We are taught in our society to suppress our emotions. 

That is a huge travesty.  

Often depression and chronic anxiety is caused by not feeling our emotions.  The habit of suppressing our emotions creates a backlog.  That backlog of unfelt emotions can feel very overwhelming.  When we suppress our negative emotions, we also suppress our ability to feel positive emotions.  By becoming more aware of our emotions, and allowing ourselves to feel them, we can reduce the backlog and move towards emotional freedom. 

What if much of what you feel is from your past?

What if much of the anxiety you feel has nothing to do with your present?  What if much of the sadness that you feel is trapped emotions from your past?  When you encounter experiences in your present that remind you of the past experience, the emotion comes up. 

 

The emotional hamster wheel 

When an emotion comes up, we can spend years, trying to change our outer circumstance so that we don’t feel the emotion.  That is a hamster wheel that never ends.  And it creates its own stress.  

We have all kinds of defense mechanisms that we use to avoid feeling our emotions.  Over thinking, creating a story about it, analyzing, obsessing, blaming others, blaming ourselves, isolating ourselves, going to numerous practitioners, trying to change our circumstances, taking masses of supplements, etc.   

 

Freeing ourself from trapped emotions 

The only way to free yourself from an emotion is to feel it.  Emotion stands for energy in motion.  When you do not feel an emotion, it does not move through you and it gets stuck.  When it gets stuck in your energy field, it continually sends a signal to your nervous system which contributes to insomnia.  It also blocks the flow of energy in your meridians and interferes with the functioning of the body and organs. 

 

A suggested practice to help you feel emotions 

Here is a practice that can help you to feel your emotions and release them.  When you feel an emotion coming on:

  1. Deepen your breath.
  2. Feel the emotion whether it be sadness, anger, fear, etc.
  3. Avoid getting into an internal dialogue about the emotion.
  4. Remind yourself that you don’t need to act on the emotion.
  5. Keep saying, “this is only an energy that is moving through me. I am willing to feel it and let it go”
  6. Try this for 5 minutes.
  7. Notice if there is a difference. 

Afterwards, take some time to reflect on your experience.  Did this help?  Were you able to do it?  Did it feel to scary to feel an emotion?  

May you be happy, may you be peaceful, may you be free. 

Bindu