I think anxiety is quite a normal thing, it happens to me every once in a while. Anxiety I define as worry about the future, often unwarranted in my case, which by definition means that you are not focusing on the now.

If you are able to take comfort in the fact that you are not living in the now, so you need to try and become more present, then that’s great. You can get over the anxiety quite quickly. But if you can’t, you’re going to need to do something that forces you into the moment. That will stop your focus on the future.

That’s where things like Yamabushi training, getting out into nature, meditation, or creative endeavours come into the equation. As I’ve experienced it, these things are able to remind us that the future is yet to come, i.e. it doesn’t exist, and worrying about it will not help.

For me, I think there’s a sort of reassuring nature in these activities. While this may sound paradoxical, Yamabushi training reassures me that I can always do Yamabushi training, and I think the same can be said for the other activities.

Being able to reassure yourself is a life skill. But as with all skills, it’s learnable. You just have to get out and do something about it, no living in your head.