Fully Being With Your Emotions

Being with your emotions is like being with your breath. In this meditation, we will cultivate paying full attention from start to finish. Just like stopping midway of an inhale or an exhale, there's a sense of incompleteness and lack in what our body needs: oxygen. The same goes for emotions. If we don't give ourselves time to fully be with an emotion, it doesn't get resolved and integrated in our way of being and living leaving a sense of unfulfillment and dis-ease.

Transcript

Move in any way that will help you breathe more deeply more fully so rolling out your shoulders and your neck allowing your entire chest cavity to inflate on the inhale your belly soft and supple and exhale let everything go everything loose breathing fully not just the front part of your chest but also on the side and up into your armpits making an inhale and breathing into the space between your shoulder blades even so you're peeling them apart from each other while keeping the shoulders soft melted away from your ears softening the intercostal muscles the connective tissue between each rib breathing warmth into your breathing muscles so that they remain pliant but today we are focusing on being present with our emotions learning to hold space feeling safety as you just bear witness and observe your emotions not identifying with them so as you breathe in breathe in fully and exhale breathe out slowly and completely placing one hand on your belly and the other on your chest to be with your emotions is to it's like a lot like being with your breath being with your inhales from bottom to top and exhale from top to bottom there's an energy there that needs to be completed if you stop midway of an inhale there's still that hunger for oxygen so it must be completed and if you stop midway of an exhale you're not fully releasing the toxins that your exhale is able to do inhale through your belly filling up the chest all the way up to the collarbones and exhale emptying out from the collarbone through the chest and the belly so with your emotions it's important to really be with them bringing your whole self to the experience and in being with your emotions you have to be with your breath emotions are what i like to consider emotions energy in motions e so there's that energy that needs to be in motion from beginning until it passes just as there's energy involved in your breath that needs to be completely used up otherwise it stays in your body in the form of tension stress so just like happiness we want to be with happiness because it's good feels good but with negative emotions like anger and sadness we have been conditioned to believe that such negative emotions need to be tamped down need to be repressed because it's not good as we were told to believe all emotions serve a purpose deep full inhale deep full inhale long slow exhale with difficult emotions they are simply reminders to take full deep breaths anger and sadness and rage motions of melancholy those are especially moments where we need to take full breaths because on the other side is joy on the other side of fear is joy the other side of anger is acceptance on the other side of sadness is relief there's no way around difficult emotions there's only through breathing in know that you are breathing in filling up from the belly up towards the collarbone and exhale emptying out from the collarbone down to the belly the saying that i like to repeat is repression leads to depression so if we repress our emotions that's when we become depressed that's when the magic of life kind of loses its potency we don't allow ourselves to experience the full gamut of each and every emotion we also lose the ability to experience the full gamut full spectrum of life breathe in fill up breathe out empty four counts on the inhale filling up holding at the top for four counts and exhale for four counts four counts holding at the bottom for four counts stay with your box breathing be with it see it through from start to finish just as with your breath see if you can do the same thing with your emotions with whatever comes up throughout your day throughout your week just see it through from start to finish because each and every emotion passes we do we really do a few more box breaths on your own and release and go back to your natural way of breathing noticing whatever space that has now been carved within you with your breath and allow yourself a few more breaths slowly transition and reorient the world around you reawaken your extremities by wiggling your fingers and your toes circle out your wrists circle out your ankles give yourself a nice long full body stretch place your hands on your heart space close our practice today say something kind to yourself thank you so much for allowing me to guide you in your practice today have a wonderful rest of your day namaste