Staying Present Will Free You

Staying present will free you.

The more I’ve lived life in the present moment, the more I’ve realized the anxiety my mind and body are accustomed to feeling.

I remember years ago in a yoga class when I realized how I didn’t have to worry about or control anything. All I had to do was breathe and listen to my body. 

After that moment, I kept going back to class (and even got certified to teach) because I craved the relief I found on the mat. 

And then I finally realized that relief didn’t have to be conditional. It didn’t have to be based on whether I went to a yoga class or did my ten-minute meditation that morning. 

I recently spent the day at the lake where I napped, read, played frisbee, and stared at the sky. It was six hours of fun with lots of appreciation of nature. 

However, out of those six hours, maybe 20% was spent in pure present-momentness. There was no reason for me to not be in the present moment for the full six hours but my mind is just wired to live in the past or in the projected future (projecting the past onto the future). 

I can say though that when I was in the state of presence, I could immediately feel everything in me relax. Even if I was already laying in the sand, there must have still been some tension my body was holding onto. 

I suddenly felt so much ease, trust and flow. I had a deep sense of knowing that all is okay. I felt so free. 

A dictionary definition of anxiety is “a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.” If you think about it, everything is uncertain. (And if it’s not uncertain, it’s actually kind of boring.)

2020 has shown us the uncertainty very clearly but even before 2020, things have always been uncertain. 

Of course my mind is going to project anxiety into my body - it hates uncertainty! What if something bad happens? What if I get hurt? What if I don’t survive? What if nothing works out for me? What if everything is just screwed? 

Moving your mind away from anxious-thinking and into the present will not secure anything for you. It’s not the insurance policy against “bad things.” 

But, somehow when you are in the present, an inherent sense of trust naturally comes up. Without any effort on your part. It is just there. 

And, I have found that when I stay in that trusting feeling, I can see more clearly. Hidden opportunities swarming around just waiting to be uncovered. 

Want to step away from anxiety spend two hours in the present? Stay tuned for Inner Voice sessions!