This is Gold. The Fearless Heart will save so many of us from our conditioned reactions, so that we can live with more ease. And every time we experience fear, that momentary reactivity to a perceived threat (which will visit us from time to time because we have a body), we know, “I’m OK.”
The more we do it, and the more it becomes our go to mantra, the shorter amount of time it takes to get there, to the non reactive state of being. To our True Self. Thank you!
Fear shows itself as insecurities and self doubt. Racing obsessive thinking about what ifs and I can’t… when I am aware that the spinning thoughts are happening, I try to stop, to breathe and to tell myself…yes this is fear. These thoughts scare me but they do not serve me. I need to be open to this situation. I need to move forward …it is the right thing to do. The fear response would be to avoid and hide.
Muy interesante. me deja claro que estamos educados a evadir nuestras emociones “negativas”, como el miedo, ser valientes y no evadirlas nos puede llevar a un lugar de paz incluso en medio de esas emociones porque no nos tenemos que defender de ellas, podemos convivir con ellas sin querer negarlas.
Spirituality. Belief in a Divine Order (God). I lived in fear from 16 to 54 and massive confusion. Had definite reason to be fearful, even threats on my life from ex and second ex was told from counseling very narcissistic. Was so controlled by my fear and confusion. As said, lived in fight and flight. Was not until I found God that I lost my fear and been working on clearing the confusion of a personality that I had no idea existed…but fits what have read from counselors to a “T”. Finding God, I lost fear. Still fearful at times, but regroup and ground self.
I always enjoy watching you and listening to the way you express even material that I am familiar with. It is truly amazing how correct breathing regulates and focuses us. I like the 7/11 breathing approach. It is easy to remember and works like qa charm.
I have yet to find a way to deal with fear. I alternate between avoidance / numbness and frantic, detailed game plans that rarely come to fruition. I’ve been trying to practice meditation and it does help calm me, however I can’t seem to stick with it long term.
Dear Tara,
You are helping me so much to face my fears & anxiety by listening to your talks, guided meditations and becoming more mindful. I am starting to let go, rest into and open to my fears/anxiety instead of clutching and tightening and becoming even more fearful. I am now back into a daily meditation practice. Your book, “True Refuge” is also extremely helpful.
I so appreciate you and your work!!
Blessings, Karen C.
Having a close friend to talk through bad times. Someone who has had hard times herself, who is willing to listen again and again, until I feel understood.
Knowledge and understanding of the fear process, provided by teachers like you, helps create some distance between the emotion of fear and my actual true nature, basic goodness.
Leaning Hebbs law helped me to understand how I can create a daily pattern of fear, by focusing to much attention on it.
One of the ways that I find gives me deep roots of stability is embodying ( that is a journey as we know) the “knowledge” that I am eternal; that this life is a life of learning, that each event is something I attract to me to learn. So each time fear comes up – it is an opportunity to embrace and release the limitations of the “small self’s” beliefs, physical sensations , monkey mind chatter associated with fear and ground/expand into the larger context/frame of the “higher” self; eternal self; deeply grounded self.
What has helped me in some situations is to think [out loud] or write down the results in the worst case of the situation. Then consider the likelihood that would happen. And if the worst happened, what would I do/how would I respond. Then repeat this “what’s the worst that could happen,” likelihood, and response exercise.
You described me exactly. I had tears in my eyes as I listened to you. I have always felt inferior to everyone. I think of myself as dumb, so I have always had fear in school, job interviews, and performance on the job. I always I felt a burden to my parents and siblings. My husband died in August 2018. We have an a child with autism. I am having a hard time finding someone that will hire me. I am broke. Now, my dad is sick with cancer. I am deep fear of my future. I am a broken person and deeply depressed. I do not face fear. I am paralyzed from it.
My habitual reactiin is to freeze.
It is awfull, especially when my thought get entangled or even on physical level when I feel tightness in my body mooving in a rigid way. All goes back to my relationship with my father.
I am 60 this year, my father is not here over 18 years. I have gone through long individual and group therapies.
It helps a lot when I take initiative despite feeling fear.
I do practice accepting, aknowledging, fear.
Fear can often be the result of a lack of self-confidence – not trusting in one’s own abilities. Building a strong sense of one’s self and believing in one’s “Buddha Nature” is most helpful in developing fearlessness.
Thank you for your message. At the moment I’m exploring other options in my life and leaving my employment where I’ve been for last ten plus years.
What helps me face fear, is to use mindfulness. When working with a client, I like to use many techniques, one that I rely on is acceptance theory and also providing a platform for talking therapies, mindfulness, EMDR and CBT.
I try to be mindful enough to immediately stop fear by returning to present moment which I accomplish by mindful deep breaths, with a whistling pursed mouth exhale to increase the length of the exhale and fully empty my lungs before inhaling again.
Taking a deep breath, becoming centered within. Knowing everything is temporary and whatever I fear at this moment shall also pass. Hoping to gain wisdom and strength from the experience that I fear, enabling me to move on a stronger person.
Being seen and heard. Learning that you can release the fear, and that it doesn’t have to control you. Some of the most powerful tools I have come across and use are Energy Psychology including EFT and Tapas Acupressure Technique TAT.
Thank you so much for this lesson. It continues to validate what I have been learning. I have incorporated a daily practice of meditation in my life after
facing challenges over the last decade. It definitely has helped. It has given me
a place to go and rest with my thoughts and helps me understand.
I am so grateful for those like you, who bring your knowledge forward for those
of us who recognize our need for it and have the willingness to take care of our
well being. It feels like returning to our true self and appreciating our greatness
rather than our fears.
Knowing I’m not alone in having fear. Noticing my thoughts and feelings. Inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh, putting my arms around it, hugging it, like a helpless baby. Thanks for all your teachings Tara.
Thank you, your presentation is intriguing. I look forward to the next segments!
I find that gratitude practice is so beneficial to my life and well-being. It brings peace and attracts more to be thankful for.
Just doing the thing I fear — talking to prospects . But most of the time I walk away from an opportunity without saying anything. I am looking forward to mindfulness in facing my fear.
For me the most important thing is to become aware that what I am feeling is fear and it is especially during busy days. But once I allow myself a break from running around pretending I am ok, it is belly breathing, trying to locate the fear in my body, feeling it there and breathing into it. If the fear is too big for me to manage, it is fast walking or jogging and after that some yin joga positions. Thank you.
I’m still getting there. Day at a time so far. The journey has been long but I’ve learnt so many things along the way. Still learning. The comments here are great, and this video clip is fantastic. Thank you for creating it.
Like others below, what helps me to face fear is metta meditation. Fear triggers horrible migraines, in my case, and meditation helped me to feel a crisis coming much earlier than before. Then, once I feel that my breath is becoming shallow, my mind racing with anxious thoughts, and a panic attack might follow, I start breathing in counting one-two, and breathing out counting one-two-three-four, all while sending myself and others love, and temporarily giving up all striving (including the strong desire to NOT be in a pre-panic attack moment). Doing so has reduced the frequency of my migraines enormously, but I feel that I can still go much further, when it comes to anxiety reduction. So I’m very much looking forward to this course!
That being said, there do is one hypothesis in this first video that imho is highly probable to be false. It’s the idea that somehow, our brains would have been perfect/optimal some thousands of years ago, when fear reactions would have been “rational” and good, as the kind of threats that human beings faced at the time would have required the spontaneous functioning of our brain, in terms of fear management.
This hypothesis has been deduced from an incorrect interpretation of Darwinism, based on the notion that all species living today are living today exactly as they are because in the past, their DNA/bodies/… were perfectly adapted to past circumstances.
If you read Darwin, you cannot but observe that that’s not at all what he claimed or has proven to be true. Instead, he wrote that WHEN two competing species start to see their common natural habitat changing, it’s the species that is best adapted to that NEW environment that will have most chances to survive.
That means that:
1. the selection ONLY happens on the trait that has to do with the one, very particular change in environment
2. other traits will persist, even though they are not optimally adapted to the old nor new environment, as long as there is no very strong “stress” on those traits.
Conclusion: nothing guarantees that our amygdala and their FFF reactions were once better suited for survival of the human species than today. They may have easily caused as many irrational, counter-productive behaviors back then as they do today. In other words, they may have made human beings get stuck in panic attacks about lions even when there are no lions around at all …
Survival of the fittest does NOT mean that the species who survive are perfectly adapted to their environment. It only means that WHEN by chance selection on one specific trait arises, the species with mutants who can cope better with the new environmental factor, will have more chances to survive than the species who don’t. And there’s no scientific proof at all showing that in a distant past, an untrained (= low EQ) human brain would have been better adapted to survival in for instance a jungle than it is in a 21st century big city.
Quite on the contrary: as average life expectancy more than doubled today, compared to most of humankind’s history, it might even be more reasonable to suppose that our brains are more adapted to today’s environment than they were to natural conditions thousands of years ago …
Conclusion: scientifically, it doesn’t make any sense to propose that our spontaneous fear reactions have once been much more useful than they would be today. This is a myth created by a sociobiological interpretation of Darwinism, interpretation that is false, and not based on any scientific evidence at all. I hope that in the future, absolutely outstanding meditation experts such as Tara Brach and Rick Hanson will stop mentioning this myth.
My fear comes and go. I pay attention to it when I feel the cold in my shaky hands and my entire body temperature’s changing, as well as the heart beats become faster, and my lifestyle changes overtime. I feel less confident or secure in my relationships because of uncertainty, and losing the tracking of the reality. This is the only thing that has been consistent, so far. I have been stepping ups in my walks that helps me to feel a daily accomplishment and relax, and get my mind of my worries; listening to music, and finding a safe retreat for calming. Some positive affirmation also helps, and mindfulness.
Virginia Beck, NP, writer, poet, and Trager® Practitioner (retired)says
I have been teaching Malama Birth Training for over 40 years…and learned long ago that we are all safe in the moment. I share with folks the innate, soft wired, genetically encoded ability to BE in any moment. Breathwork has always been the way we return to the eternally changing whirlpool of energies that we call “US”.
I share enough biophysiology in tiny, delightful stories, to remind them that we are all safe in this moment now. We have all arrived here, Now.
What will we do with this one, precious moment of aliveness? Are we safe now? And how can we remind ourselves to stay Present for the greatest adventure of our lives…Being.
i freed myself from chronic anxiety and depression by using metta meditation. i started visualising anxiety and depression as entities that came and visited me whether i liked it or not. so i began welcoming them as friends. i became childlike and would talk to them, i would tell them ..the door of my heart is open to you and you may stay as long as you like. i want to learn from you.
so by sending them loving kindness……i learnt a valuable lesson. fighting either or both just gave them the energy to keep controlling me. by being kind and accepting to both of them…….i guess they got bored and stoppped coming to visit.
i am open to the fact that either or both might return………..i now know what to do 🙂
Feel the fear and do it anyway ..That’s what got me back into karaoke it was only hard the first time and then I felt comfortable
I learned a lot from you thank you very much I’m gonna try to identify the fear in my body and breathe into it I like that see you next time thanks 1 million
I need to come to a complete stop in order to face fear. Physically, I need to stop moving. Mentally, I need to stop spinning in thoughts & to remind myself that I’m strong enough to face my fears. The time it takes for a slow in-breath & out breath is enough to accomplish this. Then, when I am really feeling that particular fear, I usually cry. I instantly feel more whole. And then I can move on to tell the fear gently – it’s OK that you’re here; I understand why you are here. Thank you. Let it be. When I can follow the entire sequence without getting distracted, I end up feeling energized & peaceful, if not downright happy!
This is Gold. The Fearless Heart will save so many of us from our conditioned reactions, so that we can live with more ease. And every time we experience fear, that momentary reactivity to a perceived threat (which will visit us from time to time because we have a body), we know, “I’m OK.”
The more we do it, and the more it becomes our go to mantra, the shorter amount of time it takes to get there, to the non reactive state of being. To our True Self. Thank you!
Support, someone helping and encouraging me to take action and to share the experience of getting through it.
Taking a few deep belly breaths before I have to face the fear,
Fear shows itself as insecurities and self doubt. Racing obsessive thinking about what ifs and I can’t… when I am aware that the spinning thoughts are happening, I try to stop, to breathe and to tell myself…yes this is fear. These thoughts scare me but they do not serve me. I need to be open to this situation. I need to move forward …it is the right thing to do. The fear response would be to avoid and hide.
Knowing that the problem I’m facing will be resolved when I face it and resolve it.
Muy interesante. me deja claro que estamos educados a evadir nuestras emociones “negativas”, como el miedo, ser valientes y no evadirlas nos puede llevar a un lugar de paz incluso en medio de esas emociones porque no nos tenemos que defender de ellas, podemos convivir con ellas sin querer negarlas.
Spirituality. Belief in a Divine Order (God). I lived in fear from 16 to 54 and massive confusion. Had definite reason to be fearful, even threats on my life from ex and second ex was told from counseling very narcissistic. Was so controlled by my fear and confusion. As said, lived in fight and flight. Was not until I found God that I lost my fear and been working on clearing the confusion of a personality that I had no idea existed…but fits what have read from counselors to a “T”. Finding God, I lost fear. Still fearful at times, but regroup and ground self.
Breathing and observing the narrative
I always enjoy watching you and listening to the way you express even material that I am familiar with. It is truly amazing how correct breathing regulates and focuses us. I like the 7/11 breathing approach. It is easy to remember and works like qa charm.
Writing my worries in a journal and then writting the worst case scenario helps me to deal with the real worries
Focusing on breathing or on the inner body aliveness or feeling feet rooted.
I have yet to find a way to deal with fear. I alternate between avoidance / numbness and frantic, detailed game plans that rarely come to fruition. I’ve been trying to practice meditation and it does help calm me, however I can’t seem to stick with it long term.
Dear Tara,
You are helping me so much to face my fears & anxiety by listening to your talks, guided meditations and becoming more mindful. I am starting to let go, rest into and open to my fears/anxiety instead of clutching and tightening and becoming even more fearful. I am now back into a daily meditation practice. Your book, “True Refuge” is also extremely helpful.
I so appreciate you and your work!!
Blessings, Karen C.
Having a close friend to talk through bad times. Someone who has had hard times herself, who is willing to listen again and again, until I feel understood.
Meditation is essential to help regulate physical symptoms that can propel anxiety-based rumination. The mind-body connection is so powerful.
Knowledge and understanding of the fear process, provided by teachers like you, helps create some distance between the emotion of fear and my actual true nature, basic goodness.
Leaning Hebbs law helped me to understand how I can create a daily pattern of fear, by focusing to much attention on it.
The u derstandi g of Samskara helped too.
Thank you for shari g your time and knowledge ❤️
Safety: feeling safe in a relationship, connected to people, feeling safe in my body, building up resilience and agency.
One of the ways that I find gives me deep roots of stability is embodying ( that is a journey as we know) the “knowledge” that I am eternal; that this life is a life of learning, that each event is something I attract to me to learn. So each time fear comes up – it is an opportunity to embrace and release the limitations of the “small self’s” beliefs, physical sensations , monkey mind chatter associated with fear and ground/expand into the larger context/frame of the “higher” self; eternal self; deeply grounded self.
What has helped me in some situations is to think [out loud] or write down the results in the worst case of the situation. Then consider the likelihood that would happen. And if the worst happened, what would I do/how would I respond. Then repeat this “what’s the worst that could happen,” likelihood, and response exercise.
When the environment feels safe enough to be curious observer
Remembering to trust in the universe
Breathing to feel oneness
Visualizing the body transposing into light
Support from friends and family, mindful breathing and recalling the sense of liberation experienced after facing a fear rather than running away.
Thank you so much!
You described me exactly. I had tears in my eyes as I listened to you. I have always felt inferior to everyone. I think of myself as dumb, so I have always had fear in school, job interviews, and performance on the job. I always I felt a burden to my parents and siblings. My husband died in August 2018. We have an a child with autism. I am having a hard time finding someone that will hire me. I am broke. Now, my dad is sick with cancer. I am deep fear of my future. I am a broken person and deeply depressed. I do not face fear. I am paralyzed from it.
My habitual reactiin is to freeze.
It is awfull, especially when my thought get entangled or even on physical level when I feel tightness in my body mooving in a rigid way. All goes back to my relationship with my father.
I am 60 this year, my father is not here over 18 years. I have gone through long individual and group therapies.
It helps a lot when I take initiative despite feeling fear.
I do practice accepting, aknowledging, fear.
Physiotherapy
Works a charm , is legit and palatable to even the hardest nut to crack!! That’s in a nutshell – my funding logo
Fear can often be the result of a lack of self-confidence – not trusting in one’s own abilities. Building a strong sense of one’s self and believing in one’s “Buddha Nature” is most helpful in developing fearlessness.
Hello,
Thank you for your message. At the moment I’m exploring other options in my life and leaving my employment where I’ve been for last ten plus years.
What helps me face fear, is to use mindfulness. When working with a client, I like to use many techniques, one that I rely on is acceptance theory and also providing a platform for talking therapies, mindfulness, EMDR and CBT.
Looking forward to your next presentation.
Kind regards,
Adam.
I try to be mindful enough to immediately stop fear by returning to present moment which I accomplish by mindful deep breaths, with a whistling pursed mouth exhale to increase the length of the exhale and fully empty my lungs before inhaling again.
Taking a deep breath, becoming centered within. Knowing everything is temporary and whatever I fear at this moment shall also pass. Hoping to gain wisdom and strength from the experience that I fear, enabling me to move on a stronger person.
Plan, prepare & do it
Being seen and heard. Learning that you can release the fear, and that it doesn’t have to control you. Some of the most powerful tools I have come across and use are Energy Psychology including EFT and Tapas Acupressure Technique TAT.
Thank you so much for this lesson. It continues to validate what I have been learning. I have incorporated a daily practice of meditation in my life after
facing challenges over the last decade. It definitely has helped. It has given me
a place to go and rest with my thoughts and helps me understand.
I am so grateful for those like you, who bring your knowledge forward for those
of us who recognize our need for it and have the willingness to take care of our
well being. It feels like returning to our true self and appreciating our greatness
rather than our fears.
I recently heard the term “Emotional Home” and the words just resonated – something started to come together …..
Would you like some tea? Water? ( : Please make yourself comfortable…. you are wanted
Then listening deeply, until fear has nothing left to say…..
Acknowledging and thanking them for their sharing offering sincere greatfulness, support, encouragement
Knowing I’m not alone in having fear. Noticing my thoughts and feelings. Inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh, putting my arms around it, hugging it, like a helpless baby. Thanks for all your teachings Tara.
Thank you, your presentation is intriguing. I look forward to the next segments!
I find that gratitude practice is so beneficial to my life and well-being. It brings peace and attracts more to be thankful for.
Just doing the thing I fear — talking to prospects . But most of the time I walk away from an opportunity without saying anything. I am looking forward to mindfulness in facing my fear.
I LOOK FORWARD TO PART II
Coming back to my body helps me face fear
For me the most important thing is to become aware that what I am feeling is fear and it is especially during busy days. But once I allow myself a break from running around pretending I am ok, it is belly breathing, trying to locate the fear in my body, feeling it there and breathing into it. If the fear is too big for me to manage, it is fast walking or jogging and after that some yin joga positions. Thank you.
I’m still getting there. Day at a time so far. The journey has been long but I’ve learnt so many things along the way. Still learning. The comments here are great, and this video clip is fantastic. Thank you for creating it.
Many thanks
Melanie
Like others below, what helps me to face fear is metta meditation. Fear triggers horrible migraines, in my case, and meditation helped me to feel a crisis coming much earlier than before. Then, once I feel that my breath is becoming shallow, my mind racing with anxious thoughts, and a panic attack might follow, I start breathing in counting one-two, and breathing out counting one-two-three-four, all while sending myself and others love, and temporarily giving up all striving (including the strong desire to NOT be in a pre-panic attack moment). Doing so has reduced the frequency of my migraines enormously, but I feel that I can still go much further, when it comes to anxiety reduction. So I’m very much looking forward to this course!
That being said, there do is one hypothesis in this first video that imho is highly probable to be false. It’s the idea that somehow, our brains would have been perfect/optimal some thousands of years ago, when fear reactions would have been “rational” and good, as the kind of threats that human beings faced at the time would have required the spontaneous functioning of our brain, in terms of fear management.
This hypothesis has been deduced from an incorrect interpretation of Darwinism, based on the notion that all species living today are living today exactly as they are because in the past, their DNA/bodies/… were perfectly adapted to past circumstances.
If you read Darwin, you cannot but observe that that’s not at all what he claimed or has proven to be true. Instead, he wrote that WHEN two competing species start to see their common natural habitat changing, it’s the species that is best adapted to that NEW environment that will have most chances to survive.
That means that:
1. the selection ONLY happens on the trait that has to do with the one, very particular change in environment
2. other traits will persist, even though they are not optimally adapted to the old nor new environment, as long as there is no very strong “stress” on those traits.
Conclusion: nothing guarantees that our amygdala and their FFF reactions were once better suited for survival of the human species than today. They may have easily caused as many irrational, counter-productive behaviors back then as they do today. In other words, they may have made human beings get stuck in panic attacks about lions even when there are no lions around at all …
Survival of the fittest does NOT mean that the species who survive are perfectly adapted to their environment. It only means that WHEN by chance selection on one specific trait arises, the species with mutants who can cope better with the new environmental factor, will have more chances to survive than the species who don’t. And there’s no scientific proof at all showing that in a distant past, an untrained (= low EQ) human brain would have been better adapted to survival in for instance a jungle than it is in a 21st century big city.
Quite on the contrary: as average life expectancy more than doubled today, compared to most of humankind’s history, it might even be more reasonable to suppose that our brains are more adapted to today’s environment than they were to natural conditions thousands of years ago …
Conclusion: scientifically, it doesn’t make any sense to propose that our spontaneous fear reactions have once been much more useful than they would be today. This is a myth created by a sociobiological interpretation of Darwinism, interpretation that is false, and not based on any scientific evidence at all. I hope that in the future, absolutely outstanding meditation experts such as Tara Brach and Rick Hanson will stop mentioning this myth.
clear, concise, evidence-informed, and compassionate advice
My fear comes and go. I pay attention to it when I feel the cold in my shaky hands and my entire body temperature’s changing, as well as the heart beats become faster, and my lifestyle changes overtime. I feel less confident or secure in my relationships because of uncertainty, and losing the tracking of the reality. This is the only thing that has been consistent, so far. I have been stepping ups in my walks that helps me to feel a daily accomplishment and relax, and get my mind of my worries; listening to music, and finding a safe retreat for calming. Some positive affirmation also helps, and mindfulness.
Talking to self or others, writing things down, knowledge, God, praying, reading Bible, learning, facing fear when possible
Meditation and prayer helps me face fear. Your reinforcement of the acceptance of fear really resonates. Thank you Tara
I have been teaching Malama Birth Training for over 40 years…and learned long ago that we are all safe in the moment. I share with folks the innate, soft wired, genetically encoded ability to BE in any moment. Breathwork has always been the way we return to the eternally changing whirlpool of energies that we call “US”.
I share enough biophysiology in tiny, delightful stories, to remind them that we are all safe in this moment now. We have all arrived here, Now.
What will we do with this one, precious moment of aliveness? Are we safe now? And how can we remind ourselves to stay Present for the greatest adventure of our lives…Being.
Aloha, and sweet breaths to you.
i freed myself from chronic anxiety and depression by using metta meditation. i started visualising anxiety and depression as entities that came and visited me whether i liked it or not. so i began welcoming them as friends. i became childlike and would talk to them, i would tell them ..the door of my heart is open to you and you may stay as long as you like. i want to learn from you.
so by sending them loving kindness……i learnt a valuable lesson. fighting either or both just gave them the energy to keep controlling me. by being kind and accepting to both of them…….i guess they got bored and stoppped coming to visit.
i am open to the fact that either or both might return………..i now know what to do 🙂
Feel the fear and do it anyway ..That’s what got me back into karaoke it was only hard the first time and then I felt comfortable
I learned a lot from you thank you very much I’m gonna try to identify the fear in my body and breathe into it I like that see you next time thanks 1 million
I need to come to a complete stop in order to face fear. Physically, I need to stop moving. Mentally, I need to stop spinning in thoughts & to remind myself that I’m strong enough to face my fears. The time it takes for a slow in-breath & out breath is enough to accomplish this. Then, when I am really feeling that particular fear, I usually cry. I instantly feel more whole. And then I can move on to tell the fear gently – it’s OK that you’re here; I understand why you are here. Thank you. Let it be. When I can follow the entire sequence without getting distracted, I end up feeling energized & peaceful, if not downright happy!