Feeling your emotions; A Meditative Practice.
I want to share with you a practice that has helped me with physical and emotional pain I have experienced within my body and it's all about feeling your emotions.
First let me explain,
- What feeling your emotions does: allows your body to rest and feel light. Makes us feel connected
- What suppressing emotions does: keeps your body in a state of alert, can make you feel tired, heavy and uptight. Makes us feel disconnected.
Feeling our emotions allows us to take responsibility for our own life, our experiences and it’s outcomes. Feeling our emotions without judgment and with understanding and grace allows us to flow through life a little easier.
When I first started on this (healing) journey I was in immense emotional and physical pain. I had let myself, my mind, my body, be over run. I would focus on what I thought I needed to do and drown out all the other voices inside that were screaming at me (telling me how I felt, which I ignored). I was living from a state of scarcity and lack and I was also operating from a victim consciousness.
When you are stuck in that state of lower emotions and are also physically depleted it’s a very hard journey back home (to yourself & to your heart).
How do we feel our emotions?
Feeling your emotions actually takes practice and sometimes it takes a combination of things to be able to feel and let go, depending on the emotions you are experiencing.
I think the first thing you need to do is have some quiet time to yourself. Time where you are not distracted, time where you are not planning anything or don’t have anything specific to think about. We could easily call this meditation OK and that’s exactly what it is. Time to yourself to OBSERVE yourself. People say “oh I tried to meditate – I couldn’t keep my mind still” and they give it up, thinking they're "not good" at it. Meditation is not that illusive mental silence. Meditation is time to reconnect to self, time to connect to your heart. Life is full of distractions, work, friends, TV, social media, SMART phones. Life has become very FULL.
So just setting out a small amount of time every day to put aside the distractions and sit in solitude, I find, is quite important. It's time to listen to yourself - you don't need to turn your mind off - time to learn how your mind works and get to know YOURSELF.
You can sit or lay and I’d suggest doing it with your eyes closed so you can really lower any external distractions. Focus on your breath and allow yourself to relax (if you can) now observe what is coming up for you. Thoughts?... anything specific?….. Now look underneath the thought… what is it that you are feeling? Rushed? Jealous? Happy? Overwhelmed? --- This inquiry could help you get an alternate look at how you perceive your thoughts.
Your mind may be saying one thing, but what it is doing is keeping you from admitting how you really feel.
I am going to give you a fictional example.
I could be angry with my partner for parking in my car spot, which makes it harder for me to get to my car. Underneath that anger story I am actually very worried about being late and find it quite overwhelming leaving the house with my daughter and getting her at school on time.
So behind that anger or 'thought' – we have an emotion. So now we get to look properly at this feeling and feel it and get to the point where we can learn and let it go. The anger is keeping us stuck, the anger is keeping us “blaming” (my partner) the anger which is really just a created story is keeping us disempowered and stopping us from getting to the root cause of the issue and SOLVING it. Allowing us freedom and self reliance.
Then once you’ve identified the feeling, give yourself a moment to feel it in your body. Let it be present. Don’t try to make it go away OR push it onto someone else (like your partner). FEEL IT. Breathe into it / cry even/ don’t make it wrong -- just let it be. Let it stay as long as it likes. Walk around with it all day if you need, let it be. It's not wrong, it's not bad, its allowed to be there, so just let it.
I want you to experiment with this! Try to do this exercise EVERYDAY to stay on top of your emotions. I can compare not connecting with your emotions like not doing your washing and just throwing it in a pile and then one day your like oh shit I need some clothes or like my house is a mess and you have to put in some really hard work to get back on top. Once you’re back on top if you do it everyday its not a chore it’s a part of life and you actually get to enjoy it.
Practice your emotional cleaning and let me know how you go and if you have ANY questions don't hesitate to contact me.
So much love,
Lucy J Grace x
Watch our IG live on Mediation HERE .
