Hi Chelsea,

Welcome to Openhandweb and thanks for your sharing, I can totally empathise with what you're experiencing.

From quite a young age, something seemed to switch within me, where my soul seemed to seek out fear. It wasn't like I was intending to, just I seemed to be always directed right into the heart of it. As soon as it arose, I'd simply jump straight into the centre of that circumstance.

Practicing martial arts seemed to help a great deal. I came to realise that fear generates bodily reaction. We tend to clamp right down, the body gets stiff and clumsy, chest and breathing gets tight. The mind creates all manner of spurious and delusional realities. The body is then filled with negative toxins that perpetuate the cycle. When you talk about being "crippled" by fear, that's what I see can happen.

But there is a way through and out of it. That is to confront the very symptoms themselves. Firstly at the level of mind, take our deepest fear and ask ourselves "what would be the worst that could happen from this scenario"? Then explore deeply into that. If you can have the courage to do this, but then continually remind yourself that you are the eternal and cannot be harmed at your core in any way, the Seer in you will always be liberated and expanded by the release of such contraction. That is after all the purpose of such fear - the direct confrontation of the illusion of separation itself. We are not this drama called life, we are the absolute that precedes all experience.

The intention of love by itself is unlikely to get you there. Because contrary to popular belief, love is not all there is. How can it be? When you create something, like love, then it can only be defined by what it is not - paradoxically fear. So if you keep simply trying to mentally create love by avoiding suffering, all you tend to do is reinforce the suffering. We have to drop through the love/fear polarity into the state of pure presence that precedes both. Then our distortions begin to unwind themselves. This is why we talk of centering in the 'eye of the storm'.

To us at Openhand, this journey is not solely about love or anything else. It's about finding total authenticity in the moment - the core of who you are without any kind of intention or projection. When this happens, freedom of action is liberated within you. You align with the destined flow and it draws you to ever higher vibrational harmonies. Which actually feels like ever increasing sense of love. But this feeling is way beyond the mental intention of love. It simply wells up from inside of you as an uncontrollable rush.

So there's the mental aspect of fear that makes the body tight. So then we have to deal with the physical aspects of it too. As the body tightens, the brain pumps out neuro peptides which then infuse the bodily cells with these negative toxins that churn the body up inside. So we have to soften into the tightness. Movement helps greatly. Feel deeply into the tightness and work with it. Practices such as yoga, tai chi, dancing, rigorous walking or jogging. Our very own soulmotion was evolved from gentle martial arts warm up routines to deal with this kind of tightness. All the while we feel deeply and softly into the body.

And so to the breathing too. Fear makes the breath tight, so softening and expanding the breath into those moments where fear might be contracting us helps enormously.

If we do this, then what I've noticed is that sooner or later, we'll drop into that void - the quiet calm at the centre of the storm. Each movement and outbreath expands us outwards from this void. The expansion and sense of liberation from what had previously been holding us begins to feel very positive and empowered. The body begins to release endorphins (the feeling of sensuality and love), which then infuse the bodily cells and stop those negative neuro peptides docking with the cells - they get washed away.

Imagine for example, what can be one of the most tense and fearful experiences - child birth - turning into one of the most sensual and loving, even to the point of bodily orgasm. I know that might be difficult to imagine, but there are many women who have experienced this during child birth.

So I felt to share this video below. When you watch it, contemplate also that Gaia herself is going through a rebirth. Big earth changes are coming indeed and there will be basically two ways of approaching them: either contracting down in fear, or softening into the sensuality of the moment in whatever way it presents itself...

Chris

I guess it sums it all up. Thanks, Chris.

About the ways to work with the body and breath, I found this video very helpful and learned a lot from it:

Between 01:43-09:49...

Well, now I just incorporate the things I've learned in my free-style way. This kind of work works great for me to put myself together (the next set too, but it is more demanding physically).

Or, something like this:

But in general, it's just feeling the body and energy and going with it.

I also dance under the trees with mp3. Very liberating and so fun.

Also, massage is very helpful. There are ways to do self massage with a tennis ball or a dumbbell. Or with anything else. Or just rolling on the floor. Cats are rubbing their backs on chairs and stuff. I do to.

Anyway, if we ask the universe, we are always answered how to help ourselves.

With love,
Yulia

She's doing Openhand soulmotion level 3!

It was 'taught' to me in a dried up river bed on an Indian reservation in Taos one bright sunrise. I'd been doing the static movements when suddenly it all took off and started flowing.

To me there is nothing like getting into a soulful expression of thew body. And you don't need years of practice to do it. Simply opening into the heart and let the soul speak through your body.

Initially there might be self consciousness to overcome. But once you drop through that, it feels like pure magic.

Chris

Yes, it does!

I experienced it for the first time something like 3.5 years ago during yoga. I closed my eyes and suddenly it wasn't me moving the body, but rather something was moving me and through me. I felt energy waves going through the body and moving it.

This is when words like energy, chakras, etc stopped being so funny to me and I began to seriously research and experiment... And then, very soon, I got to the OH site

The challenge for me now is to feel it with eyes open. Somehow I can connect to this way of moving and being mainly when I close my eyes...

I have only recently found OH too, literally a week ago!

I had experienced all sorts of odd goings on since I was a child, which I now believe is because I see the light energy emitted from each of us slightly differently to most people. For me it is like a light signature in far more vivid detail than most humans see each other, more extended beyond the physical bounds of their body. So this 'sight' had led me to perceive people slightly differently then most of my peers who did not appear to 'see' in this way.

Unfortunately, being different was never a good thing when you are little and one thing led to another, mainly bullying, and so I grew up ignoring this gift and trying to work against it. I was scared of it.

Fortunately, the universe threw in my path some very enlightened and awesome people who helped me to feel more at ease with it and as soon as I let my fear go, and stopped trying to identify myself through my ego, I felt such a huge rush of energy, literally as if the universe had plugged herself in and given me a shock in the nicest way!

Since then, I have occasionally felt a sense of unease, not so much fear, as I try to let that permanently go. I am trying to learn to live in the moment and to witness what I can only describe as my transformation, but sometimes the fear does sneak back and all the old insecurities rush back in.

But I can honestly say that since this all started and I have had a chance to read OH and watch the films, and absorb the experiences of Chris and Trinity, I have been blown away by such JOY. I don't feel so alone any more!

I literally can't stop smiling and 'bouncing', the energy in me is so alive that I often find myself moving and dancing in the most inappropriate places to the bemusement or horror of those around me. I want to scream at the top of my voice....JOIN IN WITH THE DANCE... because I feel they are missing out on so much. If only they too let go of the fear that their ego is creating and perpetuating to keep them enslaved to the drama that is their life and they too could live in the blissful movement then I am sure that whatever it is that they find there will really remove so much of the fear they and indeed I was holding on to.

I am afraid I am still at the verbal diarrhoea stage of my journey as I am in a state of permanent excitement, so like a child that can't stop saying WHY? to everything I can't stop actually talking about how amazing I feel...

So sorry if I have ranted for my first ever post... I am just so grateful to have found a place where I feel I can be truthful, really truthful about what is going on inside me.. it feels like coming home.

Love and Light, Tracy x

Hey Tracy,

It's great that you share - wonderful!

We have thousands of people who read the site but only a small proportion who actually write on it. That's fine, but it can't be underestimated the positive impact on our evolution when we do find the courage to express what's going on for us. It can have such an enlivening effect on our consciousness.

So keep right on!

Blessings

Chris

i just wanted to say thank you for the replies. ive had some good insights over the last day. i forget to just breath and relax and enjoy the transformation that can happen when i let go of the negativity that comes up. what you said about birth strikes a chord with me. i believe that surrendering to the process frees a woman from labour pains and had a wonderful experience birthing both of my sons. but i had to let go of the idea of suffering in order to allow the moments to unfold peacefully.

i think i have a hard time recovering when i find myself believing that im suffering. i know i need to stop everything and just surrender it go god. but a mom can find a zillion reasons not to put the laundry down and have a moment of stillness. i must at some level want the problem because if i really didnt want it, i would let go of it. i know this is where the problem and solution lay, finding the will to overcome. im dedicated! any way, thanks.

Welcome to Openhand Chelsea and Tracy...

Thank you for sharing here.

I had a remarkably easy and quick childbirth (apart from the part right at the end). I attribute the ease being my state of conscious that embraced the fact that it was the most natural thing in the world to give birth.

Shine on!
Trinity
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