I’ve been inviting fear in at the slightest hint of negative emotion lately, and it’s consistently lifted me into a better feeling place. Sometimes when I invite fear in, it tells me it’s name. “You’re afraid of not being good enough.” Or, “You’re looking at this in a way that’s untrue.” Other times, it has no name. Instead of words coming to mind, I just get an instant feeling of relief. Almost as if I called fear in to consult with me and it just gives me a thumbs up and told me “nothing to worry about here, you’ve got this.”
Other times a consultation isn’t enough. I will invite fear in and get “you’re afraid of wasting money” but not feel any relief. Because my thoughts about wasting money are just as screwy as whatever thought I had that made me worry about wasting money. So then I go one level deeper. I notice where I’m feeling the negative emotion and I invite fear into that part of my body. It’s like I’m an excavator and fear jumps in the cockpit to take the control and navigate. (Letting fear take control may sound scary to some of you, but in the last day I’ve developed such a good working relationship with fear that I trust it implicitly.) Letting go of control of the pain or tension usually results in an instant feeling of relief as well!
But this morning I invited fear and it refused to take over. It took one look at the pinching off in the back of my neck and just shook its head. I think it was telling me, “There’s something here you want to investigate on your own.”
Since fear wasn’t the avenue for my solution, I decided to start randomly inviting other things in to see if they held the secret to my solution.
So I invited in:
Curiosity (felt worse)
Alien intelligence (felt neutral)
Martha Stewart (laughed, but then felt worse)
Confidence (worse)
Self-love (slightly different, but not quite better)
Self-acceptance (a little better)
Unconditional love (not quite it)
But unconditional love led me to thinking that maybe a condition was causing this negative feeling, like laying on a pillow in such a way that it’s causing a crick in my neck.
So I sat up (minor relief)
I stretched out and cracked my neck (some more relief)
I got into child’s pose (instant relief in my neck, but then I got a lot of soreness in my left shoulder while stretching it out in child’s pose)
I asked some more questions, but I got the sense that I wanted to let my body release on its own, instead of interjecting with my mind. So I asked my body to unwind and gave it free reign to move freely. My arms moved from stretched-out-above-my-head child’s pose, to arms-at-my-side child’s pose. No more shoulder tightness (because I was no longer stretching that shoulder), but it felt right.
I got the sense my body is telling me that releasing that shoulder tension is for another day. I checked in again. The tension in my neck was gone but it’s moved down my spinal cord, and now resides just behind my heart chakra. I invited fear in and ask it for a massage (laughter). But then the thought comes “Do I simply want to let my heart express myself? (Instant resonance.)
I instantly broke into a form of meditation that I practice pretty regularly where I make soothing tones with my voice. The tones don’t have a distinct meaning so when I focus on them they don’t inspire more thought, I just listen to the sound and enjoy it.
Then I made a connection. I am now lying in bed, first thing in the morning meditating. I’d been wanting to start meditating more regularly for some time, but it felt like a chore or a “have-to.” Yet here I was, meditating without any effort and is feeling great! So I step into it more fully and allow my body to totally unwind itself, while also meditating to the soothing tones that are now flowing freely and feeling better and better.
I moved to a place with better lighting and decided to shoot a video while I let my body totally unwind. Instant alignment and upliftment!
Here’s a video in case you want a visual depiction of how I allowed my body to unwind: