There is a growing epidemic in today's society: social anxiety. I've lived with it most of my life, and recently I have noticed it in other young men that I have encountered. It's tragic, it is at a time when young men should really be living, being reckless at times, making mistakes, and then learning from those mistakes, in turn growing, maturing as people.
It surprises me at times, the number of young guys I meet who have social anxieties and who share their problems and stories with me ... in the past it felt like I was the only who had this problem, I had nobody to confide in ... now I'm being approached and befriending people who share their problems with me, at a time when I'm coming into my own. Some might call this coincidence; however I don't believe in coincidence, I believe in synchronicity.
At a certain point of my life, I took it upon myself to seek teachings, methods, ways to empowerment to overcome social anxiety. I had to first go back in time, see how I was like when I was a child. Up to the age of about ten, I was a bit of a nightmare, a little terror you could say. I was naughty, I was loud, I was energetic. I felt immense delight in breaking things. Now this may seem like unacceptable behavior from an adult's point of view, but I had something precious within me, a spark, that was soon to die out.
During the next few years I moved to a new neighbourhood, started a new school, and endured a lot of bullying, negative remarks, and ridicule. The kids were very different in this new school and neighbourhood, a lot rougher and aggressive. The years passed as I became increasingly detached from my playful spontaneous nature, I started to read a lot more, watched a lot more television, became reclusive and very introspective. While my school work improved at this time, I lost any ability to actively engage in play with other children. I formed the belief that if I expressed my genuine playful nature, I would be punished with a physical beating.
This belief carried through later years, and severely affected my ability to socialize and interact with others of my age group. The few friends that I did have undermined my characteristics, crushing my self esteem.
I was living in my head, unable to relate to others, always in my own world, and lacking in physical vitality. At one point I relinquished all my friends at the time, decided to look at ways to improve myself. I got involved in New Age spirituality, had some interesting experiences, but it did not solve my issues. In fact, it made things worse, as I thought too much about morals and was afraid to anjoy myself. I read countless self-help books, such as those of Tony Robbins; I started reading the news a lot more, keeping up to date with pop culture, trends, media, so I could have things to talk about. I tried to modify my personality, appear more confident, more extrovert.
However, those techniques could only take me so far. I was missing something. I then started to study Oriental philosophy and martial arts. I have never actually joined any martial arts classes, but I came upon a technique that turned things around for me. I learned that inside us there a vital point of energy known as the hara or tantien. It is located two inches below the navel. All energy emanates from that source. I learned focussing one’s awareness on that point with meditation and deep breathing grounds your awareness, giving one stability, poise and confidence in daily reality. I learned meditation through the New Age, but there I was taught to focus on the third eye, the point of the brow between the eyes, to awaken psychic abilities. However, I realise now the importance of learning to ground your awareness first.
The best technique I have come across for grounding your awareness is chi breathing. You sit or kneel comfortably, focus your awareness on your tantien for a minute, then breath deeply through your nose, for between 5 - 10 seconds, hold your breath for three seconds, then exhale slowly for 10 seconds, or exhale for 5 seconds if you cannot manage 10. Try doing this for at least 10 minutes while at the same time keeping your focus on your tantien. After ten minutes or so, breathe normally for about five minutes, keeping your focusing in the same area, two inches below the navel.
You might be thinking the relevance of this exercise to the main issue I’ve been discussing, all I can say from experience is that it grounds you into your instinctual self, the playful carefree child in all of us. Plus this meditation has many health benefits as well.
Look around at diverse self-help marketplace, you’ll find gurus and courses teaching you to think positively, or instil characteristics which are not of your true nature for some measure of personal, social or corporate success, or teach very shallow personality and social skills and techniques.
But I would like to put forward that we need to get a hold of that child-like instinctual self … be a bit naughty or reckless if need be, for those who have trouble talking to people or socialising, the words are already there … you used to blabber them as a free spirited kid. I don’t care how awful or repressed anyone’s life might have been; we were all free spirited kids at one time who knew exactly what to say.
It’s not so much an innate lack of social skills; rather that some of us live in a system where certain standards prevail, and our genuine expression is suppressed.
But that’s enough talk on this matter. I suggest you do this exercise every night, it will take some practise and discipline. It will take your awareness out of your head and into your body, which to me is where it belongs.
Muhammed Khan
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