âThis is a very important practice. Live your daily life in a way that you never lose yourself. When you are carried away with your worries, fears, cravings, anger, and desire, you run away from yourself and you lose yourself. The practice is always to go back to oneself.’
~Thich Nhat Hanh
Have you noticed this truth? The more we run from our feelings, the more they run us. Take a look at your own life to see if this is true:
- Are you limiting yourself when you know you are capable of more? Fear is driving you.
- Do you drink or eat too much? Some feeling is eating away at you.
- Do you complain? You’re likely to be irritated or disappointed.
- Are you emotionally triggered by certain people? Do you continually make self-defeating choices? You haven’t yet discovered the feeling that is the root cause.
We tend to avoid feelings for good reasonâat a physical level, our brains and bodies are programmed to turn away from pain and seek pleasure. And avoiding feelings may have been a useful coping mechanism early on in our lives.
But if youâre reading this, youâre probably aware of longings beyond mere survival. My guess is that youâre captivated by the possibility of knowing unshakeable peace and infinite love.
Then consider rising above your programmed tendencies to avoid emotions and turn inward toward them with your heart wide open.
It might sound like a paradox, but when we welcome our emotions just as they are, thatâs when they begin to soften. What was stuck is now free. And what you’ll undoubtedly begin to notice is spaciousness in your whole being alive with new possibilitiesâŠ
What Is a Feeling?
Before we can learn how to be with feelings, we need to understand precisely what they are.
When we turn inward to explore our experience of emotions, what we find are sensations in the body and a story that you tell yourself in your mind.
Are you aware of fear? Youâll notice a rush of thoughts about the future or self-doubt along with tension, vibration, and jitteriness in the body. Feeling sad? You might find a story running in your mind about inadequacy, regret, or loss along with a dense feeling in the chest. Anger? You might notice a pressured monologue in your mind along with volcanic sensations in the body.
Knowing that emotions consist of a story in your mind and physical sensations is profound because itâs the key to freedom from them.
When weâre avoiding emotions, weâve left ourselves by feeding the mental story and focusing on the outside world. Weâre missing the direct experience of whatâs happening in our bodies. When we welcome emotions fully, we turn toward all of ourselvesâphysical sensations, energies, and parts of us that feel young and disconnectedâwith unconditional acceptance, love, and care. This is how we find our way back to our essential wholeness.
Knowing How the Story Works
Giving attention to any thoughts will take you away from the direct experience of the feeling in your body. But donât take my word for it.
When youâre captured by a feeling, check out to see how often you repeat in your mind the story of what happened and how things should be different. Some stories get stuck for decades, keeping the feelingsâand the sufferingâfirmly in place.
The function of these energized thoughts is to try to solve the problem in your mind and divert you from directly experiencing the sensations in your body.
Maybe youâve had the same experience as me. If Iâm angry at someone, in a moment of awareness, Iâll realize that Iâve been rehearsing over and over in my mind what I would like to say to the person. My hands are clenched and my body is tense and contracted. Iâm clearly having a reaction, but I didnât know it because my attention was lost in thoughts.
Giving thoughts a lot of your attention will never release you from the emotion. Ignore the sensations in your body, and you will live in the story forever.
How to find freedom? Turn your attention away from the stories, no matter how enticing they may be, and bring openness and compassion to the felt experience in your body. Even long-standing patterns, habits, and grudges will begin to release.
Sometimes the Story Needs to Be Told
Despite the wisdom of letting go of the story, sometimes it needs to be told. Not in the same compulsive way youâve been telling yourself forever, but in a way that lets you have the experience of being heard and deeply accepted by someone. Find a trusted friend or professional, and tell them whatâs on your mind and how you feel.
When the time is right, be willing to say âgoodbyeâ to this narrative, then open to the sensations in your body that have been driving it. Itâs simple; hereâs howâŠ
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Put down the fight with your own experience. Center your attention in a vast open field of space, and let any sensations be present as long as they want to be. Over and over, return to being this loving, unconditionally welcoming space for whatever sensations appear. This is how emotions come for liberation.
With your attention no longer stuck on old stories, what do you notice? Here you areâŠpeacefulâŠopenâŠlovingâŠfreeâŠ