When the woman finally gets close to doing the thing she wants, anxiety shows up — a held breath, a throat block, sadness. The instinct is to make it go away. Joe gives the opposite instruction: don’t breathe it away, breathe into it and enjoy it.
“And your job isn’t to breathe it away. Your job is to breathe into it and enjoy.”
This is the crucial distinction. Breathing to get rid of anxiety treats it as an enemy and keeps you at war with your own energy. Breathing into anxiety to enjoy it changes your relationship to the same sensation, and the sensation changes in response. As she does it, her chest warms and she starts smiling almost involuntarily. The anxiety was excitement she wasn’t letting herself feel.
“If you just sit with the anxiety and breathe into it and enjoy it, it’s actually turns into something.”
Joe is careful that she not weaponize the technique. The moment she tries to use the breath to control or eliminate the feeling, she’s back in avoidance. The whole move is to welcome and enjoy the charge rather than manage it.
Related Concepts
- Fear is excitement without the breath
- Fear constricts while excitement expands — same energy, different relationship
- Anxiety is a road sign that shows you where you’re abandoning yourself
- Anxiety is constricted life force, not a problem to eliminate
- Anxiety is often repressed excitement
- Anxiety is sometimes excitement that isn’t being felt all the way
- Regulate the nervous system before you can learn from anxiety
- Saying ‘I’m excited’ while feeling it can unkink anxiety