How to deal with emotions - Mindfulness Journey

Mindfulness meditation and emotions

I often wonder how life will be if I could better manage my emotions. Is the path to a happier life to get rid of your emotional side, or solution is something much deeper? Buddhist philosophy offers one possible explanation, and also suggestion how to live a balanced life, how to deal with emotions that are not going to make you unhappy.

In the practice of Buddhist meditation, when it comes to emotions, we choose the middle path. Neither we suppress them, nor encourage them and manifest them. We do not ask to deny them, nor do we act according to their dictation. We allow them to go their way through our bodies, mind, and heart.

Focusing on emotions

There are three basic components of each emotion:

• Thoughts (a story, a trigger for emotion)

• Physical sensations, the way in which the emotions manifest in the body. Every emotion has its own physical counterpart.

• Emotional state. It can be subtle or completely obvious. Something similar to when we put color goggles, which then our experience is frightening. Fear has one color, joy has another.

When we are aware, we can notice each of these components. The thought or story often inhabits us, and we lose focus. It is, therefore, often useful to try to distance yourself from the thought related to emotions. That will help you learn how to deal with emotions.

Awareness of your emotions

One of the best ways to stay aware when there is a strong emotion is that we notice how it affects the body. Notice how it connect with the physical sensations associated with emotion, and we turn our attention away from the emotions. Otherwise, emotions, especially strong emotions, are a very seductive and powerful magnet for our attention. Sometimes it seems like they are commanding us: “Pay attention to me!”

We are used to sensing our emotions in the way that they occupy us completely. If we learn how to deal with emotions, to pay attention to emotion in a different way, we can treat it with due respect, but not to be trapped or blinded by emotion.

For example, if we are angry with someone, we usually focus on the person, and in our head, we rewind the film countless times on what this person did to us.

In our mind, instead of having attention to a person or situation, we should carefully look at this experience of anger. Instead of focusing on the outside, we focus inward.

Experiencing emotions

Emotions want to be experienced, but if we stay with the object of emotions or their story, it gives them all new strength. At the same time, this prevents us from feeling complete. But if we turn to the emotions itself, to the physical sensations it causes, and to the effect that comes to mind, then the emotion has the chance to live its life more naturally. And it will naturally, sooner or later, reach its end. As is the case with all other phenomena. Its energy is not infinite.

Everything emerges, stays for a while and then disappears forever. Emotions are no exception. We must learn how to deal with emotions.

Conscious emotions let them manifest themselves in their natural and healthy way. But that does not mean that we become her “soldier,” to do what he tells us.

Tools for dealing with emotions

We can use four tools to help us deal with emotions: recognition, awareness, exploration, and non-identification.

Recognition

It can often be quite clear to us what we are experiencing, and it is easy to name it: rage, happiness, loneliness, or fear. When we are aware and recognized and called an emotion, we are unbinding the knot in which it tied us. Sometimes it takes time to discover which emotion is it, we are not clear, but we know that we experience something!

Sometimes we also have the feeling that this is a mixture of emotions, where none of them are dominant. In that case, it is enough if we only register: “emotion” or “confusion” or one of the more comprehensive categories – chaos.

Permission

In the context of meditation of consciousness, every emotion is acceptable. You can give yourself unconditional permission to have any emotion. There is no need to censor or criticize them. Practice meditation is completely safe to place to let yourself feel what you are experiencing. Since you decided to sit still during meditation, you gave up the idea of doing what your emotions instruct you to do. Such a simple stay with it.

Sometimes we want to get rid of unpleasant feelings as soon as possible. But if you try several times, you will discover that emotion and an unpleasant feeling will completely fade and disappear. This experience is one of the most inspirational in the entire practice of meditation. It also gives us a powerful feeling that we, and not moods and emotional states, manage our lives.

Exploration

Through awareness, we can also learn to explore the experience of emotion at the present moment. How do you know that you are experiencing a certain emotion now? What does it say to you?

Do you feel anger, joy, depression, or maybe, surprise? In search of such signals, it is best to turn to your body, as emotions usually have their physical manifestations. There are many feelings about emotions. Anger can result in stiffness and heat; Fear can result in a stomach ache. Joy can produce light flicker throughout the body. These physical feelings associated with emotion are not a story that takes place in our mind, but a physical experience of the present moment. The best way to get away from the story, which usually refers to the past or the future, is to focus on physical sensations and thus bring us back to the present.

Non-identification

Usually, we tend to identify ourselves with our emotions. We think they are those who we are; in fact: I am a person who easily flies. I am a depressed person. I am a happy person, I am a fearful person. All these conditions and moods, we consider essential parts of our being. When emotions take hold, there is always some identification with it, a feeling “I,” “me” or “mine,” identification with a story related to that emotion.

All of the aforementioned tools help us by bringing our mind and body into one point, which is the present moment, by stabilizing our attention to “now”. That is how to deal with emotions.

How to deal with emotions — Wat Arun Temple, Bangkok

Working with positive emotions

Most disturbing emotions are painful emotions. When meditating, we hope to get to the feelings of peace, tranquility, happiness, balance, bliss, and joy. It’s good to work with those emotions. It is important here to pay attention to the tendency to identify with them. When happiness arises, our reaction may be an attempt to keep it. Maybe We think: “This should always be the case. Now I finally understand how to practice this practice. I will never be unhappy again… “

It’s easy to become fascinated by pleasant emotions, staying blind to the fact that we are increasingly immersed in emotion. This type of reaction can be the cause of later disappointments when emotion fades as it is the case with everything. In time, we will discover that those emotions are even more fulfilling when we do not identify with them. They become even more satisfying when we are not attached and afraid to lose them eventually. We must be aware that all emotions, bad and good things, will pass. This is truly a liberating feeling.

The practice of emotions awareness

In your everyday meditation, as described in my book Mindfulness: Yoga And Meditation, when it comes to paying attention to emotions through our practice, we should say that we are not looking for certain emotions during this practice. Instead, the basic instruction is to keep your focus on the breath. We give priority to the physical sensations caused to them. But if some emotion comes up and starts to require your attention, leave your breath aside and focus on the body sensations caused by that emotion.

When these sensations are no longer dominant, gently return to your breath. If the emotion is so strong that it makes it impossible for you to be with your breath or body, direct your attention to that emotion itself. See if you can identify and name it. Let her go. After some time, emotion will fade, so you can return to your breath.

Exercises to help you learn how to deal with emotions

1. Be persistent with your daily meditation. If you like, extend it for 5 minutes every week.

2. At least once during a week, “overcome one emotion.” When you feel strong craving, repulsion, fear, or some other emotion, do not do what it tells you to do. Instead, focus attention on this emotion and observe what changes happening in your mind as you look at it. As you do this, you can choose to sit, stand, or gently walk around. Try to observe various physical sensations and tense parts of the body, changes in intensity, different attitudes, and beliefs that you have about this emotion. When the emotions leave your mind, notice what the feeling is now, when it’s gone. How much has the character of thought changed now for you?

3. The third exercise is related to positive and empowering emotions, such as gratitude, happiness, joy, benevolence, and peace. The task is to see and develop gratitude in yourself. This emotion does not mean that you lose yourself in the thoughts associated with them! Just refresh them in your heart and body as long as they last.

When they begin to weaken, do not ask them to prolong their life, be grateful that they have strengthened you. This stand is not an exercise in the artificial creation of such emotions. You notice them more carefully now. You will be able to acknowledge much more emotions, but not to be attached to them. You will feel happier.