​Fear-Less

​What is Fear? Fear is our emotional or physical response to a threat, either real or imagined. Sometimes fear is palpable and obvious, other times it is beneath the surface and hard to pinpoint or even notice. For example, often when there is a lot of anger we think that anger is what is affecting us, but often there is fear underneath this and it is the fear that needs to be addressed to clear the anger.
 
Fear is corrosive for our bodies. Fear relates to the Kidneys in Chinese Medicine. Fear activates the adrenal glands that sit atop of the kidneys, and these glands release hormones and neurotransmitters that help us respond accordingly, getting ready to either run or fight to save ourselves, triggering our fight or flight reflex. This response is deep, primal and ancient and there for a very good reason. Fear reduces all bodily activities that are not required for this response, digestion is affected, our gastrointestinal system is put into a state of limbo so that all resources can be directed to our muscles, heart and lungs, ready to take immediate action.
 
So much of our immune response lies within the gut, a whopping 70-80% of immune cells are located in the gut. We need our guts to be working in optimal order to be able to fully activate our immune response. We need to be able to switch off this constant fear state, and move from fight or flight, back into rest and digest mode.
 
There was a time in my life when I was living in a very fearful state, my life and those of others was at risk, and I had to manage my response very carefully in order to stay safe. While I was able to this it didn’t reduce the threat. One day my father said the following words to me, “you can’t live in fear forever”. And I realised I needed to become brave and I began to imagine a life that one day would be very different from the one I had. And every day I took a step in that direction. And then one day I arrived.
 
Every day we have a choice, to stay trapped, dis-abled and living in fear, or to take back our power and choose a better life.
Do what you can to make every day better for yourself, turn off negative media, surround yourself with positive people, watch positive, funny movies, talk to people who make you laugh and give you great ideas and inspire you. Do you what you need to do to feel safe. Your life is yours to live, and your choices are your own, respect the choices of others, we are all working with our own set of beliefs, values and experiences. It is good that we are all different. If we can find harmony with each other and with nature then we will be able to live safely, wisely and symbiotically without the need for constant Fear.
Inhale, Exhale. You’ve got this.