Living Between Past and Future
We are either angry about the past or anxious about the future. When we feel fear or anxiety, we can feel it in our body – an intense sensation of trembling, shaky breath, a tendency to hold on to something, a feeling that the ground below our feet is loose. Insecurity, anxiety, and fear are shades of the same colour. You can say one is light grey, another is medium, and the third one is dark grey.
Anxiety is a machine that produces toxic air inside of you, toxic vibration—and the antidote is meditation. With meditation, you can tap the source of creativity and joy – the source of all energy. That is why when you start meditating, there is no fear in life. Fear simply goes away.
What Does Anxiety Feel Like in the Body?
If you notice, when you experience fear, there is a feeling of contraction within; a void, a sense of non-belongingness gets created. You can feel an intense sensation throughout the body, but it’s more intense in the chest area.
Love, fear, and hatred are not different energies but different manifestations of the same energy. That is why, irrespective of whether you feel love, hatred, or fear, the sensation is in the same area, that is, between your navel and your heart.
One Energy: Fear, Love, Hate
You can say fear is love standing upside down. When there is love, there is no fear. And when there is fear, there is no love. They cannot co-exist at the same time.
You must have observed that a person who harbours intense love or hatred does not fear anything. For example, terrorists have an intense love (albeit a distorted form of love) for their cause. They also have intense hatred. So they have no fear.
Children have total love, so they have no fear or hatred.
Origin of Fear
Now, when does the fear develop? Very young kids don’t have fear. But as they grow older, they develop fear.
Fear is related directly to the ego. The ego is simply a boundary. I am somebody, a separation from the universal existence – that is the ego. A compartment. Actually, an illusory compartment that is created by ourselves in the infinite field of existence.
As the ego develops, the fear also develops. Fear is an intense sense of isolation.
Now we can connect this sensation, which is so intense, with a particular event or a particular thing. This is where we perpetuate it.
Suppose we think that the fear is because of the heights. Then we are anchoring this sensation or linking it with a particular situation. Now, trying to get rid of the situation does not eliminate the fear.
There is only one thing that can eliminate fear. That is awareness. And that comes from meditation.
How Meditation Eliminates Fear and Anxiety
In our day-to-day activities, the mind gathers a lot of impressions, anxieties, and tension. And these don’t allow you to be happy. They block our intuition, they block our joy. The impressions stain the mind, and it causes a lot of psychosomatic problems.
Neither at school nor at home are we taught how to handle negative emotions. We teach dental hygiene but forget to teach mental hygiene. Meditation is mental hygiene.
Fear does not go away by just talking or advising. We need to learn some breathing techniques and meditation to get rid of the fear and anxiety and calm the mind.
Meditation is the skill to move the mind from a state of chaos to a state of bliss, from restlessness to deep restfulness, and to tap into the source of intuition. Apart from benefiting physical health, meditation improves concentration and helps one be in the present moment.
When the mind is calm, we are able to perceive things better. When the mind is disturbed, our perception is also disturbed. And that leads to negative emotions like anxiety and fear.
Scientists have done a lot of research on meditation. Scientists say that if everyone meditates for 20 minutes continuously for two months, the structure of the brain changes. Is is said that the grey matter in the brain increases. [1]
Anxiety and Feverishness
If you want something too much, then you start thinking a lot about it. Feverishness comes up in your system. Feverishness is definitely not a nice thing to have. And the reason you become feverish is that there is an anxiety or uncertainty inside of you that you may not get it.
It’s just like someone is cooking and they become too nervous, and they start putting more salt in the soup, and then the soup becomes unpalatable. The more feverish you become, the more you will spoil the broth.
That’s where meditation helps a lot. When you meditate, you calm down, and then you want something, you sow the seed with no feverishness, then it’s going to give fruit. It will happen.
Relaxing through meditation and breathing exercises can calm down your feverishness and let you focus on your goal and achieve it.
Sudarshan Kriya has demonstrated increases in psychological resilience – the ability to bounce back from challenges. In one study, newcomers to Sudarshan Kriya showed a significant rise in resilience scores within a month of practice. Participants also report feeling “calm yet energized” after Sudarshan Kriya, as the technique helps eliminate negative emotions and anxiety. [2]
While Sudarshan Kriya and meditation work at the root of fear, there are also simple ways to support yourself in moments when anxiety feels overwhelming.
5 Other Techniques to Calm Fear and Anxiety
Deep Breathing for Immediate Relief
If you feel some stiffness or anxiety coming up in you, take a deep breath, hold the breath for a while, and then let go. As you breathe out, relax your whole body. Do this four or five times.
Becoming aware of the space around the body and the air around the body also helps in relaxation.
Ujjayi Breathing
Fear is felt in the heart. When you do Ujjayi breath for a few minutes, you see all those knots in the heart region open up, and then the fear disappears.
You can learn more about Ujjayi breathing here.
Invoking Valor and Courage
If you are finding it hard to have faith, then there is another option. Invoke the valour in you.
Tell yourself, “Come what may, I will face it, I will handle it. I have the power to handle it”. Know that you are never given a problem that you cannot handle. When you invoke this energy, this challenge in you, fear vanishes.
Surrender, Prayer, and Trust
Know that there is a higher power that loves you dearly, and it will never let you down. This faith will pull you through any tough situations. When you feel you are at a stage where you do not feel like doing anything and you feel totally hopeless, that’s when you pray.
Know you are not alone. There is a higher power that is helping you, protecting you, and guiding you by hand. Have faith in that.
Pray and surrender your whole being to the divine. An intense cry to the divine will make all the difference. There is a greater power. What you cannot do by your effort, you can do by prayer.
Have that confidence in your higher self or trust that there is something that has helped you in the past and will help you again.
Flipping Fear into Love
Fear is just love standing upside down. Love, fear, and hatred are not different energies. It is three different forms of one single energy. That’s why when you feel love, the sensation again is in the same chest area. When there is love, there is no fear. When there is fear, there is no love. When you become aware of the fear, get ready to go through it intensely. Just accept it.
You’ll find that fear flips over and becomes love.
When Anxiety Persists Despite Understanding
If you understand all this intellectual stuff and still anxiety comes, then what can you do?
Sadhana (Spiritual Practices) – Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and meditation can help you overcome difficult situations in life.
Research in patients with anxiety disorders shows that Sudarshan Kriya improves biological markers of anxiety. A 2017 study found that Sudarshan Kriya practitioners with anxiety/ depression had significantly better heart rate variability and cardiac autonomic control (a sign of reduced anxiety and arousal) after undergoing the breathing program.[3]
This was seen practically after the giant tsunami in 2006. People who could not sleep, who could not even see the ocean, came out of fear and anxiety through pranayama, meditation, and Sudarshan Kriya. In a matter of two days, fishermen said, “Give us our boats – we want to go out into the ocean.”
Overcoming Common Challenges to Meditation
Some people say that for them it’s hard to meditate because they have the idea that they have to be completely empty with no emotions. But the best attitude is just to take them as a thought and ignore them.
If you feel too restless, you can shake your hands a little bit, or do some exercise, and then sit and let go.
Breathing exercises like Sudarshan Kriya are the transition. Sudarshan Kriya reduces your anxiety [4] and takes you from an active mind to a very serene, calm, and stable mind. Then meditation happens in a very natural way.
Fear’s Antidote: Meditation
Meditation sharpens the mind through focus and expands the mind through relaxation. It brings you a lot of energy, makes you more humorous, and helps turn conflicting situations into peaceful and joyous occasions.
Meditation is not limited to a certain type of person. Everyone who wants to be happy, creative, and free from anxiety can benefit from meditation.
The world is going through tremendous uncertainty, fear, and tension due to the wars and economic turbulence. The spiritual strength that we can get by meditating, by going deep within ourselves, can help us and guard us from all the pain, any that’s going around in our society, in our world.
Let us join to meditate. Let’s join to focus our attention on something positive, something creative in these coming days on a regular basis, on a routine basis.
Meditation will enable us to stand up to the challenges the world is facing today.
Practice this 20 Minute Meditation for Anxiety Relief
Recommendations to Move from Fear to Love
Guided Meditation To Overcome Fear and Anxiety
Happiness Program With Sudarshan Kriya
Sahaj Samadhi Dhyana Meditation
References
[1] (Tang et. al. 2020) Gray Matter Changes With Meditation
[2] (Agarwal et. al. 2016) Scholars Journal of Applied Medical Sciences
[3] (Zope et. al. 2013) Sudarshan Kriya: breathing for health
[4] (Korkmaz et. al. 2024) Sudarshan Kriya Yoga Breathing and a Meditation Program for Burnout
Frequently Asked Questions
Meditation can become the best alternative way of treatment for depression, anxiety, OCD and attention-deficiency syndrome. All this can be handled. Meditation not only relieves you of stress and strain, but it also enhances your abilities, strengthens your nervous system and mind. Not only does it help eliminate stress and tensions, releasing toxins from the body and soothing the mind, but it also makes you more capable, enhancing you in every way. If you want to be happy and healthy, you’ve got to meditate.
You can do the “Meditation for Anxiety” guided meditation on the meditation channel by Gurudev on YouTube. Another powerful meditation for anxiety is Yoga Nidra. This provides the deepest rest and calms your mind.
On the YouTube meditation channel and in the Sattva app, there are a number of meditations – from 10 minutes to 25 minutes, as is convenient for you. You will see an effect even after the first 1-2 meditations. All that you need to do is take the time, sit and relax. Think this is a mental hygiene program that you are doing. Before breakfast, you meditate for 10-20 minutes. Before lunch, you can do for dinner, and if you have not meditated, skip that lunch, dinner or breakfast.
To be consistent in meditation practice and make it part of your life forever, you need to do it at least one mandala, which is 45 days, a period of two full moons and two new moons.
