If you want to feel better, you need to practice feeling.
I call this expanding our capacity to feel, so we can experience more joy, love and beauty.
How do we practice feeling?
#1 Be willing to feel discomfort, pain, and sadness.
When we avoid feeling, we end up feeling irritated. Or tired, nervous, anxious.
These are facts of life. Loss, anger, frustration, emotions. The ways to distract ourselves and get out of the slightest discomfort are so quick and easy that we don’t even notice it happening,
except that we hate ourselves for it—screens, food, substances.
In fact, feeling the emotions is not that hard, and it has a bonus benefit
→ it expands our capacity to feel and hold pain our own pain →
→ which expands our capacity to relate to and connect with fellow life on earth—(aka compassion) →
→ which makes our ability to have rich and meaningful relationships with others (partner, children, family, friends, clients, community) deeply fulfilling. #truelove
Wow, ok let’s get back to how easy it is to do.
It mostly just takes awareness—oh, I don’t like this, it’s uncomfortable. Let me just go into it for a moment. Usually, it resolves itself in a few minutes–it passes. Lie down, rest, or just close your eyes and breathe. If you want, chant, “I love you I love you I love you.” Be with it, so it can process, rather than stay with us for days, decades, or lifetime.
Trust me, you can handle it, WHATEVER it is.
It may not always be so simple, as there are actual and big problems that do need more attention—such as childhood wounding and the great injustices—all rooted in a person’s (the prosecutor’s) fear of going into their own pain—- but so much of it is the day to day metabolism of life. When its time to deal with bigger stuff, this practice is the foundation for our ability to handle it, and in fact, it is addressing the tip of the iceberg— so either way, it needs to be done.
#emotionalintegrity
When we don’t do this, the trapped energy expresses itself in some other way and comes out sideways. Nervousness, irritability, muscle tension, weight retention, allergies, asthma, heart disease, bad temper, high/low blood pressure, high/low blood sugar.
It’s much more efficient to just deal with it as it arises. #energymedicineisefficient
#2 Practice feeling good things.
Such as joy, ecstasy, excitement, happiness, freedom, love, warmth, gratitude, reverence, and connection. Practice experiencing exuberance, and seeing and feeling beauty.
How to do this?
There are lots of ways to do this, so experiment—-again, this is stretching our capacity—it’s a yoga of emotions.
2 examples of how to do this:
1. Go outside for a walk. Intentionally breathe deeply fresh air, sunshine, and smells of trees and plants. Soak the colors and shapes of the natural world into your eyes and all your cells and organs. Feel reverence and honor for the land, the community, the mountain in the distance, the developed city, and the energy of the place where you are.
This is a form of Qi Gong, Taoist moving meditation for health, safety, longevity, and joy.
2. Don’t hold back when you have a positive emotion— if you tend to hold back (most of us do by cultural conditioning)—- then try exaggerating a good feeling when it comes. Express the feeling through your face, eyes, body, sound, and movement. Excitement, happiness, love. Jump up and down, laugh deeply through your entire body, Sing out randomly in freedom and joy, and do a boogie dance…
Yes, my friend, it’s time to get silly and dramatic. Just for a minute even helps. Then, in stillness, see how you feel. I bet you will feel a flush of simultaneous peace and high energy. And for the science nerds, we can call it oxygenation and circulation—but actually it’s more than that—it’s really like an athlete in training—expanding and maxing out her abilities—so are you expanding your ability to experience life fully. #getoutofyourowncage #betruetoyourself
The lesson here is that this is the real you, and a natural state. So, as important as it is to feel the hard things, and go into them as they arise, more and most of the time should be neutrally peaceful, and high vibration. This is HEALTH, and I do believe that is how we’re built—to thrive joyfully.
If most of the time you are going into the lower vibration feelings, it’s important to either rise up out of them and change the “habit.” If that is not possible, it could be that the roots of pain and grief need healing. With practice and deep healing, I do believe that we all can transform pain into power and vibrant health.
So, how can you practice and build out the physiology, neurology, grace, and coordination to feel more, and surf the dynamic waves of life?