Emotional Freedom: Embracing Feelings and Letting Them Flow Through You

A feeling is just a sensation in your body. No more, no less. It’s just like a wave on the beach. It only lasts about 90 seconds if we allow it and don’t resist it. It will generally have a name like anxiety, sadness, fear, grief, joy, or excitement. It will often have a location, temperature, speed, weight, texture, and, color.

Feelings won’t kill you but it feels like it because the pathway they take in our brains is parallel to the pathway of physical pain in our brains. For a long time I was pretty sure they would kill me, and resisted them a lot. I’d deny them, suppress them, overeat or over-drink just to name a few of my methods of resistance. I’d resist the negative ones but sometimes the positive ones too because they were also uncomfortable. I thought resisting them would make them go away or dilute them. It actually makes them stronger and keeps them around longer. What we resist persists. I created a lot of suffering for myself by resisting them, and not just allowing them to flow through me.

This is a practice, and it does take practice. Most of us weren’t taught how to sit with and process our emotions/feelings. When we are willing to feel all of our feelings, life gets so much richer!

Follow these steps to allow your feelings to pass through you:

• Become aware of the sensation in your body.

• Name the feeling.

• Locate it in your body.

• Does it have a temperature, speed, color, texture, location in your body, or message for you?

• Breathe into it with long exhales.

• Allow it to flow though you like a wave because it won’t harm you.

You may want to take a few minutes to journal your experience. Keep practicing these steps and they’ll get to be second nature. And remember to be compassionate with yourself. This is probably new, and I know you’ll get it!

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