Tara Brach - Transforming Your Relationship with Anxiety (2020-09-02)

Episode Date: September 4, 2020

Transforming Your Relationship with Anxiety (2020-09-02) - Strong anxiety frequently triggers fight-flight-freeze, our survival brain's strategy for dealing with threats. This can become a trance that dominates our thoughts, feelings, behaviors and deepest experience of who we are. This talk explores how we get caught in this reactive trance, and ways of calming anxiety and radically shifting our way of relating to the experience of threat. The gift is discovering an inner freedom in the midst of life, and the capacity to respond to what arises with love-in-action.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. So namaste and welcome my friends. It said that when Adam and Eve left Eden, he commented to her. He said, my dear, we are living in a time of great transition. And have you noticed that it always feels like that, that in some way that the times we're in are uniquely intense and fast-paced and stressful? Even knowing that, historians will probably look back at 2020 with raised eyebrows.

I just saw a cartoon, a friend sent me of a woman. telling her partner, my desire to be well informed is currently at odds with my desire to stay sane. And I think we understand, given our off-the-charts combo of current stressors, it's easy to feel like we're waiting for the bad stuff to go away. You know, we're kind of waiting to resume real life. But actually, and there's a deep understanding in this, that if we're waiting, if we're waiting for something different, we won't bring a full, honest presence to what's actually arising right here and now in our path. And it's only by doing that that we really wake up. And for many of us, what's arising on our path, what's really asking for attention

is anxiety. So, this evening, I'd like to reflect together on how to you're going to be we can transform our relationship with anxiety, how we can arouse the presence that brings inner freedom and its outer expression, what many people call love in action. So as mentioned in the opening, for the first time in this weekly online class, we'll be including some time for questions at the end. So I want to remind you that if you're on Zoom and you have a question during the talk, Please write it in via the chat box to everyone and submit your question just once. Yeah, so feel free.

Anxiety and fears been spiking over the last six months. It was already epidemic levels anyway around the world, but you know the converging streams, and we do. We know that between the pandemic and unemployment, I'm aware that just this week tens of millions of people are facing eviction due to unemployment. The streams of our children's schooling and this growing awareness that's so profound around the globe of race-based injustice and violence. And then the trauma, just these last two weeks of wildfires about three days ago, one

of my friends' home burned down, hurricanes. I mean, unless we're in denial, it'll keep coming. This is the crisis of our earth. So I've mentioned on Saturdays I do this live satsun this hour where people ask questions and we really, we explore how meditation can help with all the different challenges. And of course, you're all invited. So feel free to sign up on my homepage of my website.

What I wanted to share is how a good number have named the way that their past trauma is now being activated by current stressors and how much is just driving them into a sense of real isolation and depression and fear and anxiety. And of course, another stream for many in the United States is a kind of gripping fear around upcoming elections. For many, the sense that so much is at stake for generations to come. for those who are most vulnerable, for democracy, for our earth. So as we'll explore tonight, if we want to heal and if we want to evolve, and I'm talking about individually and as a species, it all depends on how we respond to the anxiety and fear

that's arising so strongly. Because here's what happens. fear gives rise to violence and to more separation. And this is true in our individual life to the degree we have fears that we really have not attended to with mindfulness, with kindness, it ends up separating us from others. And it's true as a society and it takes the shape of war and all sorts of other forms of violence. So if we want to create a more loving, peaceful world, and I feel that we feel that we feel that

feel like we're here because we want to. We need to let attention to anxiety be at the center of our path. It's not like we're waiting for things to change. It's like this is what's arising that's asking for our attention. And if we don't pay attention, our primitive brains will rule the day. So in Buddhism, this intention to bring presence to different to let the difficulty actually wake up our compassion, wake up love in action, is described as the Bodhisattva aspiration. And I love it because it's such a powerful expression of really I think what we all long for when we're most awake, that whatever comes our way that it helps us to deepen our love.

Bodhisatt for Means Awakening Being, and I thought maybe we'd do a brief inquiry here just to explore the power of this. And you might pause and close your eyes for a moment. And as you're listening and as you've been listening, you might just sense from what we've been already exploring how the stress of these times is landing for you, how whatever you're experiencing your personal, life or experiencing and witnessing in our society, how it might be bringing up distress or anxiety

or fear for you? What's triggering anxiety for you? What's the situations that's most challenging, most evocative? And again, it could be in your personal life or it could be societal. And take a moment to let that be in close, whatever's bringing up distress. And then calling on your inner bodhisattva, the most awake part of you, just feel this aspiration, this wish. May I meet this distress with presence. May it awaken wisdom and compassion. May it give rise to love in action.

And feel free to totally. really alter the words so they fit you, but that sentiment that what's arising may it serve awakening of heart and mind. You might, as you do this, take a moment to imagine what might these times bring forward in you. What might they awaken? More fearlessness, resilience, capacity for presence, for love, more trust in yourself, more ability, to help and serve? What do you imagine and wish that the difficulties might bring forth?

And feel free to take a few full breaths if you'd like to open your eyes or keep them closed if you'd prefer. I wanted us to reflect on this bodhisattva aspiration because I've seen over and over that while great stress quite naturally triggers off our distress and fear, if we consciously are dedicated to bringing presence to it, it can awaken our potential heart, you know, really an awake, a live heart and awareness.

And I often think of Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Ticknhat Han and how he described the refugees on boats seeking safety in the midst of violent storms. and being attacked by pirates and so on. And he would describe how just one person on those abodes could find that inner place of calm and strength. In other words, step out of a reactive trance. They could help all the others on the boat find their way to safety. Love in action.

And then he ends his teaching saying, please be that person. So, my friends, this is. is the hope that instead of us waiting for it to be over, that we consciously dedicate to letting this be our path. This is our spiritual path, learning to calm ourselves in the midst of the storm and in the most deep way bringing our presence to the anxiety and fear. It takes courage, but bringing it to the anxiety and fear with kindness, with compassion. Now, the starting place for this is actually recognizing when we go into a reactive trance. If you have some mindfulness that you have gotten triggered and gone off into a trans reaction,

then that mindfulness helps to loosen the identification with the reaction and helps you open back up into your wholeness more quickly. So just to clarify terms, what I'm calling a reactive trance is really, when we lock into one of the three ways our primitive brain tries to control life, fight, flight, freeze. And it takes over our feelings and thoughts and behaviors. And when it does, in a deep way, we forget who we are. We are identified with a very limited, separate, threatened self. That's when fight, flight, freeze takes over. And it's helpful to remember that every, every one of us is conditioned to initially react to acute stress or threat with fight-flight

freeze. It's our older, faster brain, you know, and here's what's important. The suffering is not because this reaction happens. It's universal wiring. It's that we get lost in it. It proliferates, it locks into place. Now, most of you know about fight-flight freeze. This isn't new, but when we're caught in it, we often don't have the mindfulness to pause and go, okay, that's my primitive survival brain taking over. Let's see how I can find my pathway back to presence. We just don't usually have the presence of mind to do that. So it's really valuable to examine, when we're going into trance and get familiar with it. So we actually have some more choices.

So to that end, we're going to do a very brief review of fight-flight-freeze. And as you know, when it comes in the form of fight or aggression, it's very, very familiar what happens in our body. A teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with five- and six-year-olds, and after explaining, honor thy father, and mother, she asked them, what commandments teach about how you treat your brothers and your sisters? And one little boy, who is the oldest in a family, said, thou shalt not kill. So for us, well, we might not be physically violent. Many of us aren't. Most of us, when we feel threatened,

we go into fight and the version of fight is through our judgments, through our anger, through our hatred. And it's towards those we don't agree with, those who aren't cooperating with us, those who have hurt us, those we perceive hurting others. But that's fight. And it's no surprise that the current pandemic and global stressors are straining relationships. A lot of people are going into fight mode at home sequestered with each other. And there was an article in the New York times last week and the title was, I don't know if my relationship will survive the pandemic. It's part of what's motivated me to do a whole course on loving relationships, which you can find on the homepage on my website. But we go into fight and it's causing a lot of pain in our

relationships. So that's one mode. And it comes a lot in the form of judgment. That's when you find yourself in chronic judgment, watch out. It also comes. out passive-aggressively. Some of us hold it in and it comes out sideways. There's that story about a woman who approaches her psychology professor and says, well, what's a Freudian slip? And he's curious. So he says, well, it makes you ask. She says, well, the other day I was having lunch with my mother and I meant to ask her to pass assault. But instead I said, you damn bitch, you've ruined my life. So you get the idea. It does come outside. And then as we know, this is the last piece I'll mention on fight, the greatest target

of our aggression is ourselves. We are persistently, deeply critical and under that is shame and that's a huge suffering. So when we get locked in reactive trance and fight is dominating, we just find we're chronically angry, chronically critical. the identity, our sense of identity, is as a judging, aggressive, angry person. Okay, go to flight. If we're not lashing out, then when we get threatened and anxious, flight looks defensive. We're withdrawing. We're sleeping a lot. We're using substances to numb. We're trying to avoid pain and immerse in work. We're immersing online to avoid being here.

here. I saw a cartoon with a man lost in a desert and there's a sign. It says, what are this way? And then internet this way and you know which direction he was crawling in, right? So you can't underestimate how much we flee reality through our devices. The primary mode of flight is obsessive thinking. So if you're tracking your own trances, look for judgment when it comes to fighting and obsessive thinking when it comes to fleeing. Those are the most prominent. The third, which is freeze, happens especially when there's been trauma. And with freeze, it's a sense of unreality as if we're watching from a removed place,

life is surreal, there can be a sense of cold or numbness or trapped in the body or the brain not working, can't make decisions, can't act, confused, helpless. So those are some of the signs of freeze. But I want to name the common denominators that go through all of them, because this is what I think you're going to find most useful. One is when you're in a reactive trance, you're dissociated from being in your body in any full awake way. Another is you're at those moments not able to feel your feelings directly, mindfully. At those times, there's no real access to compassion. And at those times, the identity is with a small, limited, threatened self.

And as I mentioned, from the perspective of neuroscience, when you're in that trance, you're operating from just a small part of your being, from the primitive survival brain, the reptilian and limbic brains, and you're cut off from the whole, from an integrated brain that has all parts talking to each other. You're just living in a small part of your being. So I want to pause here and invite you to reflect again. You've been listening, so let's grounded in our own experience. And you might close your eyes and take a few full breaths and let your intention be to, with curiosity and kindness, see if you can witness your own survival brain a little. And again, you might bring up a recent time you felt

distressed. You felt reactive. And take a moment once you've got something in mind to actually connect with the experience, see where you were, remind yourself what was triggering you, get the felt sense in your body of what it was like, and yet still witnessing, so you can become familiar with that collection that we call your limbic reaction, your survival brain's reaction. And you might notice what kind of thoughts were circling around? Were they judging thoughts, blaming thoughts, worry thoughts like danger ahead? Was there kind of an obsessing?

What are the emotions that you're aware of feeling when you're in that reaction? Helpless, angry, fearful, ashamed? the behavior? You know, to describe the kind of primitive brain-inspired behavior, is it fighting? Are you in some way lashing out? Is it flight avoiding in some way? Freeze? Now here's where to get much more familiar are so helpful. What's your sense of yourself when you're in that reactive trance? You had a sense your identity. Do you feel like a vicarious? You feel like a vicarious. victim, a perpetrator in some way, an aggressor? Are you aware of a real separateness, limitation, falling short, failing? Or do you feel superior? Just get sense the template. This is how the self

is experienced in trance. And notice, do you like this self? And we'll loop back to this because many find that when they're in a limbic trance and fight-flight-freeze, part of it is that they don't like their fight-flight-free self, which of course is another layer of fight, and it intensifies the activity of the survival brain. Okay, now you might shift your posture, sit up a little bit more, take a few full breaths, come back, come back, and we're going to explore together now how

So, training our attention can shift our relationship with anxiety, can really bring a liberating relationship with anxiety, can let anxiety become a portal, as the Bodhisattva aspiration describes, a portal for awakening. Now, the first understanding I find really valuable in working with anxiety comes from a term coined by Dan Siegel, Window of Tolerance. When anxiety or fear arises, if you're inside the window, that means you're having that reactivity, but you're not so hyper aroused that it's unbearable, or you're not so hypo aroused and freeze that you're completely disconnected and everything feels unreal. You're inside the window, it's tolerable. So the first step,

in working with anxiety and with fear is to make sure you're inside the window. You might have to get in the window. And many of us, even if we haven't experienced huge trauma in our life, get tripped off in a way that we first need to do some calming before we can go into step two, which is the full presence with. Think of it that way. It's helpful that the first step is often calming summer. to calm our sympathetic nervous system to get inside the window and then we start practicing

being with the anxiety in a liberating way. So let's say you're outside the window. How do you calm yourself down? And I'm only going to do this as a brief review. If you want to do a deeper dive into the different tools for calming the nervous system, you can check my website, check on the home page for fear trauma. And you'll also find in my references I have a number of fantastic books on trauma and on trauma-sensitive mindfulness.

So, but I'll name a few of the common ways of calming ourselves down and one is the most obvious is just more generally avoid the triggers that are going to set you off. I mentioned the beginning, the cartoon of the woman reading the news. For most of us, I think it's intelligent to limit our intake. Be careful. But let's say once we're triggered, how do we get in the window? And one way is the use of the breath. There's a kind of breathing that is long and slow where we perhaps count to four or five on the in-breath, four or five on the out-breath, that over a few minutes can begin to calm us down. And there are a number of varieties on that counting. So that's a whole world unto itself. But

just to know the breathing, when regulated, can bring you inside the window, can help. Then there's grounding, which is feel gravity, feel your belonging to the earth, feel your feet on the ground, feel the weight of your body, look around and see what's around you, touch objects surround you. In other words, get yourself here concretely. Notice the space around you, the space behind you in front of you to either side. And you can even say out loud, some of the things you notice that are around you in the room or outside. And that helps to bring you here now, not what trauma does, which is it actually catapults you into another time and space when danger was truly imminent or felt that way. Another way is to put your hand on your

heart or on your belly, but touch is known to that warmth against that nexus of nerves is known to help calm the sympathetic nervous system. Move. Walk, stretch, free movement, vigorous movement, it can help. The last thing I'll name is resourcing. And resourcing means any recollection of an image or use of words that help to evoke some sense of safety, love, or belonging. This is actually part of the N or the nurturing of rain. you start finding a pathway back into safety, maybe an image of a loved one, imagine hug, imagine a safe space for you, an image of trees or ocean or your bedroom. Maybe there's words, some phrase of comfort like you're not alone, or others feel this too,

or I'm okay. a cartoon of a great white shark with a huge gaping mouth and he's shouting after this person who's frantically swimming away saying, come back, come back. I just need a hug. And I'm sharing that because each summer I swim in great white territory and for some reason that image actually helps me. So it's a resourceful image. But it's probably put aside for most of you we're listening. So, okay, that is phase one. Get inside the window. We're going to spend the rest of our time on part two, which is how to actually bring a courageous presence directly to anxiety. And you might keep in mind that when we feel fear and anxiety, it means we're at an edge.

There's something we're unwilling to feel that's unfamiliar or threatening. or raw. So this is exactly the place where if we deepen attention, there's potential for awakening and healing. So we'll review the key steps that transform anxiety. And as you might be hearing, as we're sitting here right now, it's starting to rain. And this is going to be a bit of a review of rain applied to anxiety. So the timing is perfect. I hope you enjoy the gentle sound of rain on the roof. The beginning is really setting the attitude or aspiration. And I find that whenever I'm going to be working with something difficult, there's some part of me that is calling on that bodhisatt for aspiration, please may this serve awakening. It really helps. The acronym

rain, for those that aren't familiar, recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture. And with the recognize and allow, what we're doing is we're just naming, oh, anxiety, our fear is here. And as they say, the shaman put it this way, that if you can name a fear, it starts to lose its power. So even just with the recognize of rain, just noting or naming, what's there, actually begins to open your quality of presence to a wider field. And so the anxiety is there, but you're not as stuck inside it. So that's the first step, is just to name what you're aware of. And then the allow.

And the allow is a really interesting moment. Because allow doesn't mean you're liking it or that you want it to continue. all it means is you're acknowledging the reality that it's here. You're saying instead of resisting or fighting, I'm going to allow this reality to be what it is. And I'm finding for many people, and you might find this helpful, just simply the words, this belongs. Just like a wave belongs in the ocean, this belongs, opens up more space, gives us more presence and capacity to be with what's there.

And to keep in mind that with fear, fear is emotionally intelligent. It's got a reason for being there. If we didn't have fear we'd be brain dead. We want to offer presence. We just don't want to be dominated by it. So that's recognize and allow. Let it be there. Then with the eye of rain, investigate, this is where we make the all-imbing

and shift from mental, all that mental spinning of reactivity that we usually get in around anxiety to a more embodied presence. The key to investigate is to come into the body and feel the feelings. That is the key. Now there are some questions you can ask as part of investigation that might have some mental components. You might ask, well, what am I believing right now? I mean, I have found for myself that whenever I'm suffering in some way I'm believing

that I'm going to fail and there's some fear of failure, that that's a major belief there. So it's useful to identify that. Now, many people then stay in the mental realm, but what's important is to keep coming back and sensing, well, where does that belief live in my body? feel it in the body. Now, some of you might be thinking, well, yeah, but I can't feel much in my body. And it's really true that for those especially that have been traumatized, there's a lot of dissociation. So it's a gradual process.

And by the way, body scans help to get us more embodied. But to know this, you can trust this, that when you investigate, even asking questions, questions like, where am I feeling this and what am I feeling and what is this fear need? Well, actually start waking up the experience and the intimacy with the fear. It brings more presence. And then there's the end of rain, which is nurture, which is active compassion. When evolutionary psychologist said, it's not the survival of the fittest, it's the survival of the nurtured. So we need to self-nurture. For one woman who is anxious about finances,

talking to her about her children at home and trying to work out, how to keep a certain amount of hours of work, and it was just getting very, very tense, her way of nurturing was to say to the fear, thank you for trying to protect me. I'm okay right now. And it really helped to communicate that to her anxiety. Any gesture of care is part of nurturing. And then after those four steps, we move to after the rain. And I want to encourage you not to skip after the rain. This is where we become aware of the presence that has emerged and an enlarged sense of being. And by paying attention to the shift from where we started, which is often a victimized self or an angry self, to a more spacious presence, by noticing that,

here's some neuroscience, we actually integrate the neural wiring that correlates to that more whole state of being. By noticing it, what we're paying attention to, it actually actually helps it to integrate. So it moves from state to trait. A reminder now, I'm going to share a story of how this works and we're going to practice, but a reminder is if in the process of doing rain at any time you feel overwhelmed, then go, oh, okay, outside the window of tolerance, back to some of the calming techniques and calm yourself, nurture yourself and then you can reenter the rain process. Okay, my friend's a story and then we'll practice together. Trying to keep my eye on the timing because I want us to have time for questions.

This is one friend who was feeling enormous tension circling around the upcoming elections in the United States. He was filled with anxiety approaching November. And so he was practicing rain, we practiced together, and the R is recognizing anxiety, just naming it, and then allowing, letting it be there. And for him, his way of allowing was for him to say, this is part of being human, just to feel stirred up right now. Then he began to investigate. And he asked himself, well, what am I believing? And the belief was that there's just going to be more and more suffering, just huge, huge suffering to add on to what's already here. And he, suffering for his people, this is a person of color, and all people. And then when he said, okay, now I'm

believing that, what is my body feeling? He was feeling alarm in his body, outright alarm. And again, he had to say, this belongs, this belongs. There's intelligence to the nervous system feeling alarmed. Then he kept paying attention. Then he got in touch with power that he was powerless to protect vulnerable people from suffering. And his mind went off to his grandchildren and the next generation and then that deep in the sense in his gut of a kind of clutch and an alarm. And so again with investigate, the process is you feel what's there and you let it be there and sometimes it unlayers itself.

And when he let that alarm and that clutch be there, what unlayered was a sense of grieving, a sense of loss, a sense of deep, deep sorrow about the suffering and about how many are destined to suffer even more. And that put him in touch with his caring. And once he could feel that, once he went through those layers, nurturing came naturally. He described it that he felt this kind of sacred light of his own soul holding that grieving, caring place, kind of surrounding him and filling him. And during after the rain, he really was resting.

He said in divine presence, in his own soul. And he said that the stream of anxiety was still there, but it just was part of a much bigger mix. And he heard his own kind of voice of wisdom saying, to him, you can't control, but you can care and you can act. I was very touched by that. You can't control, but you can care and you can act. And for him, you know, he's very involved in terms of getting out the vote, but also very involved in his community.

He's a helper in his community. I share this with you because so many are filled with apprehension and alarm right now and it's crucial that we let it be a portal to help us connect with that kind of presence and equanimity and heart so that we can then act from love and act from love in our close relationships pausing more to express appreciation to smile to listen to care and act as is a part of a larger society that cares about widening circles of people. Because I found in my own life, and I find this again and again, that when I'm acting from care, it reduces anxiety.

It really does. So let's practice a little right now, and then I want to open it to questions. And take a moment again as we have. This is the last time to close your eyes. and bring the attention inward, and take a few full breaths and collect yourself with your breath. And again, I invite you to bring to mind a situation, your personal life, or in the larger society, that triggers a sense of anxiety or distress. A situation that you know in some way triggers that kind of reactive trance we've been looking at

where you get made smaller because of judgment or obsession, lashing out or turning on yourself, addictive numbing. So bringing to mind a situation that's distressing. And take a moment and let's, again, draw on that bodhisatt for aspiration, feel your sincerity. May this, distress, this anxiety or fear, may it serve to awaken compassion, wisdom, and love in action. Now let yourself bring that situation to mind in a close-in way. So it can just practice a little shifting your relationship with anxiety, bringing it close in, sensing what's most disturbing about it, the R of Rain. It's just to whisper. whatever you're aware of that's most predominant, anxiety, fear, anger, whatever it is.

And the A of Rain, let it be there, allow it. You might say this belongs, this is universal wiring to feel what I'm feeling. It's part of being human, it belongs. Others feel this too. then investigating. And you might ask that question, well, what am I believing? What's the fear belief? It may be personal that I'm failing, I'm unworthy, I'm not lovable, or it might be in a larger realm of society that the belief is there's going to be a huge amount more suffering. Something's going to go really, really wrong. Whatever you're believing, feel where it

lives in your body. This is where the courage comes, to feel your throat, your chest, your belly, and just breathe and feel a willingness to touch these sensations, the felt sense of anxiety or fear where it lives in you. You might place your hand on your heart, keep accompanying, whatever's here. You might even explain. or letting your posture express the emotion and your face and that'll help you get in touch with it. See if you can feel right into the epicenter of that vulnerability, offering it a very gentle presence. And you might sense what is needed to heal.

What is this place most need? Does it need feeling safe, feeling held, feeling loved, accompanied, allowed, accepted as you ask that question, see if you can listen from your highest self, from your bodhisattva self, from your awakened heart, and begin to offer whatever is needed to the vulnerability and anxiety. It may be like the man I described that you sense a light and a warmth just pouring in and surrounding it, a loving energy. breathing it. The key is to let in nurturing, let that anxious, fearful place feel held in

something larger, like a wave held by the ocean. You might send a message to that place. Whatever will be most healing, you're not alone. I'm here with you. I'm not leaving. You're held in love. And if it helps, you might bring to mind a nurturing person, a wise, kind person, our deity, our part of nature, our pet, and just imagine that energy flowing through too, because the truth is the anxiety, the vulnerable place is a wave in a larger ocean. There is a larger and loving presence that's here. Letting yourself rest in that presence now, become aware of the quality of presence that's here, the quality of heart, the quality of awareness, and sensing whatever shift has

happened, small or large, from more of that survival, brain, fear, anxiety, to this increased presence, to the truth of who you are. And perhaps as you're ready, you can sense from this space of presence what the different possibilities are for you in terms of love in action that resonate, maybe in an immediate way with someone who you'll next see

the kindness that could be expressed. And in larger ways in our society, and you might imagine others here, around the world, also bravely facing and processing and awakening through anxiety and fear, opening to a field of caring, to a shared field, and sense the power of that. Okay, my friends, please feel free to open your eyes, to stretch, to move around. And we are going to now move into our time of questions and Leo will be giving you a few questions. reminders of our protocol to begin. Hi everyone. Thank you for joining us tonight. If you'd like to

submit a question at this time, please do so via the chat box selecting everyone, so we all see your question. Please submit your question only once. If your question is selected, we will read your question aloud and we will ask you to unmute your mic because as you can tell right now, you are muted. If your camera is off, please turn it on and say hello after we read your question because this way you will come up on screen and Tara can see you and you can have a conversation. We will start with a question from Laura and here it is. I'm feeling so much dread about the election the way violence in the streets is being framed and used to bolster fear mongering law and order campaign. I write voter registration letters in the evenings but it seems

insignificant like nothing I do will make an impact. I feel as if I'm watching a train wreck and that there's nothing I can do to stop it. I'm terrified about where we're headed, where we already are. I fluctuate between obsessing on the news, avoiding it, or trying to titrate my dose. I'm doing daily self-care, but it doesn't touch my pessimism and despair. I feel called to step up and do something, but what?

So, Laura, if you'd like to say hi, you should be unmuted now, and you will show up on the screen. Laura, are you with us? Can you see me now? Yeah, there you are. Welcome and thank you for question. Oh, you're welcome.

So you just did a meditation. Yes. How did the meditation go for you? Well, it still was hard to step past just that ball of anxiety that's still sitting there and hard to just really open up to it as well. What I'm hearing from you is that where that anxiety takes you. In other words, when it's driving you, where it takes you, is into a sense of despair and hopelessness and also into activity,

but it's still sitting there really, really intense in you, and you haven't really paid attention directly to the feelings, like stayed with the feelings. It's terrifying to really get close to them. So the question's really what would help you to be able to do that? Because I'll just speak a little bit more. I feel like you're actually, really very mindful and honest and awake to what's going on. It's quite, it's inspiring. I feel the depth of

your caring. I really do. And I feel like you spoke for a lot of people. And I think that there's, it's more than anxiety. What I heard, I heard the word despair and I think that's a really important word. It's more despair than anxiety actually. So this is good. We're moving this forward now. That is really a powerful thing just to even name that and say, okay, so there's despair here. And I think sometimes we have to let ourselves go ahead and feel despairing, to open to the despair and the grief and other things wrapped in that despair. Because until we do, we're in some way holding, pushing something away and we're not going to have full access to who we are.

Joanna Macy is very good if you want to read a little. You already have read Joanna. I'm familiar with her, yeah. She has a beautiful book on despair and empowerment. And I just read a very powerful article on despair by Eric Utney in the New York Times about three days ago. And it's the same theme, which would I really like to invite you to do is gently, because it's scary, it's terrifying, to just keep naming, put your hand on your heart and keep saying,

okay, despair's here. And what if you let the despair belong, let it be part of the mix, like not to make it wrong? Yeah, immediately there's just like so much grief is right underneath it. Yes. Yes. And what happens if you, and this isn't, you may not right here be able to, but if you said, okay, then it's about making room for the grieving. It's interesting that the anxiety just goes away and the grief feels real. It's real. So you're being absolutely honest and keep with that pathway

because embedded in grief is our caring. I mean, you wouldn't grieve unless there's something you love. And I know for myself, and especially in these, last months, I've had to go this pathway, Laura, so many rounds of feeling all my anxiety or else my anger and then finding underneath that that grief, you know, where I'm weeping and then sensing the purity of the loving underneath that. And there's a refuge in that. And you'll end up profoundly tender. And then we take the next steps, not because we're hopeful and think, oh, this is going to make it work. We take them because.

because there's a goodness to just taking a step because we care. We don't know. We don't know what's going to happen. But out of our love, we just take a step together, and there's a power to that. Thank you. Blessings, dear. Be well.

Yeah. Our next question is from Tiana. How to be mindful and allow what is, without seeming like you aren't aware of what is happening around the world and don't care. some people don't get it. Thank you. Can hear you, yep.

And you just popped up, Deanna. Yay. Yay. Thank you. Yeah. So tell me, dear, say a little bit more about what you're wondering. To be, to allow what is happening in the world. Yeah.

You have to allow it and not force against it because it's happening. It is what is. And how to move about in the world. with people who maybe don't understand that we kind of need to allow it and not push against it necessarily. That's what causes suffering, I think, is to fight against what is. And so I guess I have a hard time with talking to people about my allowance of it or just being mindful and aware of what's happening and letting them know that I still understand and I still want change and things to change,

but that me wishing for things to be different than they are is what causes anxiety and suffering. So really, I guess, just how to move about in the world with mindfulness and awareness and allowance. So do you have like certain key people that are, that you find that there's tension or misunderstanding with because in some way your approach is to allow an exercise, and not be fighting, resisting in the same angry way?

Right, exactly. Yes, you have certain, and they think something's wrong with you for being that way. Right. Like, I have to just change the subject because I look like I'm crazy, because I'm not angry or fired up about it, I guess. Yeah. In the same way. Do you sometimes get angry and fired up?

I think, yeah. For sure, but I don't, I guess, live there. Yeah. You know, I'm able to move past it to some degree. Yeah. And do you feel like once you have accepted and allowed, do you feel engaged? Like you do actively move to try to change what you can? Yes.

But in the big, I mean, I don't know what I can change right now. I feel like that's also a challenging part. is I don't, what, what can I change? Like, there's a lot going on. I can do my part. I feel like it's so little, but yes. Yeah. So I really hear you, and I think that part of what happens and it's sad is that people feel

like if we're not reacting like they are, that in some way, either something's wrong with them or something's wrong with you. And so it creates, you know what I mean? It's like, it's not okay to be. different. One of the ways that helps me to explain it, I just toss it out because I remember when I first wrote radical acceptance, we were about to attack Iraq. This is back in the beginning, 2002 or something like that. And people used to say to me, Tara, if we accept how things are, are we accepting that, you know, we're going to bomb Iraq? Are we accepting, you know, that we're totally ruining our

earth with climate. And what I had to say was, and I'd sometimes share a story, which I'll share with you, which is I had this thing where I would get really, really enraged when I'd read the newspaper. I would, just the way your friends would, I mean, I would get so angry and bent out of shape every time I'd read the newspaper, especially certain, you know, white male hawks that were going to bring us to war. I was just outraged. And so what I would do was this newspaper meditation where I would put it down and I would feel all that anger and then I'd feel underneath the anger to my fear about what was going to happen and underneath that to my grief and caring. And then it was like I could accept, okay, so this is what's happening right now, but I actually could then respond from caring. And, you know, I remember going to a protest rally and I got arrested along with a bunch of other,

they were joking about the white-collar priests being, you know, our whole patty wagon full of white-collar priests. But the point is that when I wrote radical acceptance, I said, you know, the precursor to wise action is acceptance. The precursor to wise action, the precursor to doing those little things, just the way you said, you can't do a huge amount, what can we all do? But even doing the small step that we need to do, the precursor is to come home in a way that we're accepting the reality of the moment so we can respond from our intelligence. And I feel like that's what you're doing. It's not that you don't care. It's not that you're not out for change. It's just that you know that you're not going to be bringing your best foot forward if you're in a real trance of reactivity. Does that resonate?

Thank you so much for bringing this in. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah. Be well, dear. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.

Okay. We'll take a question from Alex. Question is, I struggle with feeling not enough with work, my body, and my relationships. I rush through my days. Sometimes I go days or weeks without slowing down. What are some practices that I can use to slow down each day? Hi, Tara. Hey, Alex.

Hi. I'm sure you're going to show up in a moment. Good, good, good. There you are. Hey, hi. So let me say back what I just heard that the deep struggle is not enough. In some way, something's wrong. And the way you, your trance of reactivity to get away with it is to keep really busy and not to create any space so that you can feel that anxiety and badness. Yeah, that's it. Okay. Tell me, how have you explored working with this so far? Yeah, spending time with my yoga mat. Yoga was a way of connecting for a long time. No classes right now, but I just finished reading Radical Compassion. So practicing rain with my partner. Honestly, listening to one of your talks like church every Sunday, you know, is a way of connecting for me. So yeah, I'm struggling to wake up in the morning and remember to check in before.

looking at my New York Times newsletter and then crashing through the day. I'm looking for, I don't know, some way out of that. What about, this is very practical, okay, what I've done since the pandemic started, like I started in February, actually, before it started, is a book ending the day where I basically said, okay, at the very beginning and at the very end of the day, it's kind of a gift to the soul. I'm going to pause. And sometimes it's a full-blown 45-minute meditation. Sometimes it's a two-minute meditation, and it doesn't matter.

So what I'm going to invite you to do, and I'd actually appreciate if you'd write to me and let me know how it goes, is to commit yourself every day no matter what when you enter the day. And literally, the end of the day can be as quick as, you know, may all beings be well. I don't care how long it is, you know, at your back door. Yeah. If you book end the day, it's almost like there's this container of remembering. There's some gravitational field that is going to want to bring you back to who you really are.

And it's a habit of a lifetime. I mean, it's just so beautiful. You know, I really encourage everybody. I've done this for now many years that I will not go online until I've in some way, to be with the life that's here. Okay. I will. And I'd love to write to you.

Right. And let us know. I'll remember. Yeah. I journal. So I think I'm going to just try to make sure to be with my journal or at least take time to be with myself before. Just even a few moments of coming into stillness and being quiet and it counts.

All right, dear. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. The next question is from Jennifer. I have read your book True Refuge and found it so helpful. My concern is that my spacesuit ego is so protective that I cannot connect to the pain inside. I literally don't feel anything.

How do I connect inside to where this pain is? Thank you. Hello? Hey, hi. Hi. Hi. Good. There you are.

Yeah. So, welcome here. Thank you. so what I heard you say was that you understand and it's a useful understanding about the space suit self that you know all the defenses and stuff like that that we get caught in but you can't seem to find what the awareness and I've done some work with therapy and I could you know when we're going into talking about emotions and things I can kind of almost feel when the protective self or the ego kind of comes in and comes out like I can see that I can feel that but inside I just

I can't feel, you know, where the anxiety or where the, you know, the gripping of the heart or a lot of the things that are in your book or the online classes talk about, like, where do you feel this inside? And I haven't felt anything inside through any of this time. And I've been kind of doing this for six months-ish. Six months? Yeah, but that. So when I think about, you know, situations, I can feel the emotion, which is something that I wasn't always able to before. Like, I cry and, you know, I can kind of release that. But inside, I can't feel it. So when you feeling the emotion and you're crying, you're not aware of feeling it in your body, but you are aware that there's an emotion and you're crying. I'm aware of there's emotion

and crying. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want you to know you're really not alone. There are so many people that, and I actually brought it up in the talk, that are pretty disconnected from their bodies. And so when I say, you know, where do you feel fear? Do you feel in your throat, your chest, your belly? And it's like you're going like that. Nowhere. Yeah. Yeah. So, first of all, I just want you to trust that you can wake up feelings in your body. It's a real doable process. And it just takes patience. And I can feel in you that you have a real, something in you is dedicated to healing. I'm 100% dedicated to healing.

Yes, that comes through. 100%. Yeah. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Well, that'll carry you. And it just, six months is not long, I promise you. And there are ways that you can start waking up feelings in your body and developing a very tender presence with them that's very, very healing. and you can start doing it in very simple ways that when you're feeling emotions, act as if you're feeling them in your body. In other words, you know, put your hand on your heart and kind of direct your attention

so you can actually feel your hands pressure on your heart. And actually, so you're just like sending a message inwardly. I'm paying attention to you. So you're acting as if you're feeling it in your body. Okay. make the expression on your face when you're when there's an emotion exaggerated a little and even the body like if you're feeling anger you know like this or if you're feeling sadness you know kind of like the the so that you're actually embodying it with your posture and your face these are tricks and then um with the body scan that we lead you know the meditations that go through the body Are you familiar with what I'm talking about? I've tried, yeah, and I just still feel nothing.

Like, I've tried, like, the tensing and the relaxing and, like, all different sorts of things. But if you put your hand, if you put your hands together like this, you can feel your hands touching each other, right? Yes, right. And if you squeeze your hands, you can feel your hands squeezed, right? Right, yeah. Like, okay. And then if you unsqueathes them, can you feel sensations in your hands? So that was the first time I could feel, like in the beginning where you could feel,

and you talked about feeling sensation in your hands. First time I felt that. I'm like, awesome, awesome. You're on track. You're on track. So play with the hands. Just keep on feeling sensations in the hands and then see if you can spread it a little through. And you'll find your feet are a little easier too.

So start with your hands, your feet, your face. And it'll gradually move inward and inward to the rest of your body. And then you've got the challenge of it's difficult because there's vulnerability there. There's trauma probably. And so that's why you go very carefully and slowly and be willing to drop it completely if you feel triggered in some way and have some words to calm yourself in a way to come back into some ease if you feel like you get overwhelmed. Okay.

Thank you. I thank you for tonight's talk. It was very useful and helpful. I appreciate it. Thank you for being part of this. I'm really glad you're here. Thank you. Hi.

Yeah. Yeah. So, Leo, we'll take one more question, and then we're going to close with the Meta meditation. Very short one. Okay. So our last question is from Daksha. Meditation has been like a great PRN as needed prescription,

which helps with relieving distress. My struggle has been in establishing a discipline, consistent practice of meditation, while maintaining the self-kindness about it. I know many of the teachings in theory and realize that one can reap the benefits only with consistent structured practice. How do I get past this obstacle

and struggle of establishing a consistent meditation practice? Hello. Hi. Hey there. Ah, there you are. Hi. Lovely to have you with us, dear blessings. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Yeah. So I actually live in Maryland. I have come to some of your live sessions and I've been doing meditation, mindfulness. I would say often on all my life, but much more in the last few years. I'm a licensed therapist,

so I work with people and bring mindfulness and meditation and all my work with them. But the biggest struggle for me has been to have a consistent practice and then I get into that cycle of beating myself. up about it. I should be practicing what I preach. And then it's just in that bad space. So balancing that self-kindness and the practice is a hard thing. It's like either just do it or stop criticizing yourself about it. What's your deepest motivation for practice? What really, and take your time here and responding. And this is really for all of us because, you know,

the elephant in the room is that all spiritual teachers say you have to whatever you practice grow stronger and yet our practice needs to come from our deepest intention so what's your heart's aspiration dachha for practicing um it is um the benefits i experience when i do meditation like rain and like i said i use meditation like a pr i medication for prescule description for me. And my deepest desire is if I do it consistently, then that reactivity won't be there almost ever, or that sense of calm, the kindness, the self-compassion would be become much more natural for me instead of it being a struggle. So I guess it is to develop that natural sense of peace and calm and centeredness. Beautiful. Beautiful. So here's what you can do is that

instead of beating yourself up and having the whole thing, how about if each morning you just made your prayer that please today may there be more calm and more peace and less reactivity? And kind of as I was sharing a little earlier, just even if it's for three minutes, get into the practice of no matter what I'm going to start the day with the sadna, with the practice of saying that prayer, what you really long for, and then just pausing and being quiet for just a little bit. And, you know, I mentioned bookending the day. For me, I started with the prayer, you know, waking up loving awareness, living from loving awareness.

You know, that's the prayer. And then at the end of the day, Doctor, I'll say the same prayer, you know, and I'll look at the day and say, well, was I really present? Was my heart really open? And sometimes it was, and sometimes it wasn't. And I don't judge it as much as just by ending the day and looking, it makes me more inclined the next day to have deeper attention. So I'd invite you just to give yourself a back door because I think when we say I should be practicing and sitting for a long time, then it feels overwhelming and then we just don't do it. But since you're bringing this up and it was already brought up tonight, it seems like maybe

for all of us, because this is a good number of people together. If we all just deepen that commitment out of love for waking up to putting aside a little time each day because we need to really come back home, especially in these times to our heart and to our awareness. So you're kind of inspiring us in that direction. So can I just quick follow-up question? How do I handle the not enough side of things? It is like I think Alex was talking earlier,

what I call in, I think one of your talks talks about being on the hamster wheel of not enough. Yeah. Yeah. So I have a phrase that helps me, which is real but not true, that this thought is this belief or this thought, it's happening. It's very programmed in. And in fact, you're not thinking your thoughts. You're thinking society's thoughts. It's a societal message of not enough. It just comes through all of us. It's cultural. It's in my culture. It's in your culture. I know. You know, you're supposed to be

more, do more. So you're just hearing your society's thoughts and just say real but not true and just feel a prayer to not believe it. Feel a prayer to not believe it. Thank you so much. Thank you. And thank you, dear. Many blessings. Yeah. Okay, a very brief closing for all of us, if you will, just to take a moment to sit up again because it's late for many. Close your eyes. And as you bring your attention inward, notice what's true for you right now, what's going on inside you right in this moment. Notice if you're starting utterly fresh and offer an intimate attention and sense as you are paying attention what is the prayer or blessing or wish you'd like to offer to your own

heart right now and feel the kindness and care that is embedded in that wish for yourself, for the life that's right here. Then sense that that heart space that's that's including all of us that have gathered, and that care that's including all those who are most vulnerable during these times around the globe, humans and non-humans, the earth our mother we hold in our hearts and all beings everywhere, to feel our care, feel our wish, feel our prayer. I'd like to close with a prayer from John Daniels. He says, we are alive with one another.

We live here in the light of this unlikely world that isn't ours for long. May we spend generously the time we're given. May we enact our responsibilities as thoroughly as we enjoy our pleasures. May we see with clarity, may we seek a vision that serves all beings, may we honor the mystery surpassing our sight and this one earth, this homeland of all we love. My friends, thank you so much for being part of this, our closing ritual if you will to be on gallery views to see each other. I always say that, you know, nobody knows that you're looking at them, but it's a chance to look at others and actually feel your heart and feel your heart.

sending care. It's so beautiful to gather in this way. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.