Anxiety is useful

Friends in the studio opening the front ribs and lungs helped them release anxiety.

After looking at all of the speculation about the causes of the rise of anxiety and depression in society, one could look and see that we are malnourished.

We are separated from each other, living in a world that is experiencing scarcity. Whether it be scarcity of touch, scarcity of face-to-face contact, scarcity of breathing together, scarcity of beauty, or scarcity of silence. The scarcity shows up in so many aspects of our lives.

We are far from tribe and fire.  We are separated from nature and the natural rhythms of the earth.

We live in an economy that has created scarcity.

We have scarcity of money. There’s scarcity of health, which comes from the scarcity of relationship that develops intimacy, closeness, and feeling connected.

There is also an innate scarcity in the realm that we live in—in that choosing one idea means you are not choosing another.  We choose one path and that means we are not choosing another.  This is the defining gift of our incarnation—this ability to choose our path. Choosing shows us we have a use for this consciousness—for this mind’s energy. Choosing displays our free will, our identity, it is a vote for how we wish to live our life. We want to live a life that we care about. We want to create a life that is meaningful. 

Drawing on the work of Charles Eisenstein, Author and speaker who wrote: The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, published in November 2013:

He argues that many of the social, economic, political, and environmental problems covered in his earlier works can be traced to an underlying worldview that he calls the "Story of Separation"—that humans are separate from each other and from the rest of the natural world. A new story that is emerging, the "Story of Interbeing", is a "story of the world that we really care about". The book describes this as a time of transition between these stories: "Internally, it [the transition] is ... a transformation in the experience of being alive (not functioning or coping and being productive). Externally is it ... a transformation of humanity's role on planet Earth". He deconstructs the old story while describing the new. For example, the best way to interrupt the story of separation is to give someone an experience of non-separation. 

Publishers' Weekly described The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, as "a revolutionary and interactive book—in the sense that it inspires the reader to think out of the ordinary"—and this is what we are being asked to do: Think out of the ordinary:  we are not alleviating depression or anxiety and it’s associated thought/feeling patterns. 

Instead, we are looking at the origins of these thoughts and recognizing that we have a mind that can still create a new reality—not adapt to the current one.

We must change how we experience reality.

We can remember that we are living in a sick society based on capitalistic consumerism and industrial strength requirements that lack human inter-being. 

For example, if I choose to work rather than stay home and raise my child, that may be a self-directed choice.  Or not.  So many of our choices are defined by financial requirements, so there is anxiety, we do not feel embodied in many of our choices.  They are not really OUR choices.  They are defined by our society, economic status and aspects we cannot control.

This scarcity, this pressure to make the right choices, that may not represent our choice (not to mention the true love of what we want) causes scarcity.

It is hurting us. 

We don’t even realize how we alone we feel. Nor fortified. It’s so normal.  Everyone is caught up in the feeling of pressure, of lack, of scarcity.

For example, the most common complaint I hear amongst women is: “I’m so tired. I’m not sleeping well,”  and, or, “I have no energy.”

Then What is the Purpose of Anxiety?

Is the anxiety revealing a perpetual fear?

Or is it revealing a need that we don't know we have? Or deny for fear of the changes we wound need to make. 

If the need hasn’t been met it may be causing us to feel separate and closed in.

We don’t know how to fulfill the need or believe we can have it. 

For example, if we feel insecure about feeling lonely, we might feel uncomfortable to ask someone out or to talk to them because we feel too needy.  Yet, it’s natural to be interested in somebody, that’s connecting.

Lack of serotonin, dopamine or bad wiring in the brain? 

Another look at:

Why are we so anxious and depressed?

Maybe, looking at a specific part or chemical in the brain is only ever going to give a partial answer. Maybe we should be looking at how we live, and how our minds can’t work naturally in the lives we lead. Our brains, our human brains, in terms of cognition and emotion and consciousness are the same as they were at the time of the Beatles or Mahatma, Gandhi, or Cleopatra, or the Stone Age. Our brains are not evolving with the pace of change. Primal humans never had to face emails, or pop-up ads or invisible radar monitoring our speed on streets, or breaking news or self-serve checkouts at Loblaw’s. Instead of worrying about staying up to date with technology and slowly allowing ourselves to become cyborgs, we look at how we could upgrade our ability to cope with all this change.

Cyborgs vs. feeling Alive

If we look at our physical bodies at the atomic level, all we are in the fullest fundamental sense is energy. Then how is it that we don’t feel energetic?  If I am energy—that is what my body houses, then how is it that I feel lethargic, blocked, overwhelmed, depressed, weary, anxious, cautious and a sense of “how am I going to make it through the day?”  How do I get to this tired existence?

To answer this, we are left with a question. Not an answer. (For the answer would be too complicating and incomplete. It is a single question.)

The basic, fundamental question is: what is slowing down my energy?  After ruling out disease or actual health issues, like an autoimmune disease, a virus or heart issue, we are left with the activities of the brain.  What is going on in our brain?  What are our thoughts?

**

Welcome to your eight-week series Returning to Ease-A mindful movement journey out of stress and into balance. It is valuable to come together and take the time to learn how we can live in the world with more freedom, peace of mind, and a feeling of connection with others.

During our time together, we will discover a fundamental aspect of feelings that is conducive to mental health: that all emotions are valuable. Meaning useful. Even the hard, uncomfortable and disruptive emotions like anxiety and depressive feelings.

We will learn their value by understanding why we feel the emotions we do. This will help us feel less erratic when difficult feelings arise.  This will help us be more in our life when they occur. By feeling “in our life” we won’t feel taken out of our life by a hard emotion. Or avoid feeling it.

This will/can occur, as the emotion will not trap us anymore.

We can stop avoiding the hurtful aspects of hard emotions. 

Instead, we will feel the value of our emotions.   

Feeling the value of our emotions will help us learn from them.

Emotions are our key to living a free and peaceful life.

By understanding the value of our emotions--how they can actually help us--we will feel less pressure (or interested in how) to control them. 

In a world that asks us to be in control, we realize that emotions that cause us to feel out of control seem wrong.

This is simply not true.

Being in control is not a liberated life. We do not feel good, when we are in control. We simply feel the requirement to live within the dotted lines of requirements, societal ideals, policies, habits and traditions that may not be true for us. We live from the head up.

Instead of trying to be in control of our emotions, we will learn how to work with them.

Working with our emotions means they are not wrong, even though they are uncomfortable.

For example, if a young child is yelling and “out of control”, then we know the child has a need. The child is not purposely misbehaving or unruly, they are expressing a need, whether it is for attention or to be fed.

It is the same with us. When we feel out of control with anxiety, we have hit the boiling point where our emotions need our attention.

By valuing our emotions, we will befriend them. We will become interested in what they are revealing to us.

We will develop the talent of caring for ourselves. We care for ourselves by becoming aware of the emotions as they occur. This is self-awareness.

Self-awareness will be the key foundation for our work together in the next eight weeks. Self-awareness helps us to make sense of the cluttered confusion of our sometimes maddening and messy emotions.

By feeling the hard emotions, we can enter the feeling and see what thoughts are creating them.  For example, you don’t feel anxious because you need to go into a meeting, you feel anxious as you don’t feel like you will do a good enough job.  So really, you are experiencing your own self-inflicted performance pressure.  When you are aware that you are doing this, you can name and highlight what the “hard” thoughts are that you are having about yourself and why you feel anxiety.

Can the feeling of anxiety or the blanket of depression feel so abrupt in your consciousness that you feel it like just realizing you didn’t hold the door for someone behind you?

To Summarize:

We will learn ways to manage our emotions. By managing our emotions, we will be in a good position to learn from them.

Managing emotions is different from controlling them. Managing emotions means we feel the message in them and we work to value the emotion by sensing the need they reveal.

This will become the main essence of our work: naming the emotion and identifying the need it reveals.

Emotions are our human steering guidance.

If we value them, we can identify how to manage them. For example, if we feel anxious, we may identify that we are unclear about what we need to do. This is good to know. Realizing that you are not sure how to do something means you can take action to help yourself.  You may ask for assistance or say “no” until you feel ready, if this is an option. 

Again, the way we feel our emotions and manage them is listening to the message in the emotion, which reveals the need in the emotion.