Welcome.
Today we're going to talk about something a lot of us often carry quietly and that's anxiety.
It doesn't always look like a panic attack or meltdowns.
Sometimes it's just a low-level buzzing in the background,
The tension in our jaw,
The non-stop thoughts at 2am,
The constant need to check,
To plan,
To stay in control.
Most of us are living in overdrive.
The world is a noisy place.
Expectations are high.
Rest feels like a guilty pleasure instead of a necessity.
It's no wonder that we're anxious.
We're constantly reacting,
Constantly pulled in five directions at once.
And the one thing that often feels impossible in all of this is stillness.
Stillness isn't just sitting still physically.
It's an internal pause,
A quieting,
A way of turning inwards and saying,
Okay,
What's really going on in here?
But the truth is stillness can be terrifying when we're used to anxiety running the show.
It means stopping long enough to feel what we've been trying not to feel.
It means meeting ourselves,
Not the version we show others,
But who we really are right now.
That takes courage.
Stillness isn't about silencing anxiety.
It's about creating space to listen to it without judgment.
That space is where healing can begin.
But how do we even begin to cope when anxiety feels like it's taking over?
Let's talk about something that I have found helpful and that may help you as well.
The first step is simple but powerful.
When you notice it,
Name it.
Naming it without shame.
This is anxiety.
This is fear.
This is me feeling overwhelmed.
When we name what we are feeling,
We acknowledge it and we stop running from it.
We stop making it bigger in our heads.
Naming doesn't solve everything,
But it gives us a moment of clarity and clarity gives us choices.
It may sound like a cliche,
But it works when we breathe with intention.
When we're anxious,
Our body naturally responds with our breath,
Getting shallow and fast.
Try this breath work technique.
Inhale for four,
Hold for four,
And exhale for six.
Do that a few times.
That longer exhale will tell our nervous system,
It's okay,
You are safe right now.
We're not calming ourselves by force.
We're just reminding our bodies that we don't need to be in a fight or flight all the time.
Grounding into the present moment.
Anxiety lives in the future,
In the what-ifs,
The worst case scenarios,
But stillness lives in the now.
Try a simple grounding exercise by looking around and naming five things that you can see.
Four things that you can touch.
Three things that you can hear.
Two things that you can smell.
And one thing that you can taste.
It brings us out of our heads and back into our bodies.
Our present senses,
Right here,
Right now.
Making stillness part of our rhythm and not just a rescue.
Stillness doesn't have to be long or dramatic.
It can be five minutes in the car with no music.
A slow walk without a podcast in your ear.
A moment in the shower where you just breathe instead of mentally drafting emails.
It's not about doing it perfectly.
It's about making space.
Tiny spaces where anxiety doesn't get to leave.
Each small step that we take can make a cumulative difference.
Anxiety feeds on isolation,
On silence,
And on shame.
What we can do for this is to talk about it and let it out.
Because when we speak about it to a friend,
A therapist,
Even to a voice memo,
We can release some of its power.
If,
Like me,
You enjoy writing,
Journaling your thoughts can help you release your fears.
We don't have to carry it all alone.
We're not meant to.
The moment we acknowledge anxiety and we say,
Hey,
I'm not okay right now,
We create a connection.
And connection is one of the most powerful antidote to anxiety.
Stillness isn't something that we achieve once and for all.
It's something we come back to over and over like a practice.
Some days we'll feel like we're moving backwards.
Other days we may not want to be moving at all.
And that is okay.
This isn't about becoming perfectly calm.
It's about becoming more honest,
More present,
And more kind with ourselves in the process.
So when anxiety shows up,
Maybe instead of pushing it away or numbing out,
We pause.
We breathe.
We check in.
We create just a little space to remember that underneath the fear,
The noise,
And the pressure,
We're still here and we're okay.
Take one moment at a time.
Thank you for listening today.
Sending you love and light.
Namaste.
