Feeling Your Feelings

Feelings are meant to be felt, but of course sometimes we would prefer to push them down and avoid the wisdom that they are attempting to impart. This is understandable but potentially detrimental as the act of ignoring or blocking them off leads us to be closed to the true depths of the human experience. This track is taken from my course, ‘Questions To Heal Your Soul’, available now via my profile.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the next session in the course, Questions to Heal Your Soul. I invite you to take a seat or lay down and get yourself comfortable. You can close down the eyes if you wish and take three slow deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. And as you're taking those breaths we're just going to scan our body for any points of tension or blockage or issue. If we scan down our body and we notice a point of tension we're just going to breathe into that space. Just allow healing energetic calm breaths to flow into that space. If you like you could choose to visualize healing radiant energy flowing into you and then into that spot. And as you breathe out that healing energy taking away some of the gunk in the build-up and leaving room for just your body to turn to a place and a space of calm balanced clear focused relaxation. So take another deep slow breath in through the nose and out through the mouth and just scan your body from your head to your neck to your face to your jaw to your shoulders to your chest to your belly and your back your upper back your lower back your arms just breathing into those spaces and allowing yourself to let go and down your body into your buttocks your groin your upper legs your lower legs your feet and your hands just take a moment to scan your entire body for any points of tension blockage or annoyance it's breathing healing energy radiance love into that space and then just taking a moment to allow your mind to open welcoming in possibility and potential and growth inviting the universe god intuition the muse your ancestors whatever place or space it is that you draw power from inviting that to share some wisdom to allow you to open up to the question to be flexible to be supple to be willing to embrace positive change so in a moment i'm going to ask you a question twice and then we're just going to let that question unfold can i actually sit with and feel my feelings can i actually sit with and feel my feelings okay so this question can i actually sit with and feel my feelings my initial immediate answer to this question is no not always not immediately it depends on what i'm feeling makes me realize that when things get tough when my brain starts screaming at me when there's a lot going on i tend to run to distraction to inebriation to habit bad habits that is to food to tv to pretending like i'm doing something beneficial when really what i should be doing is just sitting and feeling my feelings but it also suggests a little bit of hope because i'm recognizing that part of my practice is to expand my ability to feel i i recognize a tendency to put too much weight on myself to overburden myself to to expect myself to be able to handle everything all the time but that's obviously unreasonable the physical analogy would be that i expect my body to be able to you know deal with whatever pain arises every time all of the time but that's unreasonable i shouldn't be able to or expect my body to be able to feel everything there's a reason that we use painkillers and other medicines there's a reason that we avoid certain activities that hurt so perhaps there is an upper limit of mental feelings that i'm just not ready to feel yet but i do see a need to strive towards it for those of us that have mental health concerns mental illnesses issues down that path struggles i like to call it feeling our feelings can be quite important quite necessary because it's so easy to run from them or to label these any of these feelings that pop up as wrong or bad but there is a benefit to actually feeling what we're feeling right the benefit is that it expands our capacity the more we do something the better we get at it the more experience we have so if i get used to feeling the feelings that i'm having whatever they are i'll get better at it and therefore they won't be as impactful as painful as worrisome but also i'll get used to feeling them you know there's a tendency to run from the present moment to not feel what i'm feeling when good things happen it's like well when will the next good thing happen you still instantly find yourself running something bad happens something terrible you instantly find yourself running rather than feeling them tell me are you depressed if someone passes away or are you just feeling the natural feelings of grief but what if you run from those feelings what if you stifle them what if you don't feel them what happens then what happens then is you you're on the risk of breakdown so it seems imperative that we learn to sit with our feelings because you know every one of us is able to sit with some aspects some level of our feelings but there comes a point where we turn and run where we avoid it what i'm trying to do now as a meditation practice is just sit and just feel my feelings i know that in my belly in particular in my belly and in my left shoulder a little bit in my jaw i hold a lot of tension a lot of physical tension you know manifestations of past issues and traumas and other things and i didn't feel them back in the day i just repressed it and pushed it down and squished it but what would it mean if i was to embrace that to step into that space to feel those feelings it would mean that i'll have to actually feel them you know feelings are meant to be felt and if we push them down they sit there and they don't go away an intuitive part of me wants to suggest that if we are dealing with challenging big traumatic feelings that we should make sure that we're doing it safely that we've got supports in place that we don't overdo it i know myself i have a tendency to sort of jump all in on things oh i'm feeling my feelings let's feel them all it's like getting to a hot bath if you jump straight in it becomes overwhelming it's shocking how hot it is but if you slowly immerse yourself add some more hot water you can build up the tolerance and you get used to it start to enjoy it start to like it i guess what i'm saying is is that look after yourself make sure you're safe and work yourself up because you don't need to blow it all out and have a breakdown better approach would be to feel your feelings safely and then switch to feeling other feelings not all bad not all good not all this not all that we want to be in a flow not stagnant you know the movement of feelings is the key right we feel this we feel that we're moving my groove and we're feeling great feeling our feelings allows us to have a better insight into who and what we are both now and in the long term if i block myself off it's like i'm dulling my senses i wouldn't want to put a shade over my eyes forever but i do that with my senses because i'm not checking into what's actually happening so i ask you can you actually sit with and feel your feelings can you actually sit with and feel your feelings well done this brings us to the end of the session at the bottom of your screen you'll see an option to view the classroom or to ask a question so before moving on i invite you to take a moment to click through and share your insights to read answers from other students and to hear my replies remember to start your responses with session eight or to restate the question can i actually sit with and feel my feelings so we all know which question you're referring to this is an opportunity for deep learning further introspection and insight so please don't miss out i look forward to seeing you in the next session this track was taken from the course questions to heal your soul it's out now on insight timer and available via my profile i invite you to join in