Blog

Commune with the Elephant: An Exercise for Healing Heavy Anxiety | by Catherine Shainberg, Ph.D.

“Like an elephant is standing on me,” Doechii laments in her recent song about anxiety, singing on to soothe herself: “Just relax and let it do its thing.” 

But we all know that’s not so easy. Anxiety is our most common complaint today: the elephant stands heavy on our chests. 

It feels like Pandora’s box, with clasp come undone, now spills out horror upon horror, too fast for us to catch our breaths. How can we escape this barrage of calamity: our worries of world collapse, financial ruin, job penury, inflation, tariffs, climate change, questionable leadership? Gossip is rife, twisted truths weave upon themselves, and thus the whole world experiences a binding fear.

What is our first instinct in this environment? We want to erect walls and close boundaries to protect ourselves, when in fact this narrowing only adds to the distortion. Watching our world disintegrate day by day, we project our fears into the future.

That fear projection catapults our anxiety…and, like yawning, anxiety is catching.

Are anxiety’s feverish predictions for the worst likely to come about? Being as they are a fantasy, a future that does not yet exist (except in our frenetic anticipation of “what could be”), we find ourselves tripping over ourselves and the moment, creating a dystopian future that heightens our hysteria and our blockages. 

Why do we get so riled up by something that hasn’t even come to pass? You will tell me that anticipation allows us to protect ourselves from a possible future tsunami. That is true, but as the adage goes: Do the necessary to avoid the worst and then let go and let God. 

Can we trust in a God who has allowed this chaos to happen?  Or is it that we, as co-creators with God, have lost control of our power to create peace and balance?

We get caught in anxiety’s lie: that what is feared today will logically amplify and get worse tomorrow.

We believe that the future exists on a linear timeline, ignoring the fact that the world, like a child, grows by leaps and bounds. Anxiety anesthetizes us to the fact that we are powerful beings who can create the good or the bad by focusing our thoughts, images and emotions at will. It is up to us to choose the good. To dissolve anxiety and its nefarious consequences, we need to break the logic of linear time. 

Let’s start here.

Close your eyes; breathe out three times slowly.  Turn your eyes inward and see where anxiety is located in your body. What color is it? What is the image of anxiety for you? 

(For me it’s a panther in a cage, pacing back and forth in the small space, getting more and more frustrated and enraged. I imagine there are other panthers in the cage.  Contaminated by their comrades’ agitation, they start pacing too. Soon the heat of this activity boils over… one of them is going to snarl and paw another. Soon a skirmish occurs, then an all-out war. Does it help? The iron bars seem to be closing in on the space ’til it feels unbearably tight. The tikkun (correction) is obvious. Open the cage; let the panthers run free to enjoy fresh air, open space and their return to natural goodness.) 

Breathe out.

How do you tikkun your image of anxiety? What does the future look like to you now? What do you feel? Breathe out, open your eyes.

The answer to anxiety is not more manipulations of the imaginal field toward calamitous improbable futures.

Instead, listen to the imperative Abraham heard twice at moments of heightened anxiety – when called upon to leave his father’s house and when commanded to sacrifice his beloved son – Lech Lecha, “go to yourself.” Be daring and search for the answer within. Plunge into the subconscious as God does hovering over the deep. Only then will a radical answer appear, clearing away all the darkness and chaos. Only then will light and order appear. 

Close your eyes. Breathe out. Look inward and ask: How do I turn my anxiety into good?

Don’t think, just see. Breathe out. Open your eyes and see this with open eyes.

Your answer is a radical one – leaping from the deep subconscious into the light of consciousness – your answer shows you the truth. It is this kind of intuitive answer that transforms the world and clears anxiety to ground you in the certainty of knowing. 

Interested in exploring Catherine’s Saphire® Imagery exercises to plunge within and channel your own inner strength? This May and June, Catherine leads a series of workshops to clear what impedes you and bolster your sense of vision, so you can move forward with clarity and confidence. Check SOI’s Calendar for more information.