I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions because I rarely stick to them. But something happened recently that has me thinking this year might be different. I was scheduled to fly back to the East Coast from the West on a Boeing 737 Max 9 and was among the thousands whose flights were cancelled.
From a young age, I’ve been claustrophobic, which means I go out of my way to avoid small or crowded spaces. I often book flights based on whether or not I can sit near the front to make disembarking less intense. When so many flights are cancelled, rescheduling options are limited, and I found myself booked a day later in a window seat in row 41 of an airbus. Fear, which usually sleeps in some dark corner of the house, seized the opportunity to awaken and inhabit all the rooms.
It is challenging to drown out a phobia’s persistent noise, which is manifested via emotional, mental, and physical discomfort, not unlike grief in that sense. Logic is useless, but I told myself there were much worse things going on in the world. It was indulgent to allow fear to take over. Time to take a breath, several of them, in a measured intentional way, not hyperventilating and pacing in circles.
Everything in the world is energy and vibration. The human energy body has been likened to a tuning fork. High emotional states like love, gratitude, and peace cause us to vibrate at higher frequencies than low emotional states like anger, fear, and hate. I think we’ve all experienced the difference.
Practices like breath work, meditation, yoga, qigong, tai chi and others can help us calm down, reconnect to our bodies. Even if not practiced regularly, they can provide instant relief by steering the focus from the emotional/mental state of anxiety to the body and breath.
I hit the Insight Timer app and listened to several guided meditations the night before I flew. I downloaded videos and had a novel. I did some walking and stretching. Still, I told my brother on the way to the airport, it was Code Red in Jan Land. And yet, incredibly, when the time came it was more like Code Crystal Blue Persuasion, a new vibration. I settled into my seat, put on my headphones, and made a New Year’s resolution to really work on this phobia. We’ll check in again after my next flight. Until then, inhale, exhale.
Divine Ready 