Emotional Awareness Practice

The essence of this emotional awareness practice is to become intimately connected and honest with how your pain feels in your body. Connecting the mind to the sensations in the body created by emotional turbulence is a grounding practice that relieves imbalances between the mind and body while also addressing symptoms. Bring your attention to where the feeling is pronounced, as in a knotted belly, shortness of breath, a flushed face, or tension in the neck. Acknowledge these feelings and sensations by breathing your awareness into that space. For example, "I am feeling anxious about work tomorrow because there is so much to do. I feel tension and tightness in my chest. Taking a slow deep breath, I will focus on the tension and relax my chest while exhaling."

Here are questions to ask yourself as a guide to this practice. To begin, focus on a conflict, difficulty, or affliction in your life. As you sense this affliction how does it feel and how does it affect your body? Carefully hold on to this change in sensation and ask yourself:
1. How am I responding emotionally?
2. How have I suffered from my reaction?
3. What does this reaction ask me to let go of?
4. Am I having difficulty becoming deeply aware of my emotional response?
5. Breathe your awareness into your feelings.

Start simple. Find a difficulty that is bothersome but not too serious, like the stress an untidy partner or an irritation with the cold weather outside. Practice some smaller discomforts before moving into more serious pain and suffering. If this exploration begins to work well for small matters and you would like guidance moving ahead with a deeper emotional awareness practice, contact us for help.