THE MORGENROT TRAIL

My hands trembled uncontrollably, my breathing had mutated into hyperventilation. The tremor made it impossible to open the bar and grab the bottle to drink. What should have been a peaceful session in the Odenwald had become a Stephen King movie. The sensation of panic and imminent death forced me to stop. —YOU MUST REACH A POPULATED PLACE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. EVERY SECOND COUNTS. EVERY HEARTBEAT COULD BE THE LAST. —roared Gríma, making every nerve in my body vibrate. My heart rate skyrocketed in seconds! 120, 130, 140, 150, 160… I could only make a phone call under the emotional certainty that the next few minutes would be critical to save my life.

Anxiety is not fear of things. It's fear of sensations. It's anticipatory terror: the fear of what will happen when our own bodily reactions activate. It's as if our internal alarm system has become hyperactive and now sees threats where there are only normal sensations. It confuses an open water tap with a tsunami, a firecracker with a long-range missile. The good news is that if your brain learned to fear those sensations, it can also learn not to fear them. If you fell into this trap following a specific process, you can get out of it by following the reverse process.

Already at the ancient Celtic hillforts I felt nervous. When I reached the first staircase, I felt the usual mental block. But I wanted to show Manon the beauty of the place. With a deep breath, and my eyes fixed on the ground, I began to climb. After barely ten steps, all alarms went off. —Let's go down now! We're risking our lives! —shouted Gríma. —Enough nonsense! Only by moving forward will this torture end. —replied my rational part, fed up with so much weakness. The healthy mind won the battle. I took a breath of humid oceanic air and continued climbing without stopping until I reached the top.

When Manon caught up with me, one look was enough to understand what was happening. I was ready to turn around and flee, but she had other plans. She ordered me to be quiet and sit down. She didn't want to hear me talk or see me run. She simply asked me to stay there for five or ten minutes. The first moments were eternal. Erratic movements, intense palpitations, stabbing chest pain, numb hands… However, as I contemplated the course of the Miño River, something extraordinary happened: the anxiety gradually subsided, giving way to a clear mind. A mind that knew exactly what it had to do: get up and complete the ascent.

The carnival of life doesn't come when everything is perfect. It comes when your structure is solid enough that imperfection no longer scares you. When your foundations are so firm that you can dance on them without fear of them collapsing. In the first part of the book we rode each day toward twilight, until it became night. Now, after true epics, we've turned the situation around. The same crepuscular light we saw for the last time now greets us in the form of Morgenrot: a dawn that brings us back to a carnival of life with more colors, more nuances, more experiences, more joy.

Your brain wants to heal. Your body wants to be well. You just need to give them the right conditions. Give it routine, give it natural light, give it real food, give it restorative sleep, give it clean water. Give it time. And when the moment comes, and it will come, when you feel that Lebenshungrig running through your veins, you'll know that all this daily work was worth it. Because you won't just have overcome anxiety; you'll have discovered an amplified capacity for joy that only those who have walked through darkness and chosen, day after day, to build their own dawn know. The Morgenrot is there, waiting for you. You just have to keep walking toward it, one step at a time.