👨‍🏫 Guest Masterclass: Self-Regulating in High-Stress Situations w/ Brett Kistler

Hello. Hello. Hey, Ritz. Say, Michael. Jasmine. Hey, Pablo.

Hey, everyone.

Ellen. Hey.

Hey, Catherine. Hey, Yanis. Okay, so we'll just give everyone else a few more minutes to join if you'd like to share how you're doing in the chat.

And.

And yeah, for those of you who are able to. To turn on camera, it's always lovely to see your faces. Okay, well, welcome everyone. Let me just pin in some people here. There we go. Well, welcome everyone to the second guest masterclass with Brett this time. I'm really excited for this. And Brett was just sharing how he's come back from a retreat, which I think he'll share more details about. But yeah, I'm really excited for this conversation and partly because I myself have learned so much from listening to Brett and Joe through the Art of Accomplishment podcast, which I know quite a few of you are familiar with. And so I'm really excited for this. What I think will be a deep dive into fear, and probably not in a way that many of you expect. So the format of this is going to be some sharing from Brett, some stories. We'll have an experiential breakout room section at some point as well. And then if you guys want to share your questions, if anything arises in the chat as we're going, and we can either, if the question's super relevant, we'll probably go into it there. And then otherwise we'll have at least 20, 30 minutes for kind of Q and A towards the end as well. So, yeah, with that, welcome. Welcome, Brett.

Thank you.

So good to be here. And it's good to see some. Some faces here that I recognize. It's cool how there's all this kind of cross pollination between these, these communities and worlds. All right, so I'll just go and get started then. I see there's still some people entering and that's okay.

Yeah, that's fine. I think people can just. Can just jump in if they're. If they're a few minutes late.

Great. So I'm just going to do.

Do a quick share of my screen and get.

A slideshow started. If the play button will work. There we go.

Okay. So yeah, the topic. Topic today is welcoming fear. Where this comes from is that there's a belief system that pervades much of our society, much of our experience, that fear is something to be overcome, something that we should conquer, and that if we could just conquer our fear, then we'd be able to do anything we want. So fear is often seen as a hindrance at best, or an Oppressor at worst. So this is a photo of me base jumping in Turkey about 10 years ago, hanging from my friend's arms while he hangs upside down from a cable by his toes. Quite painful for him. Quite fun for me. Millisecond after this screenshot, we both fell away and jumped. And you might see that later in this slideshow. So I started adventure sports to.

Why is this not advancing? There we go.

I started in adventure sports basically largely as a project to conquer my fear, because I decided it was something that.

I needed to conquer.

And I noticed very quickly that a lot of the older jumpers had the richest histories but seemed to carry a lot of fear, while the younger jumpers, like myself, had the approach of wanting to conquer our fear, wanting to. I don't know if you guys can.

Hear that right now. Okay.

It was meant to be muted.

Yeah. The sound. Sounds not coming through.

Great. No need for sound there.

I noticed that I started with this idea of wanting to conquer my fear and wanting to get through my fear. And my first jumps, I started to dissociate from it, push it away, and I think that was somewhat necessary. But ultimately, over time, I learned that the people who stayed alive after a decade or more were the ones who developed a really healthy relationship to their fear. And the people who continued to have the approach of conquering their fear were the ones who ended up having all kinds of accidents.

Or.

Here's the video of that previous shot.

Wow, that's amazing.

And here's a wingsuit chomp in the Arctic. So I noticed that the people who. I'm sort of distracting myself with my own slideshow.

This is awesome.

Yeah. I noticed that the people who were most pushing away their fear, most. Most conquering, most seeing it as an enemy, ended up having the most accidents, ended up being the most dangerous jumpers over time. And so ultimately, my relationship with fear transformed into one of welcoming it, one of recognizing that allowing my fear to move through me is what actually presences me into the moment. It's what orients my attention to what really matters. It's what helps me know if there's. If there's really something to be watching for or if I'm. If I'm just scared. Because there's a difference between simply being scared, having butterflies, and they're truly being a red flag. And so the more of a relationship I would develop with my fear, the more I could tell the difference between those two things, and ultimately, the safer I could be. And also the more I could welcome my fear to Allow it to bring me vibrance and vitality and really just be a driving life force, a force in my life. And escape the slideshow now and go.

Back and the screen share.

Okay, so one of the things that I noticed that was really cool over the years is that when. When we're at an exit point, when I'd be at an exit point with other people and we'd be ready to jump, all of our usual patterns in life, the subtle ways that we manage situations around us, the subtle ways that we try to manage ourselves, the subtle ways we manage a group to feel safe, all of those things get ratcheted up to 10. At an exit point, you find people who. For some of us, when we feel fear, it gets channeled into anger, and we use anger to punch through the fear. For some people, they would dissociate from it and create some kind of story about how they're safe, some sort of a belief system. For others, they would jump into an identity or an ego that doesn't have fear. And yet for others, they would leave themselves to be in other people's fear and trying to take care of them and not in their own. And there's. There's a number of other. Other patterns that came up. And so it just became a really interesting sandbox for learning how different people's fear moves through their system and the different ways, the different patterns of how we handle it and ultimately some of the journeys that people take from the initial approach of suppressing the fear to welcoming the fear and how those patterns evolve. So I want to talk for a little bit about where the pattern of suppressing fear comes from. So most of us learn this on some level, culturally. You know, there's like, James Bond and kind of certain ideas of masculinity and certain ideas of unstoppableness and certain ways that something like the Hero's Journey has been processed narratively throughout media and movies and books and also in our. In our upbringing. Anytime that our fear felt like it was too much for somebody else for a caregiver, for a parent, we learned that that fear itself was danger. So a lot of the process of welcoming fear is starting to notice what the signals actually are and disambiguating the sense of that I'm afraid, and does that mean that I'm creating a story of danger, or is there actually danger? Because fear and safety are actually separate axes. There's some correlation, but the more that you sit with and inquire, the more you recognize that a lot of what we've been afraid of is the meaning that we've made around fear. A lot of what we register as the feeling that's uncomfortable of fear is actually the feeling of resisting fear. And that fear, when fear moves through us and we welcome it and we allow it. And that fear, when it's allowed, it becomes excitement, it becomes. It can become pleasure, it can become joy, it can be a portal to all the other emotions. And when we allow our emotional experience as it is, it brings us into contact with reality, brings us into contact with ourself, which ultimately makes us safer. For example, the very first jumps that you might do on a skydive or a base jump, or first couple times you might do public speaking. First couple times you make a advance on a potential romantic partner. The first couple times you might have a lot of dissociation. You might have some amount of like, okay, this fear will dysregulate me. So I'm just gonna put that aside and I'm gonna see if I can just push myself to do the thing anyway. And what happens often, what a lot of people report from their very first skydive is that they remember nothing. And it's like they weren't even there for it, which is a beautiful first step. It would be a problem if we didn't have that capacity to filter our reality, to be able to rate limit the emotions that we experience. And ultimately what allows you to be there from what makes the difference between deciding you're about to jump and then running a program and then being kind of caught off guard if that program doesn't go exactly according to plan. The difference between that and being present in every single moment and being able to respond to every microsecond as it occurs around you and through you. That difference is how much you can.

Be with and welcome the full experience.

Including, and in many cases especially the fear. And so that, that also comes. That comes into anxiety as well. In my experience, I actually was a very anxious kid. And I didn't know it because not only did I have a lot of anxiety, but because my anxiety wasn't held my. Because my fear wasn't held in the society around me and kind of early family, I learned that I didn't have it, it was best for me not to have it. So if I believed that I didn't have fear, then I'd be able to do the things I wanted according to that kind of fear conquering belief system. So what that actually meant is I was anxious and I was not aware of my anxiety. So One of the stories that I have about what brought me into jumping is that it was actually a subconscious drive to bring myself into situations where that anxiety could be felt and where that anxiety, where those fears made sense to be feeling, but that I was in control, I was in some form of agency. And you could kind of say that that was a little bit of a kink of sorts, kind of going into playing out a subconscious pattern, but doing it in a way that is very different from the way that it was patterned in me, but in. In my own agency. And I think that that's something that shows up in a lot of our lives. A lot. A lot of the parts of our life things that we're attracted to are often things that help us bring us into a context where we can feel an emotion that we haven't been able to feel, haven't let ourselves feel, have patterned ourselves out of feeling, so that we get to feel that emotion in a new way, in a way that feels more agentic than when it was.

First brought up and suppressed.

Another thing that I noticed over time through jumping was that often we would be very aware or we would think we were very aware of our fear of physical risk. Standing on the edge of a cliff, you're looking down, you see rocks. You're like, oh, boy, I sure hope I don't hit those rocks. And so people would be talking about the physical risks. What are the wind conditions? What is our skill level? How are we going to plan and fly this jump? What are the contingencies? But people would often not pay any conscious attention or very little conscious attention to the social fears. And I think one of the reasons for that is it's societally permissioned to be afraid of jumping off of a cliff, but it might not be as societally permissioned to be the one who asks for help or to be the one who's the most afraid or feels like they're the most afraid of in the group, or to be the one who inconveniences the group by saying, I want to walk down, and you guys are gonna have to wait four hours for me by the car while I climb down this mountain. And so what I learned over time there as well is that the older jumpers who were still around tended to be the ones who would show up to an exit point and be like, yeah, you know what? I totally just want to impress you right now with this backflip. And that's actually what I'm like, that's just happening, and I'm scared of this jump and they're just like feeling the fears, owning the fears and letting them be there. And again, a lot of the newer jumpers would be the ones who are like, yeah, I got this. And internally wouldn't be aware that what they're trying to do is impress the other jumpers. What they're trying to do is get invited to new events. What they're trying to do is build a brand for themselves and get YouTube views. And they might have justified that this is just how they would do it to make their living. But really they're still looking for their parents love. And that's just something that over, over the years has started to really show up as show up in the statistics, in the accent statistics, vitality statistics. And one of the things that really brought me into working with Joe, who you'll meet next week if you haven't.

Met yet or if you've been listening to our podcast.

One of the things that really brought me into this work is the recognition that if I had gone back in time and I had the capacity to be fully forthright and fully truthful and fully myself and fully authentic with my friends and being there with all of my fears and seeing the fears that they weren't showing and speaking to them, then there's probably a lot of my friends that would still be alive at this point. And so that has a lot of emotional meaning to me to be able.

To do this work.

I'm seeing a question here, very interested in hearing more about how you discern the difference between red flag versus simply scared fear. That's a really good question. One of the ways that actually I'm going to hold that one off for the Q and A. I'm just going to go through a couple more of.

The things here, but really good question. We're going to get into.

So how to welcome fear, how to be with that fear. First of all, there's the concept of titration. There's sort of an optimal zone that you can be with with your fear where you are both feeling the fear and you're feeling grounded in yourself, you're feeling grounded in your reality. You can see that you're safe, you can see that you're not tunnel visioned into the fear. And if you're above that zone, then you're dysregulated, you're dissociated, you're not with the fear, you're not present. The fear might be causing actions, causing you to respond, but you're not necessarily processing it. You might be able to process it later. But in a moment, you're not there. And optimally, you want to be there.

When you're feeling the fear.

And then kind of below that zone is suppression. You're just not receiving signals. If you're dissociating or if you're pushing fear away and you're just pretending you're not afraid, then you're missing a lot of data that that fear is potentially bringing you. And so that kind of comes to the, to the red flag versus simply scared situation. If I'm at an exit point and I'm about to jump, if I feel the difference for me between butterflies and a red flag is that butterflies feels expansive, if I feel like my awareness is, is expanded, if I feel like I'm excited, if I feel like my body is metabolically, energetically preparing for what I'm about to do, then that feels like butterflies. And that can be uncomfortable because often when we were young, having that much energy was just too much.

And we were told to be, to.

Be quiet or settle down. And so there can be sort of like an upper limit of how much of that experience we'll allow ourselves. But when you really allow and welcome that feeling, you can start to tell the difference between that and a contraction. And when there's a deep contraction, then there's. That's how I know that something in my system believes that something is wrong. Doesn't mean something is wrong, but it means that somewhere in my system, somewhere in my body, some new data wants to be collected so that I can. So that I can move forward or take a step back, so that I can basically make the decision and know what to do. So it might be. There have been times where I've just been ready to jump and I'm like, what's going on here? Oh, somebody didn't do their chest strap over there. And that's what's going on. Or other times it would be. You know what? I actually did not take enough time because we were all caught up in our group talking about the flight plan to really consider. Have I actually flown this line in this wind condition before? Is it going to be floaty? Is it going to be sinky? Oh, that's. That's actually what my body wanted to know. It wanted more data. Once I've checked for that data, then I can notice if that increases the sense of expansiveness or increases a sense of contractedness. And if over all, if, if doing all of that worked to perceive what's going on, I still feel a strong sense of contractedness, then I might just walk away. Even if logically, intellectually, everything looks perfect. Even if there's no narrative or logistical.

Reason why the jump shouldn't work.

If I have that kind of a feeling, then I've learned to trust that feeling. It might be something that I'm not.

Going to cognitively compute that's going on. It's just I've learned to just trust that feeling.

And that's the feeling of the red flag when there's just something that's contracted, that will not move no matter how.

Much more data I get.

Um, and that's something that doesn't. It, it takes time to develop that. My, my very first jumps, there was always still something contracted and I had to decide that I'm going to do this anyway. And I don't know, I think there was some level of luck there. Your first couple of base jumps, there's some level of I've never done this before. My, my body's not gonna be convinced.

100% until I have done it.

So there's some, like I said earlier, like suppression and dissociation isn't a bad thing.

It's just a tool.

It's something that's a stepping stone that helps us sometimes be able to do things we otherwise wouldn't do. And we might calculate that that's a long term good thing for us and we might be wrong about that.

Sometimes the world is unpredictable.

So being with it, that's titration suppression. Talked a bit about awareness, how feeling fear doesn't mean that you're unsafe. Just the inquiry helps us to discern the difference between the, between the recognition that something's unsafe and just the feeling that something's unsafe, or the feeling that fear itself is, feels unsafe and kind.

Of getting beneath that.

Another aspect is loving our fear. Something I was speaking about earlier, about the social fears being often more subconscious than the physical fears is that comes from the societal imprint that being afraid socially is often more likely to get you abandoned or, or our story is that's more likely to get us abandoned or rejected than feeling a physical fear. So one of the things that that shows is that the fears that we won't let ourselves have, the fears that we would have shame about having, go into the subconscious. We still have them and they still rule our lives. But without being aware of them, we can't actually bring in the wisdom that they, that those fears provide. And ultimately that wisdom points to what we care about. So if I'm at an exit point with my friends and I recognize, oh, you know what? I really just want to be accepted by this group. And maybe that's actually why I'm here. Maybe it's not about the jump. What I really want is to be loved and accepted. The moment I have that recognition, then any pressure to make the jump, to get that recognition or acceptance falls away. And then I'm more aware of directly.

What it is that I need and what I want.

So the more that we can love these different aspects of our fear and recognize where we hold shame and love that shame and love that fear, the more we will be aware of the.

Full spectrum of our fear, and the.

More we'll be able to see through the resistance and stories around the fear to what the care and the love.

Actually is behind the fear.

Because I believe that behind all fear is love. You can't be afraid if there's not something you care deeply about. And if you can connect to the.

Thing that it is that you actually.

Care about, then the strategies for getting those needs met shift dramatically from the.

Strategies of avoiding feeling the fear that. That produces.

Other ways to kind of work with those. The. The levels of fear and anxiety is. There's ways to. And we'll go into this a little bit later. There's ways to move fear with the body.

There's like.

There's the way that animals shake off after a chase, If. If you've ever seen a deer or like a gazelle being chased by a.

Lion or, or cheetah or something after.

The chase, immediately in the chase, they're just acting, acting, acting. And then afterwards they do this big shake before they kind of calmly walk away. And that's to bring themselves back to homeostasis. We do the same thing. Fear builds up in our system over time, and we need to physically sequence what that fear wanted to do, whether it's run, whether it's punch, whether it's shake. And when we do that, it allows our body to return to homeostasis. Much of many of us spend most of our lives far off of our body's natural homeostasis because there are fear and other emotions that haven't fully moved.

Right.

Yeah, we'd love to. And you'll probably come to this in a bit, but could you give an example of how this approach to working with fear has applied to, say, stepping into a vulnerable conversation with your wife or someone at work? Because I think it'd be really helpful for people to hear how it not only applies to base jumping, but how the very same feelings as you're Stepping into, oh God, what's going to happen in this conversation?

Yeah, so I'll connect that through. I think this is in Hebrew. They have multiple words for fear.

This might not be Hebrew, it might be something else.

But one of the words is the fear of, like the fear of something happening to you. The other one is the fear of stepping into a bigger space. That's another way of kind of differentiating between butterflies and red flags. So if I'm having a conversation with my wife, what I, the fear that I might actually be feeling is the fear of my own empowerment. It might be the fear of showing up authentically. It might be the fear of stepping through and out of a pattern that I've been using to keep myself small or to make sure that I always am chasing love, or to make sure that I'm seen in a certain way but not seen for who I am. And so this has become very useful in the rest of my life. However, it doesn't translate naturally. You kind of have to. I, I had to recognize that I was, I had been developing this relationship with fear in sports and realized that I still hadn't been progressing that much in the same realm socially. And then I started to see the similarities and apply them. And so it, it just requires more, more noticing, more awareness. Where, where have I not applied this yet?

Where have I not been exploring my fears or have I not been welcoming them?

And just briefly, when you're base jumping, the risk is if you don't fully feel the fear, you might literally die. What's the kind of parallel risk in relationships if someone continues to kind of ignore or not listen to their fear?

Yeah. Then I might spend 20 years in.

A loveless, resentful relationship.

Or I might spend half a decade building a startup and spending a ton of money, other people's money, my money, and not actually have it be what.

I want to do or not fire an employee that, that I need to.

Fire for the, for the good of.

The organization or any, any number of things.

Ultimately, the process is, ultimately, it's like the more that we allow ourselves to feel the fear, the more that we.

Can welcome it, the more data we get.

So it's ultimately about being able to process and receive and perceive the information that is necessary and processing it and making the decisions, making the actions that are actually serving me.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So I would like to go into round of experiments. So these, these are just going to be some internal experiments and we're going.

To do a little bit of kind.

Of partner work and Then afterwards, I'll look at all the questions that people have asked and we'll do a bit.

Of a Q and A.

So I would love everybody to close.

Your eyes and bring to mind some.

Scenario that you're afraid of.

Any scenario.

It could be, could be physical, could.

Be a fear of being injured, could be a fear of falling ill or growing old.

It could be a social fear, fear.

Of being judged, fear of relying on others, fear of being abandoned.

It could be something more abstract, like.

Not getting the job you want or being a bad parent or hurting somebody that you care deeply about.

It could be speaking into a room, saying I'm weak and that I need help. So imagine. Imagine that situation going as badly as.

You fear for a moment, imagine. Visualize the place, the people, the lighting, the textures. And what do you feel in your body when you bring up this fear? Now, how do you experience that fear in your head?

How do you experience that fear intellectually? Do you find yourself setting up a belief system to make it not real.

To distance yourself from it, or to.

Trap yourself in it? Do you craft an identity?

Do you manage it with thought?

Do you try to get it right? Try to imagine how you'll get the situation right, how you'll do the right thing and avoid what you want to avoid? Or do you just dissociate? And what that might look like is seeing the situation and feeling nothing? What does it feel like now to.

Resist that fear? All of what we just described, how much does that feel like resistance, connect with the way that you intellectually resist that fear? And now try the opposite. Whatever it is you're doing, try the polar opposite of that. Notice what that feels like. Now let's bring that fear to your heart. What does it feel like to resist that fear with your heart, emotionally?

Is it the feeling of pushing away love?

Is there a feeling of protecting your heart?

Is there an impulse to avoid getting.

Close to others or being seen or risking loss or hurt? Feel what it feels like in your body to resist fear with your heart. And now try the opposite.

What does it feel like to welcome.

That fear from your heart?

What do you notice about.

The tension or relaxation? What do you notice about efforting or ease? What do you notice about feelings of love or heartbreak? And now I want you to feel this fear of this situation in your gut. What does it feel like to feel and resist that fear physically? In your viscera, your body.

Deep in your belly?

Do you notice a contraction or a constriction? Do you find your nervous system tracking your Surroundings, tracking the other people in the room. Are you waiting for the other foot to fall? Are you bracing for impact? Bracing for attack? And now, one more time, try the opposite. What does it feel like to do the opposite of what your gut was doing? Resisting the fear. If you're tracking your surroundings, tracking the environment in your imagined scenario, what does it feel like not to do that?

And I'm just going to open the.

Floor here for a couple minutes of.

Reflections.

As you open your eyes and land in your body and in the room.

Giannis.

I'm amazed with this conversation. Thank you. So I noticed, like, my mind is the most active and most convincing to the point that I. I want to be more free socially because I realized that I have social anxiety recently. And my mind, like, is even convince me that I don't actually want what I want. It's so, like, let's not care about that. So it's so loud and the stories are so big that it actually convinces me out of doing what and feeling what I feel. And I have. I have not much sensation in my heart and my stomach. I could feel it constricting and releasing, but there's like, they're mostly dissociated. It's mostly my head that was active as a noise.

Beautiful.

Recognition. Thank you.

Sneha.

Is that how you pronounce your name?

Yeah, you got it perfectly. It's Neha.

Hi.

Awesome. Hi.

Yeah, it was interesting, really, for me, I. I noticed first that it was much easier for me to connect with and identify the fear in my. In my mind, intellectually, and then in my heart. And I sensed more efforting around connecting to that in the gut. The other thing that. That. That was interesting for me to observe was I found that initially when you went to the stage of just having us be with the fear and then try resisting it, I found that almost labeling the fear and going to that space reduced it, so it made it much harder for me to resist. So I found almost like a sense of, like, release, and then just wondering, how do I put that wall up again?

Yeah.

And the third one observation for me was how I found that I was just doing way more efforting in almost trying to expand versus realizing when each of those were in contracted spaces. So it almost seemed to me like letting go was. Was. Was through, like, this process of, like, trying really hard, which was, again, really interesting.

Yeah. Yeah.

Beautiful. It is like labeling an emotion can be a stepping stone.

Like, if we.

It helps us know that it's there, and then it can also be a way to distance ourself from it.

It's like, okay, I intellectually know I'm.

Scared and that's a way not to feel it.

And I can just try to figure.

Out what to do about it rather than feel it. So that's a beautiful noticing and a beautiful recognition. And also with the trying to release is still trying. There's still a doing, there's still a contraction in that. And that brings us to a different place than simply allowing. There's nothing our awareness needs to do. There's nothing our ego needs to do.

Identity needs to do for emotions. They are just naturally arising in us. And so it's just letting that occur. Xavier, thank you. Hi.

Hi.

Very interesting subject for me. I have experienced panic disorder in the past and kind of changing my relationship to fear helped a lot. Where at times the fear to the fear was the issue and not the fear itself. So on that same line of thought, could you talk more about when you. I feel like I have a lot of awareness of the fear and what it creates in my body. But I also, I think I struggle with trusting that it's impermanent, that it's going to. It's okay, it's there. So can you talk more about the trust part of this? Because I think it is directly connected to allowing it and to accepting it. But I feel like maybe part of the issue I have experienced is not trusting that it's okay, that it can be there and it's fine, I'll experience that.

Yeah. The pointer. The question I would have there then is in the not trusting. What fear is that? You know, there might be a fear and you're not trusting yourself to feel it.

Then what's the feared consequence of not trusting or trusting?

And so it might be something at.

A slightly different angle, but it's just another fear to inquire and be welcomed.

Any, anytime anything like that comes up.

There'S just another layer. Like maybe there's something else to be felt before my system is ready to fully feel the one that I was noticing. Thank you.

Got it.

So can I ask then follow up real quick. How do we get to. How do we know we are in the most.

The.

The bottom tier or the closest to. To the core of the like intuition wise. You just keep going down forever. Sounds like what, what. What's the kind of like the, the practical guidance there on.

Yeah, it's practice. It's a practice. It's not something that you do and you're complete with.

It's.

And, and this is one Thing that is common with emotional development is that people are like, okay, yeah, once I have felt the grief or once I've.

Felt the fear, then I won't have it anymore. It'll be gone.

And what I actually notice is that when I increase my capacity to feel.

And be with any emotion, then it.

Actually becomes more present throughout my life, which is a good thing.

It's a signal.

If I. I used to walk through life thinking from my head about what to do, and that was very inefficient. And now I notice myself feeling a.

Mixture of grief, fear, joy, pleasure.

Just this soup. And that soup provides a directionality that.

Is just simple to follow.

It's automatic. And it doesn't have story. It can be the source of plans.

And logistics and also doesn't require anything of me. It's just following my body's movements.

And that's where this goes and where it. What it deepens into. So there's not a. There's not a bottom. There's just.

What have I not yet noticed? What has.

What. What can I love now?

What can I welcome about my experience now?

Thank you.

Yeah.

So we're gonna do some breakout rooms.

You're gonna get partnered up randomly, and I'll let Johnny set that up. If there's an odd number of you, he will jump in with one of you.

Yeah. So we've got two. Two people per room? Pretty much exactly.

Yeah.

Do you want me to open them up and then your broadcast, or do you want to share first?

Yeah, open it up and I'll broadcast.

Okay, cool. All right, you guys should see notifications appearing. Jump in if you can. If not, just message here in the chat and I'll rearrange some people.

And I declined the breakout room I was invited to. That might be the one that you join. That's all good.

And.

Oh, goodness. Okay, great. Before you drop into yours, Johnny, can you tell me how to broadcast?

Yes. You should see a breakout room under the more the.

Got it.

There it is.

And then you should be able to broadcast through that.

Right?

I'm just gonna. Gosh, Ocean, you do this every time.

Yeah, I can. I can do it.

I think.

I think we're getting there. Yeah. Scott. Okay. Scott asked for help.

He's great.

Oh, Inga's on her own. Inga and Rocky.

I'll move those guys. Okay.

I think I'll move Ritz to the room with Kevin as well.

Great. Yeah, I think we're good to go.

Okay, great. The broadcast button just has a typing broadcast. What's the speaking broadcast button.

You're not seeing speaking there?

Nope.

Broadcast voice.

Just says broadcast message.

Oh, let me. Maybe I'll make you host. That should do it.

Okay.

Try. Try now.

There we go.

Okay, so the first thing we're going.

To do is whichever one of you has the longest hair, you're going to be the first to share, and you're.

Going to share with your partner for two minutes.

A little bit about your.

Present relationship with fear.

And I need to check in with Johnny.

Is there an agreement in this group of confidentiality when people share with one another?

Already said, yes, there is.

Yes, there is. Great.

Great. Okay, so you're going to share for about two minutes, one area in your.

Life that you resist fear and what.

That resistance feels like in your body. One area in your life where you.

Resist fear and what it feels like in your body to do that. And that'll be the person with the longest hair. Starts now. If you have the same length of hair, just pick one of you.

Right, Brett, if you could make me co host now, I've. I've given away all of my host privileges, and that way I can. I can tweak the breakout rooms as well. I think it's. It's under part participants. And then if you go more. And then.

I'm going to join Giannis's breakout room. He asked for help.

Okay, cool.

Just unmove you into a room and a. Oh, he's gone. Okay.

It looks like Fabio's on his own in room one. Oh, but he's not joined.

He's not joined.

That's great. Okay.

Yeah, it's always unwrangling, especially with.

With pairs. It always.

Yeah.

Okay. They didn't hear the broadcast, so I'm.

Going to do that again. Okay.

Okay.

I guess the broadcast didn't work.

I think you can hear me all now. So the first partner, whoever has the longest hair, or if you have the.

Same length hair, raises your hand.

That person will share one area in.

Their life where they resist fear and.

What that resistance feels like in their body. And we'll do that for two minutes.

And then we'll switch to the other partner. Okay. Guess we're underway. Now.

Do you want me to time or have you got a timer?

I got a time going.

I need to go to Zoom school.

Keep making changes. Always. I always get caught.

Brett. We also have two threes somehow, so it might be worth just giving a couple of minutes at the end for the three to do the third person, and then everyone else can maybe Just chat or share their reflections.

Yeah, it. All right, now switch to the other partner. Share one area in your life where you resist fear and what that resistance feels like in your body. Okay, now back to the first partner.

Now you'll describe one area in your.

Life where you welcome fear and what that welcoming feels like in your body. One area where you welcome fear and what that feels like in your body. And now switching to the other partner. Describe one area in your life where you welcome fear and what that welcoming feels like in your body. All right, and we're going to come back from the breakout rooms on a 60 second delay waiting for everybody to come back. All right, everybody's back from the breakout rooms now.

So I just want you to silently.

Reflect for a moment.

What similarities or differences did you notice between these two areas of your life?

The one where you resist the fear and the one where you welcome the fear.

And what differences or similarities did you.

Notice in the way that you and your partner resist and welcome fear somatically? All right. Yeah.

Feel free to enter into the chat.

Any words or reflections. Ritz says, joy, energy, expansive versus contraction, bracing and tension. Beautiful. And if there are no others we're going to move into.

The next thing we're going to do.

Is a little bit of a shake.

This is, this is one way to.

Get some of that fear released from the body.

One way to get it moving. Some people call it therapeutic tremoring. There's similar practices like tre psoas release. We're just going to spend about two minutes. You can be seated, you can be.

Standing, you can lean back in your chair, you can lie down or just hold your weight gently upright and you will just gently begin shaking your body. We can start with just your arms or start with just your core if you want to. But just start gently shaking, let it.

Build a little bit. And then what we're doing here is we're releasing. We're not amping up or activating a bunch of fear.

What we're doing is just letting it move the way that a gazelle might just shake it back off when, when they're back in safety. Just to get back to homeostasis. Imagine your body letting go of stored fear without attaching to any story about where it came from or what it means.

Just follow what your body wants to do.

Your gas is on the, your foot is on the gas here. You're in charge of the depth. Nothing's being forced. You're not driving yourself beyond what feels comfortable, just gently inviting what's there to move through and letting it be enjoyable. How much can you just enjoy letting your body shake?

It might feel really weird to do this.

You might be questioning yourself, or the hell am I doing right now?

How much can you just enjoy that?

That's happening, too.

It's just releasing.

There's no story. And now. Now just finish.

Like you're just shaking off. Like you just took a shower and you want to air dry.

Just.

Yeah, let it let. And coming to a pause.

And then we're just going to do.

A couple of grounding minutes of box breathing. So now just bringing our awareness to.

Our bodies.

We'Re going to breathe. This is called box breathing. It's a kind of breathing that's done in the military.

Navy SEALs do it to ground themselves. We've learned in base jumping to do.

It at an exit point.

And this is going to be four seconds in.

Hold for four seconds, four seconds out. Hold for four seconds.

And while you're doing that, while you're.

Breathing, feel the breath spread throughout your.

Whole body and bring some awareness to.

Your feet, to your legs, to your core. And we'll begin in 1, 2, 3, 4. Hold, 2, 3, 4. Exhale, 2, 3, 4. Hold, 2, 3, 4. 4. Inhale, 2, 3, four. Hold, 2, 3, four. Exhale, 2, 3, 4. Hold, 2, 3, 4. And then as you keep going just a couple more cycles, bring your awareness to your feet. With each in breath, visualize and imagine feel that breath filling your body. Feel the weight of your body on the seat.

The weight of your feet.

On the floor, and just feel how supported you are by the chair and by the ground, and how there's nothing that needs to be done right now. You can just be all right.

And I'd love to hear any reflections.

From those experiments and any general questions that you might have. We'll do this for about 20 minutes, and then we'll. Then we'll come to a close. Yanis?

Yeah.

So I have a question that's related to the way that the exercise felt in my body. So I'm in a practice of, as I told you, to overcome my social anxiety. I go and expose myself. And so there's a practice of approaching women that I like, and at the moment of, so I see beautiful women, I can feel the constriction, that it constricts my desire out of my. My body. And it kind of dissociates me so that I don't have the desire or the motivation to actually go. And they get lost in the story. And so I'm really interested. And I'm trying to figure out the mechanics of how to bring myself in the moment to allow the fear to move through me so that I can actually not get inhibited by that which happens in my body.

Yeah. The first thing that I would ask.

Is, what is the fear of being inhibited?

And how much can you. How much can you just enjoy and.

Love the experience of feeling inhibited in your fear?

Yeah.

I. I just hate. So I haven't ever thought of that.

Yeah.

Yeah. So there's. There may be in there. There's a. There's the fear that shows up of approaching women. And then there's also the fear perhaps of the being a person who feels that constriction.

Yeah.

And other. Other potential.

So that's. That's where I would inquire.

There is.

What does it. What does it feel like to have that. That fear of the fear?

And what is. What is it that you notice in there? If you do some emotional inquiry into that?

So inquiring on the fear of the fear rather than the fear of being inhibited.

What is, what is the fear?

If you were.

If you were to be inhibited with.

Women, with approaching women forever, what would that mean for you?

I don't know yet. I feel the constriction in my body and my posture. Like slumping in.

Yeah. Like. Yeah.

Isolation, abandonment, something like that.

Yeah.

And if you welcome that sensation of.

That constriction and just keep some awareness in your whole body without fixing or changing that sensation, then what happens?

Yeah.

There's a sense of expansion and some grief that's coming up that there is a resistance.

Yeah. And how is it just to be with that grief that comes up?

There is heat in the back of my neck. It's always better to resist emotion, to not resist emotion and to allow it even though it's uncomfortable. And I can sense tears coming up. It's just the same. Comes up at the same time. And I can't allow myself to move it. Like now.

I would say not necessarily. It's not always better not to resist the emotion. Resistance is an adaptation, just like the emotion. The question is just how much are we aware of it and how much are we allowing the experience? And resistance will always shift. Nothing's ever static. It will recalibrate.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's. And I. I just. I just noticed myself, you know, there are times when I'm unconstricted and not resisting and approaching and feeling the fear and other times that I. I can't do that. And so there is this sense of why, why the fuck can't I do it every time? And I'm trying to figure it out and it's, there's a frustration there as well.

Yeah, yeah.

So how much is that a fear.

Of being in that state forever?

Does it. That's a terror, actually.

Yeah. Yeah.

So that's, that's where I would do.

Some inquiry, like check, check the truth of it. Are you ever anywhere forever? And what is, what is the feeling underneath that fear?

Yeah, there is some tenderness there and vulnerability.

Yeah.

And the sense of I don't want to get rejected.

Yeah, yeah.

And what I notice is when I'm with, when, when I do this kind of process and I'm with that vulnerability.

Then the shape of the fear itself shifts.

If I know that I can be.

With that vulnerability, then I don't need to be afraid of it, even if I were to feel it forever. Thank you so much. And Pablo.

Hey, what's up, Brett?

How's it going?

You good.

You?

Really well.

What a dessert of an experience up until now, so thank you for that.

Yeah.

What I'm curious about is in your day to day actions as you're going out through life, what are some of the pointers or the inquiries that you apply to yourself that open the door of resistance to any fear that you sense maybe wanting to be felt, but resistance is just like in front of it.

That makes sense.

Yeah, the, the big one is just emotional inquiry, which is there's a, there's a tool that Joe has released. We, we released it on the podcast. It's on the, it's in the description.

Of the Cayenne Pepper of Fear Helplessness episode. I can give it to Johnny to.

Pass out to people, but there's a.

Brief kind of meditation that, that Joe created.

And it's, that's basically the process.

It's basically presencing. It's just what is going on for me right now? What am I feeling?

And.

Just getting more and more granular with that. Like, what's the shape, what's the texture, what's the color of this feeling in my body?

And if it's dissociation, if it is the sense that I have no feeling in my body, if it's the sense.

That I'm out here, then what does that feel like?

What is, where are the edges of that space? Where, what does the interior of it feel like? What do I notice about it?

What does it look like?

And as I do that process and sit with that process, then more information.

More sensitivity comes to light.

Even dissociation has a certain texture to it.

I've noticed.

Gotcha. So it's a what am I feeling? What am I presing? Any of those words that work and then just being with whatever arises, then becoming more curious about each aspect of that somatic experience.

Yeah.

And when you notice yourself feeling like something's not right about it or you want to change it, like, oh, but I'm holding here and I want to let go notice that there's an agenda there. And wherever you put an agenda in your internal feelings, you're going to get resistance.

That's just how it goes.

And so just noticing what, what is.

The fear in me or what emotion in me that hasn't been felt is driving that agenda to change my experience or make it any different.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Thank you, Brad.

Yeah.

And I'll also add that this, this talk has been about fear, but this is true for all of the emotions. And I, my, a lot of my sort of lifestyle explorations have been around fear. I just find that it's a doorway.

To all of the emotions.

And they're not separate things.

It's all just processes of our body and nervous systems regulating and updating to meet reality as it is in the moment.

Yeah, it's like a huge tapestry and you're just pulling on the thread of fear which leads you into the tapestry.

Yeah, you're not even pulling on it, you're just noticing it and letting it.

Slowly come out of the woodwork.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like a shy 2 year old.

Coming around the corner. Is it safe? Like, oh, hey there. You can come out if you like. You don't have to.

Awesome.

Yeah. Thank you, Pablo.

Thank you.

All right, Will.

Good to see you.

Hey, Bright. Yeah, so I, I imagine some of my question might have been answered earlier, but I was curious. So I've got a lot of fear around like the breath, which makes a lot of these sorts of modalities really difficult because so much of the down regulating is focused on, you know, holding your breath or doing breathing exercises.

What is the, what is the shape of that fear of the breath? What do you, is it like a fear of holding your breath in an.

Exhale or not breathing?

All right, let's, I mean, yeah, I, I suspect that I need to do some inquisition into the fear. To me, it just feels like I struggle to, for instance, hold my breath during the box breath. There's almost like this fear that I won't get enough breath. Like my, my chest is constricting. And it's. I actually meditated for a long time when I was younger, so it's relatively new in the past year or two. Just curious if you have any recommendations specifically on breathing. I've tried some breathwork stuff, but not had good experiences with it.

Yeah, I wouldn't call myself an expert.

On breath work, so I don't have.

A lot to say about that. But what I could say about just the experience of what it feels like.

To have your breath exhaled or held.

In that way is I would. I would just do the inquiry in it. Like, what does it. To what extent does it feel like danger? And to what extent have I written.

A story of danger around the feeling? Okay. Yeah.

And to what extent am I wanting this to change? Does. To what extent have you been holding.

Any story that there's something wrong with you? If you have this feeling that you have this discomfort around breathwork, that would be something to explore.

Do you know anywhere I can maybe read about this stuff? I tend to practice things better when I have a book or an article.

There's a couple of books that I'm.

Aware of, and I have not read either of them yet, so I can't necessarily recommend them. Totally fair.

But I think I can mention that.

Having made that disclaimer, these are books.

That have been recommended to me. There's one called Breath.

I don't know the name of the author. And there's another one called Prana, or called Restoring Prana, and that's another one that I've had recommended. They could be worth exploring, but I can't endorse them having not read them.

Got it.

And not having done much of the exploration into the breath work myself.

Yeah. Well, thank you either way.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're welcome. All right. Sean.

Hello.

I was going to ask about exposure therapy or to what extent, making yourself do the something that you might be afraid of. I guess an easy example for me, and this is also a relatively newer fear, is being, like, by the ocean and then swimming out very far. You know, like, not like losing sight of the shore, but just, you know, out beyond, like the first or second break. Like, to what extent is it therapeutic? And there are lots of other examples you could have around heights or, you know, or other things like that. To what extent is. Is it good to seek out these things or. That's the question.

Yeah, that's a really good question. I'll address that with sort of an anecdote, a story. This past weekend, I was facilitating a retreat in Moab, Utah, for A group of eight people. And we walked, we went up to a cliff, crawled out, looked over the edge and did some meditations, some kind.

Of ponderings on impermanence.

And we went to, we did a high line, I'll show some videos of.

This in a little bit. Where people were walking on a tightrope essentially across a canyon.

And then the next day we had.

People do rope jumps where you jump off of 200 foot cliff connected to a rope and you free fall and then get caught.

And there was one person who didn't end up doing the rope jump. And they had one of the most powerful experiences of all, because the invitation was just to approach, not to force yourself to do anything. The invitation is just to approach and see what shows up for you and to learn to recognize the signals in your body and notice the feeling between butterflies and a rag flag. And what does that, what do you.

Make of what you feel right now?

And so this person went up to the edge one time and they were screaming into the canyon, they were moving some fear, they were kind of up, regulating, they're down regulating, they're sort of just experimenting. And then they walked away. And then they came back a couple turns later after a few other people showed up. And then they had intended to jump the second time, but they walked up to the edge, they curled their toes over the edge, almost leaned past the point of no return, and then just didn't. And when they walked away that time, they just fell into a deep shame. And so I was with this person, coaching him, and he was like, yeah, I noticed that the feeling that I'm feeling right now of this shame, this fear of not jumping is greater than the fear that I was feeling at.

The edge and what's going on with that.

And so I, I asked him, I was like, regardless of what you thought.

You came on this trip to do.

Which of the, of the different fears.

That you're feeling right now and this double bind that you feel like kind of squeezed between, which one of those.

Would give you the most freedom in.

The rest of your life after this retreat, if you were to welcome it right now?

And after some further reflection, this person recognized that their life is largely driven by fomo. And they often find themselves in a state where they feel shame or they.

Feel some kind of bind around what they're not doing.

And for them, they ended up finding a deep freedom in feeling through the fear of others being disappointed in them.

After they came home from the trip not having jumped.

And on the other side of that they just started laughing. They just had a giggle fit for.

A half an hour.

And they just. It created so much distance from the voice in their head that was telling them what they should be. And that wouldn't have been something that.

They got if they had just pushed forward and jumped.

So I like to just trust that our system has a deep wisdom and the practice isn't pushing ourselves to do something that's scary. It's not necessarily exposure to the scary thing. It's exposure to our. To our emotional experience, whatever that actually is in any moment. And this person, also, another reflection that they had is they realized that if they were to jump, it would have actually been the avoidant thing to do, and that would have been fine. It's fine to do the avoidant thing to do sometimes and then notice what.

You feel after you've done that.

Maybe there was actually something avoidant about.

That story, you know, like it just continuously starts to unfold and unravel the more we just sit with it and notice. Thanks very much. Yeah.

Curious if there are any others.

Any other hands here?

Yeah, I have. I have, like, a whole swirl of different questions, actually, that have been arising throughout this. I think one thought that just has been arising is almost like, is. Is what we label fear purely the resistance that we have to feeling an underlying emotional sensation? And the reason that I ask that is during the exercise, I chose two different examples. One where I was afraid of our puppy, like, running away. She ran away the other day and we almost lost her. And then another example that was around a fear of. Around having kids, and a fear that was related to my capacity as a father. And I noticed that that fear was much. The second fear was much harder to feel or that there was more resistance to welcoming it, which I interpreted as there being a different story. In the first example, the story was around, I'm a great puppy, that I love this animal so much. And the other one was a story that had a degree of shame around it. And so I'm wondering if fear is purely just the degree to which we're resisting the. The thing underneath. Is that something that resonates with you or would you frame it differently? And, and, and then a second part to that question. What is courage in this lens?

Yeah, beautiful.

I. I would say that that resonates. And it can, again, like all, all emotional experiences, use different components of some.

Of the same recipe set.

So some of a lot of what. What becomes resistance that blocks our emotional experience is what we would call shame. And there's also A way that you can see shame as a fear of.

External rejection or consequence or abandonment.

And.

Or of.

Or simply of the intensity of feeling something, or a fear of feeling something so intense having learned that nobody. Having learned or believed that nobody would.

Be there to co.

Regulate with you as you needed as a child.

So, you know, there's.

People have talked about the axis of love and fear as just an axis. I see it more as there's just love at the bottom of everything. And sometimes that love becomes what we call fear, and sometimes that love becomes.

What we call shame.

And sometimes that love becomes what we call resistance. And it can also be the feelings of love, compassion, joy. Ultimately, all of these emotional experiences are.

Adapted to take care of ourselves in some way or another.

So the process is just recognizing that.

And inquiring, like, how is this important.

Emotional experience, how has this adapted in me?

How has it served me?

And maybe it's not serving me now.

But how can I recognize and acknowledge the ways that it has served me so that I'm not pushing it away or trying to change it and creating a. A war within myself around it? Yeah, and then go ahead.

Yeah. To your second question.

Can you repeat the second one?

What is courage through this lens?

Yeah, that's a really good question. David White has a beautiful section on.

Courage in his book Consolations. I can highly recommend that I can't quote right now.

The way that I would describe it is courage is.

Courage is allowing that internal draw to.

Be with what is here right now.

It's not doing the thing that I don't want to do because I'm scared doing it anyway. That can happen with courage, but courage in a.

In a circumstance where you're feeling fear is. Some people, People describe it as feeling the fear and doing it anyway, but even that description can have a little.

Bit of a agenda to it.

It's like there's a certain correct behavior. Sometimes the courage, the courageous thing to do is to walk away. Sometimes the courageous thing to do is.

Right now is not the time to feel my fear.

Right now is the time to trust.

My nervous system and the way that it wants to regulate it or. And knowing that that might not be what you do forever, there might be a time to allow that fear and that your system will know.

The more.

That you listen and inquire and the more trust that your system builds essentially.

With you not to make their dualistic.

Separateness here, but.

The more you start to have experiences where allowing various aspects of your. Of your experience lead to outcomes that.

Are more expansive, more enlivening, more joyful, more enjoying of pain or sadness, more just expansive. Then, then your system starts to learn that it can be with and welcome a broader range of experience. And then that leads to more presence and enjoyment.

Beautiful. Beautiful. One more thing I'll share and then I think we'll, we, we'll wrap up here. I remember sitting on a 10 day meditation retreat in Vermont and the teacher was saying how kind of towards the end of a path when, when someone's kind of, when they've been going at this for a long time. He used the phrase generative, terror and dread as being two of the most powerful kind of spiritual emotions. And I'm wondering through your lens, what is it that could be potentially generative about dread or terror as it pertains to wearing down the self?

I'm not sure what he meant by.

Generative in that case. In that context.

What comes up for me is that the fear of fully.

Showing up, the fear of creating, the.

Fear of having an impact on our.

World, the fear of there being a clear and unclear but unmistakable result of our existence in our experience and in others and on nature itself, I think.

That'S, that's what comes up for me when I think of generative. Another thing I could think of when.

I think of generative is to be generating the feeling of fear or terror. I'm not sure that that's what was being referred to, but that's the free association that comes through me in the question.

Nice. Thank you. Well, we've got a couple of minutes, couple of minutes remaining. I'd love to give you a bit of space to share for people for whom this, this talk, this exploration resonated. What are some ways that they can continue learning, continue exploring, continue deepening? What places or experiences might you direct them to?

Yeah, so there's the podcast that I have with Joe Hudson, who will be.

The next guest next week that is called the Art of Accomplishment.

And there's also a number of courses. You guys are going to get a.

Discount code to the intro connection course next week.

And for myself there's. I do coaching. I coach executives.

I coach people through all kinds of different experiences.

So my website is Bret Kistler Life and I'm going to be doing more of the retreat that I did this past weekend. There'll be another one coming up in the spring. Haven't set the dates yet, but I.

Can put that out through Johnny.

I can share a couple of brief slides here.

If I can't figure out how to do that. Yes.

So this is.

This is the place we were in Moab, Utah. That's near where we were camped.

So it's far out of cell service. And just gorgeous mornings, gorgeous sunsets, gorgeous silence.

And this was the high line that.

People got to walk. And you can see this is not just a ropes course up in the.

Trees, you know, this is a. Wow. Yeah. And this was the rope jump. Yeah.

So that's.

We'll put a promo video together once we gather all the footage, but, yeah, are invited to that in. In springtime. And, yeah, you can find me on.

Twitter.

Follow me there, follow the podcast, shoot me an email, and. Yeah.

Thank you, everybody.

Amazing. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Brett. I'd love to close with everyone unmuting and saying, thank you so much, Brett. That was fucking awesome. 3, 2, 1, go.

Thank you. Thank you, Brett.

Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody.

All right, see you on Friday, guys. Thanks so much. Take care.