Welcome to this practice,
Somatic tracking of difficult emotions,
Finding safety with emotions.
This is a practice of becoming familiar with emotional experience through the body.
The same time gently reminding your nervous system that an emotion can be uncomfortable without necessarily being a threat.
We're not trying to get rid of the emotion.
We're not trying to work out why you feel this way.
We're not even trying to make yourself feel better.
Instead what we're practicing is meeting what is here with curiosity,
Kindness and messages of safety.
You might just think of this as an experiment.
There's nothing you need to do perfectly.
If at any point the emotion is just too difficult to be with,
You can open your eyes,
Look around the room,
Move your body.
Bring your attention to something neutral or pleasant.
You're always in charge of how much you engage.
So let's begin by finding a comfortable position.
You might allow your eyes to close or soften your gaze.
And it can be helpful to notice the support beneath you.
The chair.
The floor,
The bed.
Perhaps even noticing the effect of gravity gently pulling you towards the earth.
And you might take a few moments actually to gently open the eyes again and just check out your room that you're in,
The colours.
Shapes.
Three-dimensional aspect of things.
You might notice sounds that you can hear.
And you're breathing.
No need to change it.
And your eyes might have already closed.
If not,
See if they'd like to close now.
And you might even notice one or two sensations that feel relatively comfortable or at least neutral.
Maybe the weight of your body.
The warmth of your hands or tingles in your fingers.
Your feet against the floor.
Now you may have chosen this practice because there is some difficult emotion present.
But right now,
Rather than going looking for that.
Just becoming curious about what is already happening in your body.
Perhaps there's something that very obviously wants to express itself emotionally.
Perhaps there's very little to notice.
No need to manufacture anything here.
Just gently allowing your body to express itself.
Maybe there's a little tension somewhere.
Heaviness.
I hate.
A flattering.
.
.
Maybe a movement,
A throbbing or a vibration.
Allowing your attention to gently drift,
Rest with whatever is already here.
And if there is a difficult emotion present.
You might notice whether it has a story attached to it.
Perhaps the mind's telling you what happened,
Why it happened.
Who was responsible?
What might happen next?
So human.
You don't need to push the story away.
But can you gently drop underneath the story for a few moments?
And allow yourself to actually notice what you feel in the body.
Emotions are made up of both thoughts and body sensations.
Thoughts are a little more slippery to be mindful of.
They tend to be in the past and in the future.
But the body is right here in the present.
So it's a kind of easier ask to be mindful of the body.
It can be very helpful.
Whether or not you have found some difficult sensations related to emotions or you're just noticing your body sensations in general.
What would it be to imagine you're kind of looking at them through the glass of a fish tank?
This is not to say that this is a visual task.
But this metaphor of a fish tank can be very helpful.
Like you're sitting comfortably beside the tank.
Just checking out what's happening inside.
No need to reach into the tank or move anything around.
You don't need to make the fish swim in a different direction.
Just noticing maybe the fish are moving quickly or slowly or hiding.
Perhaps the water is completely still or churned up.
Your task isn't to control what is happening.
You're simply observing with interest and curiosity.
So in the same way,
Can you observe the sensations in your body without treating them as a problem to solve?
And what do you notice?
Pressure,
Tightness.
Coldness.
Heaviness.
Clenching.
A hollow.
And without needing to judge the sensations can you become interested in its qualities?
Does it move or change?
Expand,
Contract,
Shift sight.
Does it have edges,
Maybe vivid or maybe vague?
Is it more intense in one place and soft around the edges?
Can you allow the sensation to be there without bracing against it?
There's no need to make it stop.
No need to figure it out.
Of course sometimes you will brace anyway and that's fine you can just notice the bracing with this same Same attitude.
Curiosity and interest.
Just watching,
Observing.
Like observing the fish in the tank.
You might even try receiving these words.
Dropping them into your system,
No need to have answers.
I wonder what this feels like.
Hmm I can feel this without needing to fix it.
Uncomfortable doesn't necessarily mean unsafe.
Uncomfortable doesn't necessarily mean unsafe.
Notice that whatever sensations you're observing are only part of you.
Not all of you.
There's the sensations.
And there is the awareness noticing the sensations.
There's also the room around you.
The support beneath you.
You pray.
The sounds around you.
And parts of your body that aren't experiencing the difficult sensations or emotion.
And you might gently allow your attention to drift between the difficult sensations.
And then gently onto something that feels neutral,
Comfortable or supportive.
Yes,
This is here.
And there is also this.
Cheers for supporting me.
Feeling of my feet on the floor.
The air on my skin.
My breath.
The sounds in the room.
And you might notice that the emotion changes as you observe it.
It might become more intense.
Or less intense.
It might move or shift or even disappear and return.
Or perhaps nothing much changes.
All of this is okay.
We're not measuring success by whether the emotion goes away here.
We are learning that we can experience an uncomfortable emotion or sensation.
Without automatically interpreting it as danger.
And this is not always so easy.
Our culture or our upbringing have often taught us that difficult emotions are wrong,
They're a threat.
Perhaps we might have had a caregiver who had quite unregulated emotions which felt frankly dangerous.
But we can learn differently.
Perhaps could even bring a little friendliness towards the experience.
Softening your relationship with it.
You might silently say.
It's okay for this to be here.
I don't have to fight it.
I don't have to block it.
Don't have to run away from it.
I can actually let my body do what it's doing.
Right now I'm safe enough to notice this.
Notice those important words.
Safe enough.
Not asking you to convince yourself that everything is perfectly safe.
We know life isn't always safe and emotions aren't always pleasant.
Simply helping our system distinguish between an uncomfortable internal experience and an immediate external threat.
And you might widen your awareness again now.
Noticing the whole body.
Perhaps still like sitting at that fish tank.
Just noticing the areas of ease.
The areas of tension.
The areas that feel neutral.
The sounds,
The support beneath you.
You're breathing.
The emotion may still be here,
Or it may have changed.
We're not trying to get in that fish tank.
We're not trying to change the direction that the fish are swimming.
We're not trying to clean the water.
We're just observing.
And if the emotion is still here,
Reminding yourself,
It's only one part of my experience right now.
And as we're coming towards the end of the meditation.
You might give yourself a bit of appreciation for doing the practice.
And perhaps just noticing what it may have shown you.
Maybe the emotion changed,
Maybe it didn't.
Maybe you discovered you can stay with an uncomfortable emotion or sensation.
For a little while.
Without knitting it to make it go away.
That is the practice and it's really important neuroplasticity.
Not getting rid of it.
Not controlling it.
But discovering.
I can experience this sensation without needing to treat it as danger.
I can be curious rather than afraid.
Or perhaps I can be curious as well as being a little afraid.
I can allow rather than fight.
I can feel an emotion and still be safe enough.
Taking a moment now to feel the support underneath you again,
Such a beautiful safety message.
Noticing the room around you.
Maybe just taking a few easy breaths.
They don't need to be deep breaths,
Just soft,
Relaxed breaths.
And when you're ready,
You might bring a little bit of light into the eyes and softly,
Softly open them.
And you might take with you into your day.
A little more curiosity about your emotional experience.
I've got a little more confidence.
That you can be with what arises.
Thank you.
