MEDITATION & MINDFULNESS


Working with challenging emotions, on and off the cushion.


Are you a long-time meditator who still struggles with runaway emotions? Have you never


meditated and are curious how to work better with powerful feelings? Here are some powerful and healthy ways to feel and process emotions effectively.


by Christopher Luard T


o feel emotions is to be human. Emotions need to be felt. In fact, in most cases, if we choose not


to feel a certain emotion now, we can be sure that same emotion will be waiting for us later. Typically, if we choose to repress


emotions, either it makes us physically ill, or when other experiences trigger a similar emotion, it resonates with the repressed emotion. (Usually both of these are happening simultaneously, more or less.) This resonance makes it impossible to respond to the present stimulus appropriately, and we either fall into a reactive pattern or, at best, overreact with emotions.


70 MARCH | APRIL 2018


TWO PATHS TO EMOTIONAL AWARENESS How do we pursue the preferred course of action? How do we choose to feel this emotion in presence? There are two ways: The first is to bring the emotion to the cushion and work on it during a formal meditation session. The second is to bring presence to the body’s sensations during an actual interaction in which a strong emotion is triggered.


ON THE CUSHION In a formal meditation session, it is done in the following way: Do the meditation practice, starting from the beginning. Feel the breath


from the nose to the abdomen. Allow your thoughts to settle. Then go through the practice of scanning the body. Feel the body from the top of the head to the bottoms of the feet, allowing the body to rest. Rest right there in the experience of the breath and the body. The body scanning is very important here, as an emotion is nothing more than the body responding to a thought. We often forget this as the body’s response to our thoughts occurs so fast. We feel as though the thoughts and emotions arise together. As our capacity for feeling the body grows, we learn to separate our thoughts from the body’s response to our thoughts.


TAMSYN ROSENBERG, FOUNDER OF GET REAL INTERNATIONAL, MEDITATING


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