to yourself, you will receive more of” you then attract more of what frustrates you.
For example unhealthy relationships, customers, jobs and experiences.
This is unaware repetition of what your subconscious self thinks to be the truth.
Repeated self-sabotage patterns, when you feel stuck and when you lack energy. |
The words you keep telling yourself and what you believe about others. |
The things you keep telling yourself that you can’t do or what you believe to be true about others. |
When you judge others or yourself, it’s caused by one word that has so much power. |
Insecurity
Uncertainty or anxiety about oneself; lack of confidence.
Synonyms
lack of confidence, lack of self-confidence, self-doubt, diffidence, unassertiveness, humility, humbleness, meekness, timidity, timidness, timorousness, uncertainty, nervousness, hesitancy, inhibition, self-consciousness; More
Insecurity goes hand in hand with fear. These two are besties and make sure that they keep each other engaged and stuck in the past, because this is where they were born.
As soon as we´re being confronted with an opportunity to grow as a human being, evolve from the heart and leave the comfort zone behind us, our subconscious self will make its entry with all sort of different insecurity actions.
Overeating, complaining, over shopping, scolding, mood swings, excessive control or exercise, judgment, comparison, sadness, fatigue, procrastination etc.
It can even cause you to break a leg, get a virus, and develop allergies or infections. It will do everything to prevent you from moving forward and losing its momentum!
The key to you breaking old patterns and negative behavioral patterns is to remember that 90% of what we do daily is default.
This means that your subconscious self is behind your steering wheel 90% of the time, every day, until you start questioning every word you express, every action you are about to take and every thought you think to be true about yourself and others.
The question might be this “Is this a blueprint from my past or my future”?
Another way is also to ask yourself this question again and again “Is this true for my heart or for my lower self”? And then learn to differentiate between the inner child that resided within you.
You might have an inner child that is doubtful, angry, a rebel, sad, resignedly, skeptic, worried. And if you can, you can also give them an age.
I myself went from having a black belt in self-destructive behavior and being my own worst enemy, to be a behavioral transformation expert who has helped more than 6000 sensitive aware people go from living by default, to now living from the heart.
They all knew with themselves that they were the one who had to change the way that they perceived life, not others. We can’t control or change anyone, but our self. What frustrates us when it comes to others, is to see our own subconscious self, reflected back into our physical eye.
I will leave you with this beautiful quote: Be the change you want to see in the world
– Mathmi Ghandi
ZANE FRIIDA PIILIPSON
Intuitive Mentor & Rapid Behavioural Expert
Click here to work with me.
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How Does Yoda Nidra Help Stress And Anxiety?
Yoga Nidra is described as the waking sleep, as it can take the participant to a state of conscious deep sleep.
It is a systematic method of inducing complete physical, emotional and mental relaxation. The practitioner appears to be sleeping but the unconscious mind is functioning at a deeper level. It is sleep with deep awareness.
In normal sleep we lose track of our self, but in Yoga Nidra, while consciousness of the world is dim and relaxation is deep, there remains an inward feeling of lucidity and the experience may be absorbed and even recalled after.
Since Yoga Nidra involves effortless relaxation it is best practised with an experienced and trusted teacher, who can verbally deliver instructions.
Anyone can do Yoga Nidra. It cannot be done incorrectly. As you lie down, supported in Savasana, or Corpse Pose, all anyone needs to do is follow the guided voice.
It’s likely parts of the meditation will not be heard as you enter deep relaxation.
Every time you do this practise it is like a new experience, none of which is wrong. Many fall asleep and that is okay too. You will still receive benefits while the unconscious mind is absorbing the practice.
My personal journey with Yoga Nidra began at 18 attending the Satyananda Yoga Centre in Manly, Sydney and Mangrove Mountains, Central Coast of NSW and in that time I was lucky to have been part of a workshop taught by the originator of the Yoga Nidra technique, Swami Satyananda, (now deceased).
More recent research studies by Dr Richard Millar (Integrative Restoration or IRest) over the past 16 years has proven that the reductions in anxiety and stress symptoms occurs with regular Yoga Nidra practise amongst all ages.
When I began my Fitness, Wellness and Teaching career I included Yoga Nidra as part of a regular practise in schools as well as Fitness Classes. This became part of every program I still teach with all ages.
I have found over the years as stress and anxiety levels increase more and more people request Yoga Nidra and even ask for a longer session.
Currently I am running a program for the NSW Department of Education Teachers that includes Yoga Nidra as a practise to help students suffering stress and anxiety.
The scientific studies have shown that people who practise Yoga Nidra experience better sleep generally, reduced anxiety and fear, reduced depression, improved interpersonal relationships and are more productive.
In our cities across the world we live in an over stressed, over stimulated environment and this is not going away.
The result of this is people are feeling chronic exhaustion, adrenal burnout and daily fatigue and the stress of having to cope with this while looking after self, studying, working and possibly having a family, earning an income, providing daily living requirements and get enough ‘me’ time means … total burn out is fast approaching.
Yoga Nidra is a simple, practised and researched method that will help address all these issues.
In a classic Yoga Nidra practice, the practitioner lies on a mat/floor on their back with arms away from the body and palms turned upwards. In Yoga terminology, this is called Shavasana or corpse pose.
Feet should be separated to approximately hip width apart, and toes falling outwards. Eyes remain closed throughout and adding a lavender pillow over the eyes will aid the sense of complete relaxation.
It is best if the body is lying symmetrically. A good way to do this is to imagine a centre line running from the souls of the feet to the crown of the head.
This position is said to aid relaxation and influence the consciousness and prepares the mind/body for complete relaxation and letting go.
It is also said it will balance the flow of life force or Chi throughout the body.
When I teach Yoga Nidra I include a focus on intentions, which helps realising a resolve or something you want to achieve in your life I say “See it. Say it to yourself. Feel what it is like and Make it happen”.
I invite people to repeat this several times silently before moving into the verbal instruction of relaxation of muscles and body through naming e.g. feet, legs, torso and so on and then repeat the intention when coming out of deep relaxation.
I also focus on breath before and after the deep relaxation.
Your intention could be as simple as wanting more love in your life or being kinder to yourself, or something very specific like a great new job or giving up alcohol or smoking.
People have reported back to me that seeing and feeling these intentions have decreased their anxiety and allowed them to feel more positive about being able to achieve a balance in life.
People who practise Yoga Nidra and intention say by repeating an intention to themselves they have found that by being in this relaxed state helps it take root in the unconscious. This could also be called a post-hypnotic suggestion.
People have also told me that they have achieved much after practising the combination of Yoga Nidra, intention and importantly mindfulness, by creating the moment they are in and letting go of sounds around them and daily stresses in as little as 10 minutes a day.
This practise has had profound results.
Combining a Mind/Body Fitness and Wellness Program that includes movement such as Yoga, Pilates, Dance, Cardio Fitness and adding a Yoga Nidra practise to finish is the total balance of mind and body.
Keeping fit will also decrease anxiety and stress by helping the blood flow and oxygen throughout the body and to the brain.
Feel good hormones known as endorphins are released during cardio based movement and will make an enormous difference to how one feels, relieving stress and anxiety. Continuing this combination will have a long term positive outcome.
Yoga Nidra can be included as part of a class and will produce results in as little as 10 minutes or a longer Yoga Nidra of 40 minutes to an hour will have profound results through total relaxation and coming to a place of peace.
It is said 30 Minutes of Yoga Nidra is the equivalent of 2 hours sleep and will increase dopamine tone during meditation induced change in consciousness.
Thank you for reading.
Reference
Anthony Profeta
JILL HEALY-QUINTARD
Yoga & Pilates Teacher
Click here to work with me.
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Stop Panic Attacks Or Live With Them
This is a subject I have written about so many times before and I think it needs more attention; so many of us have very busy lives (and many of us do not make the time to read articles like this). Is it possible to stop panic attacks? Read on…
The pressure of living is sometimes too much for us and some of us suffer from panic attacks.
We are built to cope with small levels of stress and for short periods of time, but unfortunately so many of us are constantly in a state of stress in work and in our homes as well.
There is nowhere we switch off, so our brains keep on going on and on, even when we sleep.
Look back to the lives our grandparents lead and see how slow their pace of life was.
They did not have the technology that we have today and were not bound to computers or cell phones. They had time to relax and be with their loved ones and friends.
They worked 9 – 5 Monday to Friday and had the evening times and weekend to relax. Back then nothing even opened on a Sunday!
I remember the days when the shops only opened until 12 pm noon on Saturdays. Offices were closed, shops were closed and people spent time in nature with the people they love.
These days we are bound to our computers, tablets, phones and people can contact us constantly so we never switch off to let our body recuperate. Many of us work 60+ hours a week, plus work on the weekends.
When we are not working there is so much pressure to live up to societal expectations. The advertising is constantly hitting us, whether it is on radio, T.V. billboards, newspapers, there is a never-ending stream of pressure on us from every angle.
The pressure to conform, to be the same as everyone else, to keep up with the Jones’s. It is everywhere you look. No wonder so many suffer from panic and anxiety!
Sometimes I sit and wonder what it would have been like in our grandparent’s time. I am sure they were much more relaxed than we are today.
Sometimes stress can be good. It can be a challenge that keeps us alert and motivated. It also makes us ready to avoid danger.
(Like ready to run away from a saber tooth tiger. Not that there are many of those living in our cities these days, but I am sure you understand what I am saying). It is normal to have some stress in your life.
One of the best things you can do for your health is manage it, even when you can’t control the source of it.
On the flip side stress can be very bad…
So what happens when it gets too much? That’s right. We get sick!
If you’re constantly under stress, you may develop physical symptoms, for example; headaches, high blood pressure, IBS, chest pain, lack of libido and poor sleep.
Stress can also lead to emotional problems, depression, panic attacks, or other forms of anxiety and worry.
You see, stress can play a bigger part in your life than you may realise. You may not relate your headache to stress, but if you are stressed, it is probably the cause.
You might take a pill to reduce your headache, but that is only treating the symptom. For true healing to occur you MUST treat the CAUSE.
You may be suffering from anxiety or depression and be taking pills for this but it is treating the CAUSE or simple masking it.
I work with my clients in finding the cause and making permanent change in their lives so that stress does not affect them in the same way. They can use stress to motivate them but not overtake them.
So how do we do this? We change the way we see stress, we change the way stress feels in our body. We change the behaviours we ‘do’ around stress. We change our awareness so we can see what is really going on.
We become aware of our triggers, so when we see a stressful situation coming towards us, we can better prepare ourselves.
Learn How To Stop Panic Attacks
They may feel a certain level of stress |
They may focus on that stress and how it feels in their body |
They concentrate on the knot in their belly |
Then they notice their breathing is getting shallower and shallower |
Then as they are concentrating harder on their shallow breathing, they focus on it |
Then they think they are never going to get their breathe back |
They feel their heart fluttering. |
Then they start shaking |
Then they think they are going to die |
Their vision may get blurry due to lack of oxygen |
They may then pass out |
I know how this feels because this was MY old strategy of getting panic attacks.
Can you see I can give you a step by step list of HOW I did it? You will notice I used the word ‘did’ as I no longer suffer from panic attacks.
That is it! It is half the level of steps so easier to achieve, when you know HOW!
Can you image how different my body now feels compared to the years I spent having panic attacks?
I feel a certain level of stress |
I focus on my breathing taking big deep breaths |
I get up, change my posture to an open posture, where I can give my body oxygen |
I tell myself I am safe and in control and concentrate on taking big, deep breaths. |
That is it! It is half the level of steps so easier to achieve, when you know HOW!
Can you image how different my body now feels compared to the years I spent having panic attacks? I had no idea I could stop panic attacks from happening to me.
I no longer have headaches, panic attacks, my muscles are freer than ever before. I now have these strategies and I have used this strategy with other emotions as well.
Your subconscious mind learns behaviours, just like a child does and you can retrain it.
Your subconscious is there to protect you, but when it learns a strategy that will keep you safe and protected and makes you feel good, it will change your behaviour in an instant.
This is why I love doing the work I do. There is no need to stay on pills for the rest of your life, when you learn these strategies. When you know how to make these changes, you can then turn this knowledge to other areas of you like.
You brain is ‘plastic’ (not literally of course. Neuroplasticity, or brain plasticity, refers to the brain’s ability to CHANGE throughout life. The human brain has the amazing ability to reorganise itself by forming new connections between brain cells (neurons).
By growing these neural networks you can create so much change in your life. You can create change in your physical health, mental health, in fact ALL areas of your life.
I hope that this article helps you to understand you CAN CHANGE YOUR BEHAVIOURS, LIFE & HEALTH. It IS possible to stop panic attacks.
There is no need to live a miserable life of pain and suffering. You just need to find the strategies that work for you.
SHARON WHITE
Subconscious Mind Expert
Click here to work with me.
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