It has been said that fear cannot exist where there is love. But if I can’t recognize my fear, how can I intentionally choose love? Yoga and meditation teach us how to recognize our fear, give voice to it, and let love take over.
From so many gifted guides on my mat, I’ve learned that the repression of fear leads to disease. As we’ve practiced cultivating self-awareness through yoga and meditation, we’ve watched that fear rise to the surface of such quiet moments. It has its own language of mental, emotional and physical responses, a language that is personal and touches each of us deeply. Through practice, we notice and feel these responses, as we scan ourselves for variances within our state of being. This is what we teach our students. To notice, learn, and choose.
We may feel blockage, tightness, trembling, hormonal shifts, stomach uneasiness, anger or an urge to run away. These fear responses are personal to each of us, and understanding our own fear responses is the first step on a path to choosing love, the kind of love that emanates from within. Our inner light.
My practice has brought me closer to fear, and it has helped me create a language that I now understand and can use in my work. For the first time, I know my own fear response, and I appreciate it. I know that when I sit with my fear, I am one step closer to gaining emotional freedom from it.
I know now that the fear response on the mat is the same fear that arises in my work, relationships and finances. Practice has offered me clarity to see my choice of love or fear. Now, I can begin to develop the ways in which I can share this choice, from my heart, with my students.