Flow of emotional wisdom - Appreciating the gift of our emotions

While most of us appreciate our good feelings, we often try to push away the negative ones, hoping to feel good all of the time. We learn to ignore our so-called negative emotions, stuff them down with food or other addictive substances, or be victims of them, swinging wildly from emotion to emotion with little understanding or ability to integrate what they were trying to tell us. Sometimes, these repressed emotions may burst out despite our best efforts, which can be cathartic but also scary if we don’t have tools for processing what’s happening. In the worst instances, unprocessed emotions manifest in behavior that is destructive or self-destructive.

Emotions provide us with valuable feedback and guidance, even the uncomfortable ones. It is only when our emotions get stuck, or we ignore them that they create problems. You may be thinking that experiencing positive emotions such as joy, kindness, and courage is well and good, but that you do not particularly want to experience impatience, anger, or sadness. It is easy for us to understand the benefits of our positive emotions because they feel good, but it can be more difficult for us to acknowledge the gifts that our challenging emotions bring as well. Often, it is the discomfort of negative emotions that awaken us to their presence and increase our awareness of what needs our attention. And it is that same discomfort that creates motivation for us to move mindfully toward harmony and balance. The more discomfort, the more we are motivated to do something about it.

We truly limit ourselves when we refuse to experience some of our emotions when they come up. Rather than avoiding negative emotions, our focus should be on encouraging optimal flow so that they arise, present their gifts, and then dissipate in a healthy way. Our emotional wisdom provides us with dynamic flow and help us to increase our health and vitality. 

Armoring

Very often the discomfort of challenging emotions causes us to stuff them deep down inside and try to lock them away. At the same time, certain groups of muscles could be used to stifle unwanted feelings and chronic tensions of emotional repression reside in these muscles and block feelings to be expressed, and released. We tend to tighten them to control or block our emotions so we would'n’t feel the hurt, so that it wouldn’t show. When our muscles habitually tighten and contract, our energy shrinks because it cannot flow so easily through the body and a lifelong pattern of diminished vitality is created. Both mind and body get trained to prevent being spontaneously expressive, responding freely and emotionally, showing affection, or asking for it.

For example, some of us manifest this armoring by tightening in our throat, as if we are swallowing our own voice, and also trying to hold ourselves around the diaphragm and solar plexus. In this way, everything became more controlled and manageable, as if we could package the expression of our feelings in a form that was acceptable to both ourselves and the society. Just to protect ourselves and, as a result, became less expressive, less spontaneous - less alive.

Felt sense

Very often we live in a state of disconnection from our bodies and our feelings. We are stuck in the head, stressed out and tense, living in regret of the past and fear for the future. We don’t even realize how far from ourselves we have gone.

Feelings and emotions are felt through the body. Without a body, presumably there is no feeling. So the first step is to bring the consciousness into the body, to ‘arrive’ into our physical bodies in such a way that our attention, our awareness, is focused on physical sensations, emotional feelings, the feeling of breath moving in and out, touching the body from the inside. This is the “felt sense” described by Eugene Gendlin, founder of ‘Focusing Therapy”. Through this turning inwards of the attention, we arrive here and now, into the present moment, into contact with the body.

Feeling and expressing emotions does not require our pushing; it requires our awareness, presence, sensitivity, a willingness to breathe, and the capacity to allow our own feeling to arise from within. So it is important to remember that the capacity to feel and connect with deep, authentic feelings and emotions, is one that needs time, patience, and preparation for the body and the energy system. By coming into contact with the sensations, feelings, tensions, and also pleasure and relaxation in the body, we form a deeper connection with ourselves.

The more sensitive we become to these inner sensations, the more available we can be to feel what we feel, and to live a more emotionally connected, authentic life.

“Energy is eternal delight” - William Blake

For whatever reason, when people come to realize that they are living in an unfulfilling way, some of them start looking around for methods to free themselves from the confinement in which society has placed them.

Fundamentally, it is a question of accessing one’s own energy, removing the blocks that inhibit it, and allowing it to flow. One energy is freed from blocks, once it has been awakened and released, then you can use it, celebrate and enjoy it. Then you can surf the waves of life, because you can feel where the energy wants to go and you know how to follow it.

After being through strong emotional release, we naturally fall into this space of pleasurable relaxation. This is one of those rare moments in adult life when a person can really let go of all tension and anxiety, enjoying a sense of not needing to do anything, a sense that all is well. The places that were tense before are now relaxed enough to absorb a new quality of aliveness. At the deepest level, the whole energy can turn inwards and create a silent moment of meditation and self-contact that was not available before.

When our energy is steaming and flowing within us, pulsating with the same rhythm as the universe that surrounds us, we immediately feel at home in ourselves, in tune with nature, at one with existence. We are happy and grateful for the experience of being alive.

Five Element Shiatsu

Eastern traditional medicine uses the framework of five elements and their associated emotions, both positive and negative. Five Element Shiatsu aims to smooth out stagnated flows so that we can experience all of our emotions fully, as well as express them skillfully and authentically. This not only helps with calming the mind, but it also helps to heal physical illness and symptoms. Five Elements system can be drawn as a wheel with a five-pointed star in the middle, connecting the elements in two different patterns. There is a circle on the outside (the flow cycle) and a star on the inside (the control cycle). This visual description helps us see how the elements are in a constant dance with each other.

Craniosacral Therapy & Somato Emotional Release

Western society has also begun to acknowledge the vital influence of emotional wisdom on both our well-being and our ability to navigate life successfully. It's well-known in the world of Craniosacral Therapy that emotions trapped in body tissues can lead to pain and other ailments. An energy cyst is a highly compressed ball of disorganized energy that initially entered the body in the course of an injury or trauma. Mostly, it’s the “energetic imprint” of trauma, and it can contain emotional as well as physical energy. We can locate the energy cyst when we encounter areas of the body so tight that energy flow, fluid flow, and craniosacral motion are all restricted.

Emotions are designed to move through the body. Imbalances often occur when we resist emotion and its natural path through the body. Resistance can cause an emotion to lock into body tissue, eventually leading to physical ailments. Craniosacral techniques can cause the emotion to regain movement along its natural trajectory out of the body. Intellectually, we also might be curious to learn which emotion has created the disharmony. There certainly are times when emotion will manifest or even declare itself. But what we are seeking is the release of the held emotion, not its identity. Craniosacral therapy is not psychoanalysis; it is a body-based therapy. The goal of Craniosacral therapy is to assist the body in its own natural self-corrective capabilities so that it can regain its full health and function.

The fundamental building blocks of our emotional wisdom are our capacities for self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. The more that we recognize the gifts inherent in challenging emotions, the more willing we will be to experience, accept, and benefit from what they offer.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-Rumi