Photo Madeline Bassinder
When working to release old stored emotion from the body, we can make it our intention simply to get used to how it feels to be present with that emotion - whether it's rage, or sadness, or boredom, or fear, or even joy.
Often, when attending to previously suppressed or denied emotions, we fear that this will lead to a big explosion inside us: a sudden on-rush of feeling that will overwhelm our capacity to cope and stay present. Or maybe we worry that we will find ourselves going into a state of collapse, numbness or dissociation instead.
We can put a lot of pressure on ourselves to get it right - to feel, release and integrate the unfamiliar sensations perfectly first time, and to do all this in one go.
But that's leaping too far ahead. First, we may need to work on habituating ourselves a little to how it feels to have this emotion moving through our body, with all its attendant associations, memories, and sensations of tingling, tightness, heat, cold, heaviness, lightness, prickliness, and so on.
Further down the road we might get a better sense of what we should DO with this emotion; how to better express it, the ways in which we may need to adjust our identity to include more of this feeling, how to contain or release this emotion appropriately...Until then, it is enough to give ourselves a little time to get used to how it is simply to allow ourselves to feel.
© The Art of Embodiment 2021
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