Dr. Gail Brenner

Sacred Space for Awakened Living

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Stop…Be Still

“To a mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.”
~Chang Tzu

It was a lightbulb moment for me when I realized how much I was moving away from life. It had been happening for years until I finally saw that pulling away in fear was my first response to people, situations, new possibilities.

Once I saw this tendency in the light of day, the jig was up. I learned to stop moving away and wholeheartedly embrace things as they are. It was a happy revolution in my whole way of being.

We tend to move in three ways: toward, away, or against. Which is your style? See how you move, and you will discover the joys of not moving. For when you take your stand in the here-and-now, life becomes available to you – intimate, rich, and full.

Moving Toward

Moving toward is based on need and lack. If this is your style, you grasp at people and things to fill you up and give you what you think you are missing. This tendency is learned at a very young age. You convince yourself that you are not enough.

Yet the truth is that who you are is whole, full, and overflowing. Can you not move and see that there is nothing lacking?

Moving toward looks like this:

  • Seeking approval from others
  • Great concern about the image you present in the world
  • Sacrificing yourself for others, then feeling resentful
  • Perceiving yourself as lacking and flawed
  • Difficulty walking away from relationships that aren’t working
  • Attachment to your personal dramas
  • Grasping money, people, objects
  • Feeling that you are special and avoiding your ordinariness

When you notice these tendencies, stop. With great compassion, let the feelings and urges arise, but don’t act on them. Relax back into yourself, and realize that life is complete, just as it is, in this very moment.

Moving Away

Moving away is all about fear and avoidance. In response to just about everything, there is tightening in the body, contraction in the breath, and a physical pulling away from whatever is present in the moment. Threat is seen everywhere.

Moving away is built on a perceived lack of safety and security. What are you really afraid of, anyway? Can you consider trusting that you are OK, that you can engage with life that is unfolding right now?

Moving away looks like this:

  • Paralyzing doubt and indecision
  • A surface bravado that avoids the experience of fear
  • Nonstop thinking
  • Avoiding people and situations
  • Trepidation in the face of anything new
  • Fear of committing to anything
  • A tendency toward paranoid thinking
  • Excessive worry
  • Holding yourself back

Moving away has strong physical and mental elements. Learn how to relax your body and breathe deeply. Experiment with not running your life by all the thoughts that appear in your mind. Put the thoughts aside (they aren’t helping you), and stay here, present. Open yourself fully to the wonder of now.

Moving Against

Anger, frustration, entitlement. Some of us live with our figurative fists flying in every direction. We show up ready for a struggle, while missing out on what is here when we let our guard down.

Moving against is a defensive posture that avoids vulnerability. What if you allowed yourself to open tenderly to the reality of now?

Moving against looks like this:

  • Tendency toward anger and resistance to people, situations, the world
  • Rebelliousness
  • A sense of entitlement – things should be the way you want them to be
  • Judgment – either outward toward others or inward toward yourself
  • Stuffing anger by eating, sleeping, and avoiding conflict at all costs
  • Desire for power and control
  • Championing the underdog

It takes so much effort to face the world primed for a fight. Really, there’s nothing to protect. Let the anger subside, and be open, soft, and receptive. Relax into life unfolding.

The strategies of moving toward, away, and against sap your energy. They all require you to be vigilant and defensive. The alternative? Stop…be still.

How do you move? What would it be like to stop? I’d love to hear…

Fearful? Get to Know the Unknown

“Scared and sacred are spelled with the same letters. Awful proceeds from the same root word as awesome. Terrify and terrific. Every negative experience holds the seed of transformation.”
~Alan Cohen

Anyone who experiences fear knows about fearful thoughts. Without exception, these thoughts project into the future and expect the worst. Should I or shouldn’t I? What if I do – or don’t? The imagination runs wild thinking of all the negative scenarios that could happen.

And the effect? Afraid to move, stuck, limiting yourself, playing it safe. And all the while caught in your spinning mind and missing the beauty of what is real and alive right here and now.

These fear-infused thoughts rob you of happiness and well being that are rightfully yours.

The Rational Approach

As humans, we are blessed to have access to a well-developed frontal cortex, which gives us the capability of being thoughtful and rational. In contrast, fear comes from the limbic system, a more primitive, animalistic part of the brain that drives basic survival.

The intelligent investigation of fearful thoughts invites us to fire up the cortex and subject them to rational analysis.

Now is the time to bring these thoughts out of the shadows. Why wait one moment longer? When they float through your mind without your full attention, they exert their power and control over you.

But with a logical laser focus, you can see through the lies and distortions they make you believe. And, by doing so, you enter into the realm of truth and sanity.

The Truth of the Unknown

At the foundation of every fear-filled thought is a desire to know what cannot be known. This desire manifests as an imagined negative, scary outcome.

  • I won’t find a job.
  • I’ll always be alone.
  • I’m afraid I’ll be rejected.
  • What if I fail.

Each of these common thoughts makes an assumption about the future.

And here is the logical truth: you cannot know anything until it actually happens. You have two choices: you either know or you don’t know. You absolutely know something to be true once it has already occurred. And if something hasn’t yet occurred, you don’t know what the outcome will be.

Fearful thoughts guess or assume the worst with no logical evidence. When you take these assumptions to be true, you end up paralyzed and miserable.

“I Don’t Know” Revealed

Part of being free of the effects of fear means shifting from emotion to logic, using all of the brain’s capabilities. Logic shows you the distortions in these fearful thoughts that sap your energy and slam the door shut on your potential.

What you do find is one of the most useful truths: I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll find a job, or be rejected, or fail.

“I don’t know” opens the door to unlimited possibilities that the fearful mind can’t begin to contemplate.

Seeing the truth of the unknown is like a healing balm for fearful thoughts. And here are the effects:

  • No more wasting energy and time worrying about the future.
  • No more pressure to know what you can’t possibly know.
  • Openness to all possibilities.
  • The end of “should” – what you should know or should be doing.

Living in the reality of the unknown brings our attention clearly into the present. Let go of the imagined future, and you will discover:

  • A focus on doing what needs to be done now
  • Appreciation and gratitude
  • Relaxation
  • Enjoyment
  • Acceptance
  • Wonder

The unknown is the truth, and the truth will set you free. Do you want to be free of the effects of fear? Say “Yes!” to the unknown.

Have you discovered the value of not knowing? Are you struggling with fearful thoughts? I’d love to hear…

The Three Vital Keys to Unlocking Yourself From Fear

“What worries you, masters you.”
~John Locke

If fear is still controlling you, then this post is for you. We all know, that a fear-driven life doesn’t work. It keeps us small and limited and deprives the world of our full and magnificent creative expression.

Living in fear feels bad – have you noticed? Decisions fueled by “I can’t” and “I shouldn’t” bring only confusion and dissatisfaction to our lives. We lose focus, let go of our dreams, and accept mediocre as good enough.

This is no way to live.

Yes, fear is scary. It looms large. We are afraid of losing people, money, health, status. We fear being irresponsible or risking everything. We choose playing it safe over wonder, potential, and possibility. Is this you?

Many of us are locked into a fear-driven life. We’ve convinced ourselves that we just can’t take the risk to put the fears aside and move forward. So here’s the solution: we need to take a very intelligent approach to fear.

It’s not enough to say you need to banish fears or overcome them. When it comes to fear, you need to break it down and understand it from the inside out. You need to become familiar with the way it shows up in your experience and develop a lifestyle that keeps you alert and present so it doesn’t sneak up on you.

Addressing fear takes intention and willingness. Do you want to unlock yourself from fear? Then seriously consider these three vital keys.

Key #1: Get to Know the Face of Fear

Fear doesn’t always hit you head-on. For years, I had many symptoms of fear before I realized that it was actually driving me. And once I did, everything changed.

The intelligent approach to fear begins with recognizing it. And here are the clues:

  • Obsessive worrying
  • Imagining negative outcomes about the future – “What if?”
  • Excessive mental activity that tries to analyze every angle of every situation
  • Doubt and indecision – “Should I or shouldn’t I?”
  • A low level of stress or anxiety, especially felt in your body
  • A sense of living in your head, detached from your body – maybe it feels like this:


If you experience any of these symptoms, be curious. Look deeply into your own experience, and I bet you will see that fear is at the root. This is great news!

Recognizing the face of fear is absolutely essential if you want it to lose its power over you. Every time you realize that you are worrying, ruminating, or doubting, relax and say, “Hello, fear,” then go to key #2.

Key #2: Feel the Physical Sensations of Fear

What is fear exactly? The answer to this question is fundamental to unlocking yourself from fear.

We experience what we call fear when we tell ourselves a scary story and feel certain bodily sensations, such as tension or contraction. Make this understanding alive for you – right now – by checking it out in your own experience. You will notice a fear response that shows up in your body along with thoughts that doubt, worry, analyze, ruminate, plan, project, etc.

Congratulations! You have just shone the light directly on fear. You see that whenever you feel fear, there are physical sensations and scary, anxiety-producing thoughts.

These thoughts are reinforced by your attention to them, and they keep you stuck in fear. They aren’t logical or necessarily even true.

So rather than thinking these thoughts over and over (a recipe for continued unhappiness), bring your attention into your body, directly to the physical sensations. Open up your awareness to receive the actual experience of whatever you feel in your body. Breathe and just let them be, even if they are intense.

In the moment of doing that, you have disempowered the fear. You have taken your attention away from the thoughts, and you are simply being with the physical sensations.

This is the moment of freedom. When you feel the bodily sensations without the pressure of the fearful thoughts, you have unlocked the door to freedom from fear.

Key #3: It’s All About the Moment

It’s really important to understand that the goal is not to get rid of fear. Why? Because it’s not possible. Remember, this is the intelligent approach to fear. We want to be very realistic and practical to support you on the road to freedom.

And freedom doesn’t mean feeling no fear. It means working intelligently with your experience so fear no longer controls you.

Once you develop a rhythm of feeling the bodily sensations every time you notice fearful thoughts, fear simply loses its oomph. It softens every time you move your attention away from thinking and into the sensations of the body.

Add up these moments, and here is what you will notice: more peace, greater clarity about people and situations, more choices that you never thought of before, a lightness and brightness in your being.

The only time you can do anything intelligently about fear is when it arises in the moment. When you notice it, stop, breathe, feel. Every time is a turn of the key to freedom.

Now What?

As I’m sure you know, fear confuses you. It clouds your thinking toward the negative and leaves you blinded to the full range of possibilities in any situation. And it keeps you on lock-down.

Keys 1, 2, and 3 invite you to let go of fear-ridden thoughts and breathe with the physical sensations right in the body.

When fear is no longer driving you, it might be present, but so is your innate wisdom. You acknowledge the fear, see the truth of it – simply thoughts and sensations, and step forward released and free.

Does fear trap you? What has helped you find freedom from it? I’d love to hear…

What Are You Devoted To?

“Men are not free when they are doing just what they like  Men are only free when they are doing what the deepest self likes.  And there is getting down to the deepest self!  It takes some diving.”
~D.H. Lawrence

Can you imagine a life without devotion? No commitment, no follow-through, no grounding in what really matters.

Maybe that’s how you live – losing your center in the face of compelling people and situations, not taking the time to reflect on what is important to you. Blown about by the wind.

So my question for you today is: What are you devoted to?

Not for Sissies

I love devotion. When you are devoted to something, your life is transformed. You begin orienting your activities toward what you really want. Doubt and confusion diminish, as you always have a benchmark to refer to. People and circumstances that no longer fit fall away.

Devotion is not for sissies. It takes a surrender of your personal wants and desires into something that holds greater meaning for you. It oozes passion and longing. You might even say that you form a love affair with whatever you are devoted to.

You show commitment, dedication, loyalty, reverence, and sincerity.

An Example: Devotion to Truth

I know many people who are devoted to truth, myself included. What does this mean?

  • Being committed to taking off all blinders and seeing everything clearly, as it is.
  • No thoughts or beliefs are taken for granted or assumed to be true. Not a single one.
  • The end of resisting and defending.
  • Recognizing when habitual reactions appear and being open to understanding them completely.
  • Abandoning the needs and troubles of the separate self.
  • Living as the life force that you already are.

A devotion to truth is all-consuming, like a holy fire.

And there are other holy fires, such as peace or transparency, happiness or heart-expanding, love.

Your Life Speaks. It Sings.

But maybe you are devoted to something different – stress, hiding from what you know to be true, drama in relationships, drugs/alcohol/food, sleepwalking through life, self-flagellation, greed, the need to be on top. If you’re not sure, simply take a look at how you pass the moments of your life.

You will see where your devotion lies.

Conscious devotion comes from who-knows-where. It lands like a missile or creeps up like a slow-growing vine. At some point, we just know that the old way of unconsciousness is over. What replaces it is reorientation in all aspects of our lives. We contemplate:

  • Where do I get off track?
  • What does it take to be happy, peaceful, free of stress?
  • Can I relax and let go into life?

The rubber meets the road in every moment, with unlimited opportunities to express devotion. It’s amazing how much choice we have! Suffering or freedom, tension or relaxation, closing or opening, fear or courage, separation or love. Overflowing with abundance. We are guided continually, if we let ourselves see the signs – in relationships, work, books we read, how we spend our time.

Whatever you are devoted to, choose it consciously. Don’t stay in a fog and abdicate responsibility. Man up. Be alive. And let your life sing your devotion.

What are you devoted to?  How does it show?  I’d love to hear…

The Poetry of Emotions

“Be still and know yourself as the Truth you have been searching for. Be still and let the inherent joy of that Truth capture your drama and destroy it in the bliss of consummation. Be still and let your life be lived by the purpose you were made for. Be still and receive the inherent truth of your heart.”

~Ganagji

Note: This is the third in a series on difficult emotions. You can find the first two posts by clicking these links: The Art of Navigating Difficult Emotions, The Highly Intelligent Approach to Difficult Feelings.

Picture this: In the course of your daily life, something happens that triggers a feeling in you. You notice that something has shifted, so you stop and relax. Ahhhh. Your awareness is so spacious that any experience that appears is received and welcomed.

You aren’t put off by the strong emotion. You don’t avoid it out of fear or discomfort. You stay calm and present and feel the sensations and energy in your body. You pay attention to this experience with acceptance and openness as long as it feels right, then you go about your day.

This is the possibility for all of us when it comes to difficult emotions. Think of them as weather. They arrive, then pass through. So simple, so effortless.

Now another scenario: Something happens that really pisses you off. Your mind revs up with stories of self-righteousness and revenge. How dare he…I’ll show him. You feel enraged, indignant, and fired-up – your jaw tense and throat constricted. What to do? Have a drink, blow off some steam, yell at the dog, anything to get the stress to stop eating away at you.

How to Be With Emotions

Every moment of this precious life presents an opportunity. We can stay asleep or wake up. We can ignore, defend, strategize, analyze, negotiate, or give up when difficult emotions appear. Or we can relax, receive, honor, and allow.

The experiences that arise in you are life – the way that life happens to be flowing through you at any given moment. They are a sacred offering. If a strong feeling comes, don’t make it into a problem. Because it isn’t. Let it be a friend and not an enemy. Stay uninvolved and let it run its natural course. It is not you.

Abandon the story in your mind, and you will notice sensations in your body. Let them be – every vibration, tension, and tightness. These are remnants of a time long ago when you learned that feelings weren’t safe. They went underground and lodged in your body. Now is the time for their liberation.

Stop the effort of resisting and simply be. Relax. Be still. Let the integrity of your felt experience show you the way. Give it a chance and you will see that it is OK. You are OK.

Nothing to Get Rid Of

Remember that the point is not to get rid of any experience, including your feelings. Let me say this again. You do not have the power to force feelings to disappear or compel desirable experiences to last. The only thing you have any control over is where you place your attention.

Do you want to know true happiness that is undisturbed by anything? Do you want to be free of the cyclones that emotions bring to you? Here is the secret: Don’t try. Simply, effortlessly allow what arises to be. Whether it intensifies or goes away entirely is not your business. Your only job is to relax and receive.

Let go of preferences for or against, and you will see problems melt away. Feelings come? No problem. Strong sensations? No problem. Bliss overflowing? No problem. Everything welcome just as it is.

Everyday Examples – Just Like You

A friend of mine who often has trouble sleeping took a new approach one night. Instead of getting lost in the mental noise about her to-do list and frustration about not being able to sleep, she relaxed her focus. She discovered strong energy running through all parts of her body. She stayed with it, let it be, felt it completely, and the suffering released. Not long after, dreamland.

In the course of a conversation, another friend remembered some very difficult times from his childhood. He told me that later that night, he felt a strong burning sensation in his chest that he never noticed before. And he let it be present. So soothing.

And members of our community here at A Flourishing Life have offered more examples in the comments from the first post in this series.

Northstar offers: “I have been getting acquainted with sadness lately and the more that I just “sit” with it – the more compassion I seem to be developing towards myself. I’m also getting a bit more adept at watching the “story” that sometimes goes with it and allowing it to float by. When I do that then the sensations of sadness can still be there but there is no actual ‘pain’ – if I get into my head and hooked into a story about it – that’s when I experience pain.”

Galen writes: “I finally wore myself out from all the effort and energy it took to keep the “bad” feelings at bay. Once they were “loose” I found that they weren’t so scary after all.”

And from Joy: “For most of my life, I used to ignore/deny/bury any feelings that were “less than”. I know this emotional pain resulted in physical pain. When I chose to heal past wounds, I began to acknowledge feelings as they surfaced, hold space for them until they pass..there is a natural flow that is peace filled when I honor this process. Fear of a feeling gives it power to direct my steps, faith in a feeling allows me to fold it in and create with it. And the depth and heart opening that comes with Feeling All leaves me in wonder and gratitude:)”

See the possibility? No endpoint, ever. Just the continuous flow of experience and the living as harmony itself.

Let yourself return home. Melt into being. Receive emotions but don’t get involved with them, and live as the love that you are.

How’s it going? Please feel free to share your insights, questions, or confusions. I’d love to hear…