emotion/event is . . .”
Take as much time and paper as needed to write yourself into a new feeling state. As you write, you leave your feelings on the paper.
Notice how this process connects you with your body and feelings. Writing allows you the unique and uncensored expression of whatever wants to be spoken. You are free to have your feelings and express them in a safe way. Giving a voice to your feelings is a necessary personal freedom. For some of us, it may be the first time we feel completely free to express what feels unspeakable.
Clearing Sadness/Grief through Your Heart
Recall the sadness/grief that showed up earlier.11
Close your eyes and move your attention into your heart where one word pops into your mind of how you're feeling about it right now. (Take a minute.)
As you sense this feeling, embrace it as much as you can. (Take a minute.)
Repeat the above two actions at least two more times.
Notice the natural dynamic nature of your feelings: how they constantly change all of their own accord without you doing anything except naming and embracing them as fully as you can.
Freeing Feelings of Envy through Movement
Now that you know the intimate relationship between your feelings and your body, you can express and process emotion physically through movement. Recall the jealous feelings that showed up earlier. Read the following simple process all the way through and then organically enact it with your eyes open or closed:
Find a private space with enough room for you to move. (If you are doing this as a group activity, everyone's eyes are closed and there's spacing between people to allow free movement.)
Stand up and close your eyes.
Sense what you are feeling emotionally as you recall the specific jealous/envious feeling that showed up earlier or another emotion of your choosing. Name it in your mind or aloud.
With background music or not, your body freely expresses this feeling physically however it wants to move. Imagine you are a kinetic art sculpture whose job is to visibly express the emotion present from moment to moment.
Notice when your body wants to move and when it wants to remain still, when it wants to be small and when it wants to be big, when it feels strong and when it feels vulnerable . . .
Notice how you feel in response to the spontaneous body expressions.
Notice how your feelings are changing automatically as your body is changing positions.
Continue to move until your body feels calmer and lighter. Sense how you're feeling now compared to when you started.Body moves and dances—Mind speaks and listensHeart beats and feels—Body-Mind-HeartWe are rhythms of Life
SEE & FREE Your Feelings Have Form
Emotions are invisible, taken for granted, and dismissed much of the time, a paradox given they are some of the most powerful human forces on the planet. They inflame wars, induce death, inspire invention, and control the stock markets. Even more importantly, each of us has them—constantly!
—DEBORAH SANDELLA
When you sense the form of your feelings, you gain power over them. The importance of this learning is highlighted in Jack, Joan, and Robert's real-life outcomes.
JACK'S STORY: MOVING PAST A ROADBLOCK
Jack is an extremely smart and outgoing twenty-four-year-old. He wants to do something important in the world, but his experience in bioengineering graduate school has become a nightmare. During his two years in a doctoral program, he has sacrificed free time and self-care to conduct research. He thought the project would be perfect because it is centered on curing cancer, but he finds himself feeling depressed and alienated because there is no personal connection to helping people. Instead, he is administering mechanical tests in a solitary lab.
He feels isolated, exhausted, and knows this work does not inspire him, yet strangely he can't quite quit. Even his mother, who has a doctorate in engineering, sees this program is not a good fit with his personality and has urged him to leave. His parents are so worried about his visible decline, they offer to finance a transition to something different. Though he knows he would be happier and healthier pursuing a personal passion, it is as if he were stuck in concrete. His parents fear suicide because he seems to be on a downhill slide and unable to take action to save himself. Desperate, they arrange for him to have a phone session, since the results are just as good as in person.
Jack describes his life as miserable with little time for exercise, eating well, or friends. His school commitments permeate every aspect of his day, including sleep when he is assigned middle-of-the-night data inputs. He is so depressed that he further isolates from friends, which leaves his life reduced to work, sleep, and junk food. Still, he is immobilized and unable to speak with his supervising professor, who has a reputation for driving his students harder than anyone else in the school.
Sitting in his car on his cell phone to accommodate his research schedule, Jack begins his session by closing his eyes and gently turning his attention from the external world to an inner experience. His awareness is drawn to his Adam's apple, which appears as an orange pyramid with the point poking out through the front of his neck. As he moves his attention into the center of this pyramid to inhabit it, his imagination instantly materializes a very uncomfortable feeling of standing in choppy water. With prompting, his imagination materializes someone to calm his unease: a favorite high school teacher, Mr. Jamison, appears, and Jack immediately feels better. Finding this “good” feeling in his body, he senses warmth in his stomach.
Embracing the warmth, Jack spontaneously sees flashes of playing hockey with his friends back home. In his mind's eye, he takes off his shoes and runs up a hill laughing freely. The heaviness is gone; instead he feels weightless. His voice is transformed, and I can hear the happiness beneath his words. He rests in this exquisite experience until it feels complete.
As he looks from this current scene back to the image of himself as a graduate student he realizes:
I'm so sad I haven't been true to myself. I don't even recognize myself when I look at this person who is dead because he's given his life away to strive for something that holds no personal passion or meaning.
Sensing this sad feeling expressed in his body, Jack finds a black mass on top of his heart. As he moves his awareness into this energy, he invites an image of someone he needs to speak to—whereupon the image of Professor T, his current demanding supervisor, pops up.
With his high school teacher Mr. Jamison supporting him from just behind his right shoulder, Jack speaks:
Professor T, I never wanted to go negative on you. This research is your life, not mine. I'm not happy. I'm
