A process for meeting fear with tenderness, and allowing something wiser to emerge.
Step 1: Let the fear speak completely
Let your fear speak without judging or needing to change it, ask it what it’s scared of, and what else, what else, what else, what else until there is nothing else… and it says that is all.
Purpose: Radical compassion, witness the fear without interrupting, explaining, or trying to fix.
Step 2: Somatically feel and experience the feeling
Feeling it somatically, through breath, tears, movement or sound. E.g. Do you need to cry, if you can’t cry do you need to move, can you take the shape of the feeling. Stay with the fear/pain/sadness/anger/lonliness, pay attention to what you sense, if you can, amplify it even more, then do that, if any tears or laughter come let it, or if you need to move or stretch, do it. Touch it, breath into it. Maybe even do some breath work, I like this one: https://youtu.be/1ncXO8Dj1qU?si=z81dauzxuVTsLdAd
Purpose: To fully feel it and allow it to be expressed somatically.
Step 3: Ask what it is protecting you from? (What is the meaning of this?)
Ask the fear what it is trying to avoid, what is it protecting you from. All of our fears are protecting us from something. Wait for the wisdom.
Step 4: What it needs to feel soothed?
What would it need / what would need to be happening for this part to feel soothed? [sometimes: Nothing will soothe me. That’s ok, stay with the pain. Can I just be with you here? Can I stay while you feel this?] Allow the pain to stay and just be? Locate it in the body.
[if they can’t think: What might you do for someone who felt this? What might you say that would soothe them?]
“What might you do to soothe someone else who was feeling this way? What would you say to a friend in this much pain?”
What if the goal was to learn? To gather data? To also test out your own techniques so that you can empathise with others going through the same. Use this as an opportunity to explore what you do know is true, what is alive for you and helpful for others…