This practice is an invitation to explore emotional integration while you rest.
A place to feel what needs to be felt,
Where that which has perhaps been unfelt can have a soft spot to land.
Riding waves and currents of emotions can be challenging for lots of reasons.
It's rare to be celebrated and held in our full range of feeling.
And often positive emotions can be just as uneasy to feel as so-called negative emotions.
There can be a tendency to prioritize our negativity bias as a survival instinct,
Both individually and collectively,
Which means sometimes it might naturally feel easier and habitual to pay more attention to what feels bad or wrong rather than what feels good.
Yet emotions can't be reduced into boxes of good or bad,
Right or wrong.
Feelings are the language of the soul.
And the full spectrum of emotions possess intelligence and wisdom.
Energy can be squandered and exhausted repressing,
Imposing or projecting emotions.
So in this practice,
I will be inviting you to explore some opposites of feeling as one way to develop your capacity and stamina to be with rather than avoid or criticize various emotional states and offer the possibility of fresh perspective.
Sometimes apparently opposite feelings might seem conflicting,
Yet they are actually deeply interconnected and there is a harmony and magnetic power that can be revealed underneath.
When attention is no longer bound by resistance,
Suppression or emotional energy that is leaking rather than being fully held and truly felt,
It naturally turns to self-inquiry.
Emotions can then offer insight as vital and wise messengers and be digested and integrated.
So know that in this container,
You are free to rest in movement or stillness.
Motion is in the word emotion after all,
You may feel drawn to write or draw or move your body in some way.
And on the other hand,
Sometimes space to slow down is what is most needed in order to feel.
So you are also free to let go into meditative reverie and even falling asleep is a gift.
Rest,
Dreaming and sleep are supreme for emotional integration.
Naturally guiding underneath surface stories and ushering you into deeper layers of consciousness where everything is welcomed to interweave,
Coexist and alchemize.
Ultimately,
Both active and receptive energies play vital roles in emotional processing and digestion.
Trust that whatever your experience,
You cannot do this wrong.
Let's begin.
If it feels inviting at any time during this practice,
You may wish to rest one hand on heart,
One hand on belly or pelvis.
And imagine your hands like the intelligent,
Tender touch of a wise healer.
Attuning to wisdom centers of feeling and instinct.
Beyond intellectual analyzing or shallow judgment.
Gathering scattered attention from all directions.
Observe your body breathing itself.
The rise and fall of being breathed.
Flow with the breath,
Moment to moment.
The downward flow.
The upward flow.
Returning to your fluid nature.
Feeling fluidity around the muscles of the eyes,
Inside of cheeks,
Tongue,
Throat,
Neck and shoulders.
Chest and hands.
Belly,
Pelvic bowl,
Hips,
Feet.
All invited to soften in the gentle flow of breath.
Bones in the left hand.
And the space between the bones.
And feel the bones in the right hand.
And the space between the bones.
Both hands together.
What would it feel like to breathe a little more of your soul into this physical body?
And into your emotional body?
This body of layered wisdom.
Imagine an energetic anchor grounding you.
A breath which holds the depths of the ocean of emotion inside you.
You can trust the container that holds that ocean.
Infinite space to support shifting tides and currents and waves.
Come what may.
Here you are held and protected.
Free to be who you are,
Feel what you feel.
Experience or not experience.
And from this anchor of love and support,
Notice if any particular emotion is present.
Or one that's been emerging for you lately that you are ready to feel.
Perhaps mirrored through encounters with others in your life.
Even in a dream.
Or just any emotion or feeling tone you're called to rest in inquiry with.
Let each breath invite space for whatever is true to arise,
Be seen,
Heard,
And felt.
Even if it feels like numbness or nothingness.
Being with your experience just as it is.
If there is an emotion,
Notice the sensorial quality to it.
Maybe there's a heat or a heaviness or a kind of weather pattern.
What's the felt sense of it in your body?
Are there any stories or images accompanying it?
Can you feel what's underneath the emotion?
Now let go of any analyzing or stories and allow the pure,
Full experience of this emotion.
Free of the situation or circumstance that seems to give rise to it.
Feeling the emotion as pure sensation.
Let it be held in love.
And feel the natural energy behind that sensation in your body.
Ask this emotional messenger,
What does it want you to receive?
How does it want to express?
Is there something it wants you to do or not do?
Feel your body respond.
Then ask yourself,
For you,
What is the opposite of this emotion?
And feel the opposite in your body.
And notice any attendant images or sensations.
And then let go of analyzing or stories and just allow yourself the pure experience of this emotion.
Free of any situation that might give rise to it.
Let it be held in love.
And if it's helpful,
Ask,
What does it want you to receive?
How does it want to express?
Is there something it wants you to do or not do?
Feel your body respond.
And then move attention back and forth between these waves of emotion.
The first and then the opposite.
At your own inner pace and direction.
Then feel and experience both emotions simultaneously.
Don't try to think your way.
Feel your way.
Welcoming both waves of emotion at the same time.
Now let go of that.
Notice if you can feel a sensation of holding.
Whether physical,
Mental,
Energetic,
Emotional.
Invite your breath to feel into that holding space.
With love and curiosity.
Now notice what it's like to shift into a sensation of being held.
With each breath cycle.
Letting go into the sensation of being held.
Now alternate attention back and forth at your own pace.
One at a time.
The sensation of holding.
And the sensation of being held.
Now feel both at the same time.
Holding and being held simultaneously.
Now let go into your essential well-being.
And feel awareness like the clear backdrop of the sky behind shifting weather patterns.
Beyond that which comes and goes.
Resting awareness on the part of you that is not fleeting.
The part of you that remains always steady.
