by Connie Habash | Feb 27, 2021 | Anxiety, Being, Depression, Doing, Presence, Thoughts
Many of us – especially through the pandemic – struggle with upsetting emotions and don’t know what to do about it. Normally, we might reach out to a friend or spend time with a family member to feel supported. But even before we were bound to our homes or kept physically-distanced, we may have been too busy to connect with them. Our devices have taken over for much of the time we would be spending face to face with people we care about. This may leave us feeling disconnected from the world, depressed, and anxious.
There are many ways, however, that we can release these feelings, shift our mindset, and increase our sense of happiness and satisfaction with life, even while sheltered in place. The most powerful that I have found – and the simplest – is practicing Presence.
Believing Our Thoughts
Recently, I was working with a client who was struggling with anxiety. She had a fear about what other people might think of her. It’s a very common experience that you might be able to relate to. She was also feeling very alone, and as a result, a bit down.
What she discovered as we journeyed through the session was that she spent a lot of time imagining the worst, thinking about all the awful things that other people might judge about her, all her shortcomings, etc. Yet when she reality-checked those thoughts – were they true? Did she know that those people were thinking about her at all? She recognized that they had no basis in reality. But when she repeated those thoughts over and over, and believed them, she spiraled down into worry and sadness.
Shifting from Thoughts to the Here and Now
Introducing the practice of presence created a palpable change for her. Over several minutes, shifting her attention from the thoughts to the physical sensations of her emotions, she discovered that the emotions would release. She was left with a feeling of greater ease and relaxation. It wasn’t from trying to get rid of the thoughts; it was from shifting her attention to the here and now, palpable experience through her senses.
We’ve heard of mindfulness practices; presence is similar. By becoming present, we stop for a moment, notice what is happening, and let go of the need to think. Thinking keeps us in the world of thought, spun by the mind. Thoughts pull us out of presence – and often into mindsets that create agitation and upset.
Thinking vs. Being
So in practicing presence, we do our best (albeit imperfectly) to let go of thinking and reorient ourselves to what is happening right here in the moment. We fully give ourselves to whatever we see, hear, feel, touch, or taste, and allow it to touch us. Presence helps shift us out of constant doing and thinking into Being, which is our true nature.
When we’re fully present with our breath, the sound of the leaves blowing in the wind, the taste of morning coffee, or our steps on the pavement as we walk to our car, we receive a break from the demands of life and spaciousness opens within us. In that calm quietness that comes from letting go of thoughts and focusing on the present, we can feel a deeper connection to ourselves, the world around us, and the Divine.
Presence is a Practice
This practice of presence is so very simple in concept, and yet simple doesn’t mean easy! When we practice mindfulness in the moment, one of the first things we notice is everything that gets in the way of being present. Over and over, the mind gets triggered into thoughts that lead to emotions, and those can trigger many more thoughts that take us far away from being right here, right now. It’s an ingrained tendency to get caught up in thought.
So it’s important to be patient with yourself when learning to practice presence. It takes some time and effort to change those tendencies. And it’s a practice – we aren’t expected to do it perfectly.
Give It a Try
It is much easier to learn presence from someone who has walked the territory. But you can still practice on your own. When you notice thoughts arising, shift your attention back to your senses; what is happening here right now? What do you feel in your body? What do you notice around you? If a strong emotion arises, give yourself permission to feel it in the body, but try your best to let go of thoughts and stories about the emotion. Experience it as it is – a sensation moving through you, like a wave.
This is a simple and short introduction to presence… and I will share more about presence with you in coming posts from my book, Awakening from Anxiety. Stay tuned! Meanwhile, give presence a try. Share here any questions, and what challenges you have from “thinking”. Together, we can shift out of the mental agitation into more joyful, peaceful, fulfilled lives.
by Connie Habash | May 1, 2020 | Articles, Being, Doing, Freedom, Nothingness, Presence
It’s in nothing, not in doing something, that we find true freedom. The freedom of Being.
As I write this blog, I’m ending week 7. You may think I’m referring to the corona virus shelter-in-place, but I’m actually referring to something else: my journey through hyperthyroidism, which has incidentally overlapped, for better or worse, with the global pandemic.
It’s been a humbling experience. As a yoga teacher, I’ve been quite attached to my state of fitness. Within a few weeks, I went from my regular cardio workouts, weight lifting, and my yoga practice to stopping on each step of our stairs to slow my heart rate down. I couldn’t walk more than the length of the house without triggering heart palpitations, and I had to rise very slowly from bed. At one point, I couldn’t even do the most gentle of seated yoga poses.
My work and family life have suffered, too. Unable to cook or clean for a while, I needed to rely on my husband and daughter to pick up the slack. No more could I sit down and play a game with the family, and even a short walk through the neighborhood together was out of the question. I let go of control, and also released my attachments to the state of the home, doing things with the family, and my personal physical appearance.
During the worst part, I had to cancel all my client sessions. In fact, I even had to cancel one in the middle of it, because I couldn’t think clearly. All my events – even the online ones – were wiped off my schedule, if temporarily.
It has been a lesson of surrender into the nothingness.
For that’s pretty much how I felt – like nothing. I was used to making a difference, doing something that mattered to others. Now, I was faced with being nothing, as if I were irrelevant now that I was ill.
Most of my life – certainly my adult life – I’ve based my sense of self on doing. I was capable. I could succeed in school, and I could create my work. If I needed more income, I could offer more classes, workshops, or expand my counseling offerings. I could write more, do more events, speak more places… always doing more, more, more.
Sure, I’d stop and be present. It’s a hallmark of my spiritual practice and what I teach. But I didn’t stay there. It was a breathing point, a place that I could have a break. A break between all of my doings that kept my sense of Who I Am established.
All of that broke down over the last 7 weeks. Slowly, everything that I defined myself by was stripped away. Good enough mom? Now I can’t help my daughter or cook a meal for the family. Therapist? I had to clear my calendar of client sessions. Writer? I couldn’t put together a sentence. Speaker? Teacher? No way! Nothing profound was coming out of my mouth, and I was mostly filled with fear. The fear of watching everything you defined yourself by dissolve in front of you.
One night, when I was up for hours once again, unable to sleep, it occurred to me that I couldn’t hang on. I had to let it all go. I didn’t know for how long. But I needed to embrace the nothingness.
It’s vast. It’s scary. I traveled through the fear of dying as well as the fear of living. Because living is a risk. We all risk, every day, stepping into the world. I’m not talking about corona virus – that has just amplified our physical risk. But I mean the vulnerability of being ourselves. Stepping out and being who we are. Sharing what we have with the world. But sometimes, just being in the world.
Being had to be enough. I needed to learn that my beingness – out of that nothingness – was sufficient. In fact, it was Who I Am.
All the doings are like whirlwinds, like the hurricane swirling around that calm, quiet, clear center. That’s Who I Am. In silence and presence, without any doings, is the I AM.
The hurricane couldn’t exist without its center. I had to take this journey to find my center, and stay there. Nothing is the foundation of the Universe. It’s only because of the nothingness that something can arise. Otherwise, we wouldn’t know it as something, as a doing. We must have the non-doing, the being, the nothingness as the foundation.
I needed this time to let go of the flurry of winds, the untamed doing in my life, to find the being of my Self again. Still, my heart begins to pound when I am caught up once again in the doing; my rapid, run-around-on-rocket-fuel doing to try to be that “something” I believe I am.
This illness returned me to Presence; to simply being in this moment. Nothing, without doing. In this nothingness, I could be whatever I was in the moment. No expectations to live up to.
What I found as I allowed this process to unfold, to embrace that I was becoming nothing, is that everything flowed. When my body was ready to see clients, they were there, and even more showed up unexpectedly. People contacted me to be included in their projects. The more I aligned with my nothingness and allowed myself to be, the more I opened to allow the flow – and it showed up. Sometimes, nothing happened; other times, things to do showed up. Either way, I was still the I AM, still the unchanging nothing that was peaceful and more than enough.
Now, I spend time each day sitting in the sun, listening to the birds, as I did before – but now, I sit as nothing. I smile as I write this. It fills me more than all the doings.
What freedom in nothing, in allowing myself to be and knowing, trusting, that nothing is sufficient. More than sufficient; it is the fullness of All That Is. It’s a relief and a joy.
Allow nothing to be here right now for you, and open to the freedom of being.
Many of us – especially through the pandemic – struggle with upsetting emotions and don’t know what to do about it. Normally, we might reach out to a friend or spend time with a family member to feel supported. But even before we were bound to our homes or kept physically-distanced, we may have been too busy to connect with them. Our devices have taken over for much of the time we would be spending face to face with people we care about. This may leave us feeling disconnected from the world, depressed, and anxious.
It’s in nothing, not in doing something, that we find true freedom. The freedom of Being.
