In 5th grade science class my teacher told me something that blew my mind.
He said that if you stood 1 foot away from a wall and moved towards that wall by cutting the distance between you and the wall in half with each step, you’d never reach the wall.
Each amount of space between you and the wall could be cut in half. The amount of space would get smaller and smaller each time, but there would always be a bit of space, no matter how small you went, that could be cut in half.
This idea has been in my head ever since. The idea that the space around us is relative to the size we are.
There have been many popular movies that have played with the idea of shrinking a person and interacting with a full-sized world.
‘Honey I Shrunk the Kids’ by Disney is a movie I loved growing up. Four kids accidently shrunk by their goofy, scientist father, trying to get across the miles and miles of space between back yard and house. Blades of grass the size of trees, bees and ants the size of cars and lawnmowers all became real challenges.
And while the idea of coming face-to-face with a bee the size of a bus isn’t my idea of a fun afternoon, I’ve had many times when I whished I had the power to shrink down to the size of an ant and disappear from view.
Anxiety makes us want to be invisible, to get away from everyone and everything and just be alone.
My anxiety made me feel confined. I felt as though I didn’t have any room to move. As if the walls and people around me kept moving closer and closer to me, taking away all my personal space.
For years I had to avoid crowds, small rooms, sitting at tables between people. I always felt trapped, confined.
When I began meditation I used a visualization that helped me deal with this feeling. A way of finding the space I needed by going inward. Shrinking myself mentally to experience the feeling of having infinite space around me, no matter how confined I felt.
It takes some practice but once you master it you can use it when needed.
How it works:
- Assume your normal position for meditation. If you don’t already know how to meditate I have another post that teaches you how to meditate that you can read by clicking here.
- As you relax, feel the weight of your physical body around. Feel that this body isn’t you but simply a container you are in.
- Begin to feel your true self as a smaller, conscious being existing within your physical body. This conscious, inner you is not limited by physical space.
- Imagine you look around and all you see is open space. You feel small compared to the openness that surrounds you.
- Sit with this feeling for as long as you can. Feel what it feels like to be enveloped by space and openness. This feeling is within you and can never be taken away.
After you apply this visualization practice for a while it will become easier and easier to recall this feeling of being surrounded by space. When you find yourself in a situation where you are beginning to feel trapped or closed in by people, simply bring yourself back to this feeling in your mind.
That is why practice is so important. This feeling needs to be familiar to you the same way you’ve made panic and anxiety familiar to you.
You practice feeling anxious all the time. The trick to overcoming that is to put the same amount of practice into overcoming anxiety.
This visualization helped me. I hope that it helps you.
What I ask of you is this, give it a try for a week or two and see if you can begin to call on that feeling during your regular day. Then come back here and leave a comment for me. Let me know if it worked for you… or if it didn’t.
Either way, I’d love to hear from you.
