Mini Episode: Fear: How to Cope in Uncertain Times

beyond my pay grade. And I don't think any of us know right now. But here's what I do know. Fear will corrode us from the inside out if we're not careful. I also know that our mental, emotional, and physical health are really important in times like these in dealing with crises, So it's important that we find ways to allow the fear to be there, allow ourselves to stay informed about what's going on out there, but also not let the fee year and the agitation control us

take us over, because that wears this out. It wears us out mentally, emotionally, ultimately physically, and that does not help us or the loved ones around us in our communities that depend upon us. So we've got to find a way to engage with this in a skillful, useful way. We've got to find a way to feed our good wolf when it comes to dealing with this circumstance. And that's kind of what I'd like to spend just a

couple of minutes talking about in this short episode. Several different ideas came to mind for me when I started working on thinking about wanting to say something brief here about all this, and and the first that came to mind was the author Mark Nepo, who we interviewed recently. That episode will be coming out, but um, he and I were talking and he had a line that really stuck with me that said, we've become addicted to the

noise of things falling apart. And he actually that line was written outside of this context, but in this context it makes a lot of sense. We are very much addicted to the noise of things falling apart in general, and in this particular circumstance. Many of us are addicted to watching what's happened. I find myself turning to Twitter and the news way way way more than I normally do. And again, some of that is good, but a lot

of it's not. And what I am is I noticed myself sort of becoming addicted to the news cycle, to the spin, to the speed, to the urgency, to the whole thing, and that I can tell isn't good for my insides. You know the other thing that he said about this, we become addicted to the noise of things falling apart. And I love this, he said, but things are also always coming together. Things are always falling apart, that's the nature of things. But things are also always

coming together. It's just that those coming together moments are a lot more quiet, and we have to actually make a point of turning towards them, of turning towards something deeper. And that's really I think the first pointer I would give here is that what we want to do is we want to continue to turn towards what's deeper in us, what's deeper in our spiritual practice, what's deeper in our

personal practice, what's deeper in our lives. Right, a lot of us are getting time to spend more time with the people in our lives that we love than we normally do. And we could look at this as a burden and for a lot of us. It's a surprise and it's a change, But this is also an opportunity to have the people we love closer to us, to spend more time with them and more care on them. And so how can we find a way to nurture that, enjoy that, and appreciate that in any sort of crisis,

there's the there's the classic. I don't even know if it's true that the Chinese character for crisis is opportunity. I don't know if it's true or not right, But in any situation there are opportunities, and there are opportunities in this situation, and one of the most obvious is the time that we can spend together that we don't normally have the chance to perhaps slow down just a little it and spend a little bit more time together.

So that's one pointer, but in general, to turn more towards those deeper, underlying parts of life that are coming together, that are beautiful and wonderful, that simply don't get our attention because the clamoring noise of everything falling apart shuns them out. Where can we turn to those more in

this time? The other idea that I think is really important is we had the guest Lynda Graham on the show, and she talks about resilience a lot, and one of the things that she says is how you respond to the issue is the issue. So for us, how we respond to what's happening right now is the issue for each of us personally, our individual response is the most pressing issue for each of us, right And this gets to where we put in our attention, what are we

paying attention to? And so it made me also think of Stephen Covey's idea of the circle of influence versus the circle of concern and what Covey basical He says, and you have to imagine two circles. There's a big circle that's our circle of concern, and then inside of it is a smaller circle which is our circle of influence, circle of concern or all the things that we care

about that we worry about. Right So, the news, the coronavirus, or the response to it, all of that, that all falls in the circle of concern, and we do need to be concerned and we do need to spend a little bit of time there. But the smaller circles our circle of influence. This is what we can actually do something about right, And what Covey says is the more time we spend in our circle of concern but not inside our circle of influence, our circle of influence actually shrinks.

And conversely, the more time we spend in our circle of influence, the larger it grows. And so in this case, I think it's really worth looking at where are we spending our time. If we're spending all our time engaging in the news and the crisis beyond what's instructive or helpful, then we're in our circle of concern. And again I'm not here to tell you how much that is. You

have to find out for yourself. But I think that idea of how much of this is instructive and how much of is it helpful, those are useful ways of saying, Okay, I've got what I need from there, now let me move back into my circle of influence. Right, and in the circle of influence are all the ways that we can take care of ourselves and take care of our loved ones. Really, our mental, physical, and emotional health is really important. So the fundamentals of self care here are

very valuable. Are we eating healthily? Are we getting a good night's sleep. Are we exercising, are we meditating? Are we seeking wisdom from sources that we trust and know? So when we do that, we're strengthening the pillars that will see us through this storm. And the other thing is that fear has an energy to it, right, and so by taking positive action, we actually channel that energy into productive direction instead of allowing it to sort of

twist us up inside. And so I want to just give a couple of short practices that I think might help us in this time. And so one thing that's important to know, I think is that fear is fed by our thoughts, but we feel it in our bodies right, And so what we want to do is it can be helpful to drop down out of the thinking mind into our feeling senses. It's a way of allowing that fear to work with it directly and a little bit more skillfully. And so there are two practices that I'd

like to bring forth for you to contemplate. And the first is from another recent podcast episode with the guest Fleet Mall, who introduced us to the practice of straw breathing. And straw breathing is just a type of breathing. One thing that we know is that when our excelation is longer than our inhalation, it tends to stimulate our parasympathetic nervous system and that becomes a signal to our brain that we're not in a fight or flight or freeze

state of danger and our limbic system can relax. So any type of breathing that is going to allow the exhalation to be longer than our inhalation is going to help in this. And straw breathing is just a type of breathing of doing that, and in essence, you can practice it with or without a straw. If you have a straw, it's great, But the idea is you breathe in normally and then you exhale in a slow, controlled

manner as if you're breathing through a straw. You can play with different counting, So for example, I might do an in breath of four, hold for eight, outbreath of twelve through the straw, or in breath of four, hold for four outbreath of eight. Right there, just different. You've got to find the pattern that sort of works for you.

There isn't a one size fits all, particularly because everybody has different capabilities and breathing, but you want your outbreath to be longer than you're in breath is the basics of it. And by doing it slowly, rhythmically counting it and breathing out through the purse lips like of a straw, it helps to slow our fear response. It helps us to relax. So I'd encourage you to try some strawberreathing or other ways of deep breathing. It's a very good

fear response. The thing about it is most of us tend to try it when we're really highly stimulated and we're like, all right, I'll take a couple of deep breaths and the world doesn't change overnight from taking too deep breaths and we abandon the practice. So this is a practice that you can do over time, and we actually get better at doing the more we do it,

So I'd encourage you to just work it in. I've started doing this strawberreathing at the beginning of my meditation practice because what I find it does, it actually settles me down in general. And so I might do uh twenty, say uh cycles of that, breathing in for four, holding for eight out for twelve, I might do twenty cycles, so that before I drop into meditation again. It's just a way of engaging our parasympathetic nervous system and turning

down the fear response. And then the other is a on the spot spiritual habit that you can turn to when you feel fear taking hold. So this won't make the fear disappear, but it will open up some more space inside of you so that you're not as possessed by the fear. So one of the things that all these spiritual habits have in common is they have a

trigger or something that prompts you to practice them. And the trigger for this is just to notice that you're caught in the trance of fear or the grip of fear, or you're locked in fearful ruminating thoughts. So I'm gonna lead us through this practice. It's going to be a very short, just a couple minute sort of guided practice that I'm going to lead you through here. So just take a moment and settle in and close your eyes and just pause and notice and name the fear you're experiencing.

You can just say I'm feeling fear right now, or you can name it more specifically you want, but let's pause and just notice and name the fear work experience in here for just a moment or two. Now, place a hand on your belly and breathe into your hand so that your belly expands. So you're breathing in, you're feeling your belly expand, and now slowly exhale, and as you do, just sense your body and mind letting go of tension and fear. Just notice any lessoning of that

that occurs. It might be dramatic, it might be very little. But again, just as you exhale, sense yourself sort of letting go a little bit. And let's do a couple of rounds of this. So keep your hand on your belly and breathe into your hands so that your belly expands, and then slowly exhale and sense your body and mind letting go of tension and fear. As you do that, I'll let you do just a couple more rounds of

that at your own pace. Now move your attention to feel where your feet touch the ground or if you're sitting, where your seat meets the chair, and feel supported by the earth beneath you, and just keep your attention there for another moment or two. Wherever you are ground in yourself with your feet or your body, feel the connection you're making with the world beneath it. And now since where you feel any tension or tightness in your body, and gently see if you can relax a bit in

those areas, letting go and breathing into them. So what you want to do is notice an area of tension as you breathe in, sort of imagine that area, the breath is going to it, and you can almost on the in breath imagine just the gripping just a little bit, and then on the outbreath you just let go, just let the tension and everything drain out of that area. So I'll give you just a couple of moments to do that with a couple of different areas in your body.

And now, finally, let's just take a moment and rest in this state of presence, in direct contact with that which is here right now versus being lost in the imagined future. And since what's opened up inside of you giving you some space between you and the fear that you're feeling. So that was just a very short practice. You can do this same practice in a much longer way on your own. There's lots and lots of guided

meditations out there. Sometimes when we're really trapped in the fear, it can be helpful to turn to guided meditations, to have somebody who comforts us, a voice we find comforting talk us through some of this. So there's tons of them out there. Insight Timer has countless ones. We've had sponsors on the show like Calm before. They have lots of great meditations out there. There's lots of sources of them.

But you might find that if in your own quiet meditation that you're a little bit to jumble up, a guided one can help. And so but when we name the fear and sense that we're more grounded in presence, we become less gripped and identified with the fear. And when we do that, we can become clear on what right action might be. So this slowing ourselves down, are becoming more present, are dropping into the body is going

to make our response better and clearer. So those are just a few thoughts on everything that is happening right now. I know there's a lot going on, there's a lot of fear, and I just do it encourage you to spend the time that you need to understand what's happening, but don't fall into the addictive cycle of that being everything that we pay attention to. Let's not be addicted

to the noise of everything falling apart. Let's make sure that we're taking time for ourselves to go within, to do practices that nourish us, like exercise, eating right, and all these things are going to help us cope better our emotional, mental, and physical health. Our physical health our immune system is strengthened by calm, and it is weakened by excessive fear and stress. So excessive fear and stress

is not going to help us cope with us. So I wish you some degree of inner stillness amidst all of the outer chaos right now. If uh, if I can help with anything, send me an email eric at when you feed dot net, and be good to yourself and those around you in this difficult time. Take care and talk to you soon. By