Reader, In the next You're Designed for This email, I'm going to dive into anxiety, because I got a lot of responses that included an allusion to anxiety if not an outright ask for me to talk about how we're designed to hold it.

Anxiety is a tricky multi-dimensional interconnected feeling (not emotion), that requires presence, patience, and a profound desire to start sorting through the strings. The fact that it's coupled with such an intense body-feel that makes us want to turn heel and run in the other direction (or dissociate completely) amps up the challenge.

I wanted to ease us into this topic by explaining how I approach anxiety in the body and how I work with it personally.

Unfortunately for me, anxiety feelings like to pop up as a way to both warn me away from things and invite me into scary next steps, so I have to expand the feeling to figure out which it is. And expanding anxiety isn't fun.

We have a natural inclination to move away from pain and towards pleasure, but most of the time in the Embodied Realms, we get to pleasure by going through the uncomfortable feelings, or at least dancing with them a little bit as we see how they want to unwind and resolve.

My current dance with anxiety started the day after the full moon eclipse. Each night since then, as soon as I lay down, I’m gripped with my heart pounding through my breastbone and anxiety that makes it hard to breathe.

Last night I felt like I was in a good place to listen to the anxiety and let it expand.

As I asked it to show me what it was, my whole chest cracked open over a yawning black abyss, which apparently, according to the anxious feelings, I'm to step into.

I decided to sit down at the edge instead of free falling, let my legs dangle in the darkness, and prepare my body and energy for making this leap.

When I had been there long enough, I got up, closed my chest back up, and went to sleep with no anxiety.

Tonight I’ll work with it again.

And I know, you might be thinking, but Ash, you didn't actually resolve the anxiety. You dipped your toe into it and walked away.

Yep. Sure did.

Here's what happened in my body that you don't see in that story:

My nervous system could peek behind the curtain before I shoved it off of a cliff with no parachute. I see so many people who have been told to just take the leap, do the scary thing, go beyond how resourced they are and how far their relationships might hold them in order to follow something showing up in their body or from spirit. By the time they get to me their nervous system isn't capable of handling the demands of life because it's been pushed beyond its capacity. It's in a functional freeze in order to maintain a sense of safety.

We can avoid this by releasing the capitalist scarcity programming that says you have to jump on something the minute you are aware of it or you'll miss it.

You’re not going to miss it. It’ll come around again in some way shape or form if it’s meant for you.

So what I did here was something I talk to clients about all the time. You can see a thing, an opportunity, an adventure, and basically just go “oh hey, I see you and I’m willing to work with you, but you need to let me get my body on board.”

Shame couldn't enter into the conversation. As I've written a few times (here, and here) shame originates in the Organ Realm, and it loves to step in as a witness when we aren't able to look at something with neutrality, or dare I say, love.

When shame gets involved it creates an energetic oily layer that's hard for feelings to move through, and hard for us to see as they are instead of how shame wants us to see them. So by me easing into a neutral place with the anxious feeling and asking it to simply show me what was there, choosing to dip a toe in and believe that was enough, I removed the ability for shame to edge in.

My bones had an opportunity to show me if they were involved. The Nervous System and Bone Realms are intricately linked together because bones produce the hormone that releases the brake on your sympathetic nervous system response. By letting my nervous system feel into what was behind the anxiety, I also gave my bones an opportunity to make themselves known. Absolutely nothing came up from my foundational Realm, which lets me know that my bones are prepared for me to make this leap, the scaffolding is already in place.

My conscious mind is now aware of the shifts in other Realms that haven't made sense until now. I'm connecting dots that had seemingly popped up out of the blue. Like my sudden inability to keep a consistent daily schedule while my brain is screaming at me to create a new weekly routine. My desire to lift weights and the gravel-grinder hill-repeat mountain bike rides I've been going on. I've been unconsciously activating my Muscle Realm in preparation, and now I know why.

My body trusts me to come back. I made sure before I closed up the abyss and walked away that I told it I was coming back. By keeping my promise, I build trust with my body.

When I work with someone who has anxiety or anxious feelings, we talk to the feeling, let it lead us, show us what it wants you to know, and invite it in as an active participant. It's always a complex journey through the Realms that might now always make sense to our conscious mind.

However, this is why my client work is body-led and achieves the results it does. Because when we go at your body’s pace, you end up getting there so much quicker and easier; and because I'm me, we often giggle a little along the way. How's that for adding some pleasure into the process?

In the next YDFT email I'll use some examples of anxiety and trace them through the Realms so you can see it's multi-dimensionality and interconnection.

I'll also break down why I don't think we were designed to hold anxiety (yikes, right?!).

I won't give tips or tricks, or ways to ease anxiety, because it's such a tangly feeling it's nearly impossible to give blanket advice (like breathing a specific way, which can help, but can also sometimes make it worse!). But hopefully this peek into how I approach it will give you courage to reach out a hand and see what's on the other side.

​Energy Archaeology Sessions are the perfect way to begin working with complex feelings and patterns that show up as anxiety in the body, and an Embodied Realms Immersion can help support you to dig deeply underneath to pull it out by the roots. My books are open through the end of October when you're ready to jump in with me.

Your body's partner in exploration,
Ash