With the world being what it is today, most people have experienced anxiety to a greater or lesser extent. And while there are many possible approaches, not many of them deal with what happens at an energy level when we experience anxiety.
Drawing from my own experience, I would describe anxiety as a kind of clawing, niggling feeling that may or may not make sense consciously. Sometimes I knew I was anxious and I understood why, and other times I had no clue why I was feeling that way and that only made it worse because there was nothing I could do to ‘reason it away’.
I’ve also experienced the kind of anxiety that hits you like a freight train and completely shuts off your power of speech, your ability to think and even your ability to move.
When the body is in severe anxiety your energy field will tend to react by catapulting your consciousness out of the body to a safe distance where you can observe what’s going on. This way you don’t have to be fully present with what may be a painful or traumatic experience.
So, when, consciously or unconsciously, you don’t feel safe or comfortable in the physical body, you retreat to where you can view things from a different perspective.
This can be a very useful tool and people do this, often without really being conscious of it, when small things happen to upset them.
The trouble comes when you are spending large chunks of time, ungrounded and ‘away’ from your body. The nature of grounding and being connected to the earth and your physical vehicle is something that can actually help you feel safe and secure, so it’s a bit of a catch 22.
When you are more grounded and in your body, it helps you feel less tired, have more energy and, here is the important part, process emotions out of the body. You have to be in it to win it!
If you’re not in your body then you can’t process the energy (feelings) coming into it well enough to transmute them and pass them out of your system.
It is a bit like being constipated. All the food hanging around in your gut just creates more toxicity and while it’s sitting around, it gets less and less hydrated which makes it more difficult to pass out anyway. This is very similar to how it is when we don’t effectively process our emotions. This means they stack up in the body and could be a reason why you experience anxiety as there is a huge backlog and nowhere for it to go.
So having established that it’s ok and normal to ‘pop out’ of our bodies occasionally, we need to be mindful that in order to process the feelings that build up during our everyday lives we need to be back in our bodies.
Processing our feelings can sound like a scary thing, but it doesn’t have to be a painful experience. If you wish, you can sit mindfully and be present with feelings or memories in order to transmute them, but that isn’t appropriate, or desirable, for everyone.
Luckily there are many ways to process our ‘stuff’. Music is a very popular way to process. Only you know what kind of music will help you at that particular moment, but it can be extremely cathartic and helpful.
If you can play an instrument, so much the better, as this is linked with physical movement which is another way to move stuck energy out of the body.
Singing is also very powerful as using your voice in that way sends vibrations throughout your energy (and physical) body which can help break up congested energy.
As I said before, physical movement is also beneficial. You can walk, run, play sports, dance – anything really. Some activities allow more expression, such as dance, and that expression can be very cathartic, but just the physical act of moving on its own is helpful for the body.
After all, our lymph system relies on our motor movements to move fluid round the body and one of its jobs is to help remove waste from our cells. Something very similar is happening at an energy level when you move.
Self-care activities such as taking a warm bath, writing things out in a journal, having a massage, or taking some time out, can also be helpful when dealing with anxiety. Time out is very important to reengage with our bodies and is helpful, not only for the energy body but also for the physical system.
What you don’t want to do is shove your unprocessed feelings in a corner and refuse to look at them. But if that is the case right now, don’t panic! There can be very good reasons why you’d want to do that and if you need to, it’s totally fine for a while.
Just be aware that’s what you’re doing. Tell yourself, ‘I’m not looking at that right now – but I’ll come back to it.’ It’s ok, so long as you don’t forget about it forever.
Give yourself as much time as you need, but then remember to come back to it. And eat the elephant in small bites if you have to – there’s no need to rush.
Just a little bit at a time, can make you feel so much better and that should help to alleviate the feelings of anxiety AND give you a lot more energy. Give it a try and see how it goes!
Multi-Dimensional Healing 