In the last post, I wrote about getting mind and body in sync, and why that feels/heals so good. This week, let’s talk about how!

How do you get the mind and body on the same page? Here are four easy steps to use, right now.

1) Return to the body.

To do this, bring your awareness into your feet. Wiggle your toes. Feel your feet. You can also notice your hands, too. Spend a few moments noticing sensation in your feet or hands. What do you notice? Hot, cold, tingly, sweaty, heavy, light…any sensory words that help you notice are perfect.

2) Listen to the body.

The body is trying to tell us, day in and day out, how to care for it. Spend a moment asking it what it wants right now, and then wait. Listen. What do you hear? Is it asking for water? Food? Rest? Movement? What do you feel? Tension? Relaxation? Creativity? What is the energy it wants to explore right now? Play? Meditation? Doing?

3) Acknowledge the mind.

Listen to what your mind is saying. Is it giving you a zillion reasons why you can’t do what the body wants? Does it have its own agenda for right now? Notice it all. Write it down if you want.

4) Let it all co-exist.

Let yourself know that you need whatever your body wants, and you are aware of what your mind wants. Say this: my body needs ___________ AND my mind says ____________. Don’t fight either side of the issue. Just be in the middle – the observer. Notice that both are equally valid. Neither needs to be discounted or judged. Breathe. From this place of being with the body and the mind, a creative solution to what seem to be opposing needs will arise.

Wait. Be. Notice.

Notice. Wait. Be.

Allowing everything to be heard and in your awareness at the same time ends the war. The an-swer may be a compromise. It may be a wiser solution than you could have imagined. It may be a total surprise. Whatever it is, it comes from a place of wholeness, and you will feel that click of alignment. It feels…good.

Really? My body is talking to me? Can you please tell me what the heck it’s saying!

If you are suffering with chronic pain or fatigue and haven’t been able to find lasting relief, you’ve probably considered the possibility that your physical symptoms have a deeper cause.

Maybe you’ve tried to reduce stress, acknowledge old emotions, let go of anger and resentment, or think more positive thoughts.

You may even have an inkling that your body is saying STOP – since that’s all you seem to be able to do – but still, you’re not sure WHY and you can’t figure it out.  So, you continue to alternate between ignoring, tolerating, or medicating your symptoms (if that’ even possible) and frantically trying to find a cure.

Unfortunately, none of those options will EVER heal your body.

The only way to do that is to listen.

When you are out of balance physically, your soul is sending you a message, and until you can understand and implement the guidance you are receiving, you are going to be exhausted or in pain no matter what else you do.

Here’s how your guidance system is meant to work…

Step 1.   Your Emotions give you guidance.

Your soul has an outrageously joyful life experience in store for you and it is constantly giving you guidance, in the form of your emotions, about how to live it.  This is a highly sophisticated, system, but for our purposes right now we can boil it down to these simple principles:

Joy = You are on the right track! Go this way!  More! More!

Anger, Sadness, Fear = You are slightly or way off course.   Tune in for further instructions.

Step 2.  Feel Your Emotions and Receive Their Guidance.

This requires noticing and allowing the energy of the emotion (which may not always feel comfortable) to move through your body, tracking the physical sensations of it, asking it if it has a message for you, and listening for the answer.

Step 3.  Implement Your Guidance.

Sometimes just allowing the emotional energy to move through your body will be enough.  For instance, sadness will help you let go of anything you no longer need, fear will help you focus, and anger will help you strengthen your boundary in a healthy way.

Sometimes an action will be required – a change in direction (big or small), physically letting something go, or putting yourself out there and allowing your voice to be heard.

Acting on the information your mind-body-emotion system gives you, will not only keep you feeling great physically, it will keep you on the path to your best, most fulfilling, and outrageously joyful life.

What goes wrong?

When we don’t notice, or don’t allow our emotions to flow through us, there are physical affects.

Initially, repressing emotions (consciously or unconsciously) leads to subtle physiological changes – like muscle tension, and activation of the fight or flight response – including restricted blood flow and an increased production of stress hormones.  It also leads to lack of passion and enthusiasm, feeling flat, and eventually depression and/or anxiety.

It takes a lot of energy for the body to constantly tense and contract muscles, and chronically be in the fight or flight response.   It breaks the body down.

So, when initial physical signs go unnoticed or ignored long enough they will escalate to chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and/or other recurring health issues.  Often there will be a direct connection between the part of the body that you are habitually tensing to suppress emotion, and your symptoms.  For instance chronically and unconsciously tensing pelvic floor muscles leads to pelvic pain syndromes.  Chronically tensing neck, shoulder and jaw muscles leads to migraines.  Chronically tensing all muscles leads to exhaustion.

What to do about it:

Because of how long this has been going on, it’s usually not quite as simple as just asking and listening – although that is always a useful thing to do.  Just don’t get frustrated if you don’t hear or understand the answers right away.

Understanding what your body is saying requires learning a whole new language – the language of your body and soul – the language of sensation.

To learn this language, you need to turn up the volume on sensation – not turn it down.  This may seem counterintuitive if you are in pain.   But trust me, it is the only way to lasting relief.

Start by cultivating your willingness to notice, appreciate, and allow every little sensation that you have in your body – the ones that feel good and the ones that don’t.

Like learning any language, understanding the language of your body will take practice, patience and experience.

Tips to get you Started:

• Set aside some time every day to practice. 
• Notice your breath.  Breathe into your low belly and imagine bringing your energy and intention into your body.
• Track the sensations you notice in your body – So, for example you may notice that you are holding tension in your feet.  Say to yourself “I notice I am feeling tension in my feet today.”  Then move onto your calves, thighs, pelvis, etc.  Just naming what you notice as you go.
• Don’t try to relax tension or pain away.  Let it be there.  (Although, if it dissipates on its own that’s completely fine!)
• Have a dialog.  Ask the sensations in your body if they have a purpose.  Ask them how they are here to help you.  Ask your body what it needs and how you can get started giving it what it needs.  You may not get an answer right away.  That’s ok.  The answers will come when you are ready to hear and understand them.
• As you practice, over time, you will begin to understand your body’s language.  And, as you do, you will be empowered to follow its guidance.

It may be hard to believe now, but one day in the near future you are going to be filled with appreciation for your pain or fatigue, or whatever health issue is stopping you in your tracks right now.

It is your greatest teacher.

It’s not going to allow you to continue living out of alignment, just getting by, living a safe life.

It’s going to lead you right into your calling, your passion, and your joy.

Open your mind to that possibility.

Stop resisting.  Stop ignoring.  Stop trying to make it go away.

Start with the premise that your body is perfect, and wise, and your best friend in the world, and see what happens. 

You will be amazed by how much love and guidance are available to you right now.

Lorraine Faehndrich is an Endorsed Mind Body Coach and Women’s Health Mentor with over 15 years experience with mind and body healing. She specializes in helping women who are suffering with chronic and recurring vulvo-vaginal pain identify the true cause of their symptoms so that they can heal. Lorraine helps her clients to not only transform their health and get out of pain, but also empowers them to use their pain to connect to their body, live their passion, and claim a truly magical and outrageously joyful life!

To learn more about Lorraine or how to work with her please visit www.RadiantLifeDesign.com

In my previous two posts, I’ve written about the benefits of feeling your emotions, and how to know if you are in touch with them.  If your emotional system is blocked or flowing slowly, here are some practical steps to help build your emotional muscle.  As with weight lifting, start with many repetitions and low intensity.  Gradually you can increase your endurance and ability to lift or handle heavy emotions. 

1)  Ask and observe, “What am I feeling right now?”  I still sometimes have trouble answering this question right away.  If the question is hard to answer, no worries; that is to be expected at times.    At first it may help to choose between 4 categories of emotions: fear, sadness, anger, or joy.  Once you practice tuning in, it becomes easier to know what emotion or emotions you are feeling.  Take into account how you learn new information.  Are you a kinetic learner?  Does it help to move while asking “What am I feeling right now?”  For me it really helps to write things down.  Even if I have a vague sense that I feel a particular emotion but I’m not sure if that is correct, it helps to write down an answer.  This requires me to commit to a decision about what I’m feeling.  Another helpful technique is drawing a face cartoon and illustrating it with your emotion.  Consulting a feeling chart may be helpful if you are a visual learner or if you want to work with kids.  You can download a feeling chart here or buy a poster here.

2)  Connect emotions to your body.  Identify where in your body you feel particular emotions in this moment.  Is the anger in your head, chest, stomach or all of these?  Can you identify a place in your body where you don’t feel this emotion or it feels different?  Again it may be helpful to write down where in your body you feel an emotion and where you don’t.  Draw a cartoon outline of your body and place your emotions in the picture.

3)  Feel emotions as sensations in your body.  Be able to identify internal bodily sensations that accompany emotions.  Eugene Gendlin calls this the felt sense.  Once you know what emotion you are feeling and where you feel it in your body, ask yourself “How do I know I’m feeling this emotion? How does it feel in my body?  What sensations are associated with it?  In addition, notice any colors, textures, sounds or images associated with sensations.  This step is key!  If you can identify emotions as sensations in your body you are 90% there.  All emotions are felt as sensations in your body, but not all sensations are connected to emotions.

4)  Spend time watching and observing any change in emotional sensation.  Follow internal sensations for a minute, then 2 minutes, then as long as feels right.  With uncomfortable emotions it helps to set a timer and only tune in for a minute, then pay attention to another part of the body that feels more comfortable for another minute.  Observing the contrast in your body will help develop your capacity to handle uncomfortable emotions and it will help you practice coming back to your emotions when your attentions wanders. 

5)  Listen to meaning or messages from your emotions.  With practice, once watching your emotions is comfortable, then you can ask your emotions directly.  “Why are you here and how can you help me?  What do you want me to know?  Be open to any messages or meaning that may arise from watching and experiencing emotions.  You can also then begin to ask your body and emotions specific questions.  For example, “Is this job right for me?”  Emotions and sensations will show up to help you answer this question.

Throughout the process of tuning into emotions, clients often go through 3 stages: first healing, then empowerment, and finally creativity emerges.  Be patient with yourself.  Things may not change overnight, but the effort is worth it.

Anu Gupta is an endorsed mind-body coach.  She loves to guide others though healing, and into their power and creativity.  Learn more about her approach at www.triplepointcoaching.com

A smart and hardworking client who is a full-time student and almost full-time employee shared this thought recently. A cause of her angst? She took a nap after getting more done in a morning than I do some weeks. It got me thinking about this particularly sneaky form of perfectionism and self-criticism. It’s a crazy-making Catch 22: I’m not doing enough, so I better do more, which still won’t be enough, so I can either continue doing more in an increasing frenzy or get stuck and avoid thinking, feeling, and acting because it all seems like just too much – at the same time it’s not enough. Just perfect. (Pardon the expression).

When I think I’m not doing enough, I often do less. When I believe I’m not doing enough volunteering/donating/ paperwork/exercising/de-cluttering/flossing/?, I can become immobilized or unmotivated. Or I do the opposite: way too much. I overhelp from an anxious, pleaser place, which doesn’t feel good. It’s also annoying to most and under-appreciated by the rest…of those whom I am trying to do more for.

Why do we do this? In my case, I think it goes back to basic human fears: I am not safe; I am not enough. The irony is that self-judgment and perfectionism create conditions for the perfect (!) storm of the fight/flight/freeze response. This creates feelings of being even less safe and less adequate. Closely related to its cousins, “I should be doing more,” “I should be doing it better,” and “I’m not doing it right,” it’s also a setup for distraction and procrastination. Nothing happens, except we get to beat ourselves up for not doing enough (or anything.) Those of us who experience mind/body pain, anxiety, emotional eating, and other symptoms courtesy of the stress trifecta also get an excuse to view our disconnection through the same self-critical lens, and the “beat” goes on.

How to free one’s self from this loop? Here’s the thought I am playing with: maybe it’s all true. Rationally, I know that sometimes what I’m doing is enough and I just need to hold that thought. It may also be true that sometimes doing more would be better, and I’m not doing as much as I could be doing and it’s still enough. It might be what my body, energy, time, and sanity have to give right now, so it’s actually perfect. And some days, doing more is taking a nap.

Wishing you sweet days and dreams,
Ann

Years ago I received this excellent advice from one of the wisest and most practical people I know. At the time I was attempting some version of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, relying on my mechanical style statement of jamming the stubborn item (drawer, door, key, trunk lid, you name it) into its “proper” place.

His advice, that the most important information was 1)not that it didn’t fit, but 2)why and how it didn’t, and 3) how to make it work with ease, it was a lightbulb moment for me. It led to noticing what what was stuck – and to non-violent household solutions.

For awhile “Don’t Force It” was my DIY mantra. Eventually I realized its truth as a more global philosophy. Force leads to struggle, which leads to a fight/flight/flee stress response, which leads to a host of mind/body pain, from IC, back pain, and fibromyalgia, to weight gain, anxiety and beyond. When I started listening to my body, it all fell into place.“Don’t Force It” replaced my previous all-purpose motto, the old Nike slogan, “Just Do It.”

One of my “do’s” had been to drag myself to the running trail whether it sounded like fun or flogging. I eventually started to notice that when my body’s need was to heal, my muscles and joints weren’t happy, the endorphins didn’t kick in, and the experience was more ordeal than exercise. Coincidentally (or not), I started reading about the concept of over-training, which provided scientific evidence for what I was experiencing. The gods of “should,” OCD, and habit didn’t strike me down for taking a day or week off. My physical being thanked me with energy and lifted spirits. I began to focus on my body’s messages and expanded my awareness to other areas of my life.

Additionally, as I played with listening to my body, I realized that at times she wanted something (physical activity, completion of a task, protein) and had difficulty being heard because of whiny thoughts: “It’s too much work, I don’t feel like it, I deserve six cookies.” That’s when my logic mind and my meta-consciousness (Compassionate Witness, Wise Guide) entered my awareness as helpful detective and observer. They have also become guides to what my being really desires: whether it’s doing, not doing, doing something else, or choosing to do/not do it this time, or file the info for the future.

My To-Do or Not To-Do Steps:

1) Notice the physical sensations and emotions from a situation/decision, especially heavy or light

2) Notice thoughts attached to emotions/sensations, if thoughts arise

3) Ask yourself what message is being sent

4) Act accordingly

5) When values, uncertain boundaries, or practicalities lead to actions that don’t feel body-centered (i.e. attend the meeting, change the litter box, pay the bills) give self a hug for awareness and file as “good to know for the future/what did I learn from this?”

The Quick Version:

I encourage you to experiment with ways of hearing what your body is telling you. I’m still learning and I would love to hear your own listening techniques. There are multiple benefits and no down side to getting your body’s opinion – and letting go of unaware force.

May the Ease be with you!

Ann

Some people call this skill “acceptance.”  However, I’ve decided that word has too much of a charge for many people.  My clients often react to it with dread, because they misinterpret it to mean “resigning one’s self to this fate forevermore.”  Yuck.  That’s not what we’re doing here!  So, I’ve decided to call this skill “allowing.”

First, here’s a quick definition of allowing: letting this moment be exactly as it is.

Why is allowing such a powerful healing skill?  Get ready for a slight mind-bender here.  With a couple minutes of review and attention, I think you’ll see what I’m saying, but you might need to take those couple minutes to really play with this idea.

If, in this moment, you are experiencing something you dislike (such as pain, overweight, etc.), your natural tendency is probably to push against this unwanted thing and want it to go away.  You are likely doing this with all your might, in the back of your mind, all day long.  Take a moment right now to pay attention to this pushing against sensation.  Notice what it feels like mentally.  Notice what it feels like emotionally.  Notice what it feels like physically.  Meet me back here when you’re done noticing.

What did you feel?  My guess is you felt some kind of mental tension, stress, worry, or fix-it mode.  You probably felt some kind of emotional heaviness or stuck-ness consisting of hopelessness, fear, or anger (or a mix).  You might have felt physical tension and a bit of a fight or flight response.  All of these feelings lumped together becomes what we call “resistance.”  This is the feeling you get when you fight something that is currently present in your life.

When you drop the fight and start allowing, you release this resistance.  Your body relaxes.  Your mind is able to function creatively again.  Your emotions are able to flow freely and be released from your body.  In other words, you drop into healing/weight loss/love mode.  Your body is able to heal itself, your metabolism is able to function properly, and you are able to connect to your inner intuitive genius, which helps with every part of your life.

This is why allowing the pain, the extra weight, the body part you don’t like, or whatever it is you’re resisting right now is the most powerful skill you can learn.  Allowing doesn’t mean thinking that this thing you don’t want will be here forever.  It means dropping the fight and allowing it to be here right now.  Ready for the mind-bender?  As soon as you allow, you actually facilitate change.  When you resist, you create a pattern that repeats itself, meaning you’ll end up continuing to experience pain, overweight, etc.

By now, you’re probably wondering how to allow, seeing as it’s such a powerful skill.  Allowing is something that takes a little practice, because it’s not something you can do in three easy steps.  It’s more of a feeling, a visceral sense, and a dropping into a place you didn’t know you knew existed within yourself.  You’ll get it, I promise.  It just may take a few tries.

Here’s how I do it.  I ask myself the question, “Can I allow this right now?”  Then I say to myself, “I’d like to drop the fight.”  Then, I do nothing for a few moments and just wait.  There’s a feeling of release and relief in my mind, emotions, and body when the allowing kicks in, so I simply wait for that.  Sometimes it takes a few days.  Sometimes it only takes a few minutes.

Remember that you have NOTHING to lose.  In this moment, if you are in pain, you are already in pain.  Fighting it is utterly useless.  Why not just allow it?  If you are overweight in this moment, you are overweight.  There’s no changing it this instant.  So why not allow it?  Why not allow yourself to have those thighs, that butt, that job, or whatever else it might be?  Stop fighting and you’ll find the secret to releasing stress. You’ll find that it allows love to sneak back into your life.  You have everything to gain by playing with this powerful healing skill.

For the past five weeks, my family and I had a surprise Guest stay with us.   Guest arrived without warning and with no communication when Guest would depart.  Why had Guest decided to visit at this time and what was Guest trying to teach us?

Our questions were left unanswered until around day 21 of Guest’s visit I went for a run and the answer came to the surface.  Guest would stay as long as necessary and not a moment longer.

What the heck did that mean?

I dug deeper into the question.  I asked Guest, “Why would you stay for so long when we are really not very fond of you?  And to top it off we didn’t invite you.”

To which Guest replied, “Oh, but you DID invite me.  You ALL invited me, welcomed me into your bodies, each one of you.”

Allow me to blow Guest’s cover.

Guest started as a little cough and sore throat for a few days then progressed into a chest-rattling, gunk-producing, smoker-hack-sounding cough and none of us ever smoked.  I don’t recall in my life ever having such a cough.  No fever, no aches, no chills.  This Guest set up residence in each one of our lungs and got comfortable.

After using some mind-body tools, I discovered Guest’s purpose was to clean out years of toxins built up in the lungs.  I recently wrote another post about my son Ian, Ian’s Message About Toxins, where I began to put it all together.  He is my nine-year-old son with autism and one of my greatest teachers.

For the past six weeks, I’ve done a TON of work to clean out the toxic thoughts in my mind; clearing out painful, stressful thoughts using The Work by Byron Katie and Abigail’s mind-body tools.

What I’ve learned through my training as a mind-body coach and working with clients struggling with physical pain is that when you shift your mind, the body follows.  Sometimes that means there is quite a mess and that is just as much a part of the process of healing as any other part.  In my case, a four-week Guest setting up camp in my lungs.

Here are two additional golden nuggets.  Your thoughts create your reality meaning your view of life all begins with thought and according to quantum physics and string theory we are all connected on an energetic level.  Check out physicist Brian Greene’s TedTalk from 2005 on string theory.

So, it made perfect sense to me that as I cleaned out a Mack-truck load of toxic thoughts, my body would follow and rid itself of toxins as well as my family to whom I’m deeply connected.

I put out the welcome mat.

For my final week of “clearing”, rather than curse Guest I welcomed Guest with open arms and accepted the gift that my body invited.  My oldest son welcomed Guest two weeks after me so he continues to rattle and cough but I find it so fascinating that he’s not unhappy about it.  When he has trouble breathing, we do a breathing treatment and then he’s back to being happy.  He lives in the present moment, unencumbered by stressful thoughts about the past or the future.  And as I let go of the painful thoughts and release them from my body something amazing happens.  Not only does MY body heal but HIS body heals.  His healing has actually accelerated over the past year.

I share this story with you to invite you to consider the power of your thoughts and how they are connected to the health and healing of your body and even possibly your loved ones near you.  The power of thought continues to amaze and awe me.

I leave you with this thought.  At the core of every human being is love.  Some of us just have thicker layers of painful, stressful thoughts shrouding the view.  Let love and acceptance blow the view wide open.

Have you ever felt like your body was filled with lead and actually doing the items on your list was harder than pushing a boulder uphill?

Have you ever forced yourself to do them all anyway, and ended up feeling exhausted, doing less-than-awesome work, and feeling downright horrible?

Nah. That’s probably never happened to you.

It has, however, happened to me! At least a few times each month, I experience this phenomenon we call resistance.

I used to beat myself up and feel guilt for even experiencing it, and then push myself through to the finish line with dogged determination. I used to think that if I forced myself to work through resistance, I’d get over it. I used to completely ignore my body whenever it had the lead-filled feeling.

It’s REALLY hard to ignore your body when your hoo-ha is on fire, your bladder is spasming, you have terrible gas all the time, and your knees throb.

Which is, of course, the point.

My body got seriously tired of me ignoring it. And after several years of learning how to listen to it, I now have a different reaction to the lead-filled feeling. I realize it means I need to stop. Now. Check-in. Breathe. Ask my body what it needs. Listen. Obey.

Resistance tells us to stop. If we honor that, we learn something important.

Like: It’s time to rest. I need more singing in my life. My body wants to sleep more this week. I feel like taking up dancing. I never did write that book I meant to write. I need to connect with a friend. This project is big, and I need help. I need to learn to delegate. That idea isn’t right for this project/moment/year. I need a date with my spouse. I need to play in the park with my kids. Time to shift my priorities. Today is not a creative day. Today is not a working day. I need to breathe deeply more often. Etc.

Whatever the message is, it’s something we need to hear. So resistance comes up to make us stop, listen, and learn. Which is why overriding the resistance is not helpful. It’s okay if it doesn’t all get done today. It’s okay if it’s not perfect. It’s just plain okay.

Stop.

About an hour before the call I noticed a stabbing pain in my stomach.  Twenty minutes before the call, my older son’s caregiver told me she wasn’t feeling well and asked to go home.  At the precise time the call was scheduled to begin, my sister rang to ask when she could drop off my younger son.  My thoughts drifted to the tower of projects perched on my desk.  I asked myself, might it be better to reschedule (for the third time?)

The scenario above provides a perfect example of when my mind does it’s very best to distract me from doing my work.  It really “thinks” it’s doing the right thing by throwing in the stomach pain or the phone call from the sister – anything to keep the decoy strategy alive.

The initial purpose for the call was to find the reason for my late night eating when I wasn’t hungry.  I had ten extra pounds of suppressed emotions camping out on my hips and I was ready to find out why.  All the little distractions that led up to the call were my mind’s way of avoiding the examination of some painful thoughts.

So, I climbed into bed, took a deep breath and made the call.  The “Whys” were ready to surface.

I looked myself directly in the mind and answered my coach’s questions honestly, openly and without judgment.  Bottom line, I was in attack and judgment mode and felt crappy.  All the while I rubbed my stomach trying to ease the painful cramping.

Thirty minutes into the call I made a break through.  I took a deep breath and laughed and in that moment noticed the stabbing pain in my stomach was completely gone.  My body knew I was believing a lie and when I let go of the belief that anything had to be different than it was, my body relaxed and said thank you.  When I’m in a state of loving what is, everything around me and in my mind is full of love.

What’s cool is that when I “fall out of love”, I have this reference to return to at any time.  My body is there to gently (and sometimes not-so-gently) get my attention to let me know I’m believing a painful story that’s untrue.

Do you remember a time when you experienced physical pain that seemed to appear with no explanation?  Do you recall what was happening in your life at that moment in time?  What was your emotional state?  Were you stressed, anxious, fearful, or sad?  Can you recall if you wanted something to be different?

When your body starts to hurt in all kinds of interesting ways including pelvic pain, a migraine, back pain, Interstitial Cystitis, or IBS to name a few, it’s doing the very best it can to show you, teach you, let you know there’s a valuable message for you to discover.  Start asking yourself questions to discover the truth.  When you do, you’ll be delighted to find the pain dissipate and crawl back into the recesses of your body and wait to serve as a messenger when you get distracted.  And maybe next time you’ll notice it just a little bit earlier until it only needs to be a whisper instead of loud, chronic pain.

If you’d like help with the questions, I’d love to support you through your discovery.

Cheers to 2011 and to listening to the wisdom of your body.  It never lies.

This week I’d like to share a post with you from my good friend and fellow coach Bridgette Boudreau.  As soon as I read this, I realized I couldn’t say it better, so I’m bringing her words directly to you.  Bridgette and I have been coaching each other recently on allowing emotions, and I think you’ll benefit from her excellent summary of this important life skill.  Enjoy!

I’ve been at war with my emotions. I’ve spent my whole life trying to stuff them down, or my more recent nuance, trying to shift the bad ones away and create the good ones. I didn’t want to feel negative emotions because I believed I’m supposed to feel good–that feeling happy was the end goal–and if I wasn’t happy I should be actively finding my way back to happy. What I ended up believing was that something was wrong with me. And thinking something is wrong with me–which creates alternating feelings of anger, fear and sadness–was not something I wanted to think or feel either. So I distracted myself with overeating, over-Facebooking, overanalyzing, overtv-ing, over-you-name-it. This was not happening in the distant past, I was doing all these things NOW. And sometimes still do.

While I intellectually understand the concept of feeling my feelings, I didn’t understand the true nature of my emotions and how to feel them. I remember asking my coach years ago how to feel my feelings and she said just lean into them. That sounded sage and true, but it took me a year of practicing feeling my feelings before I deeply understood what she meant. This instruction was not specific enough for me to understand how to feel my emotions. I always say the weight loss gurus tell us to “eat less and move more” and that if it were that simple to put those concepts into practice, I would be out of business. The same applies for “Feel your feelings!” Sure! I’ll just feel my feelings after spending my whole life reflexively repressing them. I’ll get right on that. I needed more specifics on how this whole feelings-thing works.

I’ve been looking back over my blog posts for the last year and seeing how most of them are about some flavor of how to feel, live with or shift your feelings. Basically it’s been me trying to figure out my own emotional life. In the background I continued to struggle with allowing my own emotions to flow. I didn’t tune out emotionally anymore only to check back in six months later, but I still beat myself up for not being a happier person. (Which is funny since I’m a pretty happy person–I didn’t say my beliefs were logical!) I didn’t fog out by eating whole plates of nachos anymore, but I would eat just a little bit too much at dinner to try to keep that fear of uncertainty at bay. Things began to shift for me as I became willing to delve deeply into my emotional life. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

It’s not about Fun, Happiness or even Delight
Yeek! Did you think I just took a Debbie Downer pill? Fear not my friends for I am a big fan of fun, hilarity, and happiness in all its forms. I’m just going to stop chasing it. Happiness in its healthy state is a passing emotion. Its role is to show us when a particular thing or event is joyful and then it passes. Happiness is not intended to be a static state. Shifting my emotional quest from fun to delight as I talked about in this blog post was getting warmer, but what I’m really looking for is the state of peace. And this to me is great news. I no longer have to try to create an emotional state I’m not experiencing.

I can feel fearful and peaceful.
I can feel insecure and peaceful.
I can feel resistant and peaceful.
I can feel decidedly unpeaceful and peaceful.
I can feel angry and peaceful.
And, oddly enough, I can feel happy and peaceful.

Because now I know if I’m not feeling HAPPY! or JOYFUL! or GRATEFUL!, there’s nothing wrong with me. When I feel happy or joyful, I can relish that moment, knowing it too shall pass and that I don’t have to freak out and chase it when it does. Each of my emotions (even the “negative” ones) are here to help me. All I have to do is listen.

(Hang in there, I’ll tell you how to listen below.)

It IS about Peace, Groundedness and Flow
I now have a deeper understanding of The River of Your (and My) Emotional Life. I still think of our emotions as a river, and now I know that underlying that river is the foundation of peace and groundedness. Our emotional river is meant to flow, yet we try to dam it up by repressing our emotions and/or expressing our emotions in unhealthy ways. When the river is backed up, it floods over our peace and groundedness, making our foundation hard to perceive. The foundation is still there–it always is, we just have this little flood situation to deal with now. In my previous blog post I said it was things like overeating, overshooting, over-anything that causes the river to dam up. This is true, but we distract ourselves with these things because we are resisting some emotion. The other thing we do is try to constrict the river when we feel strong emotions–we try to squish our anger, fear or sadness into the narrowest stream possible in hopes it will go away. But you’ve seen what happens to large volume of water in a tight channel right? Raging rapids and flooding! The counterintuitive thing to do is to make your channel wider–allow more room for those swift emotional waters to flow.

Emotions are Here to Help
I thought I understood how emotions are here to help, but I was missing the boat. I understood that our “negative” emotions alert us to something that needs to be attended to. But REALLY deep inside I believed they were something to be banished as soon as possible and preferably avoided. After all, they don’t call them negative emotions for nothing. Except they aren’t negative. Again, I probably read that in some self-help book somewhere and said to myself, “Yeah, yeah, nothing’s negative, it’s all for the good. Blah, blah blah.” But I didn’t really get it. Now I look it is this way–strong emotions are there to get my attention, and each emotion has a specific useful purpose that helps me deal. I’ve been reading a book recommended to me by my fabulous friend and fellow coach, Abigail Steidley, called “The Language of Emotions” by Karla McLaren. I’m not sure I buy everything McLaren says, but she sure knows her shit when it comes to emotions. Here’s what she says about the so-called “negative” ones:

“I can also see quite clearly that happiness and joy can become dangerous if they are trumpeted as the only emotions any of us should ever feel. I’ve seen so many people whole lives imploded after they disallowed the protection of anger, the intuition of fear, the rejuvenation of sadness, and the ingenuity of depression in order to feel only joy. In short, throughout my life I’ve found that what we’re taught about emotions is not only wrong, it’s often dead wrong.”

She goes on to explain how anger allows us to determine what is acceptable to us and what is not.
Fear activates your focus and intuition.
Sadness allows us to release that which isn’t serving us.

Pretty frickin’ cool.

When you allow these emotions to free-flow, they deliver important messages into your consciousness and move on.

How to Feel Your Feelings
Here’s where we get down to it.

I was onto it with this blog post, but I’ve got better tools now.

Use the below questions to keep your emotional river flowing–check in with yourself several times a day. (Another shout-out to Abigail for sharing these great questions!) This allows you to build your emotional-acceptance muscles and create that feeling of any-emotion+ peace. I’ve been keeping an emotion journal to help me keep close to my emotional ebbs and flows. I’ve noticed that by doing this I don’t feel the need to overindulge in food or engage in as many distractions.

Question 1: What emotion am I feeling right now?
Build the habit of naming it. I like to try to boil it down to one of these four basic emotions: mad, glad, sad or scared. Don’t get all rule-bound about it, but see if you can capture it in one word. Then write down anything else that occurs to you about this emotion such as:
Where you feel it in your body
Details on what it feels like (hot/cold, spiky/smooth, dull/sharp, etc…)
Ranting about the emotion or the circumstance (It’s ok to rant! Ranting helps the emotions to flow.)
Thoughts related to the emotion

Writing anything beyond the emotion is optional, the main thing is to keep this simple so you keep doing it. If you forget to do it, no problem, don’t make it a thing–that only causes more resistance.

2. Can I accept whatever I’m feeling right now without judgment?
The answer is yes or no, but either answer is correct. The idea is to explore why you can’t accept the emotion and find out what you can accept about it.
If you can’t accept it, can you accept your resistance of it? Great! Start there.
Can you accept that you’re pissed that you’re angry? Awesome.
Can you accept that you’re sad that you’re afraid? Excellent.
Can you accept that you can’t accept any of it? Aha! That’s perfect too.

Here’s another little tool to use here. I want you to try it on yourself real quick:
– Think back to the last time you felt anger, anxiety or fear.
– Notice if there’s any tightening in your body. Usually there is because we’re taught to try to suppress the emotion, hence the tightening.
– Imagine a container around the emotion.
– Now make that container bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.
Did the sensation of the emotion change?
Most people report still feeling the emotion, but that it is more manageable. This is the sensation of allowing the emotion to flow. It’s still there, but now you can again sense the peace and groundedness underneath.

Neat, huh?

3. Ask the emotion what message it has for you.
Seriously. Say, “<Emotion name here> what message do you have for me?”
Then listen.
The message will be in the small quiet voice that speaks to you right before your mind tells you what you should think about this emotion and a few other things while it has your attention.
Tune out the mind and put down whatever pops into your head from the small voice no matter how trivial, weird, ridiculous it seems.

That’s it.

There’s nothing to resolve, nothing to “work” on. This is simply you feeling your feelings, creating peace and accepting your full human nature.

I can tell you that I feel much more peaceful now that I’ve let myself off the hook for being happy all the time.