Take a moment to get comfortable.
Let your body settle in a way that feels easy and supported.
Rest your hands wherever they naturally land,
On your belly,
Your chest,
Or by your sides.
If it feels right,
Allow your eyelids to close down or simply soften your gaze.
Begin to notice your breath,
Not changing it,
Just observing it.
The quiet inhale that lifts the chest and belly,
And the slow release of the belly and the chest,
In and out.
Let your breath find its own rhythm,
Steady,
Consistent,
Deeper and deeper.
As you follow your breath,
It becomes your anchor,
Drawing your focus and attention inward.
With each breath,
Tension begins to soften and melt away,
And the outside world fades as you move into your body and into your deep awareness.
At times,
Emotions can feel like they come out of nowhere.
It can feel like a wave of frustration or anger,
As heat building through the chest,
The shoulders,
And the fists.
A surge of anxiety,
Where the arms and legs may feel cooler,
Restless,
Or unsettled.
A drop into sadness,
Where the body can feel heavier and lower in energy.
A flush of shame or embarrassment,
Heat rising quickly into the cheeks or face.
A moment of happiness,
A lightness or warmth through the whole body.
It can feel like you're in it before you even realize what's happening.
And that's because your nervous system is designed to react quickly,
To protect you,
To make sure that you can survive when it was important to be reactive.
In modern times,
That design impacts us differently every minute of every day.
So learning emotional regulation is a strategy and a skill.
It's a practice.
It is not about stopping emotions.
It's about learning how to recognize and understand what's happening while any motion moves through you.
The survival system means that emotions come first,
Before thought,
So it does not build slowly.
It can be calm one minute and then flooded the next.
It can be like a rogue wave that hits the side of a boat.
No warning,
No time to prepare.
One moment you're on steady ground and the next you feel tossed,
Pulled,
Off balance,
Like a cork moving in fast water,
Up and down,
Side to side.
Your body is reacting before your mind can catch up and that's its job.
It's working brilliantly for you.
And now we can take this information from the body and make it feel familiar to the mind by understanding that this is how your nervous system works.
This information is a message in a bottle with your name on it.
For many of us,
Emotions weren't something that we were taught how to work with.
They were often pushed aside,
Quieted,
Or moved past.
Sometimes because they felt uncomfortable and sometimes simply because there wasn't a clear understanding of what to do with them.
It's no one's fault.
This is newer language.
It's a deeper understanding of how our minds and bodies actually work.
Now let's learn the language of emotion as the direct message it is built to be.
We can tune in and listen deeply.
Imagine that every emotion is all mixed up in the bottle until something is sent your way.
And when you receive the message,
Imagine that you have to pull it out of the neck of the bottle and unroll it and smooth it out on the table.
This is your time to take a breath and go inward.
Put on your captain's hat so that you are the calm steady hand at the helm of this ship.
As you travel within,
Pull out your spyglass and have a look around to notice what's the message that you're getting.
It's a gift from the seas of emotion and you can simply receive it and become curious about what it is saying to you.
You are noticing what's happening in your body.
Where do you feel this message the most?
Is it in your chest,
Your stomach,
Your throat,
Your shoulders,
Your back and hips?
And how does it show up in your body?
Is it tightness?
Is it warmth?
Is it pressure?
Is it movement?
As the captain,
You're letting it be there.
All you do is notice the message.
There's nothing to fix.
There's nothing to push away.
Feel the edges of the message,
The heaviness or the lightness of it.
As captain,
You're investigating the emotion like a seasoned sailor.
I've seen this before.
I've felt this before.
I've checked the environment and the initial thoughts of a hurricane are smoothing out and flattening.
There's nothing to be alarmed about.
As captain,
You're doing something different.
You're staying with the emotion.
You're noticing it for what it is temporary.
You're breathing as you stay with it.
You notice that even intense sensations shift.
They rise,
They peak and they pass.
Now imagine an intense feeling like the anticipation at the very top of the first drop on a roller coaster.
That moment where your body knows something is coming.
You are completely here,
Fully in the moment.
There are no other thoughts.
There are no other sensations.
Just the feeling of anticipation building and building,
Knowing that you are about to feel the rush.
And then the drop,
The speed,
The rush,
The intensity,
The movement.
You feel it from head to toe,
Through your chest,
Your stomach,
Your breath,
Everything moving all at once.
And then as you come through that first drop,
It passes and you're still here,
Still breathing,
Still steady.
Emotions move like this,
Rising,
Peaking and passing.
But sometimes they don't feel like they pass.
Sometimes they feel like they loop.
And that is because how the mind works.
The anticipation you feel often comes from past experiences and the stories that the mind creates to make sense of what's happening.
Your mind is always trying to understand,
To predict,
To prepare you for what might come next.
That's part of its job.
And as those stories form,
They connect to emotion.
And those emotions create sensations in the body.
So what you experience is both at the same time,
Thoughts and sensations.
The mind is doing its best to interpret the messages.
But to really understand what's happening,
We need to separate the two.
Thoughts are the sentences in the mind.
They sound like language,
Like a running commentary,
A narrative.
Emotions are sensations in the body.
They show up as pressure,
Tightness,
Warmth,
Movement.
And when thoughts and emotions become tangled together,
That's when the loop continues.
The body completes an emotion quickly,
But the mind can restart it through thought.
When emotion rises,
Bring your attention into the body,
Not into the story.
But when you begin to notice the difference,
Something shifts.
You can allow the sensation,
The rise,
The peak,
The pass.
They're meant to move through you without needing to follow every thought that comes with it.
And that's where emotional regulation begins.
Knowing that,
Understanding that,
Believing that,
That is the practice.
Know that you are the captain of your ship and in charge of what happens on every aspect of it.
Your job is to be calm,
Stable,
Consistent.
Someone that you trust completely,
No matter what the seas bring to you,
Moment to moment.
Embody your feet grounded beneath you.
The movement of the breath moving in and out of your chest.
Your breath tells you,
Your nervous system,
That you're safe,
Even when the emotions feel intense.
The air brushing against your skin and in front of you,
Your hands resting on the wheel,
Solid,
Steady,
Stable.
Feel the weight of the wheel,
The exhilaration of being in control of the responsiveness of the ship,
The grip in your hands.
You may not control what the wave does when it comes.
You may not control the storm,
But you can learn how to meet it.
You are allowed to feel it.
You are confident in your ability to stay steady when emotions run high.
You know what that feels like.
You know how to interpret the messages.
You have that language.
You know it's a practice,
But you are more than capable of putting your knowledge and language to good use.
Not perfectly,
Not all at once,
But moment by moment.
When you feel emotions rising,
You know that it will peak and pass.
And the more that you practice responding to emotion by noticing the emotion,
The more you notice that the peaks are smoothing out.
The seas are becoming gentle waves that sway the ship.
They are no longer hurricane strength.
They are swells that rock the ship from side to side,
Rather than high peaks and low valleys.
The waves of emotion move.
The captain gets to choose the next action.
What a captain has learned is invisible trust in themselves,
Which makes them confident in their abilities to weather any storm of emotion.
It's a quiet knowing within you that even when emotions run high,
You can stay steady.
Not because everything is calm in the life on the seas,
But because you choose.
You know the language.
You practice noticing message that your emotions are telling you.
The steadiness is a choice that you can return to again and again and again.
You have the ability to pause,
To notice,
To feel,
To understand there is a rise,
A peak and a pass.
And from this place,
There is space and expansion and relaxation.
Space to move through your emotions without reacting in a way that doesn't serve you.
Space to respond in a steady way.
Space to feel calm and present.
By trusting your ability to meet what's here,
You sense the subtle shift of the calm captain residing in you.
A steady presence of trust.
The captain part of you that stays in the moment of intensity.
The captain part of you knows to learn the language.
The captain part of you knows that it's their job to notice the messages.
The captain part of you knows to breathe when a message is received.
The captain part of you knows to choose what to do next to create steadiness on the ship.
Whenever you need a reminder,
Return to this recording.
You strengthen the connection of your practice of emotional regulation.
A practice you can choose so that your mind and body begin to respond automatically to what you want.
And you want to be a person who chooses to captain their own ship and stay steady when emotions are high.
Now take a deep,
Steady breath in and gently exhale.
Begin to bring your awareness back into the room.
Wiggle your fingers and toes.
Feel the edges of your whole body.
And when you're ready,
Go ahead and open your eyes and take this with you.
You are holding the wheel of your ship.
You choose to stay steady when emotions are high.
This is a gift you can give yourself.
