Welcome to this meditation on empathically holding your emotions.
For this meditation exercise,
I will invite you to quiet your mind and empathically sense into your body,
Because your body is where all of your emotions from all of your past experiences are stored,
And because many of the painful emotions that you experienced in the past were not empathically held by another person,
You can learn to gently do this for yourself,
Gradually,
With practice and patience,
Over time.
So today,
I'm going to guide you in a short empathic holding process so that you can build a stronger and steadier empathic presence to the uncomfortable emotions in your body.
And if you are persistent and you practice empathically holding your emotions every day,
For even just a few minutes,
You will get to a place where you feel like something inside of you is communicating with you.
But this can take a while.
At first,
You might just get vague sensations.
Perhaps you can barely feel them sometimes.
Or you might get really intense sensations in your body that feel difficult to hold.
But at some point,
As you practice empathically holding the emotions in your body for a few minutes every day,
You might start to hear inner voices.
You might sense memories or see symbolic pictures.
Or you might gain insights into what is really bothering you.
But in the beginning,
You will need to be patient and steadfast.
As most people are not used to listening to and feeling into their emotional body.
So even if you feel doubt about feeling anything at all,
Or you're feeling overwhelmed about your arising intense sensations,
Just wait,
Listen and trust whatever wants to make itself known to you today.
But before we go into your body for a two-minute practice of empathic,
Silent listening,
I would like to offer you a few pointers to support you to stay with your emotions for the entire two minutes.
If the emotions in your body feel intense when you go inside,
Which will be likely if you are more on the anxious end of the emotional spectrum,
You will probably find yourself wanting to pop out of your body and up into your thinking mind whenever intense emotions arise.
So if you feel overwhelmed with intense emotions and are having a hard time staying with them,
You might want to place your emotional experience outside of your body at a certain comfortable distance to see if you can energetically hold this intense emotional experience at a distance that feels just right for you.
Now,
If you are more on the depressed end of the emotional spectrum,
It will be likely that you can barely feel anything at all in your body.
So if this is the case,
I encourage you to move closer to any faint or vague sensation within your body that you can find and see if you can sit closer to it,
Sensing it,
Perhaps inviting it to share more if it wants to,
And staying as close as possible to it for the entire two-minute practice period.
Now let's start by taking a few moments to relax your body,
Finding a posture that feels both relaxed and alert,
And closing your eyes.
Taking a few moments to breathe deeply and to scan your awareness through the sensations of your body.
Wherever possible,
Paying attention to the obvious areas of physical tension.
Just feeling the sensations in your body in this moment as you breathe,
Allowing your body to show you what wants your attention today.
And perhaps you sense that you want to rest one or both hands on a place in your body that feels tight,
Numb,
Tense or uncomfortable.
And once you feel reasonably centered,
Connected to your body and comfortable,
You can trust that you can learn how to tenderly hold and be empathically present for your emotional life as it arises,
Fresh and new,
Each and every day,
To speak to you through feeling sensations,
Or perhaps colors,
Sounds,
Gestures,
Or words.
So before we go into what your body wants to feel and communicate with you today,
It will be helpful to ground yourself into a deeper sense of emotional support by first imagining a grounding cord going down from your body,
Down,
Down,
Down into the earth,
All the way down to the center of the earth so that you can access the deepest level of grounding support possible.
And when you reach the center of the earth in your imagination,
Invite up all the emotional support that you need today to travel back up your grounding cord,
Perhaps in the form of colors,
Or sounds,
Or feelings,
Or gestures,
Or words,
Inviting this deeper sense of support,
However it wants to come today,
To travel up your grounding cord and invite it to circulate throughout your body.
And as this deeper level of support circulates through your body,
You might also consider inviting higher emotional support into your body as well.
You might invite the top of your head to open up to the higher realms,
Perhaps calling in support from your higher self,
Your intuition,
Your soul,
Your spirit guides,
Or your angels.
Perhaps your ancestors want to pour support into the top of your head.
And as you imagine whatever higher support wants to come into your body today,
Perhaps coming down to the top of your head through the form of color,
Sound,
Feelings,
Gestures,
Or words,
Just circulate this higher support through your body now.
And as you are feeling support from above and support from below circulating through your body,
Soon I will invite you to tune into your human body to see what needs your attention today.
So I invite you to remember to create more empathic distance from your intense emotions if you feel anxious,
And to move closer empathically to emotions you can barely feel.
And now I invite you to empathically stay present for your emotions,
No matter how faint or how intense,
For the next two minutes.
And your period of silence begins now.
Welcoming you back now and inviting you to thank yourself for empathically holding your emotions.
And before we go,
You might also want to thank your emotions for connecting with you today.
You might say a few kind words to your emotions.
For example,
Thank you.
I accept you.
I love you.
I see you.
I hear you.
You are important to me.
Asking in the warm kindness that you've offered yourself today,
I wish you many blessings for your emotional healing journey.
