5 Ways to Feel More Peaceful

Stress seems to be the modern way of life. 2023 research by Columbia University Medical Center revealed how when people spent more time thinking about a stressor, they felt more stress. The more time spent dwelling on something stressful, the higher their blood pressure became. 

I understand stress. In one particularly stress-filled year, I experienced betrayal on my spiritual journey by some of my teachers, and had to start my life over again, moving across the country, starting new work and navigated a painful breakup at the same time. I lost all my friends, and found myself in a new city, where I had to get to know new people in my professional and personal life. 

What could have destroyed me became the greatest opportunity, the birthing ground of my inner warrior. I discovered that I could battle stress by going deeper into the powerful soul liberation practices that made me feel peaceful.

I emerged from it feeling more powerful than before, in ways I could never have imagined. 

Here are practices that supported my discovery of the spiritual warrior within, that you can also find within yourself, when you embark on the path of powerful soul liberation. It won’t be easy, but it will free you.

1. Invite your emotions to surface. Fear and anger are the most important emotions to be experienced before transmuting them with spiritual knowledge. Often, when there is childhood trauma underlying current stresses, we blame ourselves for it all. We often learn as children that we have to deny our own feelings to be caretakers for our adults. This can make connecting with your genuine emotions challenging, so first simply invite your feelings to arise.
2. Give yourself permission to feel. Create a safe container to feel all your feelings. It really helps to create long periods of time to practice being silent. It can take a while to feel safe enough to feel everything. Anger must be acknowledged. We need to feel the fire of it in our bodies, to find our power. And fear warns us of lurking dangers. 
3. Understand where your emotions come from. Make a list of what you are upset about. Start moving your emotions from your body and mind onto paper, where you can begin experiencing enough distance from them to start more objectively observing them. Are there connections between what presently disturbs you, and what you went through in childhood? Write anything that arises.
4. Accept the situation as it is. Acceptance is a powerful soul liberation practice. No one is born perfect. We may not always behave appropriately in all settings, and neither will others. Often, it can feel easier to sweep problems under the rug to avoid the pain that dealing with them entails. This, however, perpetuates continuing the very behaviors we may wish to transform.  
5. Study powerful soul liberation teachings. When you accept your anger and the trigger for it, you can then partner your anger with ancient wisdom that you expose yourself to, and in the process, feel powerful in a way that you never have before. 

As for fear, you have to go deeper. All fear is rooted in the fear of death. Ancient Vedic spiritual wisdom teaches that death is merely a change of clothes, from one “bodysuit” to another. The more we understand this, the less we need to fear death. The less we fear death, the less we fear anything else in life. Reading ancient texts like Bhagavad Gita and attending spiritual lectures from qualified teachers helps tremendously. 

Forgive anyone who upset you, and forgive yourself for allowing your boundaries to be crossed, or for doing things you regret. Once you’ve felt your feelings, understood them, practiced acceptance, and gained greater spiritual knowledge, you will feel powerful enough to forgive – without forgetting what you learned. 

Go in order. Don’t skip any step. Healthy anger helps ensure you keep healthy boundaries. Healthy fear warns you when someone doesn’t feel safe, and how near or far to remain from them, while not getting paralyzing. 

In the process of following these steps, you will experience the blessing of awakening your powerful inner spiritual warrior.  

Ananta Ripa Ajmera is a spiritual teacher, 10-time international award-winning, best-selling author of The Way of the Goddess, founder of SoulWisdom Press & PR, and co-founder of The Ancient Way, an organization offering Powerful Soul Liberation programs, rooted in Ayurveda, Yoga, and Vedanta's universal spirituality. She’s been featured in Forbes, Vogue, and Cosmopolitan. She’s taught at Endeavor, Stanford, and UNICEF.