Many of us deal with enquiries about how we are feeling with vagueness: "I'm fine," "I am well, thank you," "A bit tired." All well and good until you enter the inner world of self-exploration. For those of us involved in the inner world being upset, OK, or fine are redundant terms. We need to be emotionally literate.
Like a painter whose vision is not restricted to red, blue, yellow, and green, we must possess more ways of describing our emotions. Angry, sad, scared, and hurt are not enough.
So, here's my quick course for converting a previously illiterate person into an emotionally literate one.
One: Do not experience feelings, or more strictly speaking emotions, through your mind
Most people "think their emotions." This is rather like pouring processed white sugar over a sugar-free desert. Please don't! You cannot think emotions; you can only think thoughts and real emotions are not reduceable to thought. Emotions must be felt.
Two: Feel emotions by connecting with their bodily location
When you experience some feeling or other do not be vague. Start by locating where the emotion is in your body. If you have any difficulty with this allow your hands to respond. Nine times out of ten when I ask an emotionally illiterate person to place their hands on the bodily location of their present feelings their hands know exactly where to go.
Briefly, emotions relating to sadness, anger, and power reside in the belly and the pelvis. Emotions related to self-love and self-worth in the solar plexus. Longing, love, grief are found in the heart or chest center.
Once you have located where your emotions are, bring attention to them via their bodily location. Now you should begin to notice how, rather than being stuck, emotions actually want naturally to flow and how they respond to attention in a balancing, healthy, positive way.
Three: Develop your vocabulary and feeling response to emotions by learning how to describe them. This is what we shall look at in more detail in next week's BLOG.
Thank you for reading this. Now tell me: How are you feeling now?