Who among us is not afraid? Who among us does not experience moments of panic? It's not necessary to be attacked at night; fear is part of our daily life, and panic can manifest even in the seemingly mundane act of receiving a message on our mobile phones.
My experience as a mediator and Aikidoka has allowed me to thoroughly study fear and work on its management.
In part 1, we talked about the panic reflexes —fight, flee, and freeze—and how they manifest in our lives. We discussed how fear is an integral part of our days and influences us in many ways. I thought you what servile and masterful automatisms are and how to use them to your advantage. And we also saw the Color Code of Mental Awareness, the military code used to identify our level of preparation and awareness in unexpected situations (just crossing the street can present an unexpected situation)!
Today, in this part 2, as promised I will illustrate five super effective exercises to control our fears. And just to share everything, I will tell you about my tragic experience with mushrooms... yes, what can I do... it's not guaranteed that some fears make sense!
Enjoy this episode, which is, as part 1, very complex for me because it's full of personal references. The editing is also less precise than usual, but I wanted my reactions to be as natural as possible.
Comment with your experience on the episode post on Instagram and send me a DM with suggestions for the next episodes: https://www.instagram.com/ritsu_aikido/
And if you're in Rome, we look forward to teaching you how to manage fear on the tatami! All the information is here: https://kohakuaikidoroma.com/
Join the Ritsu's Community! Train hard, live soft!
For further exploration:
Zanshintech: the first digital martial art. All information here: https://zanshintech.it/
Color Code of Mental Awareness: In military training and the teaching of some martial arts, reference is made to the Colour Code of Mental Awareness, theorized by Colonel John Cooper (1920-2006). It is a system to identify each stage of attention with a color and to learn to maintain a high level of alertness in everyday life.
Panic Reflexes: Fight, flee, or freeze manifest in situations of strong emotional and psychological stress.
Quick reels, rapid responses – we have no time to waste. We are willing to dedicate only a few seconds if we get immediate value in return, whether it's entertainment, education, fun, or tutorials. But satisfaction must be instant. Be careful though: satisfaction and happiness are two completely different things. We can gain so many advantages to the point of bursting and still feel empty. Self-care, human communication, feeling understood, heard, doing things together, planning together. If you're looking for immediate value, there's an endless offering on social media. If you want to reclaim a small piece of yourself every day, slowly, without strategies, without a quid pro quo, just ideas and listening, then stop here and talk to me. Why me? Because I've discovered the perfect metaphor to look at our everyday lives from a different perspective, and this metaphor is the martial arts, Aikido. Aikido can be practiced even while sitting at the desk; it's a mindset. Let it enter your lives, and step out of the whirlwind. In front of you, there's only you and what you still don't know about yourself.
In the last episode I shared with you the panic reflections about which are the automatisms and which are the risks of being controlled by panic. And I said that there are five extremely effective exercises to control panic and our reactions. So, let's share some details of this. And I will also tell you, as I promised, my personal experience with the mushrooms.
Let's go!
The first step is to take deep breaths and focus on calming the mind and body. It's evident that everything always starts with breathing. Breath control is everything. Deep breathing helps lower the heart rate, relax the muscles, and center the thoughts. Now, I intend to dedicate several episodes to meditation techniques that are very effective for me and are also applicable in everyday life, so they don't necessarily require a dedicated physical space. So stay tuned because you might find the perfect exercise for you.
The second step is to recognize our fears. We must identify the deep causes of our fears and begin to understand and face them in the most effective way. Now it's clear that panic can manifest in a sudden situation when someone attacks us; it can manifest deceptively online or it can manifest following traumatic experiences we have had in our lives. So, the approach we can take may differ. However, a a very interesting exercise is to write our fears on a sheet and try to analyze them objectively. I'll give an example that may sound trivial but isn't. I don't know why, or (16:18) rather, I partly know, but anyway, I don't eat mushrooms. Why? I don't know. Yet, my grandfather was a forest ranger, and I've eaten an industrial quantity (16:31) of them. Now I don't know why I'm afraid, and as soon as I eat a mushroom, I panic. People tease me, but I won't admit it. But I can't handle it. I say, "This is the mushroom that will kill me." Why I say that, I don't know. People say: "Don't worry, these are the sell porcini mushrooms at the supermarket!" And I am like: "don't worry. They made a mistake, and I'm catching it." Does this make sense? No. Is it the result of traumatic experiences I've had in my life? Probably. Is it a sudden situation? No. Yet, it's pure panic. I go to a restaurant, and they say, "Mrs. Tagliatelle and porcini mushrooms today." And I'm like, "Ahahahah.....Great." I start thinking about the fantastic excuse I can use to refuse. If I can't refuse? No. no way! The exercise for me should be to take a sheet, write, "I'm afraid of eating mushrooms," and then write the reasons why I think I'm afraid of eating mushrooms and also what happens to me if I eat mushrooms, speaking rationally. Will I die? What are the chances that I can objectively die from eating mushrooms? At most, I might have indigestion. But rationalizing our fear is the first step to controlling it. So try to imagine yourselves attacked in a sudden situation. What is the prevalent panic reflex? Why would you choose this one? Then try to imagine yourselves in online relationships. What scares you? How would you react to an attack? And why would you react that way? Try to think of yourselves in the fears of your daily life. Why are you afraid? And are these actually fearful things? Or is it just in our heads? Try to do this exercise. Divide it into three quadrants. You and your online presence. You and sudden uncontrollable situations. You and daily fears. Write down why you're afraid? If these fears are rational? And which panic reflex is prevalent? Then reread it, and you'll discover a lot of interesting things about yourselves and your behaviors.
Another truly effective technique is to reframe thoughts, and it stems from the previous exercise. Instead of dwelling on negative and fearful thoughts, replace them with positive thoughts. Will I die if I eat mushrooms? No, definitely not. At most, I'll have a fantastic culinary experience. So try to turn the experiences of negativity and panic we might live through in a positive direction. Therefore, try to motivate yourselves. In what can we demonstrate positivity? What elements? Visualize yourselves successfully facing your fears and imagine how you feel when overcoming them and the positive impact it will have on your life. This also applies to an address. Imagine overcoming it positively and assess how you feel. What element is predominant for you? Being able to tell others about it? Feeling really strong? Feeling lucky? Being able to go back to my children? It may seem trivial, but each of these things can be interpreted in tens of thousands of different ways. Actually, it can be interpreted in as many ways as there are human beings. Discover what specifically relates to you.
Another thing, seek support from others. When I find myself in situations like this, I always know someone who knows and looks at me with that expression like, "Why are you like this?" but still, takes my hand and says, "Calm down, come on, come on, I'll help you. Come on, let's get another dish, this time let's avoid mushrooms." There's always someone who supports me because I already know I can do it; it's my weakness, they know, then they tease me a bit, they help me, but you don't know how much better I feel. Even when I decide to eat mushrooms, the fact that someone is there saying, "I know, I won't judge you, I'm here for you," means a lot to me. Each of us has that someone.
Extra suggestion, this is... hard core. In the sense that, indeed, I'm the first one who is afraid to put it into practice. Let's face our fears, which basically for me means eating mushrooms, but how should fears be faced? Little by little. We're afraid of heights, fine, we have to do bungee jumping. The day we decide to face our fears, for instance, let's take a glass elevator and go to the second floor. We go down. A week later, go up to the fifth, go down. A week later, go up to the tenth, and sooner or later, we'll eventually get to bungee jumping. It's about facing it step by step. I'm telling you, it's really something, in the sense that if something causes you panic, it's very difficult to apply. But for those of you brave enough to do it, I respect you a lot, and I would be honored to have feedback on this.
Your experience, share it on the episode's post on Instagram because I would really be interested in knowing how you handled the situation.
Of course, these situations are the same ones we experience in Aikido because there's no Aikidoka who starts practicing without fear of falling. Aikido is a discipline where you fall acrobatically very often; you fall backward without looking at what's behind, and our back is the point of support for our falls. Now tell me, among those who don't practice Aikido, how many of you feel perfectly relaxed receiving a giant shove that makes you fall backward? I think no one. So, we must summon a lot of courage to learn to fall and repeat the same exercises every day for years, and gradually, we gain confidence in our body and mind until we do it without even realizing it . Similarly, try to implement these strategies in your daily life and try to reason about your panic reflexes because you perfectly have the power to master your fears and live a life free from the constraints that panic reflexes cause. Comment on the episode's Instagram post and share your experience, your experience with the exercises if you applied them, your experience on which panic reflexes are prevalent for you, and leave me a DM suggesting new topics for upcoming episodes so that we can develop the next content together. You know it's the thing that's most important to me. Thank you for being with me, and I see you in the next episode.