Overcoming Worry, Chasing Away Doubt

Energy Healing And Other Techniques
For More Peace of Mind

As I write this, our 20-year-old daughter is traveling alone in Costa Rica. I know that Costa Rica is a very safe country, and she's a level-headed, competent person, but I worry. I'd like to be that enlightened person who can just let go of things she has no control over. But what can I say -- I'm a mom, and I worry.

Most of us worry sometimes, so I thought I'd share some of the energy healing and other things I've been doing to help keep my motherly anxiety under control. They've been helping a lot. (Mostly :-)) You can use them yourself for overcoming worry, and you can teach them to and use them for clients as well.

Overcoming Worry By Being Present

Worry is an energetic state of not being present in the moment. Energetically, you've thrown yourself into an imagined future. Pulling yourself back to the present counteracts that.

There are lots of ways to do this, but it works for me to ask myself, "Are you OK right NOW?" The answer is almost always, yes. Unless I'm in an ambulance or a hospital, I'm OK at that exact second. So my world is all right in the exact present. I keep asking myself those questions over and over again until I'm back in the present moment and I feel more calm.

Of course meditation is always a great method for bringing yourself back into the present and overcoming worry, too.

Overcoming Worry and Doubt With Intentional Breathing

My old friend, 6-12 breathing, is a good way to reduce agitation and anxiety. To do it:

Breathe in through your nose to a count of six, and then breathe out through your mouth for a count of 12. Do this for a few minutes. It's a great soother for your nervous system.

You don't have to specifically breathe to the counts of 6 and 12; the mainpoint is to make the outbreath twice as long as the inbreath.

Grounding

My other old friend, grounding, is also very helpful, especially if I'm in one of those "spinning out" states of worry. To do it:

From the soles of your feet, or from your 1st chakra region, send roots down deep in to the earth. Imagine the chakras on the bottoms of your feet opening wider. Give yourself a few minutes to breathe deeply and feel your strong, deep connection to the earth.

The Sea Of Tranquility Acupressure Point

Hold the point on your sternum (breastbone) that is about four finger-widths up from the bottom of the bone. On some people there is an indentation. Sometimes it's also tender to pressure. Hold it with several fingers for a minute or so. Deeply calming and a great help in overcoming worry and relieving stress.

The Worry and Doubt Acupressure Point

On the midline of your face, between the base of your nose and your upper lip, is an acupressure point that helps with overcoming worry and doubt. Position your finger so that it is pressing into your gums, and hold firmly for a minute or so. (From acupressure teacher Michael Reed Gach.)

Reaching For A Better Thought

Thoughts are energy, and worried thoughts are like whirling little vortexes that disrupt the harmony and flow of your energy field.

Spiritual teacher Esther Hicks teaches the practice of "reaching for a better thought." To help get rid of those pesky little thought-maelstroms, overcoming worry and getting to a more positive outlook, you start with the thought that is bothering you and go from there.

For me, as an example, that would be something like, "My baby is alone in a strange country and I'm afraid something terrible is going to happen to her." (I know it's completely over the top, but that's worry for you.)

Starting from there, I reach for a better thought: "The Costa Rican people are known to be very kind and friendly, and they have an excellent health care system." I add another "better thought": "She has a friend there who's married to a Costa Rican, so I believe there's a network of people who would come to her aid if she's in real trouble."

I'm already breathing a little easier. I add, "My daughter is sensible, healthy, and has a strong constitution. She speaks Spanish. This will be one of those unforgettable, formative life lessons."

By now, I'm feeling a little more detached, in a good way. I reach for another "better" thought. "I traveled alone in Europe for 3 months when I was about her age. I was far less competent, but I lived through the experience despite a variety of close scrapes. AND that trip gave me an unshakeable belief in myself and my ability to be the driver of my own life. It'll probably be similar for her." My breath is coming freer now, and I'm feeling more /clear-headed and harmonious.

So you get the idea. Just keep replacing the worried thought with better thoughts, leading yourself out of the pit of anxiety that you've dug for yourself. It works really well as a stress reliever , and helps train you to be more positive generally.

Esther Hicks, by the way, refers to worry as "using your imagination to create a future you don't want." Brilliant.

Tonglen

As the beloved Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron describes, the practice of tonglen "dissolves the barriers in our hearts that keep us feeling separate from others, and cultivates a deep compassion for all living beings, including ourselves. . . By practicing Tonglen we connect with a . . .more open, spacious dimension of our being."

The energy of worry is closed, constricted, tight, disconnected. The Buddhist practice of tonglen opens up this claustrophobic energy and helps us regain our sense of connection.

Doing my best to follow this simple but deep practice, I breathe in awareness of my own distress, without denying it, ignoring it, or trying to change it or make it go away. I pause with the intention of transmuting it, and then breathe out (as best I can) what will bring me relief (it's not necessary to name it -- basically I breathe out healing energy). I do this for a few breath cycles. Then I expanded my focus, breathing in the distress of every mother everywhere who is worrying for her child, pausing to transmute this suffering, and breathing out (again, as best I can) what will bring them relief. Immediately, I feel better. My energy expands and brightens, and I am well into the process of overcoming worry.

Acute Stress Reliever--What To Do When A Full Melt-Down Strikes

Just when I was congratulating myself on my relative serenity, our daughter texted us that she still had a fever, after being on antibiotics for a couple of days. The antibiotics, if they were working, should have taken care of the infection she acquired after getting a severe sunburn on her legs. That spelled trouble to me. I went into meltdown mode.

While my husband texted her sensible advice, I took the advice of energy healer Donna Eden, and put my thumbs on my temples and the rest of my fingers on my "forehead bumps" -- the barely discernible bulges that most people have on either side of their forehead, about two thirds of the way up. Donna calls those the "Oh my God!" points -- the spots we instinctively put our hands on when we receive distressing news.

This is one of the best-ever anxiety relief techniques. I started to feel better almost immediately. My breathing returned to normal, my panic subsided, and I began to think clearly again.

(And our daughter got the problem taken care of.)

Chakra Work For Overcoming Worry

Worry usually has some involvement with the 1st chakra, so it's always good to work with it to help ground, restore a sense of security, and keep from spinning out.

Working with the 6th chakra is also important. Worried thinking is not clear thinking, and supporting the sixth chakra helps us to get perspective and think more clearly.

To give an analogy, a few months ago I went hiking on Mt. Rainier, our beautiful, sacred mountain in the nearby Cascade range. At sea level, where I live, there was an ugly blanket of smog, but when we got up on the Mountain, we were well above the thick haze and it was brilliant, clear and sunny. When we support our 6th chakra and move our center of energy there, it's like that. Suddenly everything seems clear, and it's as if the worry doesn't even exist. Energetically speaking, you've risen above it.

Of course, you may want to work with other chakras, too, as the circumstances suggest. And doing a complete chakra balancing is always great for raising your energetic calibration to a higher level so that the lower-vibration energy of worry is just evaporated off.

More Energy Work For Worry, Anxiety and Stress

As I've mentioned, worry can be like disruptive little whirlwinds of thought, or like a thick fog of low-vibration energy that keeps us from seeing and breathing clearly, and that generally pushes our energy down. However it presents itself, worry is a low-calibration energy that takes us out of the present, where we are most alive, vibrant, health and balanced.

Smooth The Energy Field

So in addition to working with the 1st and 6th chakras, and/or balancing the chakras as a whole, I find it good to do general smoothing and clearing of the energy field, as worry leaves the field spiky, tattered and disrupted, at least in particular areas if not all over. Celtic Weaves over the whole body are especially good at helping to restore order and harmony to the field, thereby overcoming worry.

Connect The 6th And 7th Chakras

Simultaneously holding 1-3 fingers on the forehead and crown of the head at the 6th and 7th chakras can help to up-calibrate the energy of anxiety and doubt and lift you above your fussing and fretting.

Hold The Occiput

It can also be good to just hold your hands at your occiput (the nape of your neck), or even better, have someone else do it for you. Do it for a minute or more, with you in a comfortable lying-down position. This is very comforting and helps a lot with overcoming worry.

Footwork

Working with the feet can also be good. Press the top of your feet in the space just before where the bones of the 1st and 2nd toes come together, and hold for a minute or so. This acts as an anxiety remedy by helping to bring energy down into the body. Worry is a thought-energy phenomenon, and getting it unstuck and flowing and grounding it in this way helps a lot. If you can get someone to rub your feet, this is also great for overcoming worry and doubt. Hard not to be in the present when someone rubs your feet!

Get Out in Nature

Another one of my go-to, cure-all remedies.It's one of the best anxiety relief techniques. Being outdoors in the beauty of nature always raises my calibration and brings me home to myself, dispelling the energy of stress and anxiety and overcoming doubt.

*******
The spiritual teacher Ram Dass once said (something to the effect of), "So you think you're enlightened? Go spend a week with your parents." Funny, and true. Same thing with your kids -- only they don't even have to be in the same country as you to show you where your thin spots are. Your kids are some of the best possible spiritual teachers, in my opinion, keeping' you real over and over again. Sigh.

Whatever you're concerned about, I hope you find peace.

(And just to let you know, by the time I finished this article, my daughter was home safely, with a lot of great stories to tell. -- Nancy)

---

Go from Overcoming Worry and Doubt to Self Care main page.

Go from Overcoming Worry to Shifting Your Energy.

Go to site home page.

---

---