Meditation For Understanding Your Emotions

This guided meditation will support you in exploring and understanding your emotions, especially if there is a recent emotion that you have been working on overcoming. You will be able to explore recent emotions or memories in a safe space.

In this meditation, we practice titration to process emotions without overwhelm. Connect with your body and explore sensations. Shift your relationship with emotions and feel more empowered. You are in control of how you feel!

Transcript

Hello and welcome to this meditation.

My name is Marina.

Thank you for being here and for showing up for your emotions.

It's a really brave choice.

In this meditation we're going to go on a journey to explore a recent emotion,

Memory,

Or event that you've been experiencing.

This practice is especially important if you're in therapy or undergoing a new healing modality or experience that's bringing up a lot for you or if you're working on integrating a major life event.

For this meditation we'll practice the skill of titration from somatic experiencing.

Titration means that we carefully peel back the layers to look at an emotion or event associated with it and mindfully put it down after a bit of time,

Ground,

And get back to daily living.

What tends to happen with emotions is they can feel overwhelming.

The way we overcome that is through titrating the length of time and the number of times per day we make a dedicated effort to explore the emotion.

Titration allows us to stay calm,

Regulated,

And grounded even if the emotion feels big and heavy.

It helps us process the emotion slowly and gradually without getting overwhelmed by it.

Let's begin by finding a comfortable space both around you and within.

Soften the eyelids to gently drape the eyes.

Take a few clearing breaths.

That could be in through the nose and out through the nose or in through the nose and out through the mouth.

Take a moment to ground and center yourself in your seat,

The base of the spine,

Rising through the spine,

Expanding tall from the sit bones to the crown of the head.

A posture of ease and dignity.

Relax the abdomen and open up the chest.

Relax the shoulders and jaw.

Create as much space for deep breathing as possible.

We'll begin with a few slow deep breaths.

Inhaling for a count of three,

Exhaling for a count of three.

Inhaling in two,

Three.

Exhaling out two,

Three.

Slowing the breath down.

With it,

You may notice the heart rate starting to slow down as well.

Inhaling in two,

Three.

Exhaling out two,

Three.

Inhaling in,

Exhaling out.

Inhaling in,

Exhaling out.

Take as much time as you need to slow down from your day.

You may even choose to pause this track and take some time to yourself before returning to it,

Feeling grounded in yourself.

We'll begin by bringing that important event that happened in the past or recently to your mind.

This could be a distant memory,

Something you've known for a long time,

Or something that you recently discovered.

It could have come into your awareness through any personal work you're doing on yourself,

A plant medicine experience,

Or any other transformative experience.

Bringing that event and memory to mind right now,

Take a deep breath and breathe into the memory.

Allow yourself to explore it in your mind's eye.

Where were you?

What was going on around you?

What were the sensations that you were feeling in your body?

How were you feeling in that moment?

When it comes to the primary emotion you were experiencing,

Think about what that emotion was and name it.

As you bring this emotion into your awareness,

Allow yourself to feel it in your body now.

Notice where in the body this emotion is most strongly felt.

Perhaps in the solar plexus,

Maybe it's in the heart,

The throat,

Anywhere else.

If it's easily accessible to you,

You can even bring both palms to that part of the body now to feel supported.

You're doing great.

Notice the temperature of the emotion and the sensation.

If you were to give this emotion a color,

What would it be?

What would it be?

What would it be?

If you were to give this emotion a color,

What would it be?

As you continue to feel and feel into this emotion,

Here are a few affirmations that can support you in this space.

It is safe to feel these feelings.

I am capable of being with this emotion.

I trust myself.

My emotions do not control me.

I am a humble observer of my emotional state.

When I'm ready,

I can make a choice and shift the emotion to something else.

But for right now,

It is safe for me to be with this emotion.

Noticing the sensation,

The texture,

The shape and color of this emotion.

The shape and color of this emotion.

Noticing the part of the body that speaks to you the most.

Simply being with it.

We often tend to analyze our emotions with our mind and rarely give ourselves the opportunity to actually physically experience them.

This is a rare opportunity.

A few more questions you can ask yourself.

When you feel this emotion,

Ask yourself,

What is this emotion asking of me?

Is there anything I can do or that which this emotion would like me to express?

Is there anything I can say or communicate that will help shift how I feel about this experience?

Is there anything this emotion wants me to remind myself?

Is the emotion I'm experiencing right now the primary emotion or is there something else underneath it?

For example,

Anger is often recognized as a form of self-discouragement.

For example,

Anger is often recognized as a secondary emotion which means that it masks or protects us from a deeper seated potentially more painful emotion.

So as you explore the emotion that you named and that you feel on the surface,

Consider if there is any primary emotion underneath it.

If there is,

Ask what that emotion is and what it is asking of you.

If there are tears welling up,

Let them.

If there's another somatic experience that's unfolding such as a yawn,

Shivering,

Heat or anything else,

Notice it and allow it to be.

It's often our interpretations of emotions that term them negative.

So let yourself approach the experience with curiosity and compassion and see how that might shift your perspective on it.

Emotions are the signs and signals our body sends us.

They are the language of the body.

Next time you're experiencing a big emotion,

Consider taking it as a piece of communication from your body.

It's something that your body wants you to pay attention to and look at.

Give yourself a few more minutes,

Solidifying in your mind what you just learned through experiencing the emotion.

Remember that it's safe to put down the memory when you're ready for it and that we don't need to spend all day in the memory in order to make progress.

I am capable of being with my emotions.

My emotions do not define me.

I am a powerful creator of my emotional state.

I am a powerful creator of my emotional state.

I am a powerful creator of my emotional state.

I am a powerful creator of my emotional state.

I have the ability to choose my moment-to-moment experience.

I have tools that support me in feeling grounded and calm.

Finally,

Notice how experiencing the emotion and allowing it in may have already started to shift your relationship to it or your interpretation.

The time has come to gently begin to come back to the present moment.

Take a few clearing breaths,

Breathing deeply in through the nose and then exhaling through the nose.

And exhaling through the mouth with a sigh.

Returning back from the exploration into the moment that you're in right now.

Go ahead and rub your palms together generating heat between the palms.

You can bring the palms to a part of your body that needs support or you can also rest each palm on the opposite shoulder or your upper arms in a gentle hug.

You can also rest your hands in your lap when you're ready to relax them feeling that gentle warmth and energy running through the top of the skin.

Feel your feet on the ground and your body supported by the chair or whatever you're sitting on.

You're welcome to return to this meditation tomorrow but for today try to do something grounding.

Go for a walk in nature,

Take a hot shower or bath,

Spend time with a pet or a loved one.

Gently closing the book on what you just explored as you remember to breathe deep into your belly and staying here to ground as long as you need.

Think about everything you have to be grateful for in this moment,

All the blessings that are in your life.

If needed you can continue to gently rub your palms together to generate energy and heat to feel a connection to yourself,

Feeling rooted into your seat and tall in your spine,

Feeling the feet on the floor.

When you're ready to fully come out of this experience I would recommend choosing a soothing texture you can feel with your hands such as a cozy blanket or pillow that you have at home or choosing a soothing scent that helps you ground and relax such as lavender in the form of a candle or an essential oil.

These are some things you can consider when you return to this practice in the future.

When you're ready gently flutter your eyes to open to return to your day.

If you feel up for it journal about your experience and what you noticed and learned.

Thank you for exploring this practice.