Kristen Ulmer

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When you are scared, fearful, or anxious, what do you do? How does your inner coach react?
Welcome to Flow Unleashed. I'm Cameron Norsworthy, and this is your podcast for human performance.
Fiat touches nearly every aspect of our lives, shaping how we think, feel, and react, but how do we deal with it? Most of us are conditioned to ignore it, push it aside, and simply. Power through gritting our teeth and hoping it will pass. This approach [00:01:00] often leaves us frustrated, distracted, and far from our best.
I've been there more times than I can count Under pressure, my nerves would hijack my focus. Making even routine experiences feel overwhelming. I grew up with a stutter, and every social interaction felt like a tightrope walk and public speaking became my greatest fear. And each time I faced an audience, my thoughts would spiral into a whirlwind of self-doubt.
And instead of staying present, I became trapped in my cycle of comparisons, expectations. And the dreaded, dreaded. What if scenarios overwhelmed. I tightened up often fixating on avoiding failure, just getting by, doing enough, not messing up, rather than embracing success. The result I spoke but not with confidence or joy or fluidity.[00:02:00]
My performance suffered and my confidence eroded. It wasn't just public speaking. I realized the same pattern surfaced whenever fear took over, but instead of fighting it, what if there were a better way, a way to turn fear into a tool for presence? That question leads us to today's episodes where we dive into the connection between fear and flow with Kristin Alma.
This segment comes from a session at the Biannual Flow Conference where we explored how fear often seen as an obstacle can actually serve as a gateway to flow. Kristen is a high performance facilitator. And a foremost expert on fear recognized as the hall of fame's most fearless extreme skier. For 12 consecutive years, she draws on her incredible career, 15 years of zen practice, and over a decade of working with [00:03:00] thousands of clients to help them rethink fear.
Her book, the Art of Fear, why Conquering Fear Won't Work and What to Do Instead, challenges conventional wisdom and offers a new perspective on this misunderstood emotion
flow. Unleashed, unleashed. Welcome to the show, Kristen. Hi. Great to have you on the show. Take us through your approach to fear. Lemme tell you a story about a client that I worked with a few years ago. She was a ski racer and she had won a bunch of medals. Well, she'd done very well as a ski racer, and she actually won a gold medal in the prior Olympics, and she was about to go back to the Olympics and she was in a bad place and all eyes were on her.
Was she gonna defend her title in the Olympics and what the public didn't know? Unless you were a ski racer, was that she had spent the [00:04:00] last four years since the last Olympics floundering. She had, uh, spent two years out with pretty serious injuries and the other two years at which she was competing, um, she only finished half of her races and the other half of the races she did not do well.
So here she is going back to the Olympics after four years of. Terrible performance, definitely not being in a flow state. And I wound up working with her three days before she was going to get on the plane to go to the Olympics, and I spent three hours with her and she got on the plane and she wound up winning two silver medals in the Olympics after four years of floundering.
So I'm gonna tell you what I did with her in those three hours and it is completely unexpected and outta the box and different than what you think. Here's a quote that I am borrowing from a great zen master named Dogan Zenji, who lived about 900 years ago. And my [00:05:00] background is that I also voraciously studied Zen to help become a flow specialist.
And Dogan Zenji is famous for saying enlightenment. Is intimacy with all things. Uh, we don't use the word enlightenment anymore. We have replaced it. It's a word that is relegated to only some spiritual practices. Right now. The buzzword is flow, which is basically the same thing. So modifying the quote for today's world flow is intimacy with all things.
So what this ski racer was struggling with is that she was, she was feeling a lot of fear. She called it anxiety. Nobody calls fear Fear anymore. We all call it anxiety. She had a lot of anxiety. Pressure was on. She and everyone that was helping her prior to when I showed up was saying, oh, there's nothing to be afraid of.
You got this. You're amazing. She was feeling angry at a lot [00:06:00] of people, her coaches, and. People that were telling her not to feel anxiety, and they said, oh, you shouldn't be angry. You have the most magical life. You know, you need to get rid of that and have gratitude for how great your life is. And then she was also starting to feel sad because she was losing her passion for skiing.
And they said, oh, you shouldn't feel sad. You have the most amazing life in the world. So she was not having intimacy with her fear. Not having intimacy with her anger and not having intimacy with her sadness, and so she was definitely out of flow. And the thing is, we are taught to do what she was taught, which is resist it, conquer it, overcome it.
You know, just take fear alone. Let it go. Breathe it away, rationalize it away. There's no reason for it to be here. Anger's not allowed sadness. We're embarrassed about, you know, we apologized for it. And so she was definitely buying into not just what her advisors were [00:07:00] coaching her on, you know, co coaches were saying this.
Parents were saying this, friends were saying this colleagues, you know, other ski racers were saying this, but society also says this, that, you know, you, you, you're not gonna be able to get into a flow state if you have fear. Oh my god, for example. So I come along and I facilitated a conversation between her and these three parts of her, her fear, anger, and sadness.
Now, I'm most known as being a, a fear expert. So I definitely started there and she was in resistance to it. She was fighting a war with it. She was trying to get rid of it, all of that. And uh, I brokered a conversation between her and her fear and it looked something like fear saying, Hey, stop being such an asshole, right?
I'm here for a reason. Of course you should be scared. I'm scared, and you should be scared too. You know, all eyes are on you and you haven't been doing well for the last four years. So I helped. Changed the nature of her relationship with her fear. And I'm gonna give you a couple of equations [00:08:00] that really tie into flow is intimacy with all things.
So first of all, what the ski racer was experiencing was a lot of suffering. So the first equation, and, and you might wanna write this down 'cause this is huge, and if you're having troubles in your life, this is why suffering equals discomfort. Times resistance. So she was feeling the discomfort of fear, anger, and sadness, and then she was trying to resist it or being taught to resist it.
So her level of emotional discomfort was a level 10, but you can't change that number, right? But the resistance is something that's taught, you know, it's still kind of natural to resist anything uncomfortable like a hot stove. But what we're taught to do with our emotions is resist, resist, resist. And resistance comes in many forms.
She was trying to fight that mighty battle. Control it, manage it, get rid of it. All of that. And that was a level 10. So 10 times [00:09:00] 10, the ski racer was suffering horribly. Suffering equals discomfort times resistance. So what I shifted with her is the second equation. 'cause there's resistance and then the opposite is intimacy, which is the big buzzword when we're talking about flow.
Flow. Second equation, get a pen, right, equals whatever you're feeling. Plus intimacy. So instead of being in resistance to fear, anger, and sadness, I helped broke our conversation where she learned how to be in flow with her fear and flow with her sadness or intimacy with her fear, intimacy with her sadness and intimacy with her anger.
When you do this, not only do you not suffer, but you're in a flow state. So you, you kind of a bonus, not only do you not have anxiety disorders and depression and PTSD when you go through trauma and all of these. Horrible emotional disorders and problems, but you [00:10:00] also get to then access flow states where the impossible becomes possible, where you are tapping into.
And the traditional number in Zen is 10,000, 10,000 different states of being, where we're not just willing to have intimacy with love and joy and passion, but we're actually willing to have intimacy with, um, self-doubt and fear. Of course, that's the big one. And and frustration, right? And so you wanna be able to be in an intimate place with all 10,000 states of being not just the good ones, but also the bad ones, so that you can access all that Life has to offer the wisdom of all that life has to offer.
So Steven Kotler, who wrote Stealing Fire and Art of Impossible, I'm. Quoted in each of those books on what's due about fear and having that intimacy with fear. He said something interesting once we were having a conversation, this isn't documented anywhere, this is just a phone conversation. He said, well, when there's fear, [00:11:00] present flow comes for free.
You know, and my background as a professional extreme danger sports athlete, I was dealing with a lot of fear. And when you are doing dangerous sports where the consequences of failure or death or injury, you know, of course fear is going to be there and, and that's what takes people into the flow state.
He said, okay, when you're. When there's fear, present flow comes for free. And I said, Uhuh, no, that's not true, Steven. I said, when there's fear present and you have intimacy with it, then flow comes for free. So I helped the ski racer, broke her intimacy with her fear, and she got on the plane, went to the Olympics, won two silver medals after not having, I mean, four, four years of injuries or crashes.
So I think her, her top finish for those last four years was 17th, and she goes and wins two silver medals in the Olympics. So that's the power of shifting from [00:12:00] resistance to intimacy. So then my question for you is not only are, you know, are you and flow or in intimacy in an intimate state with. All of your many states of being, your 10,000 states, of being.
So there's the internal states of being that you can have intimacy with and like your, all the different parts of you, your controller, your mind, your emotions, but there's also the external component. Can you have intimacy with the snow and the wind and the cold or the heat? Which actually brings up an interesting point.
A lot of people get taken into an altered state when they have intimacy, say with their pain. Like if you're getting a a tattoo, people become addicted to getting tattoos because it takes 'em into this altered flow state. Because what they have is the intimacy with the pain. They're not in resistance to it.
They have intimacy with it. Same with Wim [00:13:00] Hofs. If you're breathing, you know, you're. In your body, you're having intimacy with your breath. You're having intimacy also with the cold, and even though the cold can be very unpleasant and uncomfortable, but if you have intimacy with it, it takes you into a flow state.
Similarly, with sweat lodges, if it's very, very hot, it also takes you into your body more on that in just a second, being in your body. Yes. Then that also takes you into a flow state or. Pain or suffering. You know, people who are long distance athletes. So the questions I have for you, are you experiencing intimacy with your many internal states of being and intimacy with the external world around you?
When you wanna get into a flow state, now you don't need fear to get into a flow state. Gardening takes people into a flow state. There's no fear there, but I. People have intimacy with their experience, either the, the ground, the plants, the wind, [00:14:00] the bugs, and also their internal experience. And that's what's taking them into a flow state there.
So whatever thing that takes you there could be sex, it could be dancing, it could be whatever your jam is, right? That takes you into that altered state. It's the intimacy that takes you there. And do you have that? Do you have that all the way is the question I have for you? The second question I have for you with your clients, is this what you're brokering are, or are you trying to get them to leave anything negative behind and only access the positive?
So those are the questions I have for you. Now, how do you have intimacy with all things internally and intimacy with all things externally? Good question. Well, first of all, when we think of a great lover. We, we don't see them as stopping what they're doing and saying, okay, I have to think about what we're doing here.
You know, and, and what's really working? No, that they're in their heads, right? That's, that's not a flow state. [00:15:00] So basically a flow state begins where thinking stops. Like, for example, intimacy with a cat, like a kitty cat. And if you're thinking about having an intimate experience with a cat, and keep in mind, a lot of people assume, when I say intimacy, they think of sex.
But if you've ever had an intimate experience with a dog or a cat or a piece of cheesecake, you know it's not sexual, right? It's just a deep. Physical connection with that thing where you're giving and receiving at the same time. So back to the analogy of a cat, the first hot tip in order for you to get out of your head and and have intimacy is you're not thinking about having intimacy with a cat.
It's like touching a cat. It's something that you feel, so you gotta feel. Cat in order to have an intimate experience with it. So getting back to emotions like you have to feel your fear. You can't think about feeling it. You can't [00:16:00] try to feel it. You just feel it, and it's a no mind experience. So it's a thought free experience.
So the first hot tip, gotta get outta your head. You know many ways to do that, drop your mind like a pen. But keep in mind, this is very, very hard for a lot of people to do, especially in the western world where we revere our ability to think and understand things above anything else I. Our modern school system seeks to take our mental intelligence to the top of the mountain.
We think that we can solve all of our problems through our minds. We think that we can access flow states through our minds, and in many ways that's true because our mind is the prism by which we experience everything. And without it, we would be tomatoes, right? If you can find that no mind place and just get into a, a physical experience, an emotional experience instead of a heady or an intellectual or an understanding experience, say [00:17:00] with fear, right?
Fear's my favorite subject. So instead of thinking about fear or tr focusing on feeling fear still in your head, you just feel the fear with no agenda, it's physical. Like feeling a cat is physical. So that's the first hot tip. Hot tip. Get out of your head and learn how to be in a state of physical feeling.
It's a connection force. That's my second hot tip. Just see it as a connection force. It's like I'm connecting to my fear and it is connecting to me. It's like deep, deep connection. Deep connection with the grass, with the day, with the emotions, with the moment. With your teammates, with whatever it is that's externally and internally a part of your day.
Now, just to summarize too though, it's easy to connect with a cat and have an intimate moment with a cat. It is a lot [00:18:00] harder to connect to difficulty, like fear or frustration or self-doubt. And I'll finish with a story from my own ski career. I was competing in a competition where it was really important that I won.
It was the first, I, I mean, I was a, a ski movie star. I, I skied in movies and all of a sudden my sport had competitions, big mountain, extreme skiing, and. I was required to go there as I was considered the best in the world. Not only did I need to compete, but I needed to win or else my hierarchy, my, my being called the best in the world might be threatened.
So a lot was at stake. It was a three day competition, elimination after each day, 200 competitors, about 40 of them were women and we're on day three, and the best of two runs wins. And I skied my first run and. I wasn't winning. I played it safe. I, I didn't challenge myself. I was in second place [00:19:00] and the girl that was beating me was my nemesis.
Like she was so mean and so. Competitive. Like I, I could not let her win. I had two hours to think about it before my next run though. And I was going through all sorts of like a, a class five rapid of emotions, like see your body like a hose when there's 10,000 different states of being flowing through it.
And I was experiencing fear and. Anger and keep in mind, you don't need to know what you're angry about or what you're afraid of. That just takes you into your mind. And I didn't go there, but I had imposter syndrome. I'm like, oh my gosh, maybe I'm not as good as I think I am. Um, I was, I. I was embarrassed.
I mean, it was all just flowing like Class six rapids through my body, and I didn't know at the time this information that I'm sharing with you, it took me 35 years to dissect this, but I just naturally was having an intimate experience with all of [00:20:00] it and drop by, drop by drop. With that intimacy, I became a mighty river.
And the fear helped me come up with a plan of what my next run was gonna be like. And it was gonna be big. And uh, and keep in mind, this is for you skiers. In the nineties I was on skinny skis and it was, it was hard packed day. And I got in the gate and I was just so present and just there, and I had the last two hours I just worked up into this absolute.
Bombproof Flow state, and I took off outta the gate. 3, 2, 1, go. Skied an amazing run including catching a 70 foot air onto hard pack on skinny skis and stuck the landing. And it was, it wasn't 70 feet. Powder Magazine said it was 70 feet. Really it was about 35 feet, but our little secret. So, and not only did I win for the women, but I took fourth overall [00:21:00] for the men.
And that other girl that I told you about, finished 73rd for the men. So that's the power of intimacy with all things negative as well. So this is very counterintuitive for your clients and you, it is very counterintuitive to teach. 'cause this is out of the box, not normal. Most people are trying to get rid of negativity, but.
I promise you, if you teach getting into an intimate state with your fear, anger, sadness, frustration, self, all of that, it works to enhance your performance like nothing else I've seen.
I really enjoy the concept of intimacy with what is rising. It sponsors an engaged approach to what is happening, not an avoidant or coping strategy that so many psychologists and performance coaches advise. Friction and flow are and Tal [00:22:00] constructs. And the more we promote coping strategies that tell us to ignore the rising fear, grit our teeth and push through it, fake it to make it, and force a result.
No pain, no gain, and focus on creating clutch. The more we move away from our ability to be in flow, and at the same time sponsor unhelpful patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving, stamping and entrenching deeper neural neurological pathways. Of this unhelpful manner of dealing with fear. I also love the concept of no mind.
I often use this term think Less to be more. We are so used to getting into our heads when things get difficult, either because of our biological pre predispositions or because of our cultural habits. We are wired to think more. When difficulty and complexity arises inadvertently triggering us to [00:23:00] become less.
In your work with others, do you see this ability to trust and become intimate with the experience becoming more common amongst performers? I love the question, and I wish the answer was yes, but no. I mean, I, the needle hasn't really moved that much. I, I've been facilitating this for about 20 years, and anxiety disorders are only getting worse and worse in the statistics are alarming and what anxiety is, is fear times resistance, and whatever you resist persists, it kinks the hose and traps the fear in your body.
I recently interviewed, and I don't just work with athletes, I work with business leaders. I work with. I have three avatars. I work with people who have deep emotional [00:24:00] issues, you know, anxiety disorders, PTSD, depression, that kind of thing. That's avatar one. Avatar two are people who are highly functioning and, but they also struggle with insomnia and anxiety and maybe they had a panic attack and they're like, what is up with this?
And, and then that's avatar two, avatar three are, are high performance folks who are looking for the 5% that's missing. And it's not just athletes. I would say 1% of my client base are athletes, but I, I find that athletes are the most fun to talk about. So let me talk about 26 different athletes that are some of the most famous people.
For danger sports in the world. I interviewed them actually for a movie. They weren't clients. People like Alex Hunt, who free soloed, El Capitan, layered Hamilton, arguably the best big wave surfer in the world. And so 23 of them, when I first started talking to 'em, I said, what's your relationship with fear?
And only three of them knew. [00:25:00] The rest of them just started parroting some sort of cliche, you know, I don't let it get the better of me, that sort of thing. I put it outta my head. Um, so three of them were, they, they actually said, oh yeah, intimacy is, is where it's at before I even brought this up. And, and, but they were all these three athletes.
Me think about this one was in their forties and two were in their fifties. But everyone that was younger and they had figured it out too, and they were the best in the world at their sports layer. Hamilton was one of them. Actually, my first question I. To all of these athletes is what is your relationship with fear?
I, they don't know anything about what I teach and lad Hamilton said, I would have to say I have an intimate relationship with fear. And I'm like, ah, my head exploded. Right. So then of the 26, 3 of them were like, I don't have any fear. And they were just angry at the thought that I would even suggest that they have a flow state with fear [00:26:00] or, you know, and, and I actually worried.
For their safety. One actually just got up, furious and walked out, and I wasn't being offensive in any way. So just by virtue of the fact that they reacted with such vicious anger, you know, which was way outta proportion to the conversation, tells me that there's something that is, is very protective there.
Or, or like, they, they didn't, they, there was just a rigidity that makes me worried for. Their safety because so many people die in these sports. One of the 26 said, all the people I know that, that say they have no fear, they're all dead now. So I was worried that these three people were probably gonna die.
Um, and so 23 of them though, in the end nodded their heads. Yes, intimacy is what the magic is. And then there's the three that. Said, absolutely not. So this is what we find with business leaders too, that are doing incredible things. So they may be able to have intimacy with [00:27:00] their idea or intimacy with their passion.
But if they don't also have intimacy, say with their fear, you may be able to get into a flow state during the day, through intimacy with something else, but ultimately over time, you're going to either burn out because you're spending 99% of your energy blocking out fear. Like we see gymnasts now 17 years old that are already burnt out.
You know, that's a sign of not having intimacy with their fear. They may have intimacy with other things, like I said. If they don't have intimacy with all of it, there are consequences for that. And about 10 years later, those consequences will make themselves known. So back to your question, I know that people are really, I.
Into flow. But I think that the question that you're asking is, are people having intimacy with the negative side of life? And actually, if anything, I would say the reverse is happening with all this. [00:28:00] Choose love over fear or gratitude practice or, oh, you need to let that go. That's the worst advice that you can give somebody who's going through a difficult time, um, because that will take you out of flow and lead to suffering.
So. Unfortunately, we're, we're getting better at having intimacy with the, the positive side of life, and we're getting worse at having intimacy with the negative side of life. And so there will be consequences for that and we can see them. So you have someone in front of you that is used to avoiding fear.
How do you practically help them do a 180 and have intimacy with what they're avoiding? It's a great question. There's a, a old Chinese proverb, I think Confucius said this. He who chases two rabbits catches neither. You really have to pick one or the other. Either you're helping your [00:29:00] clients have intimacy with the negative side of life, or you're not.
I can't tell you how many times people say to me, oh, you know, especially regarding fear, which is my main focus, getting people to have intimacy with fear. I'll talk to somebody who. Works with a lot of clients who have anxiety disorders or fear issues, and they say, oh, we're teaching the same thing. And I say, I assure you we're not.
And I, I hate to be so abrupt about it, but there are four different levels of dealing with fear, for example, and level one is resistance. And there are many different forms of resistance. So don't get too caught up on the word resistance, but it's any kind of. Replace it with calm, let it go, rationalize it away.
What's the worst that can happen? So it's trying to talk yourself out of it all. These are forms of resistance being so busy that you don't have to think about it. [00:30:00] Going out and exercising or taking, going to yoga class, you know, it seems like a way to deal with fear, but it's actually a way to not deal with it, like running away from it.
So that is what most. Practitioners are teaching. Second level is acceptance of fear. A lot of people teach that, and this is kind of new. This is exciting. It's a step in the right direction. That's level two. And, but what happens is we say, oh, it's normal and natural to feel fear. You don't wanna resist it.
You don't wanna, it's not a sign of personal weakness. You wanna. All that, but too often there's a comma after acceptance, but you don't wanna let it get the better of you and boom, we're right back to resistance. So I would say level one and level two is where we're bouncing back and forth right now with regard to fear, for example.
And that's one rabbit you can chase. And then there's third level, which is feeling, just feeling your fear without thought. Just having a physical, somatic [00:31:00] experience, feeling your fear. And then. Without trying to get rid of it. That's key. And then level four, which is the intimacy with fear. If you just start to feel your fear, intimacy just comes naturally.
That is the other rabbit you can chase. And you have to pick one or the other because imagine fear is a person. Who's your roommate? Like, here's your roommate, and you're like, okay, I accept that you're a normal, natural. I'm not gonna resist you anymore, but I won't let you get the better of me. Right? It's just very disrespectful to that roommate versus, Hey, you put the berry white on.
Let me give you a hug. Let's connect. In a gorgeous way, let me speak about you in a positive way. Say positive things only. You are the one of the best things that ever happened. You're one of the greatest experiences I get have to have here on planet Earth. Like that is the other rabbit, and that is. The thing where it's like, I'm Batman and and fear is Robin.
We are stronger together than apart [00:32:00] and we can go out and do impossible things together because fear is here for me and it's got my back and I know that. And that's where a flow state exists. Loving the Batman and Robin analogy. So do you distinguish between intimacy and presence? Um, yes. Here's why I want the practitioner to avoid any kind of mental experience.
And for me, presence can, can come in two different forms. It can be mental presence or it can be just physical presence or you said a word before consciousness, right? You can be mentally conscious. But it, you wanna, you don't wanna be mentally conscious or even conscious of yourself. It's, it's just a, it's a, a more of a presence in your body.
Like you imagine like a, a singer singing a great [00:33:00] aria where they're filling the concert hall with the fullness of their presence, but it, they're not in their heads. And so it depends on what kind of presence or consciousness we're talking about. You have to be really careful with the language because emotions.
I guess when we're talking about fear is how I'm answering this question. Emotions want to be felt. They don't want to be you to be conscious of them. They don't want you to try to understand them. They don't want you to be present with them. They want to be felt. So, um, if the presence or the consciousness is physical, then great, but for most people.
I don't know that, that, like mindfulness, for example, is tied in with presence and consciousness, right? Mindness, mindfulness is a buzzword right now, so I put that all in the same category. You, that's not what you want. That's not gonna take you into a flow [00:34:00] state. It's mindlessness. That will take you into a flow state.
So slight tweak, words matter. It's not just semantics. When words lose their meaning, culture collapses. So it's very important to be on point with our language and I worry that the word presence will take people into their minds. Hmm. Nicely put it is, it is difficult a lot of the time as our cerebral activity will always try to pull us into that thinking brain.
Keep us locked into conscious experience to try and solve things, think our way through and out of situations, keeping us locked into an avoidant rabbit Warren forever shielding us from entering flow and in intelligent people will have a hard time doing this 'cause they'll just keep trying to use their intellect to figure this out.
Yeah. Or what we consider intelligent people. Because we think of mental intelligence when we talk about intelligence, but there's physical intelligence [00:35:00] and then emotional intelligence. But my version of emotional inte intelligence is different from what else is out there. What else is out there is emotional intelligence is our seen as our ability to understand and regulate our emotions, which I don't.
Subscribe to. For me, emotional intelligence is our ability to feel our emotions in an honest way and have them help us come alive or take, have them take us into a flow state.
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The official site of flow training and flow coaching. Interesting you say that, and I often talk about the journey of. Building our experiential intelligence. And whilst we need the intellectual understanding of things to raise our awareness and the metacognition to empower the direction of our attention, often find that the people I coach get locked into the trap of prioritizing their, their mental intellect or cerebral intelligence or acumen of their thinking brain, for want of a better phrase.
You know, they prioritize it over and above their experiential intelligence and personal wisdom. And by, by that I mean their embodied knowledge that is inclusive of all aspects of experience, be it the senses, the emotions, volition perspective, and our thoughts. It's experiential intelligence doesn't come through better thinking, rather through [00:37:00] letting go of our incessant need to think and instead trust and embody the experience.
Be with the moment and cultivate embodied knowledge, which when Sumit equates to our personal wisdom, uh, just riffing off of something that you said a little bit ago, um, people don't know that they are not good at feeling. And so when you hear, okay, we gotta get in our bodies and learn how to feel and intimacy, we become like computers that are trying to turn themselves off.
It's very difficult and if you try to use your intellect to try to turn your intellect off, that's gonna be a rabbit hole that is not gonna take you. There is more a matter of just dropping the mind, like you drop a pen or um, just whenever you've just hugged somebody, like maybe a friend that's upset and you hug them and it's physical [00:38:00] and you're just there connecting with them.
Draw from those kinds of experiences. Just try it on, you know, experiment with it in your own life Flow. Unleashed. Unleashed. I really enjoyed Kristen's commentary on becoming intimate to what we are avoiding and that whatever we resist persists and that all of our anxiety is a result of our resistance to fear.
She reminds us that we all have the choice in each moment to be intimate with the moment and the plethora of sensations, emotions, thoughts, ion and perspectives that make up each subjective experience through her. Then training her. Two main practical tips to move beyond our ordinary experiences of fear is to firstly, get out of your head.
Use your physical feelings to lean into the experience somatically or physically be with [00:39:00] your fear. Approach the moment without mind, not mindful, but mindless. Secondly, see the experience through the lens of connection. Assess the quality of our connection in each moment. Do we have intimacy with our fear?
And only then can we be in a state of no mind and experience the deep richness of flow. Her comments bring us back to the very essence of flow and the quality of our experience. Can we learn to have a more intimate, richer relationship within the moment, or for the very least, the moments that matter?
And whilst our individual needle may vary as to our desire and tolerance for rich experiences, if we can walk these words and allow our ability to be intimate to grow, then we'll be knocking on flow's front door and [00:40:00] quench the thirst of the deeper aspects of our being that give rise to our level of vibrancy and exuberance for life.
So the next time you experience fear. Feel it in your body and take a moment to have a level of intimacy with it. If you wanna find out more about Kristin Alma, please see the show notes.
Thank you for listening to Flow Unleashed. If you enjoyed listening, please subscribe to get notified when our next episode drops. The more people that subscribe, the better I can make the show for you. Equally, please leave a review. Your review will go a long way to helping others find this pot until the next time.
Thank you for listening to Flow Unleashed.[00:41:00]
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