Fear Can Cripple You

One of my students is a wonderful, committed, massage therapist and body worker.  She helps many clients by helping them feel better and more whole.  She practices all of the appropriate methods to ground herself, clearing out her personal stuff before the bodywork so she can be a clean channel for Universal Healing Energy. She purifies the bodywork area with time-tested clearing techniques which eliminate any released negative energy after the therapy session.  In a word, she does everything that she should to keep the client's negative astral energy away from her and the environment allowing the cosmos to absorb it.

The Scream by Edvard Munch - a very famous painting depicting pure, raw anxiety and fear

The problem is, she has come to yoga classes because she can hardly move.  Her muscles seize up a the slightest wrong movement.  She is so tight in the shoulders, neck, and hips, that even the most gentle yoga movements and poses can be excruciating for her. She was a private student recently, and because of the one-on-one class I was able to dig a little deeper into her body issues.  

I told her I felt something was very wrong, because if she was doing all of the clearing practices she mentioned with her clients, there was no way she should have the near paralysis in her body.  It appeared to me that her problem was a case of "holding", or absorbing into her own body astral garbage (negative energy resulting from trauma and grief) that was crippling her.   

She agreed, stating that she holds onto the negative emotions from past experiences.  She told me she was a "control freak" and that this tendency would not allow her to let go and move on from these past issues.  I asked her what she thought was wrong.  She said "I'm afraid, I'm really, really, afraid".  Bingo!  She had simply constructed a separation between her healing work and her personal work.  You've heard the saying, "healer, heal thyself!"  Now how do we do that?

I asked her if I taught her a simple, free technique that she could do to eliminate her fear, would she be interested in learning it and practicing it.  She said "Of course".  Then I told her to meditate every day.  Her eyes got big, round as saucers, she said she used to meditate years ago, but had stopped practicing.  

I explained to her that meditation is the quickest, most effective way to eliminate fear and negative emotions, empowering us and allowing us to let go and move on with courage and acceptance.  Meditation taps us into the stillness and peace of the Divine.  This peace and stillness we experience in meditation permeates us, returning our own personal power to us. Meditation allows us to face the present moment with serenity, without the hindrance of negative mind states.

 

Meditation is much different than prayer. Prayer is a wonderful practice, but it's based on the teaching that God is separate from us and has all the power while the supplicant has none. We pray to request a little power now and then when we need it.  The thought of God as a Cosmic Bellhop comes to mind. 

 

Meditation taps us into Divinity or the Universal Power Source.   It is available to each and every one of us.  Meditation "plugs us in" to our own personal empowerment, because we are inherently powerful.  We have simply forgotton that we are.  We operate on the assumption that we are separate from the Divine.  This is not true.  The empowerment we gain through meditation eliminates the fear, anxiety, guilt - all the negative emotions that are so crippling. Meditation is like a power chord or conduit.  Plug it in!   Pay attention to God, and God will pay attention to us!  Meditation lights us up, enabling us to be free of negativity.