Have you ever noticed how certain patterns seem to repeat in your life, no matter how much you want things to change? You recognize the signs, you feel the pain or fear, yet somehow the spiral continues.

When someone recently asked me for a fresh perspective to help break such a cycle, two practices came to mind — both grounded in the power of presence.

1. Shifting from Story to Sensation

This is a key element of The Presence Process (new dates for the online group here).
This process teaches us to move our attention away from what we see — the circumstances, the storylines, the reasons — and instead place it on what we feel — within, here and now, without needing to explain or label it.

Instead of seeing events through the mind’s interpretation, we begin to experience them as energy in motion (e-motion). Patterns, pain, and fear are no longer just problems to solve, but felt sensations to meet: warmth, cold, tension, release, movement.

We are invited to feel these energies unconditionally. Without the mental story. Without even labeling them as “pain” or “fear.” Just feeling — raw, real, alive.

And if we do, we’ll start recognizing patterns through sensation. We deepen into unconditional presence: simply being with what arises. And as we get better at feeling, we’ll move ever closer to the original imprints that have shaped our lives. When we finally feel them unconditionally, the old imprints lose their power. Life circumstances shift — or our experience of them changes so profoundly that they no longer hold us captive.

The path to breaking any spiral is simple, but not always easy: Feel it all, without condition.

2. Meeting Fear with Full Presence

The second practice is something I turn to personally, especially when deep fear about the future shows up.

Whenever fear arises, I don’t push it away.
Instead, I welcome the possibility of what I’m afraid of happening.
I sit upright (or stand tall), imagine it vividly, and breathe deeply into the fear. I stay present, breathing fully, even when every part of me wants to recoil. I breathe until I feel free and strong — even while holding the image of the thing I fear most.

If the situation is particularly triggering, I take a mental snapshot and place it in a frame on the wall. In my mind’s eye, I look at the image, then at the wall around it (move your eyes all around!). Then at the image again, then again at the wall. Keep on breathing. Take a step closer and repeat. Find your spot as close to or far away from the image as you need to keep on breathing and standing tall. This is how I practice staying present with any fearful image in my mind.

I do this even with situations that feel unbearable to imagine.
And each time, the fear loses its grip.
It dissolves.
It transforms into love.
And I find myself free.

Trust the Power of Presence

It’s natural to want to break free from fearful spirals. And the key is not to fight harder, or think smarter — it’s to stay with everything that arises, including the things that scare you the most. You don’t have to enjoy it. You don’t have to fix it.
You simply have to stay.

And if you’re worried that imagining worst-case scenarios could somehow create them — please know: Creation flows through feeling, not thinking. When you feel free and steady even amidst imagined fear, you open yourself to an entirely new reality — one shaped by presence, love, and deep resilience.

And often, life responds in ways that feel nothing short of miraculous.

 

Image by Małgorzata Tomczak