Feel your Feelings
Hello. . . I hope you are sitting in a wonderfully comfortable place and open to receiving and reflecting the words and feelings I share with you today . . . We are talking about mind and body connection and emotions.
Many people have come to me lately to talk about relationship problems and feeling numb and emotionless in their own bodies due to stress, pain, and perceived emotional trauma from the relationship dynamics. I have written this brief article to help you better understand your body and mind connection and to help you find ways to begin to go within and begin to identify what you are feeling right now.
Making a daily practice of introspectively checking in with your body will help you begin to understand what you need and want in the moment, and that will help you begin to be able to take better care of yourself. Taking care of your needs and wants best you can, helps you to communicate with others because it helps you have feel more peaceful. Feeling peaceful and well cared for by you, helps you have a deeper understanding and reception of them, and also helps you express to them what your deeper needs and feelings are in the relationship.
It’s kind of like the old adage, “You must have your own safety mask on first before helping (or communicating) with others.” 🙂
so lets begin. . .
Emotions begin in your body.
Physiological emotion (feelings) are core sensations from within your body communicating that something needs to be addressed/healed within. These feelings may be physical heartache because you have been deeply hurt by an expression of un-love from yourself or from someone else, or the feeling of a rapid heartbeat because you are in fear of experiencing a difficult feeling, or being actively rejected or hurt. You may be experiencing a tight, restricted throat because you are unable to speak your truth. These examples are feelings or core sensations in your body and are not fully processed by your mind.
You can literally FEEL your feelings.
Often expressions of your unconscious are difficult. Your mind may begin to place a story onto the origin of the feelings. This is a way that your mind begins to perceive, respond, and understand. You may not yet able to put the feelings into rationale or words. It is better to feel first. Trust that your feeling is communicating something and try to allow yourself to follow the response, be it crying, anger, joy. It is grace in action when you allow your feelings to be put into motion. This is a healthy way to begin to release stored feelings. When your unconscious is given time and permission to release the stored pain, this will provide space, relieve pressure of the energy. Then your mind and body can begin to communicate more fluidly.
You can begin to understand you.
Your mind needs something to do, so give it something to do through attuning to your body sensations, or listening within. Engaging your mind in this way can become a daily practice in your life, as a movement toward self- understanding and thus healing. Your quality of your life will change because this practice begins to allow you to open and move past the deadness or defensive layers. These layers are emotional armor that we often naturally surround or protect ourselves with due to socialization and the fear based survival mechanisms we learn in relationship to our inner selves and others. Dropping down beyond the mental-emotional accumulations, instinctually builds a bridge between the false self (a socially constructed sense of self) and your true self that resides deepwithin. Focusing your mind on attuning to your feelings can help you move past rational verbal layers of conversation, both in your mind and in your social life.
You can come to terms with your truth and not truth. This is the path to understanding how circumstance effect your internal self. You can continue to learn about yourself by tuning into your body, to feel your emotions, and then listening, watching your mind. This effects balance between your body, mind and heart.
A thought: At some point one emotion can become a defense against experiencing a deeper emotion. For example, rage often masks sadness. Try listening to your feelings more thoughtfully. When you are fluidly open to this, you will develop even deeper awareness and mind body union.
Introception
Introception is the ability to monitor the physiological condition of your own body. This forges intimate connection between the physical sensations of your body and the emotions that arise in response. Most of us are aware of our heartbeat, bladder pressure, and hunger to some degree. We all have wide variability in how sensitive we are, and at times are more sensitive than others. Your emotional range and capabilities are linked to your ability to perceive the physical sensations within your heart, and other parts of your body.
People who have a capacity to feel the internal state of their own body have been shown to be more intuitive, experience stronger emotional arousal, have better memory for emotional material, and perhaps be better able to control their negative emotions. This connection between the physical sensations in your body and your emotions extends to the neural processes in our brain. So, developing an awareness of your bodily feelings is important to developing awareness of your emotional response.
People who display an imbalance or defense against introceptive awareness are less able to have positive emotion in daily life, have more difficulty with decisions, and on. Training our mind to be more internally aware will lead to heightened emotional abilities and health.
Introceptive Journaling
I invite you to begin exploring mind and body awareness by journaling.
The best way to find out what is happening between your mind and body is to look and listen within. These questions may seem complex, may not. Give yourself time and patience with them. Write with this every few weeks, we are attuning a new way of perceiving. It takes time and repetition.
1. Sit. Observe. Breathe. Feel.
What do I feel in my own body?
In my heart?
Where do I feel the most sensation in my body? What does it feel like?
Temperature, heart rate, organ pulse, numbness, pain? If it had words what would it say?
Do I have certain ailments that are recurring? Where are they? Pain, stinging, throbbing, or? If it had words what would it say? Do I want to be with this feeling or do I want to move away?
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