Attend and Befriend: Healing the Fear Body - Tara Brach

a story to begin and this is one that circulates the web and we don't know whether it has any veracity I haven't even checked it out but it's a good story anyway some of you will remember this a man is sitting on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet and he's blind and he says I'm blind please help me with this you know kind of a bowl and so on and a creative publicist is passing by and he notices there's only a few coins in the bowl and so he without asking permission he just takes a sign he rewrites it puts it down and leaves end of the day he comes back from work sees the blind man sitting there and the bowl is overflowing with coins and with with cash and so on another blind man heard his footsteps and recomment and recognized him so he said you know are you the one you're the one that did something to my sign and the publicist responded I changed it a little but I didn't write anything that wasn't true here's what he said the sign read today is spring and I cannot see it now as you can tell from the story this has nothing to do with physical blindness this has to do and when we feel a pang in our hearts that can resonate this has to do with moving through life but not really being available not being able to really see or feel or be touched by what's happening this is a when our senses are closed off and and in some way we are caught up in reactivity and if we look at that it's a deep inquiry of you know really what's between me and being open to the life that's here and what we find is either our mood is depressed or we're caught up in some sort of a judgment or reactivity towards others or towards ourselves or we're just Restless or distracted but if we look more carefully underneath any of those moods or states what we find is fear that's the the core emotion and it's ironic because our fear is about losing life and by being caught up in fear we lose life that's the sadness there's all different kinds there's you know traumatic fear there's deep gripping fear there's anxiety that targets different things in different moments or that's refloating but around the corner there's this the sense that something's going to fail it's like a sense like in any moment something big is going to go wrong and the very word worried the origins of the word worry mean to strangle so when we're when we're feeling fear in some way our life force is getting strangled there's a contraction that takes us away from wholeness and presence so one of the terms I find really useful when we consider what happens to us when we're afraid the way our our mind contracts in too busy thoughts and body gets tension our heart gets tight I like the language of body of fear or sometimes called the fioor body because the body includes all the different parts of us and when we're in that trance and that fear trance our body of fear is contracted and it's really our world is seen through that lens the world is smaller so what I'd like to do tonight is explore how we typically react when we get triggered you know how we kind of intensify the body of fear the fear body with our reactivity and how if we can learn to pause if we can slow down even a little we can shift from fight flight to attend and befriend and I really see this shift of fight flight this kind of automatic reactivity to attend and befriend as a sign of the evolution of consciousness that we even have this capacity to recognize oh I'm in flight flight oh I'm identify with the fear body okay pause deepen attention attend and befriend so we'll look at that and I want to say right off that the friend does not mean that we always are immediately embracing with great love the fear that's there because the very biochemistry of fear in the biochemistry of love aren't the same but there's a movement towards that loving presence when we attend and then regard with gentleness what's here we kind of inch towards it so first the function of fear as we know is survival that every one of these body Minds here we all have this nervous system that is rigged to anticipate what can harm us and if you're wasn't there you'd be brain dead you know it's it's meant to be there so it's a basic survival function we're meant to scan for threats and respond to them now most of our fears because of the twists and turns of evolution are not directly linked to physical survival anymore most of them are around the stories and emotions that have to do with our well-being in in social context a lot of our fears around personal failure you know what's going to go wrong how I'm not going to be prepared how I'm going to fall short how I'm going to be rejected how I'm going to drop the ball on something and all hell is going to break loose you know it's just something's going to go wrong and it usually has to do with me that's a lot of our fears around the corner I'm at a fall short I'm already fully insured but it'll have big consequences you know that thing but even underneath that when we examine fear the deep core level is the sense of the fragility of life that every one of us into its this uncertainty and it's true it is uncertain and it's fragile so fear is an anticipation of what's going to go wrong because of that fragility and if we can begin to distinguish between our habitual fear reaction the one that's kind of programmed into us that gets over done and when there's actually a threat that we need to respond to we end up living most of our moments in the awareness of the fear body but not stuck inside it but there's a discrimination that goes on is this really something to respond to that's a danger or is this just my habit most of its habit really you know how Mark Twain hoodie said the worst things in my life never actually happened you know that so it's anticipation of what's going to go wrong and and I watch myself so often with it because I part of my sadhna which is a spiritual practice as I I go into the woods most days and go walking and I can and I can start sensing what's what my mind is like you know if I can if I'm walking but I'm not really on the river and by the trees I'm thinking of the emails I didn't respond to or I have to fill this prescription for medication before I go travel and did I make the right plane reservations and you know did I have time am I gonna have time to finish the fear talk and all that kind of thing anyway and then so then the practice is okay wait a minute this is it's not helping me to prevent something from going wrong by ruminating because usually it's not so come back okay what am i seeing what are the forms the colors the blossoms the smells you know what's the feeling of the earth as I'm walking come back come back so that's one discrimination and I was thinking as I was writing this of a time last year that I was walking and the wind started blowing more and more intensely and twigs were crackling and so on and then all of a sudden there was a huge crash and I saw a tree come down you know but wait when the crash happened I instinctively covered my head and I want to just and then I hightailed it out of there I got home I was not going okay the breeze on the cheek feeling a few you know it's like that was no longer the point you know it was like get out of there so we don't suffer because we anticipate threats and respond appropriately we suffer because our sympathetic nervous system is locked into a fight flight reaction and we're just continuously interpreting the world through that lens we're living in a fearful anxious mentality so this is the fear body and it's and it becomes our identity and you can sense for yourself how much of the time is there some sense of who I am as being hit with the fear of what's going to go wrong the insecurities socially the reactivity to situations how much of our self senses hitched to that so then the inquiry becomes well what what makes it so strong from so many of us it gets definitely amplified by the culture we're in I mean you can't listen to the news and read the newspapers without being triggered and it's just the way it's the slant of our culture we've got a very fear based culture and then you can sense also it has to do with genetics and and our upbringing is the one of the biggest factors to the degree we had an insecure upbringing not good attachments with that the healthy attachments with our parents there's a sense of something's wrong with me and things are going to keep going wrong it gets locked into our nervous system so part of the inquiry is to recognize how we habitually react to fear you know what is your fear management strategy it's really useful to know it because if you know it then you can begin to pause and move from your version of fight/flight to attend and befriend but the first step is recognizing and if I have any goal in this talk one of the big ones is that after it you'll be at least a degree more interested when fear comes up because if you're interested if you don't automatically tumble into the reaction in that interest there's a bit of a pause and more freedom to deepen attention versus continue the flight flight there's more choice interest helps okay so what are our strategies and you know the major ones one of them that isn't talked about as much as freeze the freeze strategy it's when we're overwhelmed and powerless and there's no way to effectively respond animals of all sorts and us humans we freeze on some level but the ones that were most used to are the flight and the fight so flight what do we know about flight like how do we flee or pull back from the feelings of fear and from the triggers of fear how do we do that in our lives okay so I'll read you this is Freud yeah here we go Freud writes life as we find it it's too hard for us in order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures there are perhaps three such measures powerful deflections which cause us to make light of our misery in a way we ignore it substitute satisfactions which diminish it and intoxicating substances which make it which make us insensible to it that's pretty well I'll say it again three such measures powerful deflections which cause us to make light of our misery substitute satisfactions which diminish it and intoxicating substances which make us insensible to it so what's your management strategy is it the kind of deflect and ignore so that there's fear going on but I'm not going to deal with that you know it's kind of muscling it through stiff upper-lip kind of thing you know for most of us in some way what we're doing is a control strategy and we are trying to control things so we reduce the unpleasantness we're in some way trying to get away from what feels wrong one of my favorite stories Edith Wharton she says one day when the Sultan was in his palace at Damascus a beautiful youth was who was his favorite rushed into his presence crying out in great agitation that he must fly at once to Baghdad and imploring leave to borrow his Majesty's swiftest horse the Sultan asked why he was in such a haste to go to Baghdad because the youth answered as I passed through the garden of the palace just now death was standing there and when he saw me he stretched out his arms as if to threaten me and I must lose no time in escaping from him the young man was given leave to take the Sultan's horse and fly and when he was gone the Sultan went down indignantly into the garden and found death still there how dare you make threatening gestures at my favorite he cried but death astonished answered I assure your majesty I did not threaten him I only threw up my arms and surprised at seeing him here because I have a tryst with him tonight in Baghdad so we try to outwit in some way death we try to control our experience and we do it in a few major ways in terms of when I mentioned in terms of flight William James describes life as this ceaseless frenzy where we always think we should be doing something else ok did you know that feeling that the sense of whatever it is you need to get this down because you really need to be doing something else under that as fear I'm not going to be prepared I'm not going to get life taken care of I'm not going to tie up the loose ends so one of our flight responses is to get busy and see how many things we can do and there's a sense of when we're stressed not doing is can be almost intolerable because we're rigged to feel like just do something do anything you know but trying to do something about it gives us some sense of power is that resonate some of you might remember it's kind of a silly little story of two hunters on it on a hunting expedition and one of them gets a heart attack and falls down and he stops breathing he's gone panic partner calls 911 it's really a bad story I know but you get the feeling of it that we'll do anything just just do something about it when we're panicked so then Freud pointed to substitute gratification when we're freaked out we try to in some way in some way soothe ourselves some way make ourselves feel some other kind of pleasantness our happiness it's like that story of the man and his wife in the living room and he's saying to her you know if I ever become you know going to a vegetated stay please just you know pull the plug so she goes to the TV set cause the club you know so we kind of dull ourselves numb ourselves you know we zone out because that zone you know the stuff we're getting on TV is not the same fear thoughts that keep our body triggered so it gives us a temporary vacation okay flight we're still talking flight here and then one of the big ways that we self-soothe and most people have some tendency towards that it's through substances whether it's sugar chocolate you know food kind of substances or whether it's marijuana or alcohol some substance that in some way takes us away from the immediate rawness of feeling fear I remember going to a conference on post-traumatic stress and they had they had posters and one of the posters was on Prozac which can be one of the substances that can help to give some distance from fear and let me say before I tell you the rest of this that I have you know I feel like for many people medication is completely an appropriate choice and part of freeing them up to move forward on the path but anyway so the story so there's this poster on Prozac and it says if there was prozac back then and it has a picture of you know Karl Marx you know he's saying well maybe if we tweak capital maybe it'll work and we just tweak it a little bit you know then they have Edgar Allen Poe and he's looking out the window and he's saying hello birdy what I like about these examples is you get it that the flight the stepping back it might cut off the fear but it cuts us off from the reality of what's here too so we avoid taking risks that's part of you know the flight strategy okay fight I mean some of us most of us have both Vincent we major in one or the other but we have both and we know that one of the flight one of the fight strategies when we're afraid is we attack and we attack ourselves a lot when we're afraid we attack ourselves and our intention is good we're attacking ourselves as we're trying to make ourselves into that better person that will no longer be risking failure you know that's our strategy for being better and of course it doesn't work and we attack others who feel threatening we attack them with our thoughts with our judgments with our actions there was a study which I don't think would meet any of our criteria for being of sensitivity and kindness to animals that shows how rats when they're under a fear of shock bite other rats very very quickly and and so it is with us it's behind all war that there's this fear that brings up aggression and gets fed if anybody wants to make money out of a war they just feed the fear right it's the way it goes so hatred aggression underneath it is fear so many of us are living with the the immediate sorrow of the loss of life of Trayvon Martin and knowing how at just one example of so many of how fear ends up destroying young lives destroying lives everywhere with the aggression that comes out of it we don't Massacre other people if we're feeling inner peace you know we hear about the massacres at ward it comes from a very scared psyche and our society ends up you know nourishing that that fear so the suffering of fear just some just it's a sum it up is that when we're living in the fear body when we're living in the thoughts that are anticipating in the body that's tense in the heart that squeeze when we're in that for your body we lose our sense of belonging we lose our sense of belonging to the moment we just can't open to what's right here we lose our capacity to really be intimate and belong with each other when we're afraid there is not that tender open receptivity we lose our belonging to the earth of course we're going to politically make decisions that are not sensitive to the needs of Mother Earth if it's a fear-based culture earth is separate it's not part of us we are not made of it we forget we lose our sense of belonging to awareness we become small and separate so that's the suffering of it now the hope the hope is that fear can either trigger reactivity fight/flight our it can be a call to deepen attention if you leave with even a little more interest in oh okay so here's the fear management strategy can I pause even for five seconds even five seconds it's radical in five seconds there's a little more capacity to begin to deepen attention so that's what I want to explore with you now how do we deepen our attention in a way that really wakes us up from the body of fear that really lets us know who we are beyond that small separate sense of self and we move on this path not only for a sense of our own inner freedom but because this is what's necessary for the healing of our world for there to be peace on earth for there to be that care for our environment for there to be social justice would be anything that we want and long for we need to be able to attend and befriend the fear and you can't do it with others others you can't attend and befriend others if you haven't with the life that's here okay so let's let's look a little bit of how we decondition the reactivity and if you think about it just imagine a sea anenome that little creature that you know if you poked it it goes you know it contracts it contracts away from its environment into itself that's essentially what's happening when we get triggered in some level we contract and then when we might have our spines come out and we might do more to create the separation but we pull away from belonging we contract the mind does it it contracts into busy worried thoughts the body does it so that we are our blood flow changes the hormones change or our arms and legs so that we can run and fight are filled with a lot of blood can't digest for anything in our stomach though no blood flow there the sympathetic nervous system turns on we're in fight flight what happens to the heart very tight very tight so the I think of the practices that move us towards a mindful awareness towards a 10 and B friend that there's some preliminaries they can be really helpful and I want to name them because when you're practicing this when you do this pausing and this interested attention you might sense wow this fear is really strong I need a tool right away just to kind of calm down the sympathetic nervous system so the first things I like to when I'm working with people individually is sometimes just to very intentionally pay attention to the breath when you slow down the breath and lengthen the breath it changes your biochemistry it calls on the parasympathetic nervous system which is like a brakes it says so down it's okay you don't have to fight flight you might just just for a moment we'll try it practice together okay yes if you will just come sitting in a way that allows you to bring your attention inside and each of these things we'll do right now just are I've been shown in a biochemical way to assist us so you might first in this pause just scan and sense where you are right now there's the mind feel busy is there openness and space in the mind what's it feel like in your body right now what happens when you let they learn to settle down come into the body what happens when you bring your attention to your heart I'd like to invite you to very consciously let the breath lengthen so there's a conscious longer more full in breath and match it with the out-breath about the same length of the out-breath but sense of letting go with the out-breath a deliberately longer in-breath and then softening and releasing with the out-breath matching the duration full in-breath filling the lungs a bit and with the same length letting go letting go as you continue see if you can let the breath be without too much of a gap between the in-breath and the out-breath so there's kind of a smooth continuity full in-breath and then a real conscious softening and letting go with the out-breath now continuing to feel the breath you might gently place one hand on your heart and one hand on the belly and as an experiment feel how that is for you just feel what's that like right now to feel the warmth of the hand the pressure on the heart the belly you can let the breath be natural just feel what that's like and then as an experiment switch and put the other hand on the heart switch hands the other hands in the belly and since what that's like what's the experience of the warmth the pressure the hands and then continue by putting whatever hand feels best on the hand on the heart or the belly so if you liked having your right hand on your heart go back to that if you just switched away from it so whatever way feels best one hand on the heart one on the belly might open the mouth slightly relax your tongue just since the possibilty next time you feel some real stress or fear of taking a few moments to explore the breathing and our this hand on the heart hand on the belly just to notice whatever changes whatever occurs relax open your eyes when you'd like for quite a while I've taught people to put their hands on their heart and often on the belly because these are kind of neural centers that have a lot of activity and there's been much evidence that when there's touch and warmth in these two centers that it actually is very calming it's it calms the Paras the sympathetic I'm curious for you how many of you noticed a real difference between which hand was on which how many of you notice that okay I have always automatically put my right hand on my heart and my left hand on my belly but I was with Dan Siegel who's a neuroscientists psychiatrist colleague friend we just had lunch a couple days ago and he was telling me how he's done research that shows that there's actually a very different effect depending on which hand you have where depending on your preference so if you found one was preferential and then you were put under some brain scanning equipment there would be a distinct difference and how effective this technique was in calming you he doesn't know why but I thought that was fascinating and I wanted to share and thank you Dan that was a I like that so that's something to explore for yourself these are trainings or strategies that help preliminaries that help pave the way for a pure and mindful attention if you've been traumatized you don't go directly into mindful presence where you're just being with what's there you do whatever skillful strategies help to settle down some including working with another person what I'll be talking about now which is a tend and befriend is something you would do only gradually and with support if there's very strong trauma because sometimes as you pay attention to trauma in the body it gets retraumatization imagine as you breathe in that's a ten that you're bringing your attention to con HAC what's right here in the body and as you breathe out you're offering space and kindness and gentleness to whatever you touch so attend and befriend it's just a way to think about and there's actually meditations that link with the breath just in that way okay all right so attend its attending to where you feel it in your body it's a mindfulness of the body so one of the ways we think about it is you're learning to stay with the uncomfortableness of fear as a physical sensation on the body which is exactly the opposite of our conditioning all of our conditioning is to get away from that that unpleasantness so this is countering the conditioning unfortunately when we try to get away we actually deepen the trance we become more identified with the fear body the more you run the mortar identified it starts dissolving that identification when you stay so the first step is sometimes it's called just leaning in for one one person described if a dog runs at you whistle for it you know it's like stay or one Zen master was asked how do you relate to fear his response I agree I agree so this is a kind of courageous willingness to contact the physical sensations again if they're really strong first breathe air first go like this do whatever it takes to cozy up to them okay this isn't something where you're supposed to be in some way masochistic this is a courage that comes because you have that wisdom that knows you don't want to keep on doing fight flight that it's this presence that heals so this is the first step is this contact and I find it helps for people to name what's going on just a name you might say squeezing our pounding our clutching our heat or cold you know just name what's going on name where you feel it sometimes that really helps and investigate it from the inside out feel it from the inside out now one of the keys in this attend part of of the equation is to notice when you've gone off into fewer thoughts and come back that's intrinsic to the training as soon as you start feeling fear your mind is going to generate more thoughts about what's going to go wrong so it takes a certain commitment to go okay those are fewer thoughts okay come back I don't have to believe this come back back to the body okay that's what I'm calling the breathing inter contacting feel it name it keep coming back okay second part what we sometimes call breathing out or discovering the space or the tenderness that holds things is is like the word yes it's like it's the sense of the space or the kindness that can can be within the Buddha taught the meta or loving-kindness practice initially explicitly for fear it's always been interesting to me that when the the monk sits at one point during the rainy season had been in some sort of a jungle and have been encountering all sorts of really nasty spirit entities you know that were making life miserable for them and they ran to the Buddha and said can we just leave that encampment it's just too much it's too scary and he said you need to go back but here go back and practice this and he had them practicing loving-kindness that sensing the space of love the field of love as the story goes the field was so powerful that the transform the energy of the tree spirits and creatures and they became allies and you know it's a happily ever after Buddha story but it talks about the power of befriending so attend breathe in feel it befriend offer space say yes some kindness so an example that I'd like to share with you is of one woman I worked with some years back she had gone through a series of really painful relationships and they all ended and they're all they all she felt were failures that reflected on her undesirability her lack of worth then she had a ten year hiatus like from like 32 to 42 or something like that and so it was a long time and then she began dating and as you can imagine in this new round she was terrified of what was going to go wrong I mean she was so set so primed with with fear and fight/flight and her main way of fight/flight was this generating all the stories like she tell us if I really need to be like this because that's what's going to show that you know she had all these ways you want to configure herself to be likable and all the way and her fear was he'd see her fear that was her fear so when we work together you know and I asked her what was going on you know she described the fears I'm going to blow it he'll see how afraid I am he's just being patient right now but who likes insecure people you know that was this stuff that I'm sure many of you can relate to so this was a mental for your body okay and in her physical body she'd say so the first step was okay just say to the thoughts thank you very much but not now and come into the body that's the first step you know just attending contact what's here in her body as she she named it it was clutching and tightness and pounding so she'd name it and then say yes okay let's just say agree to let it be there agree to let it be there and then she'd go off into thoughts again as soon as she was settled into it and the thought she was believing these are real this is really what's going to happen I said no wait you don't have to believe them thank you very much back so that was step one recognizing how she left thank you very much come back feel a name and agree to what's here as she got a little bit of the knack of being with the sensations and it takes something to stay with unpleasant sensations then she began to very intentionally become more gentle and that's what I mean by befriending it's in some way there's a sense just as the gesture of touching your hand on your heart I should use my right hand that just like this gesture in some way she was communicating to the place of fear it's okay you can be there I've done many many sessions with people where if they can get to the point of like sensing well what is the fear most' wand often the fear just wants us to accept that it's there it's a part of us that just needs to be accepted so some ways you're saying okay you can be here that's what I mean by befriend the intention to be kind and the more she became gentle and the more she just let it be there the more she discovered what we call space a kind of tender space and as she described it you know I get it that that fearful insecure person is not who I am doesn't mean I am this secure confident together person just means I get that that's been playing out for years and years it's not my identity she had more space more freedom and in this relationship as it worked out because they both were practicing meditation and they put a value on honesty they began to name out loud what they were experiencing which truly is I call I think of it as bypassing out loud or we now call it interpersonal pass on our I've it that's that's our latest phrase but it's where we start naming out loud and and holding a space for each other and what we're feeling it's a very powerful practice with another person you just name what's true you name hold it name it hold it if there's if what you're naming brings up conflict then you need to bring in some other skills but if you're just holding a space for each other in the naming what's here becomes less personal it's just it's not my fear it's the fear and they're both able to find they both were insecure which of course helps it out to be as we all are I mean when we're with each other if we're really honest much of the time there's a fear there we're afraid of each other some and that's okay I mean there's also love and appreciation and fun and but there's some fear in to the extent that there's fear and it's not acknowledged and processed it creates a separation it stops us from being able to sense the springtime of who we are together that aliveness that's spontaneity so this was this was her experience and as I as I said earlier this is intrinsic to the spiritual path that everyone on the spiritual path needs to face this fear body needs to open to where it lives in our physical body and in that presence discover a larger sense of who we are in that presence we discover a larger sense of who we are there's a story that I rediscovered I had it years ago that this is Pema tree and one of Hema children's books and she's describing a man who's talking about his experience in India and he's trying to get rid of his negative emotions and he's struggling against his anger and his lust and his laziness and his pride but mostly more than anything he wanted to get rid of his fear okay so this is a story of you know his meditation teacher kept saying stop struggling you know this is you know it's a tendon befriend kind of thing but he just took that as another way of overcoming his obstacles okay I'll stop struggling you know so here's what happened finally the teacher set him off to meditate in a tiny hut in the foothills he shut the door and settled down to practice and when it got dark he lit three small candles around midnight he heard a noise in the corner of the room and in the darkness he saw a very large snake it looked to him like a king cobra it was right in front of him swaying all night he stayed totally alert keeping his eyes on the snake he was so afraid he couldn't move there was just the snake and himself in that fear so all night alert with that fear just before dawn the last candle went out and he began to cry he cried not in despair but from tenderness he felt the longing of all the animals and people in the world he knew their alienation and their struggle all his meditation have been nothing but further separation and struggle he accepted really accepted wholeheartedly all those emotions that he had been struggling against so far and as he put it at the end of his description he said that much intimacy with fear caused his dramas to collapse and the world around him finally got through he was able to connect with life feel his belonging to life this is the gift of opening to the fear body the fear body if we're fighting with it or avoiding it or acting out of it keeps us from that tenderness it keeps us from knowing or belonging it's very premises separation when we bring presents to it we begin to rest in and inhabit that presence and discover that set of thoughts those physical sensations that does not define who we are we sense this very deep belonging to these space and the awareness and the tenderness that's attending and befriending so it's a homecoming I remember oh now it's been probably about eight years ago and one of the very beloved members of our community here Alec was dying very close friend and he'd hit these waves of fear and when he was afraid you know he'd feel his fear but then he'd you know feel it but his breathing out was he would start intentionally remembering his daughter beautiful young girl and my sister who was close to me and the members of the Sangha that were supporting him the members of this church so it he'd remember his loved ones and he said that when he could reconnect with that belonging that loving fueled the fear was still there but it didn't define him he was big enough to face living and dying which he did with a beautiful grace here's a poem I remember we shared a few weeks before he died it's called late fragment and did you get what you wanted from this life even so I did and what did you want to call myself beloved to feel myself beloved on the earth if you sense what is it we really long for when we're most afraid if we can trust our belonging to this moment to each other to this earth there's this enlarged beingness that has room now what I haven't yet mentioned I'm going to mention in just a very short amount of time is that one of the most powerful and beautiful ways of reminding our self of that belonging is actively with each other so it's not just that we're bringing to mind each other but actively we need to take refuge in each other it's one of the refuge's Sangha it's not it's not something that's like a support or a crutch it actually helps dissolve that sense of separation there's been research at UVA that shows that if you're getting shocks and you're anticipating with fear and then if you hold the hands of a loved one the Norrell centers that register fear calm down we calm down and I like to remind us that that 20 second hug were you really hugging 20 seconds and oxytocin begins to spread through the body and the fear reduces how about just saying yeah somewhere in the next 24 hours you're going to do one of those why not so I remember one mom describes her three children getting into a horrific fight and then they go to bed and then there's this terrible thunderstorm and she heard this whispering and she found them in the closet and they said they were in the closet forgiving each other no we want we want that contact so maybe it's part of closing or just a story that I I like to share when I have a chance this is Araya Mountain dancer writes this she says she's describing a an incident where she had given a workshop and then a woman wanted to talk to her afterwards and she said and this is a woman small thin woman in an oversized park or her name's Isabelle can I do meditation on my own she asked yes I said I'm sure you can although many people find it easier to establish a meditation practice with the help of a group it's just hard to keep the discipline up on your own but what will it give me what will it give me what will I get if I do this every day and her tone took on a whining quality and Orion Mountain dancer rights I felt my irritation rising as she continued how fast will it work well I feel a difference after a week how will I know when it's working this is exactly the kind of thing I detested the quest for a quick fix the desire for guaranteed outcomes a simple answer do this and you'll get that my sons are waiting for me and I wanted to go home I took a deep breath look directly at Isabelle and set my knapsack down on the floor I tried to slow down my words thinking that maybe if I spoke slower I would feel more patient well I said meditation is more a process than a goal-oriented activity they can help you become more aware of what's going on within and around you and this can help reduce stress my best advice is to try it and just be patient with yourself I picked up my bag and started to button my coat I really did have to leave and I wanted to get out while I was still feeling virtuous for not snapping her head off but as I started to move away Isabel suddenly reached out and grabbed my arm with surprising strength but what I want to know she said her voice rising in a crescendo that bordered on real panic is will it help me find God if I meditate well I haven't experiences something or someone out there listening something really with me a wave of desperation swept out from her through me and I was surprised if I my eyes filled with tears this woman wasn't looking for an easy answer or guaranteed formula because she was lazy she didn't want a simple plan because she was unable or unwilling to think critically about what would work she wanted something she knew it would work and work quickly because she was hanging on by her fingernails she wanted something that would work in a weakness she was afraid that she simply wasn't going to make it through months or years I put my hand gently over Isabelle's where it gripped my arm it's okay Isabelle we all feel desperate at times I said nobody does it by themselves we all need help her hand relaxed a little beneath mine and she started to cry we talked for a while longer there is no them there's only us when I left I did not leave one of them I said goodbye to one of us a human being doing the best she can searching for the home for which all of our hearts long as we begin to look at our lives and sense this fear body this habits of fight/flight we realize they take us away from home they take us away from what we love and the blessing of this path is that we have this capacity to deepen our attention we have this capacity to pause and choose to attend and choose to befriend and in those moments we actually wake up from that identity of a separate self of them a person that's one I'm here you're out there and there is a sense of the belonging for which we long we open to that belonging so I'd like to to close with a very brief meditation just in the way we started as you find yourself a position or pause just to mention I started with that story of a blind man and it wasn't about physical blindness as I said when we're caught in the fear body were cut off this practice this path is about reconnecting so just taking these moments if you will connect with whatever experience is right here and if there's any place a vulnerability that's in your body or your heart anything going on in your life right now you can allow yourself to bring that into awareness anything that's bringing up stress fear reaction letting these moments be ones where you just identify or notice okay so this is where I get caught this is where in some way the fioor body begins to get more solid more active this is where I shrink it away and pull away from life get dizzy get judgmental in some way lose contact and for now simply notice that sends your intention to pause to attend and befriend your intention to intend and befriend and for now you might just feel where that stress lives in your body if you're able you might acknowledge the kind of thoughts that go on when you're caught in it when you're caught in fear thinking just sense okay so what's it really like in my body right now and if you'd like to put your hand on your heart as we did earlier even put one hand on a belly just to feel what is going on in your body when there's some stress so you breathe in and just feel it there and you breathe out in just sense softening caring space breathing in and touching where the rawness is breathing out and sensing the space of care that can hold it this is an honest kind presence as you breathe and as you feel the fear body with presence you can begin to sense that that presence is more who you truly are just this place of awareness of tenderness than any of the stories of so how faith writes the poet efface writes how did the rose ever open its heart and give to this world all its beauty it felt the encouragement of light against its being otherwise we all remain too frightened so in a very simple way we're learning to offer the light and warmth of our own awareness to the fear body sensing in your mind the possibility that whenever fear arises that there's a little more of you that can notice all okay this is the possibility to pause to attend to befriend so we close with the meta loving-kindness practice just this simple wish this prayer for own being that we may come home to who we really are to live in that place of belonging of awareness of love that the fear like a wave in the ocean can be there but not to find us this recognition that when you know you're the ocean you're not afraid of the waves now we can st. hold that same wish for all things everywhere that all beings may face fear with presence may discover that loving awareness that can hold this living dying world may we live from love Mary lives be an expression of love may all beings awaken and be free

Channel: Tara Brach

Views: 317,397

Keywords: Tara Brach, dharmarain108108108108, meditation, attend and befriend, healing, fear body, fear management, fight/flight, body, mind, pause, gentle, mindful awareness, sense of being, belonging, presence, love, life

Id: k5w4Mh28wn4

Length: 60min 26sec (3626 seconds)

Published: Mon May 28 2012