The Anatomy of Anxiety with Deane Juhan

The Anatomy of Anxiety is a two-hour online meditation and mind-body webinar with Deane Juhan, a bodyworker and author who has spent fifty years researching and practicing the anatomy and physiology of the body-mind. It is for anyone who lives with anxiety and wants to understand what is happening in the body, and for practitioners of yoga, mindfulness and somatic healing who want a clearer map of the territory.

The session runs from 2:30 to 4:30 pm Pacific Time over Zoom, so people can join from anywhere.

What to Expect

Juhan starts from a simple premise: anxiety is not an emotion that the body then reacts to. The body's reactions are the emotion. It is a biochemistry, anchored in neural processes, glandular secretions, muscular tension and compulsive behaviors, which the mind then experiences as a feeling state. From there, the workshop moves through three questions.

- The biochemistry of anxiety and stress. How the brain, pituitary and adrenal axis releases adrenaline in the face of danger, why that surge normally fades once we fight or flee, and what happens when we keep remembering a threat, or imagine one that is not there, so the adrenaline keeps pumping and wears down the organism and mental clarity.
- The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. How one stimulates us to get the day's work done, how the other restores us in rest and sleep, and how chronic anxiety keeps that cycle from completing.
- The opposite of fight or flight. Why deep mental and physical relaxation, as in meditative states, can reverse the biochemistry of fear and stress and let body and mind restore themselves.

Running through all of it is the idea that attentiveness to the body, through yoga, meditation and mindfulness in its many forms, is the most effective way to neutralize anxiety. The webinar is taught with extensive slides and lecture, and offers new images and language for the anatomical, physiological and philosophical aspects of the body-mind. Much of the content applies to somatic healing disciplines of all kinds, and it offers perspectives that are not found in textbooks and often run counter to accepted opinion about how our organisms develop and heal.

About Deane Juhan

Deane Juhan trained in residence at Esalen Institute from 1973 to 1990 and has worked as a professional bodyworker for 30 years. He is a Trager practitioner and instructor with a private practice in the Berkeley area. He is the author of "Job's Body: A Handbook for Bodywork" and "Touched by the Goddess: The Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Dimensions of Bodywork." His workshops have been presented across the US, Canada, Europe and Japan, and draw on both current research into the body-mind and his many years as a practitioner. He is known for making anatomy and physiology vivid, accessible and intriguing.

Before You Go

The Zoom link arrives in your confirmation email, with reminders two days and one hour before the start. A recording is sent automatically to everyone registered, so you can still take part if the live time does not suit you. Continuing education credit is available for NCBTMB. No prior experience in anatomy or meditation is described as required.