When feeling stuck, an exercise I like to turn to is to ask what I am most afraid of. Often that fear is a clue of where I can turn to next in my healing and growth.

Once admitting my fear, it seems smaller and more manageable. It becomes more tangible, something to wrestle or dance with. I like the word dance because it leaves open room for exploration, there is a space there for give and take. It’s like inviting a partner in to move in response to their presence, their energy.

Most journeys have an element of being less straight forward than we would like. But in dance, we can move back and forth, touching into the space and retreating as needed. It’s an intimate exploration and seemingly for me, less confrontational than wrestling. There’s no win or lose in a partnership and it leaves the space for growth.

When I wrestle with something, I try to overcome despite what the fear has to teach me. In dancing, it allows the fear to be experienced and integrated.

In naming my greatest fear it brings the energy forward, it calls it into being. It gives it space, form and a voice.

When the fear is not named, or identified, it hides in the shadows and influences my actions. It impacts the results I get in life. Call your greatest fear out from the shadows where it hides. Then it can be explored, confronted and danced with until integrated.

Many of the things we struggle with are simply symptoms of fear. Money issues can be fear of lack of value. Love issues can be a fear of not being accepted. Health issues can be fear of living. But what is it you really fear?

It's not likely you will say, "I fear I lack values." Instead you say, "I fear I don't have enough money to pay my bills."

Call your fear out and see if it brings insight into the things you struggle with or at the very least brings insight. Calling a thing doesn’t necessarily mean voicing it to another person. It may be something you do in private through meditation, or even in writing. But giving your voice in any matter, gives it form.

It may show you exactly what you need to do. Then do the thing you are afraid of; either directly, or in it’s opposite form. Fearing being sick could result in you taking steps to better care for your health. Fear of losing someone could mean risking telling them how you feel. 

When I first began this practice I named the fear of losing a specific person and so I gave that person space, enough space that it transformed the relationship between us. It did not remove my fear but it taught me that I had a bigger voice within the relationship than I thought and it gave me back some of the power I had, in my fear, given away.

Voicing your fear and confronting it won’t necessarily give you what you want in a situation, but it can give you back your power over the fear, over the situation and that can give you more options for how to proceed. That’s what it has done for me.