How to embrace our emotions
In our last few articles, we talked a lot about accepting emotions and how important it is for a peaceful life, many people started to ask me how exactly to do this. They say, all this theory sounds fine but I get so angry or sad or jealous every day how do I deal with it? So let's see what you can do with any emotional situations you face in life.
The other day one of my client walked in, she is a lady who generally wears a smile all the time, but that day she was different, like a fuming volcano. Without even pleasantries, she started telling how annoyed she is with her friend for the last couple of days. Somehow, she was unable to move out of the situation where she got annoyed with her friend. I wanted my client to handle the situation immediately rather than asking her what exactly happened in the background. I asked her to close her eyes and allow the entire anger, which she is holding against her friend, to rise through her. When she allowed the anger to come up, I asked her to observe her anger (be mindful of anger) rather becoming anger. She couldn’t understand the difference between becoming anger and observing the anger. This is very normal with anyone who is taking this exercise for the first time. Let me explain with a simple example, we inhale and exhale breath but we never give attention to the quality of the breath that is inhaled and exhaled, we don’t observe if the air is soft or hard or hot or cold, we don’t observe if the inhalation is going till throat or lungs or abdomen, we just inhale and exhale. When you bring focus on to the bridge of your nose and start observing the inhalation and exhalation, we get many insights about breath. Do you want to give a try? Just do it for a minute and see. When you observe your breath, you are mindful of breath, your entire attention is on it. Similarly, when we are angry about something or someone, anger takes over us. We tend to become anger rather observing the anger.
Coming back to my client, my client started observing anger rising through her. I asked her how it feels like when the anger is rising through her. I asked her to observe how exactly the anger feels, how deep it is. Does she feel like it is frustrating or irritating or furious or something else? She observed for a moment and said she felt very furious with her friend and entire situation. We don't have to worry about what is coming up, we just observe and allow it to pass through.
Then I asked my client how this feels in her body, how the body is responding to the anger? She started experiencing heaviness in chest, chocking in throat and a throbbing pain in head. I asked her to be with these sensations and try not to change any of the sensations. I asked her to be with the emotion and each of the physical sensation. The trick is just BE with the sensation, not to hold on to the emotion and physical sensation. Observe. Don’t become. Some people feel a tightness in chest, or jaw or shoulders, or heaviness in tummy, the sensation of anger in body is different for each person.
It’s like what we see in the movies, in the mirror scene, one part of the actor standing in front of the mirror and the other part of the actor appears in the mirror and the discussion goes on. Exactly in the same manner, one part of you will be observing your emotions and physical sensations and the other part just to Be with the emotions and sensations.
The final step is to just embrace the emotion with all the compassion and love towards self. The moment we embrace the emotion, the emotion will start dissipating and the physical sensation will be gone within seconds to minutes. Within a couple of minutes, everything will be subsided. You just feel a relief in that body part and the anger gone.
My client's immediate question is how can she embrace anger? Anger is bad. Everyone told her not to express anger because anger is bad, even if you get anger, suppress it or manage it. How can she embrace anger? Anger takes away relatives, friends from her world. She was not ready to embrace it.
You remember those days when we were kids, very small kids. We play in the garden with dirt all over the body, dress in a mess and a running nose, rubbing it with one hand and some part with tongue. Wonderful times, aren’t they? We come running to mom and mom without a bit of hesitation or thinking, she embraces the kid, she doesn’t feel bad to hug the kid with all the dirt on or a running nose. That’s the love of a mother for her kid. She loves the kid without any judgment even if she is in a social place. For mother, the kid is part of her, no different from her. What a loving feeling? So very divine, it lights up both mother and child with love.
Why can’t we become like that mother for our own feelings, after all they are just part of us. Why can’t we be compassionate and loving to our own feelings? Why don’t we embrace them without a judgment?
As we were growing, we learnt so much. So much of right and wrong, good and bad, positive and negative, so many conclusions, decisions, judgments. We learnt to set goals, expectations, and comparisons. With each passing day in our life, we come across so many people, situations / events. Each situation or event or person trigger so many thoughts, feelings, emotions within us. This is life and that is absolutely perfect with all of the above. When all the feelings and emotions are perfect, why is this discussion? When many thoughts, feelings and emotions arise within us, we embrace all those which are triggering happiness within us, when same situations trigger anything other than happiness it’s our tendency not to embrace them. Any situation that triggers anything other than happiness, gives us pain, so we don’t entertain nor embrace it. We suppress it. We make those feelings, emotions to be wrong. We don’t want to experience pain one more time. It’s an unpleasant feeling to experience pain. But painful emotions won't go away when you ignore them.
Have you observed or gone through this experience, especially during summer holidays, the kids are at home and create havoc. Mother pulls the naughtiest kid and puts him out of house for being naughty. The kid would cry, beg, plead, make noise, runs from door to window to kitchen window and will try all possible ways to grab mother’s attention. Within few minutes, mother opens the door and allows the kid into the house. The kid without any noise will go and sleep off.
How different are emotions from the kid? Are they not asking for our attention because we shut the door on them for creating havoc in our lives?The moment you embrace them, they will come in and sleep off like the child.
Once my client realized this, she accepted anger as a part of her and embraced the emotion with all the gentleness, compassion and love towards herself. It just took a couple of minutes for the anger to subside and the physical sensations to dissipate. She returned back to peace within no time. I asked her to remember the event where she got annoyed with her friend, she tried remembering it but the anger is no more present there. She is at peace. In fact the memory of the event is feeble.
Good news is you too can do it. You don't need to walk into my office, or need anyone's help to embrace your emotions. Next time you get angry, just try to embrace your anger this way and see how well it works for you! All emotions are part of us, they are not outside of us. Emotions are like built in apps of a smart phone, we can’t delete them. They seek attention from us, the moment we give them our loving attention, they calm down and we get back to our peace. If we don’t give attention for our own emotions, who else would do it!! The moment we start embracing all the emotions without judgment, life flows through us like a flowing river which is serene, peaceful and beautiful. When we hold on to past pain and painful emotions, they become like a stinking lake. It is our choice if we would choose a beautiful river or a stinking lake.
-Ramakrishna Maguluri
Engaging with life
ELAI
engagingwithlife@yahoo.com