When I first began yoga, I began because I wanted a practice to support my mind. Working a challenging and demanding corporate career, it was lonely. It required constant mental power. Looking back now I can acknowledge how taxing that was energetically. Fast forward to this now moment, and we are all living it, daily. 

United we are in this. Our freedoms have been stripped from us. Uncertainty is a certain. Planning comes with the potentiality of being pointless, and as much as my burning desire is to avoid pessimistic reflection, I have to be honest, it is the current reality we are facing. As a human who likes to lean into truth rather than turn away, I have to equip myself with the tools to manage this sense of emotional reflux! 

So if you’ve struggled at any point recently with stress, anxiety, self sabotage, self doubt, worry, for yourself or for loved ones, for the future, then this is for you. 


Let’s take a moment to reflect and remind ourselves that we don’t get the rule book of what an emotion is, and how to deal with the labelled ‘bad’ emotions when we are a child. We are conditioned to understand  'good’ and ‘bad’ when we are a child, and therefore this stuff is ingrained. But understanding and mastering the colourful array of our emotions is pretty helpful in adulthood. Ok, so mastering is a tall order, so we can at least start with understanding :).  In my last blog 

‘Every thought pattern creates a ripple effect’ we looked at physically what happens when we have an emotion, so we understand the chemical chain reaction within, learning emotions are simply an expression of qi or energy. 

But what happens when we identify with said emotion? 

Quite often we can feel ‘wounded’, uncomfortable, irritable, pi$ed off. Most of the time it’s natural to try and avoid the emotion, trying to plaster over it with our ‘numb-ers’ exercise, food, alcohol, excessive scrolling, filling the schedule, hiding away. All we are doing is covering it up, and this can often extend the momentary suffering. Recently when I studied non-dual Saiva Tantric philosophy I immersed into the practices of Adyashanti, and learned the art of sitting with the discomfort. I can’t tell you how transformational this has been for me. If you’ve felt all the feels, I would invite you to give it an experiment yourself. 


We all have so much to contend with right now, whilst trying to remain positive. I am allll for remaining positive and upbeat but when we do that in an attempt to plaster over uncomfortable emotions, we completely miss the learning. 

In TCM (traditional chinese medicine) we learn we are not our emotions, they’re an expression of qi, which is asking to move through us. We feel the emotion, we are not the emotion. This helps us in becoming less consumed by them, we learn to witness them, just like we learn in meditation.

Emotions aren’t labelled good or bad, they can be great teachers, offer us valuable wisdom. Have you ever learned a valuable lesson from a certain moment which caused an emotional response - your teaching? 


What happens when we don’t honour our emotions? It’s like the festering unsaid in that unresolved disagreement… it doesn’t leave. Feelings buried alive never die. In fact they rot. We all know the issues lay in our tissues, and that can become problematic when we don’t deal with them, we suppress them. It can build up enormous internal toxicity and in the worst cases become a breeding ground for something heavier, like anxiety or depression. 


In this practice, we learn to sit comfortably and quietly. Turn within, pause, come to the breath and sit witness the emotion. When we do this, we lean in to the emotion rather than turn away.  Ask, what am I feeling right now, where is it in my body, what is it trying to teach me? Sit with the feeling in your body and feel your way into where it resides in your physicality. Internally identify the sensation, hot, scratchy, burning, numb, empty, a cold void.


You don’t need to be an expert meditator to be able to do this, anyone can do it. Commit to the exploration as part of your journey to internal freedom. What is it calling you to discover? What is it longing to teach you? Where have you abandoned yourself? Let your barriers down? Fallen out of alignment? Are you being hard on yourself again? Is it necessary? Is it feeding or draining you? Is there another way you can respond?


Invite it in. Home within. Here is your opportunity to plunge into self acceptance and therefore healing self love. There is light at the end of that dark tunnel. 


When we sit in this space, we uncover pieces of ourselves we have turned away from. We return to truth. Our essence. We return to source. Not only do we return to alignment, we become more loving and accepting in the process. Imagine this exercise as a bottle of compassion, ready and available, and always full.  

You just need to open the bottle, and take the plunge. 


Beyond the discomfort is your freedom, trust me. It’s all within. 


Sending you an extra dose of H love, here’s a little grounding earth based Yin practice, for you to reconnect to your healing wisdom within.
					

Share