Your emotions are a powerful catalysts for personal transformation

Your emotions are a primary language of the subconscious mind they reveal our underlying beliefs and patterns. Our subconscious beliefs are formed from past experiences along with our emotional reactions. This significantly shapes our emotional responses to current situations in everyday life. Yet as a society we have been conditioned to disconnect from our emotional worlds. This has taught us to disconnect from our body. Many people today see their emotions as something they do not have time for and resist, dissociate and escape from or left feeling controlled by their emotions. Judge it as wrong or as something they should not be feeling. Even creating a belief from an emotion in the body that in reality is not true. The stories we tell ourselves amplify our feelings thus creating more drama. Trust me when I say this, I have spent most of my life experiencing my emotions in this way. I’ve been stuck in thinking I was feeling the emotion by crying, venting and thinking and analyzing my experience which ultimately would lead to me feeling more negative emotions such as resentment, anger and blame. And yes, crying is emotional release but your nervous system runs the show. What I was calling feeling was just a mental interpretation in my mind a performance of emotional pain that would keep my nervous system stuck repeating the same old loops again and again.

Emotion is the biological response. It is the raw sensations you feel in your body such as tightness in the throat or chest, A jolt in the solar plexus, A sharp buzz behind the eyes, your stomach sinks and a wave of heat rises this is what the body experiences before the mind takes over. What then follows is your reaction to the perceived emotional trigger. What you think about after the sensations in your body is the feeling, this is your mental interpretation or story about why the sensations are happening in your body. Feelings are subjective and can evolve when we deepen our awareness into ourselves connecting mind and body and breath. Emotions carry information for us but because we do not bring our conscious awareness to the emotion we miss the information and it turns into a behavioral response.

Your body holds wisdom before the minds interpretation. If we are not present enough in the moment we cannot disrupt the pattern and stop traveling the same loops. We miss this wisdom and deeper connection to our inner selves to feel more in harmony and aligned with our soul. Tuning into your body’s wisdom and practicing mindfulness and self awareness can help navigate life experiences, expand perceptions of your world view and social realities. You feel more grace and ease and trust within yourself.

Questions to ask yourself?

• Do I have enough self awareness and self compassion within myself to observe my reaction to the sensation and learn from it?

• What does this emotion want to teach me about myself?

• Am I analyzing the sensation in my body rather than just observing it?

• Are you letting your mind jump to conclusions about the sensation, preventing you from truly experiencing it?

• Are you allowing the sensation to simply be with no judgment or are you trying to understand it away?

• Are you witnessing your pain? Or reliving the same story around it? Are you performing your pain?

How to practice experiencing your emotion in the moment:

• Understand your presence is a part of you, it is your power. When you’re not present you react, overthink, over analyze. 

• Practice observing yourself.

• Presence requires self trust, self honesty become aware when you are in a mindset of black and white thinking.

• Breathe deeply, keep staying connected to your breathe. Inhale-exhale-repeat. Breathe into your body.

• Notice and become aware of the sensation in your body. 

• Stay determined and present in the moment. Keep breathing. Inhale exhale, softening within.

• Staying present enough in the moment is important so you can guide yourself and choose your response. It is ok to make mistakes this takes practice.

• Interrupt your train of thought with your presence your breath, and love and compassion for yourself.

• In some cases your mind might take you back to a childhood memory. 

• Reparent your inner child with love and say to the younger version of you  “you are loved”, “I will not abandon you” “ I’m here now” or whatever feels more connected to your experience.

• Practice mindfulness, engage your senses, have a dedicated practice, be mindful of your thoughts.

• Practice mindful body checks by regularly checking in with how your body responds to certain people, places, memories or events.

• Engaging in mindful movement and breath, stretching, dance, yoga or breathing exercises to release tension and energy and help connect mind and body.

  The practice is to experience an emotion in the body without attaching any story to it. On average the emotion only lasts 6-90 seconds and feels like a wave gently passing through. Overtime you experience more inner harmony, grace and ease moving through life experiences that would have been challenging before.

  “What triggered me” via The Gottman Institute