What does it take to be courageous?

It takes, above all else, the willingness to fail. It takes willingness to be vulnerable—which means cultivating the capacity to hold your ground even when you feel like you are in free fall.

The bravest thing you can do when free falling is to sit still, breathe, and pay attention. This means being aware of what was going on around you. There is a certain part of you that won’t want to see the world with that clarity. We succumb to distractions every day. Alcohol, sleeping pills, the distraction of bad television are all appealing.

Eventually, however, you will come to realize that you need or want to see what’s really going on.

Summon up your courage and… SIT STILL.

Every morning for 10 minutes, sit on a cushion with a timer and pay attention to your breath. Your attention will wander off every few seconds… But each time, just re-focus on the task at hand. That pattern repeated every few seconds, will feel like a long time, but after a while, it will be second nature.

Training your mind is like training a puppy: it needs gentleness and incredible patience. Which is why one of my tips for practicing courage is a simple daily practice of mindfulness.

5 STEPS TO CULTIVATE COURAGE

1. Breathe

If you have never done any breath work before, start simple. Just try inhaling through your nose deeply, and then exhaling either through your nose or your mouth as you relax your body. Over time, you’ll want to build the capacity to breathe deeply, using the full diaphragm so that you see your belly rise and fall as you breathe, rather than just your chest. But for today just try five deep breaths. They may be the first deep breaths you’ve had all day.

2. Focus & soften

Find a comfortable place to sit. Eyes are closed or half open, gaze soft. Bring your attention to your breath. For the next five minutes, every time you notice that your attention has wandered away from your breath, gently bring it back. The moment of noticing that you have wandered is the moment of awareness; it’s the heart of the practice—which is to come back, over and over again. Tip: set a timer or you’ll be checking the time every few seconds.

3.  Feel fear in your body

Sometimes we think that courage means having no fear. In reality, courage means becoming very familiar with our fear and learning to act even though we are afraid. Fear is not just an idea, we experience fear in our body and yoga helps us start to recognize that. Try this: Take a fear you a familiar with, a fear that shows up in your life regularly. Now, feel where your fear is in your body. It might feel like a tightness or a contraction. It might feel like you’re holding something in, or back, or up. Take a few minutes to inhale deeply and send deep exhales of softness and release into that contracted place.

4. Study your fear

Studying our fear may seem counter-intuitive. But yoga teaches us to study our own habits and patterns. So pay attention to the fear that shows up in your life, listen to it, see if you recognize it. There might be an old familiar pattern in this fear, and recognizing the pattern may help you find the exact words needed to reassure it and move through and past it. This is especially useful with fears that come up over and over again—maybe even in different guises.

5. Meet fear with kindness

The very first principle and practice of yoga is ahimsa—which means being compassionate and kind, even towards ourselves. The meditation practice outlined above is, ultimately, a practice in looking ourselves in the eyes with kindness, which gives us a pathway to reconnect with our own great big courageous hearts. Love melts fear. And our meditation practice is a path back to our own original, loving selves.

Citation: “ZEN UNDER FIRE: 5 Yoga and Meditation Steps to Cultivate Courage | The Mindful Word.” The Mindful Word. N.p., 08 May 2013. Web. 19 May 2016.