Working With Difficult Emotions - 20 Min

This guided meditation, originally published as a Daily Insight in 2019, takes you through the process of being present with your emotions. After connecting with the body and the breath, we start to tune into feelings. We are learning to feel without resistance, to open to what is arising with fearlessness, to let it come and let it go.

Transcript

Hello,

And welcome to the Daily Insight.

My name is Kevin Griffin.

Today I'd like to offer you a mindfulness practice for working with emotions,

Particularly with difficult emotions.

This involves mindfulness of the body and developing more awareness of what arises in the body and how it interacts with our mental states and thoughts.

Begin by settling into a comfortable meditation posture,

Whether sitting or lying down,

Just making sure that you can relax and still stay alert and present.

Our posture in meditation is important because it allows us to maintain this clarity and ease.

We want to be able to sit still without getting too uncomfortable or restless.

First,

We can do some intentional relaxation as we scan the body,

Starting by relaxing the muscles in the face,

The eyes,

The jaw,

And relaxing the shoulders,

The arms and hands,

Softening the belly,

Opening the chest,

Relaxing through the back muscles,

Relaxing through the hips and pelvis down through the legs and feet so that there's a sense of the whole body settled,

Releasing any tension or holding.

Be aware of any sounds in your environment and just allow them to be there without struggling.

Then letting your attention now come to the breath,

Feeling the breath at the nostrils as it enters and leaves the body,

And feeling the breath as well in the chest and belly,

The rising and falling as the lungs expand and contract.

Feeling the breath in the torso in this way,

The chest,

The stomach,

Helps us to start to tune in to our emotional state,

To our mood.

Right now,

See if you can identify or feel what you're feeling,

If there's a strong emotion or a subtle mood that's present.

This might be something that you have a name for or it may just be a felt experience that doesn't have a name,

That there are no words for.

The important thing is to tune in to the felt sense.

Breathe with that emotion,

With that mood.

Feel it as an energy in the body,

As a kind of sensation.

Let the breath move easily in the body,

Having a sense of openness and receptiveness to what you're feeling.

Notice any resistance to being open,

To feeling what you're feeling,

Or notice any struggle to actually feel.

As we learn this practice,

At first it can be awkward,

We're not used to tuning in in this way.

We have to learn what it means to feel our feelings.

Emotions are often thought of as mental or psychological,

And yet,

When we apply mindfulness,

They have a stronger sense of the visceral,

Of the physical,

The somatic.

This is the sense that we're trying to emphasize,

Connect with.

If this is challenging,

Take it easy.

This is a process,

Learning to practice in this way,

A vital process,

But it takes time.

Be gentle with yourself in this process.

Notice any thoughts that arise as you're tuning in to your emotions.

We often try to control or analyze or judge the things we're feeling rather than just feeling them.

We have a tendency to believe that we can think away our emotions,

Or that by figuring them out,

We'll take control of them.

But this isn't the case.

Our emotions have a life of their own that must be respected.

Once we learn to hold them in a gentle and mindful way,

They're not so much of a problem.

They don't need to be controlled.

With unpleasant or difficult emotions,

The mind resists.

There's this quality we call aversion,

Not liking,

That closes down around the emotions.

And so there is a literal physical closing as the body tightens.

And then there is a mental closing as we either judge ourselves,

Describe the experience we're having to ourselves,

Or we try to analyze it and figure out how it arose and how we can get rid of it.

All this mental activity actually has the effect of feeding the emotions.

Thoughts trigger feelings,

And feelings trigger thoughts.

It's this interaction which we're trying to interrupt with this process of mindful attention.

When we have an unpleasant emotion or difficult emotion and we start to think about it or judge it,

Those thoughts themselves trigger more feelings.

Those feelings then feed back more thoughts and we create a loop which can spiral out of control.

The best way to interrupt this feedback loop is to zero in on the physical sense of the experience.

In the body there are no words,

No stories,

Just the felt experience.

When we can rest in that with mindfulness,

Then it gives the emotion time to play out.

This is a vital understanding,

To realize that emotions are not solid things,

But that they have a lifespan.

Our mind tends to perceive emotions as solid,

And so when we feel them we sense that we must engage them,

Fix them,

Force them away.

But when we come to see their dynamic quality,

Their ever-changing quality,

Then we come to intuitively understand that they will not last forever,

And that if left alone or treated with kindness,

They will simply live their lives.

There will be this feeling,

This energy that will arise and then settle,

Will slowly dwindle away.

One of the things we want to do with our mindfulness practice in this regard is to start to follow this lifespan,

To feel an emotion as it arises,

Whether during meditation or in our daily lives,

To catch it at its moment of appearing or whenever we can catch it,

And then to breathe into it,

Just feeling,

Letting go of the story,

Letting go of the judgment,

Letting go of the resistance.

As we feel it,

We feel its life,

Its energy,

Its dynamic nature.

It's not a solid thing.

It's not easy to actually locate.

It's more like a cloud moving through the body.

So we breathe with that.

The breath helps to keep the body open as when there is resistance,

The breath clamps down,

The chest and the belly tightening.

So we breathe and soften.

As we do this,

There may be some fear.

If we're not used to working with our emotions,

There can be some fear that we'll be overwhelmed.

And so this reminder,

This understanding that this is impermanent,

This is manageable,

This will not harm me,

All of these reflections can help us to stay with the experience,

To not run,

To not close down.

So we breathe with the feeling and we may also be breathing with the fear,

But as we breathe we observe,

We observe this moving quality.

One of the things that we discover in this process is that the things that we have named as emotions aren't necessarily what we call them.

So sometimes something like fatigue can feel like sadness and we misinterpret it.

So when we take away the naming,

We take away the story,

We take away a lot of the power of the emotions to threaten us.

We just see them as feelings and energies in the body.

They become part of the movement of our day.

There's a certain stepping away,

Not taking them so personally.

Just seeing that thoughts and feelings,

These emotions appear for their own reasons out of the causes and conditions of a particular moment.

Perhaps when you wake up in the morning,

You wake up in a mood.

Nothing to be done with that,

Just to breathe with it and trust that it will pass.

You have an argument or a conflict with someone,

You walk away with this energy in the body,

Intense,

You breathe with it,

You see that even as you breathe,

It settles and quiets.

Interacting with emotions in this way allows us to move out of the destructive patterns of depression and anxiety that thrive off this vicious cycle of feelings and thoughts.

We start to see how our own mind has actually created a prison for us,

A prison built out of a story,

Built out of fear,

Built out of a lack of attention and ignorance of what is really happening.

This mindful approach to emotions shows us the truth of our feelings,

That they are simply sense experiences felt in the body,

Felt in the mind,

With no meaning necessarily attached to them.

We are the ones who give them meaning and thus give them power.

So if you struggle with difficult emotions,

Begin to apply this both to your meditation practice and to your daily life.

So as you're meditating,

When the mind starts to wander,

Instead of following the thoughts,

Come back to the body.

Notice if the thoughts are actually being triggered by some feeling in the body,

Some emotion or background mood.

But also when you notice thoughts and come back,

Notice if the thoughts themselves have triggered a feeling.

Perhaps you were in a neutral state and then a negative thought arises.

So check in and see how that thought has triggered more feeling.

And again,

Coming back to the neutrality of the breath allows you to settle,

Let it go.

In your daily life,

This can be used in the same way,

Just catching yourself as you're having a feeling or as a negative thought arises and breathing and softening.

This use of the breath to release is very powerful,

Can be drawn upon in all sorts of circumstances.

Emotions are natural expressions of human life.

They are what makes life rich.

And they're to be appreciated.

I hope that you can use this practice in your meditation to allow for a more peaceful meditation and in your daily life to bring you a more satisfied,

More balanced,

Happier way of living.

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