However, in the meantime, here’s a peek into my daily life and how I’m using this concept for myself.

A year ago, I hired a contractor to do some renovations on my house. They weren’t huge changes like major additions, but there was a significant amount of work. Our house needed a laundry room, much updating, and lots of little fixes. We bought a fixer-upper before we knew we really hate fixing-up. So, I was delighted to have someone with expertise make our house a home.

I will admit, I was a newbie to the contractor experience. I did not realize that contractors live in a completely different time zone, independent of all officially recognized time zones. We’ll call it Contractor Time. Contractor Time is based on two-week cycles. This means that they tell you everything will be done in two weeks, every time you ask. They also disappear for two weeks at a time on a regular basis.

So here we are, a year later, and the project is not yet done. A few weeks ago, I found myself getting hysterical about this fact, and experiencing a great deal of anger and copious amounts of weeping. (I’m sure NONE of this is related to being pregnant.)

I really, really, really want this done before the baby arrives. I never in a million years thought we’d still be in construction mode at this point.

So, I sat down and connected with my emotions. I knew there had to be a message in there, and I was really hoping my soul wisdom would have something helpful to say. I had reached a limit. My life has been completely turned upside down between not knowing when the contractor will be in my house (every day it’s a gamble – in fact, my husband and I have started betting) and having constant disruption while trying to live here, run a business, and be pregnant.

I’ve kind of gotten used to the constant chaos. My life looks a little something like this: I’ve given the contractor instructions/input in between first-trimester vomiting events. I’ve dashed down the hall dressed only in a towel when he showed up unexpectedly. I’ve tripped over piles of equipment, moved in and out of rooms repeatedly, and coached from every corner of the house. Today, I ran into the bathroom to pee, forgot to shut the door, and realized he was right around the corner in the kitchen. To be honest, I didn’t even care. He’s like a permanent member of our household.

When I sat down to check in with my emotions and my soul wisdom, a message came through loud and clear. Here’s what my emotions and my soul said:

Sadness: It’s time to let go of your current way of working and living as you step into your new life as a mother. I’m here to help you let go.

Anger: I’m here to help you communicate clearly and stand up for what you believe in, which you’ll need to do as a mother. I give you strength.

Soul: This is all happening to give you practice ground for the new life you’ll be living as a mother. You’ll have constant interruptions. You’ll need to work and live differently. You’ll need to find ways to stay connected to yourself, to find peace, to make life the way you want it, with a lot of randomness and surprise curveballs. This is a great chance to practice so that you can move toward this new way of living.

Immediately, I felt my body relax. This all rang so true that I could see exactly why it all needed to happen this way. I’m not saying I became perfectly peaceful and haven’t had a moment of anger since. No, I’ve still had my freak-outs about this house project. However, I can return and return to this inner wisdom, reminding myself to use this chaos to practice what I know. And that is working.

Without my emotions and my soul wisdom, I would be in a constant state of stress and panic around this issue. I’m grateful to be able to let go of stress, let go of tension, and stay connected and healthy in the face of whatever is happening. That’s the power of the mind-body-soul connection, and the power of letting my emotions be a guide in my life rather than something I avoid or suppress.

All right. Ready to go. Planning to start any minute now.

Or, maybe in a few minutes, after you check Facebook. Or read one more email. Or finish one more housekeeping task.

Oh my gosh! You just remembered that closet in your basement you were going to re-organize. Better get that done first.

You have just run smack into Resistance, a good friend of mine.

Resistance shows up frequently in my life. In the past, I used to berate myself anytime resistance stopped by. I’d say things to myself like this:

• But if you would just do this, it would be over.
• Why can’t you just hurry up and do it?
• You suck.
• You should not be resisting this! It’s good for you/fun/something you should do!

I used to battle resistance. It was a futile battle, I might add. I read self-help articles that talked about “overcoming resistance” and “getting rid of resistance.” Yet, whatever I did, resistance still showed up. I thought I was just procrastinating out of laziness, silly fear, or other such ridiculousness.

Then, as I developed my mind-body skills, I began to see resistance differently. Because, if you believe, as I do, that everything shows up to give you a message, then resistance must be here for the very same reason.

Instead of fighting with resistance, I started asking it how it was here to help me.

Here is what resistance said:

• You’re trying to do too much at once.
• This is overwhelming. Planning a whole afternoon of creating feels hard.
• Tone it down – how about just 10 minutes of mind-body practice?
• There’s no need to hurry or do so much at once.
• Please put less pressure on yourself about this goal/activity/idea.

Wow. Resistance is actually pretty smart. And friendly.

It turns out resistance was here to save me from myself – or at least the part of me that always pushes too hard, pressures herself, and sets impossible standards.

I started talking to my clients’ resistance, too. Often, it had very similar messages for them. The details were different, but the general message was pretty much the same. I’ve distilled it into two easy-to-remember sentences. Resistance shows up to tell us:

Slow it down. Gentle it up.

In other words, where can you take smaller steps, be in less of a hurry, and do less right now, while still gently moving forward? How can you take the self-pressure off and be kind to yourself while engaging in your goal or activity? (Note – sometimes, you actually have to stop moving at all toward the end goal and just be. That’s okay!)

If you’re trying to create something today such as trying to do something new and uncomfortable, like fully feel an emotion, put yourself out there in some fashion, or any such terrifying prospect, you might be feeling resistance.

I’d like to suggest that you don’t try to push through the resistance, get rid of it, or argue with it. Instead, you might try befriending it. Then, ask it how it’s here to help. See how you can slow it down and gentle it up with whatever you’re doing.

I’d love to hear how this works for you! Hop on over to the anamsong facebook page for a conversation!

Every now and then, I fall back into the don’t-feel mode. I start making self-judgments like “I should be okay with this already,” or “I shouldn’t get THAT angry, for heaven’s sake…”  This usually means there is something I REALLY need to feel, and I am busy convincing myself I am fine, it’s all good, and I’ll just attend to a few more emails instead of stopping to feel.

This past month, I noticed creeping tension accumulating in my back, and I knew I needed to feel something. I did some avoiding, then some distracting, and a little bit of eating. Strangely, none of that magically eliminated my tension. Finally, I took a deep breath and dove into my own psyche. I should have known. It was stored anger.

For me, anger is the hardest emotion. I’ve worked for years to allow sadness, and now I can pretty much allow myself a good cry whenever I need it. I’ve gotten much friendlier with fear, and I can allow it to be present for the most part. Anger, on the other hand, is almost always the culprit when I say to myself, “Gosh, I just don’t KNOW what I’m feeling. Hmmm. What on EARTH could it be?”

I believe deeply in honoring emotions, the body, and the mind and how they work together. I decided I needed some help accessing what was stored in my body. I booked an appointment series with my chiropractor, who also does intense (by that I mean hideously painful) myofascial and deep tissue release. If I had any anger stored in my muscles and tissues, he would definitely help it start to flow.

After last week’s session, I drove home (blinking the tears of pain out of my eyes – the man has thumbs of steel) and got back to work. He’d done a new type of fascial release that hurt so much I thought I would pass out. He attacked muscles on the top of my head that were highly offended by the assault. Yet, it felt oddly good afterward. I sat, typing away at my desk.

Suddenly, a tsunami of anger exploded into my awareness. Wow. I did some Conscious Complaining, I felt it, I talked to a fellow coach. I thought I was doing pretty good, allowing the anger to flow. Yet, the muscle tension was still there. I was a little puzzled.

A couple of days later, I was visiting my mom, chatting with her in the kitchen. I told her about the anger explosion, and she said, “Oh, yes, I like to have tantrums when that happens.” I’ve tossed around the word tantrum before, but I had a sense something really good was about to be revealed. Sure enough, she began to demonstrate, and something indescribable came over me. It was a sense of relief, a giant easing of years of tension. It was permission to let go. She really got INTO the tantrum. She yelled. She mocked. She moved her whole body. It was spectacular, and impossible not to join in. Pretty soon I was having a tantrum, too. I was shaking all parts of my body, I was being a three-year-old, and I was letting it all out. It was kind of like a tantrum dance, though lying down and kicking our legs was still involved. (Stolen from the classic 3-year-old tantrum move.)

The tantrum came to a natural close, because we couldn’t continue long without exploding into fits of laughter. It was possibly the funniest thing, ever. I so wish you could see my mom having a tantrum. She is gifted. She is a genius. She knows how to let herself have the moment. How many times do we stop ourselves and say, “I shouldn’t really feel/think x….” when we just need a two-minute tantrum?

We like to think we’re adults now, and tantrums are a 3-year-olds prerogative. Not so. There is nothing more freeing than letting loose your inner 3-year-old. I imagine that, like us, you’ll have a hard time not laughing when you’re done with your tantrum, especially if you really let yourself get into it. (I highly recommend grabbing a friend who’s willing to explore the tantrum concept, too. It’s more fun with company.)

It might seem silly, but a tantrum done well is actually one of the most healing things you can do for yourself. First, you get to combine Conscious Complaining (at the top of your lungs, no less, or in scathing, mocking tones – soooo fun) with moving your whole body. There is something hugely powerful about that. Second, you get to shake, punch, kick, and otherwise pummel the air, releasing actual stored energy from your body. Third, you get to feel whatever you’re feeling, and it’s much easier to let it flow when you’re really getting into it physically. Fourth, you get to laugh at the end, which is one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself in general.

Not five minutes after my tantrum, my back loosened up. I felt lighter. I felt happy. I felt awake. My body was alive, fluid, and strong.  I was present. I told my mom she is a genius. She said she learned it from me, when I was a three-year-old. When I had tantrums as a kid, she used to join in, because, well, why not? My mom GETS kids, in a way that no one else I know does. She knows that you’ve just got to have the tantrum, and trying to stop it is futile. She knows that a little company during a tantrum makes it that much better. Somehow, I forgot, as my adult self, this gem of wisdom. I am grateful to have recovered it.

I guess, for some reason, we always try to be so grown up. Why is that? Kids have way more fun. They are naturals at feeling and moving on, no stored tension necessary. Whatever changed you and me from a freely feeling four-year-old to a hold it in adult (yes, there are many experiences in life that, unfortunately, facilitate that process), it’s time to recapture our kid genius.

I tried to get Mom to make a tantrum video, but she was a little shy. Maybe I’ll coerce her to give Tantrum Workshops with me. Somehow, I hope to convey her genius to you, because I think you’ll benefit in a huge way. For now, the written word is the best I can do. I’ve learned from the master, but I don’t consider myself a fully trained tantrum instructor just yet.

How to Have a Conscious Tantrum

1)     Queue up the issue you’re upset about in your mind. (If you don’t know what it is, that’s fine – you can start with the feeling instead.)

2)     Start moving. Wiggle your shoulders, shake your arms, make air punches – just do anything your body wants to do. Keep moving.

3)     Start complaining about whatever it is, or anything. (If you don’t have an actual complaint, you can just make noise, too.) Stoop to your lowest levels. Say what you really want to say but aren’t letting yourself express. Use your bitchiest voice. Then yell. Get snarky. Mock. Whine. Judge. Channel your inner toddler. (Keep moving.)

4)     Feel whatever emotion is there. Say what you feel. (Keep moving.) Let your movements express what you’re feeling in whatever way feels right. Be the drama queen. Go way over the top.  (This will facilitate step 5.)

5)     Laugh hysterically at yourself.

I really can’t recommend this enough. I employed it yesterday while having a wardrobe meltdown. (These recur at a regular monthly interval for some odd, completely inexplicable reason…) I felt completely hysterical about all of my clothes, and spent a good several hours ruminating on how awful they all look, before I remembered the Conscious Tantrum Technique. Ahhh, sweet relief. (Now seriously, aren’t you just a little intrigued by a tool that is powerful enough to release PMS mania? You’ve gotta try it.)

So, I encourage you to be a toddler when you need to feel through something. Have the moment. Let yourself go there. Let it all hang out. Stoop to your lowest levels. Then, you’ll rise up on the sweet aftermath, with laughter to carry you home – to you.

I get emails from clients like the sample below pretty much every week:

Agh! I think something is terribly wrong with me! Oh no! I am crying a lot! I feel terrible! What should I do? I can’t live like this! What if I’m never happy again!

To which I usually reply something like this:

Yay! Soooo glad you are crying and feeling your emotions! Don’t worry – this won’t last forever. It’s what we’ve been hoping to accomplish. Remember when you said you wanted to stop stuffing your emotions and actually feel them? Well, this is the beginning!

I have gained a reputation for being the coach who makes you cry. In a good way. In an “I can finally let down and let this emotion flow” kind of way. I joke about this crying coach thing with my clients, who thus far have not thrown tomatoes or eggs at me, or toilet papered my house. This may be because most of them live far, far away from Wyoming. Thankfully.

Once they get through the initial panic over actually feeling these darn emotions, however, they report feeling much, much better. Emotionally, physically, and mentally. Storing all that emotional stuff in one’s body really doesn’t feel great, takes a lot of energy, and leads to physical pain. You’ve gotta remember the reason you embarked on this mind-body healing journey, whether it was to relieve pain around issues like vulvodynia or interstitial cystitis or gain confidence and quiet the self-doubts and inner critic. You wanted to feel better. You wanted to actually let yourself have emotions. You wanted to connect to your soul wisdom, even if you didn’t know it in so many words.

Well, the first step is to actually feel those emotions you’ve unwittingly stored away. Conceptually, this sounds great. In reality, it’s very unnerving, at first. This is because you’ve spent years NOT feeling them. Trust me – as a champion emotion avoider, I have so been there. The reason we don’t want to feel these things is they are sooooooooo uncomfortable. (Along with other reasons, such as feeling vulnerable and “weak” if we let them flow.)

Like many, many things in life, when you start this process, you have to make it through the rough patch where things seem worse before they get better. In physical healing, this is often called the “healing crisis.” In the mind-body process, I just call it The Mess. It generally involves a lot of Kleenex tissue, reassuring one’s spouse that this is not an emergency, and a cave-like place to which you can retreat and blubber. A lot.  (My spouse has mentioned that spouses need a blog post on what to do with mates who are going through the mess. He too, speaks from personal experience. Possibly I’ll write that one next…)

The only reason this seems so awful, for most of us, is the panic and fear that arises from the inner part of us that thinks these emotions are not to be felt. They are to be avoided! Stuffed away! “Run now!” shouts this inner suppressor inside us. “The tears are coming! Noooooooo!”

This is what we call resistance. Resistance to feeling these emotions is normal. It’s just part of the process. You might feel it in spades or feel it just a little, but it is likely to show up nearly every time you start to really feel an emotion, especially at first. Just acknowledge this resistance, reassure it (you can talk to it like it’s your friend) that you are okay and that you will go gently into the emotion swamp.

If you can stay slightly in the role of observing yourself feel (this feels like you’re watching yourself in a movie), even as you are crying (or throwing things at your poor, unsuspecting spouse), you’ll find that the swamp is just that. It’s only knee-high. You won’t drown, you won’t feel overwhelmed, and you will make it to the other side.

Once you’ve started letting yourself feel emotions and have integrated that into your daily life, they’ll be like just a blip on the screen. Just a normal, simple, passing part of your daily existence. You’ll become a pro. You might still feel some resistance every now and then, and you won’t do everything perfectly, but you’ll feel much more at peace with emotions, and you’ll feel much more relaxed and energetic in your body. If you were in pain, it will fade away. You’ll start to feel like you know yourself. You’ll start to feel like you like yourself. And dare I say, even love yourself! You’ll find yourself having fewer bouts of self-doubt, and when those do arise, you’ll see them from a slightly detached place instead of getting totally knocked flat and immobilized.

I write all of this simply to say this: stick with it. You can do it. It doesn’t feel this hard forever. If you can get over the hump and through the muddiest part of the swamp, you’ll get back onto dry ground. It’s much easier to just keep going forward, through the discomfort, through the resistance (not forcefully – just with a steadfast willingness to go forward) than to start and then stop, over and over again. That tends to feel horrific, like you are never going to make it out of the swamp.  Martha Beck, my mentor and the original reason I became a coach, calls this process going through the ring of fire. This is an apt analogy, because it does burn hot. If you move forward, however, you don’t catch fire. You end up in what she calls the Core of Peace. Ahhhh. If you start and stop repeatedly, you end up just standing in the fire, burning. Gack. I’ve done it, and I don’t recommend it.

Keep feeling. Be willing to be a mess. Be willing to have a melt-down, even if it’s not in your schedule. (Because really, have you scheduled your melt-down time? Is it listed in your calendar between the haircut and picking the kids up from school? Didn’t think so!) Emotions are not logical, not linear, not organized. They affront our intellect with their very kindergarten-style way of doing things – so haphazard, so random, so…undisciplined. Yet, they return us to our own bodies, our own soul wisdom, and, ultimately, peace.

Embrace the mess. This too shall pass. You can do it. Stock up on Kleenex. Celebrate this sign that the mind-body process is working. Know that most people have no idea how to navigate emotions, so they may not understand what you’re doing. Reassure them that it’s okay, and don’t bother worrying about what they think. You are on the path to healing, and you will most definitely arrive. Just keep going forward, through the swamp, through the fire, and remember to breathe. You will not only survive – you will thrive.

Over the holidays, I took two weeks off from coaching.  I had two reasons for doing this – one, doing things besides coaching brings fresh ideas and creativity to my coaching practice, and two, my essential self asked for two weeks of attention.  Since I generally give my essential self a great deal of attention, this request made me curious.  I wondered what was up with my inner world that required two weeks of concentrated focus.

I started my break with fun family gatherings, cooking, and doing whatever felt right in the moment.  Soon, however, I felt an emotional storm rolling in within my body and mind.  (I have often quoted Pema Chodron to my clients, because she likens emotions to the weather, which I find very apropos.)  I battened down the hatches and prepared myself to feel it, whatever it was.

As you might have noticed, I talk frequently about emotions – specifically emotional suppression and avoidance.  It is the most important concept to understand if you want to strengthen your mind-body connection in order to release pain, lose weight, or follow your inner guidance to success.  It is the key component in all three of these journeys, because a fear of emotions, an unconscious suppression habit, and a pattern of emotional avoidance techniques all prevent a strong mind-body connection.  It’s hard to be aware of your body when are busy fleeing it.

Emotions are a physical energy within our bodymind system.  (Someday, somebody is going to coin a word that encompasses the body and mind as a whole.  Then we can stop searching for phrases to accurately describe the whole with words that imply otherwise.)  To feel them, we have to be aware of our bodies via our physical sensations – no matter how uncomfortable or unusual they are.  A willingness to move toward this discomfort makes it a lot less uncomfortable, a paradox that can keep us confused until we risk feeling everything as it comes.

Having had much experience fleeing my feelings, I now make every effort to just feel them.  It has served me well and kept me pain free, at a healthy weight, and very clear about my inner directives and creative ideas, which results in a successful coaching practice.  I had a sense that this emotional storm moving in had a lot to do with my essential self requesting two weeks off.  Sure enough, I proceeded to spend large amounts of time feeling a variety of emotions for two entire weeks.  I grieved, cried, laughed, got angry, moped, danced, and felt pretty much every emotion there is.  At the end of the two weeks, I felt refreshed, fresh, alive, and joyful on an even deeper level than I had before – which is really saying something.

The reason I wanted to share this experience with you is this: It just goes to show how much emotional detritus it is possible to unknowingly store in our bodymind systems.  I’ve noticed myself and my clients thinking sometimes that we’ll reach a point where we’re finished releasing stored and held emotion.  It’s that old perfection thinking sneaking back to play tricks in our minds.

It’s much easier to just go with the flow, allow the weather, and be fascinated by our own emotions.  Instead of fleeing or fighting with myself for two weeks, I just noticed my emotions as they passed through, almost as if I had grabbed a bucket of popcorn and plopped onto the couch to watch the show.  I let my body wisely do its thing, and am even freer as a result.  I used to only allow emotional release when I’d noticed my body signaling its necessity (via pain or tension).  Now, I’m into preventative mind-body medicine.  Feel it when it asks to be felt, and surrender to the wisdom of my body.  Perhaps this will take me to a different level of health, since I’m already pain-free and full of energy.  Who knows!  Maybe I’ll start aging backwards or performing astonishing athletic feats.  I did have an audiologist tell me this week that my hearing is abnormally good for my age.  Hmmm….

All joking aside, I do feel a depth of joy that is in itself worth weathering any kind of emotional storm.  That’s how I see it – allowing the weather to be exactly as it is also allows this new depth of joy and absolute love for myself and others.  It’s as if in regularly clearing out the stored emotional energy I’ve made room for a stronger, free-flowing, fluid experience of love and joy.

Feel your emotions and you get to be pain-free and full of joy.  If that’s not motivation enough to allow your emotions, I don’t know what is!