The Fear That Weighs on the Body

Fear rarely stays in the mind. It settles in the body, and we begin to feel it as weakness, tension and even pain.

Arjuna, the finest archer of his age, stood between two armies at Kurukshetra and suddenly could not fight. He tells Krishna that his limbs are failing, his mouth is dry, his body trembles, his skin is burning, and the great bow Gandiva is slipping from his hand. Nothing had struck him. No arrow had been shot.

Yet his fear of the war, and of what it would cost him, had taken over his body so completely that he could not stand. Krishna did not dismiss his suffering, and he did not hand him a new weapon. He asked him to give up this faintness of heart and rise. The strength was already there. It was the fear that was holding it down. Many of us know a quieter version of this. Someone recovers from an injury, completes the treatment and the exercises, and still carries the pain, because the fear of re-injury keeps the body braced. When that fear is finally recognised and released, healing often follows. Treatment prepares the ground, but the letting go has to happen within. The Upanishads put it simply: the mind alone is the cause of bondage and of liberation.

Today, name one fear that has been quietly weighing on you, do your practical part, and then consciously loosen your grip on it.