We Are Not Alone – Part 2

“I feel hopeful and I feel discouraged all day long,” a friend shared with me the other day. Her words summed up a sentiment I’ve been hearing regularly in my private client practice: it’s difficult to escape the collective fear prevalent in the world right now. 

Every day we hear of more Covid cases and deaths. Though we might feel some hope, like my friend, there’s also a looming fear in the air, seeping in and out of buildings, hospitals, city skylines, hovering over mountain tops and vast bodies of water. One of my clients named it “fear smog.” How fitting!

About once a month, I feel this collective fear encircle me. I’ve practiced working with different energy modalities for years, including energy boundaries, and yet, I feel the fear seep in when I’m sitting in my prayer and meditation practice. 

I start to feel tears well up in my eyes. When this happens, I take a deep breath and open to what’s moving in my body, and I start to cry. Then after a little while, I may sigh, and there is a release, like my whole being, this large container, is emptying. I can take then another long, deep breath. I often then feel a soothing vibration in my body and, a voice says to me, “I am here. You are not alone.” 

It’s true - we are not alone. But too often, we think we are. 

During this turbulent time, you may find that you feel closer than ever to God, Source, energy, and this connection is giving you comfort and hope. Or, you may feel only an emptiness, a void, a heightened sense of aloneness and despair. You may feel only discouragement instead of a mix of discouragement and hope.

Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle gave a talk in July, and in it he named that we are all in an “enforced stillness.” He explained that we are living in a time where we are called to go inward, reflect, and open. True, deep peace is not found outside of ourselves. The big challenge is how do we move out of our fast-chattering, fear-based mind, to touch into our inner peace?

If you are having a hard time doing that, here’s one practice that can help you.

First, notice when you are ruminating over the past, a worry, a fear, or a future what-if scenario. Can you step back and become the witness to your thoughts and feelings?

Name what you are thinking, either outload or silently. Then come back into your body, which is always in the present moment. To do that:

1.   Take a deep breath, feeling your belly expand on the in breath, and recede on the out breath. 

2.   Feel the air come in through your nostrils. Feel its coolness as you breathe in and warmth as you breathe out. 

3.   Feel the energy of the breath as it goes over your sinus area.

4.   Feel the breath turn downward and go down into your chest.

5.   After you breathe out, in that moment, before the next in breath, just feel. This moment is pure awareness, pure potential.

6.   As you continue to breathe, feel the sensation in your hands and your fingers. Can you feel the energy moving there? When you’re focusing on your hands, you can’t be thinking of other things at the same time. Your analytical mind stops, and you touch in to space, stillness.

Another easy presence practice is simply to notice what you are feeling, seeing, tasting, hearing, or smelling in any given moment. This past week, for example, I paused to notice the sensation of the warm breezes touching my skin, the aroma of fresh brewed coffee wafting up the staircase in the morning, the brighter hues of late-fall sunlight in the windows, and the deep, visible love ever present in the eyes of my dogs, Gigi and Bella.

Next time you’re feeling fearful, pause and ask yourself, “What can I notice right now? What can I see? What can I feel? What can I hear? What can I taste? What can I smell?” Tuning in to each of your five senses will bring you into your physical body and the present moment.

When we practice a few minutes of breathing, meditating, or presence, our brain waves and the electrical activity in our neocortex slow down. We learn to self-regulate our nervous system, and our bodies start to physiologically calm and relax. We can literally change our body’s physiology and lower our blood pressure, heart rate, and cortisol levels. We can then move out of our analytical mind, and into a spacious stillness, a peace, where God, Source, energy, this infinite field of possibility exists.

And in this infinite field of possibility there is no room for collective fear.