Very grateful for the recent email sent out to the DYWM community and I thought I’d share a little melee of personal connections to the ideas David mentioned about ‘labelling’ anxiety. The embodied sensations associated with an onset and the importance of naming them, of nurturing them with physical touch in nurturing ways and, as always, guiding the process with Mindful Breath.
Many of my most valuable perspective expansions have emerged and become an important shift in my practices related to several suggestions David explained. I have experiences of anxiety related to traumatic incidences in my life that culminated in active dissociation (specific types of seizures within a category of Epilepsy where I would loose capacity for visual, auditory or spatial awareness). Most often, they “looked” like intense panic attacks. They affected memory, speech, balance, safety and sleep very intensely. The anticipatory anxiety heightened general anxiety as the onset of such symptoms and effects were unpredictable.
I’ve worked actively with a Counsellor and with many teachers, including David and his DYWM crew, to integrate important lessons. I’ll name a few other MASSIVELY important Guides on this path too. Tara Brach and Judson Brewer. Both examine anxiety and manners of healing through a neurological perspective and actively integrate Mindful Awareness practices.
There is marked evidence within this lens of neurochemistry around our capacity to alter what can be understood as anxiety being an innate and natural, though navigable and adaptable “habit”. Tara Brach bases many of her teachings within a “R.A.I.N” focus; an acronym representing Recognize, Accept, Investigate, Nurture as a means of self care and investigative curiosity with any sensation of anxiety, or other factors that can pull us from Mindfulness. She often suggests, as David reiterates, the value of naming the SENSATIONS, their locations, their impact. This action leads us from the limbic section of our brain (with a more emotional/ “innate” function) toward our prefrontal cortex (the front of our brain; the very active “thought and processing centre” that is more recently evolutionarily developed). Engaging this part of our brains with can allow verbalization & actions that nurture. I really value the impact of “gently talking myself down” and naming sensations, rubbing my belly, my heart space and my temples as this is often where I’ll feel the sensations that have me holding my breath.
Judson Brewer digs into the malleability of anxiety as a habit that IS within our capacity to adapt, without a goal of needing to “remove it”. As if we ever could! It is innate. It can feel dominant or permanent when it’s recurring. But it doesn’t have to be and can change. And serve truly as a Teacher. A key takeaway from his view for me is that there are lessons possible to glean from engaging RAIN-type practices: during an anxious moment, in retrospect or in comforting expectations that such experiences are likely to re-emerge. And all of that is ok. And all of that demonstrates growth.
We needn’t hold a label of being Anxious. We do not “have” Anxiety- not in a fixed state. We experience it. And we can learn from it.
I’ll list 2 books by each of these wise teachers and offer a link to a free podcast in 2 parts of a conversation between the folks. (Plus hundreds more via, tarabrach.com !!).
- Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach &
- Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer.
https://www.tarabrach.com/unwinding-anxiety-with-awareness-pt1/
https://www.tarabrach.com/unwinding-anxiety-with-awareness-pt2/