I write semi-anonymously and I am not building a following. I am a communicator, not an originator. I am not a Buddhist, but I promote the hell out of the teachings because they are pure and true. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are a masterpiece. Even the twelve steps contain groundbreaking ideas about how a person helps himself. My job is to carry good material to you without dressing myself up as the source of it.
So when I put myself in the story, it is because the example is useful. Here is what I am working on now. I am surveying the uncharted territory of my own nervous system, how it moves, how it reacts to everything pressing on it. None of what follows is science. It is my gut feeling, for whatever that is worth.
My nervous system takes a hit when anxiety triggers stack up. They can spread across days or land all in one afternoon. Money is on my mind. My wife and I have a disagreement. I did not sleep. I am congested and cannot breathe through my nose, and a low anxiety comes off that alone. I am tired and I have not moved my body. Put all of these ordinary things on top of each other at the same time and you are looking at a collapse.
What interests me is that there is no diagnosis for it. The whole time it is happening, the observer in me is present, watching. Life has ups and downs. It is normal for a man to feel low when his father is slowly fading, when his mother falls on a sidewalk and nearly kills herself by accident. Everyone is getting older. We are lucky to be entering these chapters. They are also frightening.
Death is frightening. Ancient cultures spent thousands of years building stories to relieve themselves of that fear. We do not know when it comes for any one of us and we do not know what follows. It may be close to unbearable for a creature designed the way we are, wanting to live, taking pleasure in the moments, avoiding pain, believing itself immortal for one stage of life and then watching that belief fade.
So we build our character around the truth. We settle into the impermanence of everything, take a deep breath, and relax into the idea of an ending. All things end and then take another shape, and all of it is uncertain, and uncertainty is hard on humans. Say it out loud, because once you can see that this fear sits at the base of all the smaller fears, you stop treating your anxiety as a malfunction that needs a name. Then you can start a program that lifts you. Eating better, exercising, meditating, breathing, service work, reading and writing, caring for your family, a better presence of mind.
None of that is groundbreaking. It is obvious. The useful part is what I can tell you about getting over the obstacles on the path.
Start at night, after the day is finished, teeth brushed, everyone asleep. Sit on the side of the bed or the side of the couch. Lights off, no music, no accessories, no symbols.
First question. Where is my breathing right now? Am I holding my breath and struggling, or am I relaxed? Some nights my nose is clogged and I have to work harder, and I have to find a body position that lets gravity liberate the congested areas. If the breathing is not working, I do not force it. I do something light instead, ten push-ups on my knees. That helps almost immediately. I do not know whether it was the movement, or the rise in heart rate, or the position of my head, but it felt good, and I noticed it and saved it. So I do another set to capture it better, and this time I am more present for it.
It takes very little to feel better. The willingness is the whole act. Ten easy push-ups do not just help in the moment, they give me the urge to do ten squats after, slowly, because there is no rush in this. The point is to make contact with the breath, to feel it again for a moment, and to remind myself that I am being restored, that the congestion is clearing right now.
The longer I am alive, the more chances there are for negative self-talk to find me, and the more chances there are for the positive kind. Both are available. Both get in. So I answer the negative with the positive. The first set of thoughts I generate myself. The second set I take in by listening to the great teachers.