I never actually saw it, the bear that was going to kill me. The bear that was snorting and huffing in the wet Vermont night. The bear that was pawing his way through the forgotten food bags left near the fire-pit. The bear that if I did see him, and we made eye contact, would surely rip me to shreds.
I lay paralyzed in my tent picturing his monstrous height, sharp claws, wet mouth, his presence as palpable as my friend’s body lying next to me.
“Wake up!” I whispered.
Propping herself on an elbow, she said, "What?"
“Are you crazy?!” I hissed, slamming her down. “He’s going to see you!”
“Who?” She asked.
“Listen,” I said.
Rustling food bag. Heavy breath. Near growl.
“Could be anything,” she said.
"Bear," I stated.
She looked doubtful.
"It is a bear!" I insisted with a trembling voice.
"Lets just have a look then," she suggested, gently, beginning to clue in to my panic, watching my body shake, tears roll down my cheeks.
"We can't," I whispered. "He's going to kill us. All of us."
An unaware relationship with fear causes us to overreact, writes Ethan Nichtern in his book The Road Home. Or else to freeze in paralysis, avoiding showing up to real life because fear overwhelms us into panic.
Fear is often conceived in reality and serves as a vital signal that ensures humanity's survival. This, however, was not that. This was fear without awareness. Stretched-out, blown-up, super-sized. Fear without foundation.
After all, for four years I had lived in Vermont, camping and hiking, leading teenagers on backpacking trips through the Green Mountains, and never had I run into a bear, much less any other emergency. In fact, the only bear I had ever seen was a dead one - small, young, and defenseless – laid out on the back of someone’s pick-up. I had felt nothing but a sense of great loss – love even - for such a beautiful, strong creature. Yet here I was, gripped in the claws of panic, convinced that the sound outside my tent, the one I refused to investigate, came from an animal I had no history with, no real knowledge of. How had the ease of a glorious summer day spent canoeing and camping with girlfriends turned so suddenly to this? And where was this baseless fear coming from?
Inhabiting a human nervous system, writes Nichtern, is kind of like living in a house where the doorbell and the burglar alarm make exactly the same sound.
Speaking in public. Asking someone out. Confessing the truth. Taking a test. Trying something new. We’ve all felt this burglar alarm response in our bodies, the reaction that is not rational. Our hearts race, our palms sweat, our tongues dry-up, our muscles tense. Current studies in neuroscience reveal our genetic inheritance of a primitive, reptilian brain, and of a nervous system that contains many of the same functions as those of earlier species from whom we evolved. Those species needed to be in high alert, threatened as they were by actual bear-like dangers. And so, even though our everyday dangers may be different – losing someone’s respect or facing rejection - we embody the fear in the same way.
This is not bad, not good. It just is. Whether we like to tune into and admit our fear response or not. But how do we engage with an emotion that can keep our nervous systems constantly activated, our bodies in a state of simmering stress?
First, we could do what my friend did for me. Though she had never seen me like this and was bewildered (and probably humored) by my intense physical response, she did not laugh at me, question me, demand that I listen to reason; nor she did not force me to look or even look herself. No, my friend did what any kind, patient mother would do for her scared child; she put her arms around me and held on tight until I was ready to be brave.
And if bravery is a healthy response to fear, what does it mean to be brave? What does it look like?
The essence of bravery, writes Pema Chodron in The Places that Scare Us, is to be without self-deception.
To do, essentially, what I was unwilling to do as I lay paralyzed in that tent. To be willing to take a deep breath, feel our bodies, open our eyes, and turn on the gentle flashlight of awareness. To check out what’s actually in the darkness without numbing out, denying, avoiding, or rejecting. Simple, it seems. To shine a light. To know ourselves. To be honest about who we are and the truth of our situation. But actually, taking a straight look may feel as challenging as sensing we are up against a hungry bear in the night.
The truth of my situation is that I did not want to know what was out there. I hoped that it would finally go away and in the morning I could pretend it was all a dream. But what if we could push through that initial resistence? What if we let ourselves believe, even for a second, that we are not up against a bear in the night, that what we always believed, what we lived in fear about, what we have wept over, tensed up around, refused to engage with, rejected; this fear that we built an entire aspect of our identity around was, in fact, based on a misunderstanding, a lie, a projection, or a delusion?
Might that encourage us to finally take a look, to correct ourself-deception? Maybe. Maybe not. Because even this possibility is enough to create another level of fear; after all, it is hard enough to feel the initial panic. It can be even harder to admit we were mistaken in the first place, that this panic has now hardened into habits of mind and reactions that we’d prefer to deny. Judgmentalness, stubbornness, pettiness, arrogance.
So, it's not easy to un-numb our awareness. It's also not easy to acknowledge what we see. But that’s no big deal. Easy is not for those of us training to be warriors, committed to creating within ourselves more bravery and resilience. The challenging stuff, in fact, is what we want to see. Because the more we get to know the uncomfortable, embarrassing truth, the more it loses its power over us. The more we witness and work with the reality of who we are as whole beings, the more we see how simple our basic nature is, how good at the core we are. Maybe a little lost. A little mistaken. A little delusional. But that's not who we are, not in any solid way. It is, instead, a temporary condition, able to be transformed. And once we start exploring the hard stuff, we can often trace our false assumptions back to fears we never fully acknowledged, addressed, or released.
And release the fear response we must… as I learned the night I refused to face my own. In fact, I never had to. Instead, as my friend held me close, there came suddenly from another tent a loud clap and a voice that yelled, “Shoo! Shoo! Get outta here, Raccoon!”
The lightening bolt of truth jolted me upright. Raccoon?! It never even occurred to me! But of course! And there it was, a thick-bodied, harmless menace waddling its way back into the woods. The relief that came over me was as intense as the initial shot of fear that had struck my belly, and I started laughing and then crying and then I had to go to the bathroom… like, immediately! My tent-mate was also laughing - at me and with me - as I hustled towards the trees and released the panic from my gut.
Fear, my friends, is about as physical as it gets. Not rational. Not to be explained away or compartmentalized in the brain. It is of the body and in the body and speaks to us through the body. Not only do we feel it in the gut, on the skin, in the mouth, in the muscles, and in the organs, we must release it from those places, too. Some of this purification happens through amazing organic processes. Crying, laughing, sighing, sweating, pooping. But it can also be – and I would argue, must be –released voluntarily - through healing movement, through bodywork, through breathwork, through intentional exercise.
Or what? The fear response stays stuck. It lives in our bodies and creates stress patterns, resulting in, at best, dis-ease. At worst, disease. Physical pain and discomfort – our bodies attempt to get our attention - turns to illness and chronic injury. Fear-based mental patterns harden into character, nudging us towards more serious forms of psychological and chemical imbalance.
It’s a powerful, powerful energy, fear. Not to be disrespected, shunned, rejected, or avoided. It’s also itself not to be feared. On the contrary, it is a vital teacher, and one to be honored, witnessed, and appreciated, and when it shows up, we could decide to be curious about it, grateful even for its presence, and open to the work it invites us to do in ourselves.
After all, life is unstable and electric, writes Nichtern. And when we face fear, he continues, it grounds us in our body and annihilates the pretense that we are supposed to be anywhere else. Fear destroys the naïve spiritual premise that we might “transcend” our human experience.
Fear of taxes. Fear of mud season. Fear of a longer winter. Fear of not getting things done. Fear of boredom. Fear of managing life. Fear of not being strong enough. Fear of not saying it right. Fear of a person. Fear of yourself. Fear of never feeling better. Fear of what it takes to feel better.
Right here, right now, no past, no future. Fear roots us to the spot. Trivial or overwhelming, it connects us to our very life force. And so the brave warriorship comes when we stay with such a profound experience, ever-committed to living without self-deception. With authenticity. Integrity. Alignment. Ease.
What is it for you? What fear, acute or low-level, drains your energy and activates your stress response? What is one curious and loving step you might take toward seeing and working with that fear?
Whatever it is, small as a raccoon, large as a bear, you can start by realizing you are not alone and most of us, on some level, are scared, moving through life doing the best we can. I invite you to Catskills Yoga House where through movement, meditation, breath-work, community connection and sound healing, you will find long-term support and slow, deep healing. Here, you will be considered a warrior - all you who are trembling, all you who are laughing, all you who are crying, all you who are living in a state of falling apart. Please come and live into your warrior nature. It's who you really are, in your heart of hearts, courageous and alive.
As always, I am yours in movement, sometimes afraid, sometimes brave, often both -
Sara