Dr. Aziz guides a quick practice to release anxiety by noticing where you brace your body against fear, then breathing into that tightness and letting it go. Anxiety is physical guarding that keeps emotions stuck; softening lets them move through like storms.
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Would you like to be able to release anxiety and feel more confident right now? If so, watch this video to the end because you're going to discover not only the tool to do it, but I'm going to guide you through the process to do it right now. So this is immediately useful in your life so you can go out there and feel, well, less anxious and more free, more ultimately, you. Because when you're in an anxious state, you're usually not being you. You know, you're focused on survival. You're focused on, am I going to be okay? You're kind of looking at other people and situations as like, what am I going to get out of this and am I going to stay safe here? And you're not bringing your full self to the table. You know, you're not looking at what can I contribute or how can I share love or how can I enjoy myself or what can I create? Right. They're kind of two different ways of being. And so we got to get out of that anxious way and into a more inspiring way of living, a more confident way of living. How can we do that? Well, there is one fundamental perception and pattern that creates a lot of anxiety, and here's what it is. Take a moment right now with me and breathe. You're just going to be more awareness to your body. I want to guide your attention to something specific in your body. I think it's going to be fascinating for you. Okay, so you really to play with me on this is going to be a workshop little video here. We're going to practice together. Sound good? You can do this while you're driving, you can do this while you're walking. All you're going to do is bring more awareness to your chest, to the area around your ribs as well. So take a full breath in right now. And as you breathe out, slowly pay attention to your chest, your ribs, your throat, kind of the whole central area of your torso, even down to your stomach. We're just going to take five seconds, maybe one more breath. And what do you notice? When I do this myself and I work with clients on this, what often people will notice is that there's some sort of tension. Right? No duh, right? I'm anxious, I'm tense. Right. What's happening, though? And the more I practice this, the more I meditate, the more I've studied, I think what's happening is that you are afraid of feeling and afraid of being impacted by life. Right? So someone's going to reject me. I'm going to fall in love and they're not going to like me back or they're going to leave me, or I'm going to get my hopes up to go for this thing and try to believe in myself and take confident action. It's not going to work, you know, and there's all these feelings we don't want to feel. Past, present, future. And so what we do is we're actually subtly contracting ribs, low back, chest muscles, throat, jaw, everywhere else, head migraines. Like all these things come. There's this, like, bracing against life. And it's like, oh, you're not going to get to me. You know, like a boxer who's got their guard up right? And it's like, here's the thing. There is no way to stop life from getting you, because life is you and you are life. It's not like I'm a Z's over here. And then there's life like what you. It is. That's like saying a drop of water is different than the ocean. It's all part of the same thing. Like energy and oxygen and heat and light and electromagnetic waves. All this stuff is moving through this body, my body, your body, all our bodies and everything around you and the air around you and everything, sound waves, everything is moving through. You are part of life. You are connected. You are. You are the fabric of life. It's like one big tapestry, one big blanket. And so there is no escape. There's no escape from feeling. There's no escape from living. And so when you're bracing like that, you're not successfully protecting yourself. You're not guarding anything. It doesn't work. All you're doing is creating physical tension, physical pain and a boatload of anxiety because something bad's going to happen in life. It doesn't work because, you know, you're still anxious. Something bad still could happen no matter how much you're bracing. And just think about. It's almost like if I clench my gut strong enough, then my dog's not going to die, then my friend's not going to ever move out of town, then I'm never going to get reprimanded by my boss because I'm clenching my bowels. Like, how absurd is that? And yet we do it, and we do it habitually. And I've been really fascinated with this, especially for me, in the last couple months, I've been making a deep study of this. I said, you know, what would it be like to live fully open to life, fully porous to life, like an undefended connected life. Because I saw the futility of that resistance and that blocking. And I said, well, what would it be like to just really open and one. It can feel really amazing. I've had some moments that just feel so blissful of, like, oh, I am exactly where I need to be, and I'm guided, I'm connected, and I'm part of this beautiful mystery that we're in. And I've also noticed how that habitual contraction can occur like 700 times per day. You know, all it takes is a thought, the future, bad future, that person over there, something bad, you know. And so a lot of my practice has been just watching that contraction and then softening. And so that's my invitation for you right now. Do you notice any contraction? Do you feel any contraction as I'm talking about it? Can you feel. It's almost like an armoring. It's a way that you're trying to block you from life. And it's. It's not just metaphorical. I mean, literally, you're physically tightening parts of your body. You also might feel more of an emotional kind of guard or wall or numbness or something. So bring attention to it. Find the place that feels really tight right now. And you know how when you're stretching, like in yoga or just before sports, you kind of stretch. You kind of lean into that edge. Like, I always got tight hamstrings, right? So you're bending down, you're tightening your stretching hamstrings. You get to that point where it's like, that's as far as you want to go. And then you go. When you breathe out and you just lean a little further. That's what you do here. You just kind of breathe in. You find that area that's all tied up, and you just go breathe into it. And then the out breath, you just let go and soften a little bit. You're just not forcing it or jamming it. You gotta let go. Now you're just like easing into a hot tub. And you're just doing that, you know, many times throughout the day, bringing your awareness to the tight, contracted part. That's like, I don't want to get hurt by life. And you say, okay, I got you. I know, I know. Resistance is futile, darling. And you just let yourself feel. Let yourself feel even more. And guess what? It does hurt. It does hurt. If someone leaves or you get broken up with, A dream doesn't work out, or you have to go through some challenge or someone gets sick. You know, that does hurt. But Escape from that is impossible. People get sick. Think you could experience these vicissitudes, right? The eight worldly winds, they call it in Buddhism, the vicissitudes of fate. There's gain and there's loss. There's pleasure, there's pain, there's fame, there's disrepute. So you're not only going to have gain, you're going to have loss, too. So it's going to happen. You can't block that from occurring in life. And there is no perpetual safety from loss or something. But there is this. If you really surrender, if you really soften continually throughout the day and say, okay, okay, I get it, I'm part of life. I'm going to feel all this. Not only do you feel a lot more joy, you also feel peace, even in the challenging moments, because you know that it's part of life. It's not like something wrong isn't happening and you just let yourself feel. And then emotions move right through you like a storm, you know, like a downpour. And then moments later after a downpour, and we got the woods here in Oregon, you know, there's like, it's spring, so there's a downpour and then. And then it's clear, and then it's sunny skies. Just within minutes, the same is true for you. So thanks for being with me today. I hope this serves you. This video is a little deeper, a little broader, but it can profoundly shift how you approach life. Anxiety, confidence, yourself. Share down below in the comments what you're finding most valuable and until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to truly know on a deep level that you are amazing, you are awesome, and any story in your mind that tells you otherwise is an illusion. All right, be well.
