When you open to joy you will still have negative emotions show up. What do you do when negative emotions flood your system or sneak up on you? What is your go-to way to bring your body, mind, and feelings back to equilibrium?
Numbing thoughts and emotions are possible by escaping into television, video games, drugs, shopping, exercise, smoking, trying to control everything or everyone around you, seeking the pity of others, becoming a martyr, and serving others at the sacrifice of their well-being, and becoming a workaholic.
Some people reach for a glass of wine or an entire bottle. Others reach for French fries, brownies, or other fat, sugar, and salty food. Still, others lash out at those around them or create drama to distract themselves from deep emotions and issues they don’t want to face.
Then some can’t or won’t use any way to try to calm, heal, or uplift how they are feeling. They get into bed and stay there. Or they plaster a smile on their face and trudge forward with their life, just trying to get through another day.
There is a better way to cope with negative emotions.
It isn’t what happens to you, but your reaction to it; it is the sometimes split-second pause between stimulus and response that will change your life forever.
Just as we can train our muscles to become stronger, so too can we grow an inner spaciousness with training.
1. The next time you feel sadness, shame, anger, despair, rage, resentment, grief, hopelessness, fear, or any other negative emotion, pause.
2. Place one hand on your belly and one hand over your heart. If you can’t do this in the current situation, then imagine your hands resting on your stomach and heart.
3. Take a deep breath in through the nose, filling first your belly, then your lower ribs, and feel your heart expand outward and upward. Exhale out the nose, allowing your shoulders to soften down your back body.
4. Breathe in three more times in this way if time permits. Count up to three on your inhalation, and down from six to one on your exhalation. Breathing out twice as slowly as you inhale will allow the stress response in your body to turn off, and the healing parasympathetic system to turn on.
5. Now imagine floating above yourself in the third person. Just observe.
6. Grow still. Be with whatever emotions are here, or arising from moment to moment.
7. Imagine with each in-breath you are creating more inner space for the feelings to unclench and flow. With each out breath feel yourself softening around whatever emotions are within you right now.
8. Name the emotion. Release all thoughts about the feeling. Accept whatever emotion is here, right now, without acting on it in any way. Just be still, be with whatever is right now.
9. From this place of quiet, inner spaciousness, decide what you can do, right now, at this moment, to improve your situation. You can take out your joy and well-being lists. What can you do at this moment to nourish your body, mind, or soul to increase your well-being? If you can do nothing, then accept what is and release the struggle. Release negativity. Attach your mind over and over again to the breath. Inhale for three, exhale for six.
10. Cultivate your inner spaciousness for as long as you need, or as time permits. If you still feel the clutch of negative emotions, then return to this exercise and repeat.
11. A Yin Yoga or Restorative Yoga class can open up space for you to flow through the above steps and be still with whatever emotions are within you. We store repressed trauma and feelings in our bodies. Yin yoga especially allows us to open up the body and release old emotions from our muscles, fascia, and tissues. Yin Yoga can also keep new feelings from building tension, tightness, or pain in the body.
12. Be patient while training inner spaciousness. Continue through the steps, and you will eventually build inner strength. Your inner spaciousness will allow negative emotions to flow within you without you needing to grab a distraction or numbing mechanism, such as a plate of brownies. Instead, you will become a curious, loving, third-person observer. You will be strong enough to observe an emotion, name it, and be with it, and the negative emotion will dissipate, like steam.
Wisiahing you radiant health, joy, and abundance, Heather
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