Whenever fear arises – either in a sudden wind of panic or a low-grade brooding anxiety – the approach of mindfulness is to fully feel the fear, to move towards it rather than running away. The fire of fear is usually mixed up with the smoke of explanations, abstract considerations that attempt to tame the fear through various storylines about the fear. These storylines move us away from feeling directly.

The healthiest way to be with fear is simply that – to be the fear rather than trying to solve it or successfully manipulate it from a distant vantage point. Approaching fear from a distance is like having a giant pair of chopsticks – fear is at the end of them, twenty-five feet away from us, and we keep trying to move the fear from kitchen counter to dining table and back again. No wonder it keeps spilling onto the floor! Instead we could approach fear as a finger food – using the bare hand to pick it up directly, place it in the mouth, chew and swallow.

Gaylon Ferguson, Natural Wakefulness