Overriding the Voice of Fear.

The more unsettled the times, the more potent are our anxious feelings. When a natural disaster gets completely out of hand, like the current devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, fear triggers more than an immediate reaction. A backlog of anxiety is invoked, much of it stemming from the Covid pandemic and looming ecological disaster. If these triggers are powerful enough, it is hard for anything to override the voice of fear inside us.

All of us are forced to adapt to its presence. How do people usually adapt to anxiety besides taking tranquilizers? Psychologically the two most common ways are denial and distraction. By ignoring your anxiety or doing something that takes your mind off it, you might find temporary relief. But is there something more permanent and effective? Can you get this unwelcome guest to leave?

The secret is to make conscious choices that cause fear to shrink away because you no longer need it. Fear is a holdover from our early evolution, rooted in the fight or flight response. It lies in wait, ready to spring into action, as it did for our hominid ancestors over a million years ago. But for the last ten thousand years the higher brain has evolved, a physical embodiment of something far more critical: our awareness of infinite resources of thought, feeling, creativity, and choice-making.

We have evolved to make it possible to be set free from primal fear. All we have to do is to choose the path of consciousness. We must choose to wake up. Becoming fearless is accomplished with every step of waking up. To make the right choices in anxious times, you need to be conscious of what fear is doing to you. Fear is a form of stress, and you can choose to release stress anytime you want. To experience this, you need only yourself and a comfortable place to lie down preferably on the floor or even outside on the grass.

Lying on your back, place your feet 18 inches apart with your arms at your side palms up. Close your eyes, settle into the position, and breathe naturally. Put your attention on your breath, feeling your diaphragm rise and fall. On the out breath let your lungs deflate with a sigh. Easily breathe in, then exhale with a sigh. Sense yourself becoming deeply relaxed and continue for 5 to 10 minutes. Now sink into this relaxed feeling. To exit the pose, don’t quickly jump up and go into activity. Easily turn and stretch as if you were waking up in the morning. Open and close your hands, then open your eyes and get up without moving quickly into activity.

Notice that you feel relaxed and in control. Remember this feeling. Anytime in the day, if anxiety comes calling, tap back into this feeling. The state of relaxed alertness is the basis for effectively reaching a place inside that is free of fear in a natural, effortless way.

Let’s broaden the discussion a little. Modern life makes room for many external rewards but very few inner rewards. A stark fact in modern life is that more money, power, status, and position don’t bring inner fulfillment. Inner fulfillment is found along a different path. In ancient India life presented two paths, the path of pleasure and the path of wisdom.  Every wisdom tradition, East and West, is based on waking up, which means in practice getting over your unconscious behaviors and adopting conscious behaviors instead. You participate in your own evolution, which is how wisdom awakens.

In time, as wisdom becomes your inner reference point, the voice of fear will be entirely overridden. You’re already starting by confronting how fear works. You are waking up to discover that fear doesn’t have to be in charge. You might not think of this as wisdom, but it is. Every moment of inner wisdom is simply a moment of becoming more conscious and aware. Being an unconscious force, fear cannot defeat awareness.

I again want to underline the effectiveness of Shavasana. Taking 5 to 10 minutes to breathe out stress and breathe in relaxation may not seem like much in an anxiety-ridden world, but such small steps reassert control over your personal reality, lessening the grip of fear and uncertainty.

DEEPAK CHOPRA MD, FACP, FRCP, founder of The Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a whole health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation.  Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego, and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is the author of over 90 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. Chopra has been at the forefront of the meditation revolution for the last thirty years. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Digital Dharma: How to Use AI to Raise Your Spiritual Intelligence and Personal Well-Being. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as “one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.”  www.deepakchopra.com