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LightSeed.com > Self-Empowerment Center > Articles > Processing Emotions Effectively

Processing Emotions Effectively

by Bobbi Gay

Emotional energy is just that, it is a wave or waves of sensation accompanied by some movement of energy. As I said earlier it is common for negative emotional energy to get trapped due to self suggestion, ex. "This isn't happening!" Other factors that come into play are squeezing the muscles and containing the breath. This slows down emotional energy causing it to go out of awareness. But, it doesn't go away. It lies there in a congested form. I suspect from my own observations and those of energy worker's I highly respect, that it gets encapsulated.

When the body is given a toxin or other substance that it can't process and release, it forms a capsule around it as a self protective measure. During a fast or other cleansing the body's own intelligence kicks in and the whole thing may be expelled. Well as we all know nature repeats good strategies. I sense the structure around the stuck energy has a membrane, once that membrane is penetrated, [through vibration] things start to speed up. That is largely because you as a self healer hold the intention to release what no longer serves you. Rather than repressing, you are using your ever powerful INTENTION to reverse the process.

When a person is working consciously with this kind or process, their job is to allow. After asking for the guidance and help of your Higher Self and/or angelic assistance, get out of the way and let the feeling come up. Invariably as you focus inside you will notice sensation and movement. That is the compressed energy seeking to express and release. It may take a few weeks of focused attention inward before you begin to notice sensations. That is because sensation has been blocked for so many years. Gently ask your body to show you it's wisdom.

If you can't get the energy moving through allowance then it becomes time to deepen the breath. This means to hold an intention of releasing the emotion while taking a slow breath in and a slow breath out. Deepen the sensation of breathing to include the solar plexus, and eventually the belly all the way down to the pubic bone. At this point the energy might well cause constriction and a definite sense of tightening. That is a good sign that your body knows how to release. Breathe a little more aggressively into the tightened area. You can image that each breath irradiates the congested material with light. It often helps when working deeply to lie down and have a spiritual buddy.

Once the energetic pattern is constellated you can release or shatter it by many methods all of which I have used on myself and clients at one time or another. Human INTENTION is at the center of this mystery.

The following techniques can be used to release energetic congestion:

• Focus on the tight, painful or heavy area and imagine that with each breath you bring light to the area, with each outbreath you release old junk. If this works you might feel an emotion come up, or you just might release energy. That often feels like the tightened spot contracts and then suddenly or gradually releases. This might be accompanied by butterflies or other vibratory sensations. Afterwards there is often a felt sense of relief and lightness.
  
  
• Focus on the area with the INTENTION of releasing and begin to make a sound. This is usually a lower sound for areas below the heart and a higher sound from the chest up. But, trust your inner being to guide and inform your choices. It helps to put the fingertips of one hand together and press intuitively on the constriction. This helps in several ways. Allow the sound to extend and build. If at first it is hoarse or choked, please hang in there. A few minutes makes all the difference. Hold the course while intending to release. I say internally to myself, something like, " I'm releasing old feelings." Then I ask to express the compressed material.
  
  
• Focus on the symptomatic area and imagine your can navigate internally to find it. Upon locating it with your inner sight, notice whatever you can about it. Shape, color, dimensions etc. Sometimes it may look like a frightening creature, that is because it has been alone and stagnant. Then ask the shape to tell you why it's there and how it's trying to protect or help you. Thank it for it's positive INTENTIONS and ask it to transform into a higher form. As the internal sense or image changes you process out the energy. This is my variation on the fine work of Vernon ? author of Holodynamics.
  
  
• Lie down breathe strongly into the area and make guttural noises that carry the energy of whatever is repressed.
  
  
• Send the energy into a 10 gauge balloon and then pop it with your own arms linked around it and the balloon on your chest. Breathe out and release as the balloon explodes. This is especially good for hot emotions like anger.
  
  
• Listen to activating music and breathe a little more deeply than usual. Drumming affects the lower body. Violins, pianos and harps affect the heart, use your instincts. When the music is working right the emotion unfolds like a flower as you INTEND and deepen the breath.
  
  
• Ask your body what color it needs to deal with the release of the particular emotion, Then image that color entering through the feet and traveling to the spot, past it and out the mouth. Blow it out gently as if extinguishing a candle. Do this for five or six minutes. This is followed by bringing in white light through the feet and out the crown of the head for one minute. This is followed by an affirmation. This process was developed by a woman named Patti Conklin, she is a nurse I believe ???
  
  
• Lying down and imagining that the wound or bound up energy has a skin. Gently penetrate that skin and imagine pushing the energy out beyond the body's form using intention and breath. This is a brief version of a technique developed by two people ????
  
  
• Imagine you can shrink down and travel through the body until you locate the pain or sensation. Ask the pain what it needs you to know? Listen as if your whole being was an ear. If you sense something allow your guidance to show you what to do with the information.

Once one has released the emotion of an event or whatever, it becomes time to understand what it meant. Quite often after releasing the person feels expanded and soul infused. In this consciousness they may see a broader or deeper learning that at the time seems to justify the pain. This is a general trend, not a rule. If you don't feel that way it's okay. What is more important is that you feel congruent within yourself, that yes this thing happened, and this is what it currently means to me. Allow yourself to know what you actually think about the meaning.

If you would like to deepen the learning further you can ask yourself what it is you might have come to believe as a result of this incident. As I mentioned earlier high adrenaline levels encode information about the event. What you were believing at the time goes right into the tissues. After a release it is a good time to ask inner being to show you if any false beliefs were formed. See yourself releasing the old belief like a dove from your hands. Call your power back from that belief and see it settle up and down your spine. Many people feel this quite clearly. Finally restate the new belief and broadcast it internally to all the tissues, and bones.

It is not necessary to do this part for a release of emotional energy to occur, and often when the pent up energy is released things just naturally improve without having to do a process like this. The reason why I mention it is because in the case of very deeply held trauma, because of the adrenaline and other stress hormones the thoughts that were in the mind at the time of the trauma get encoded as beliefs. This can result in the encoding of many limiting beliefs. An example might be a female incest victim may well encode negative generalizations about all men, touch, personal boundaries, and denial.

I think if these beliefs aren't changed out either naturally and automatically, in the healing process, or deliberately in a process such as previously described, they will repeat in one of two ways. Either they will broadcast from a deep yet unresolved place, this requires more work. Or they will be re instituted through self talk. I address this in detail in the chapter entitled, Poor Mental Hygiene.

In the case of still held stuff, if the less expressive vibrational methods don't work I go to catharsis. The fully expressed release of old emotion. In some cases this may require an abreaction or reliving of old trauma. If that is what comes up when the person allows the feelings to arise, I then assume that it still contains lessons that can only be fully released when a lesson is integrated. This is how the inner being guides things. If something keeps emerging whether it's a symptom, a thought, or and issue, it's because something needs to be integrated. When that happens, it will release.

I'll give an example here as an illustration. Suppose we have someone who can't take care of themselves in this world by setting appropriate boundaries. When confronted with power she just collapses or backs down. She may clear out an instance in grade school of being abused by a bully. After the session she may notice improvement with boundaries, yet the problem still exists. The clue for me would be that during the bully incident, in her remembering of it, she never even attempted to defend herself. That suggests to me that a strongly held belief such as, "I can't fight back." exists. It is purely instinctual to fight back.

In a case like this I might suggest asking her Higher Self to take her back to the originating point of the belief. She might then find herself being sat on and choked by a malicious older sibling, as a two year old. If she breathes deeply and allows the memory to come up she may get in touch with words or a feeling tone that was repeating at the time of the incident. In this case it may be a generalized feeling of overall helplessness. The two year old might not be repeating words to herself while being choked. Yet a three year old might easily encode something like, " I can't fight back. It's no use."

In the case of the two year old it may require expressing a sound such as a scream, or a word, such as NO !!!!!! While the energy from the bully incident was released, the energy of the choking is still pent up. As it finds expression a great deal of the lousy feeling tone will tend to resolve. It might not all clear in one session, but there will be notable improvement, you will know you're on the right track. In the case of an older child or adult, there might be insight into how this incident was formative for many subsequent problems. This is part of what I mean by integration. To know what happened. How it felt, and what it means. There might be insight into what the core beliefs were that formed around this incident. The reliving also tends to strongly empower the individual. Our illustration person has confronted a deep fear and that is both exhilarating and personally empowering.

At this point I might hand her a copy of the book, No is a Complete Sentence. I would suggest that she heighten her awareness around the issue of boundaries. I would ask her to self observe and if she's willing, to pattern bust. In this case that would mean taking the risk and setting some boundaries. If it turns out well, I ask her to focus on it. If it doesn't, I ask her to honor herself for interrupting the pattern. This is the way the bigger shifts are made.

I use many gentle, vibrational approaches in my work. Yet there are times when nothing short of full expression seems to do it. I believe that sometimes the person's energy field has to recapitulate the amplitude of the original event in order to release something. Yet, I see this all as so benevolent, because the person who has to feel it fully, is probably the very one who needs to heal her relationship to her own emotions.

We can't be fully human without being fully feeling. I remember feeling somehow strangely removed from my own life. I remember wondering why things failed to effect me emotionally. I had suppressed too much and with it went my joy and connection to my life experience In a very real way our emotional challenges can be thought of as intiatory. They cause us to reach in deeper and pull out more of who we are.

I also can't help but notice, that when people really allow emotion and feelings they evoke such love from my heart. We are most lovable when we are most real, and emotions make you real. The quality of essence can be felt when someone is feeling fully. In the training I've had I've watched how it affects people. It is very bonding to share strong emotion, and it evokes tenderness in others. People often thank another for modeling that it's okay to feel.

There is a difference between expressing anger in a contained and loving process, and blasting those around you. It's the projection of the feelings onto others, that give emotional expression a bad name. It is the dumping of childhood rage upon someone who merely activated old repressed and unfinished stuff that causes so much quaking. When someone works inwardly with their anger, I feel admiration. How brave to face something and not perpetuate the cycle of pain by out picturing it.

At this point I'd like to mention some of the many forms release of emotional energy might take:

• Tears and even racking sobs.
• Powerful utterances of words suppressed during an experience.
• Shaking, and or sensations or energy or coldness going out the feet.
• Movements of every variety.
• Vibrations in various body parts or full body.
• Screaming, especially in cases of horror or terror.
• Thrashing and kicking, this is best done on a bed or padding.
• Striking movements, only on a padded surface.
• Noises of every variety.
• In cases of very deep releases while lying, the body may surge upward in various ways. Undulations and such literally ripple through.

All of the above represent the movement of energy that is attempting to free itself from compression. It literally has force and momentum behind it. For anyone who sees this type of thing, it is obvious that emotional energy is real. It is also obvious that releasing pent up emotion is often a pleasurable life experience when all is said and done. Even at the height of my pain, I was simultaneously aware of a part of me that seemed to be quietly affirming, " This is good. " People remark about that often.

I think it's important to stress a few things here. Extreme forms of catharsis, are not advisable in certain instances:

• In instances of manic depression or even someone without a diagnosis who has manic moments. Get the advice of an expert, use a worthy guide. I will provide some resources in a later chapter, Things That Really Work. The transformational energies so closely associated with deep releasing may flood a person who has manic tendencies.
  
  
• In cases of glaucoma, strong emotional releasing may be inadvisable. The strong emotion may cause pressure changes in the eye.
  
  
• People with a history of a diagnosis for a severe mental illness tread lightly. If you go to Stan Grof you could probably work effectively, but this calls for great discernment on the part of the facilitator. I mention facilitator because in these cases a guide is a must. Many great facilitators work successfully with people who have been labeled, so weigh things out. I believe it is the pent up energy that causes different patterns to manifest and these patterns are labeled and often medicated for. My recommendations for people with a diagnosis is to start with very benign vibrational tools such as flower essences, or Thoughtfield Therapy or La Chance Emotional Release Method.
  
  
• People with a history of severe heart disease or uncontrolled high blood pressure, may find extreme releases too taxing. Use a vibrational method from the Things That Really Work chapter, or especially those noted above.

We need to remind ourselves frequently, how emotionally repressive our whole culture is. We would rather go to a movie and watch actors have emotions, that way if we feel too much we can claim it was the movie. You can tell a lot about your personal themes by looking at what movie events " hit " you with regularity. Of course abandonment is always preeminent. Everybody remembers Bambi's mother.

As you become emotionally expressive you will feel good and want your new state to be embraced by others. We are just evolving into these understandings now, some of us have to go first. But don't expect a welcoming party. People will frown, shun, attack, actively suppress, interrupt, cajole, threaten and a whole lot more. That is because when your emotion moves, my emotion gets vibrationally entrained and starts to move. This causes alarm from either a subconscious level, or from a more aware one. Either way the person who incites it gets blamed on the emotional level. I say emotional level, because on an intellectual level you may be all right, yet you still feel irritated at Other. Kids stir up everybody's unresolved emotions, and they pay a heavy price for it, some pay with their lives. The fact that we are interconnected in this way is threatening to many who need to feel separate. Even though it isn't something we appreciate, it does demonstrate our inherent interconnectedness.

Empathy is our awareness of the connections. When I work with people, I let myself attune to what they are feeling, then I pull back with information about what they need. People with a poorly developed sense of self have trouble attuning to others. Their own inner states, particularly painful ones demand attention or suppression. This accounts for the extraordinary insensitivity some people demonstrate. We need to be able to feel the connections without fear of losing self. That is how to bring peace to our precious Earth mother We do that by identifying with big Self.

Empathy is a highly desirable evolved trait. Yet, too much empathy is not a good thing. Some people put others before self and that never works. It works best to allow yourself to attune, then breath a few centering breaths and focus on pulling your energy back, settling it up and down the spine. Then you can drop your mind down into your heart area and begin communication. This means you actually accept that your heart has a higher way of processing, and you willingly align your mind with that.

Deep work such as heavy abandonment, sexual abuse or infancy stuff shouldn't be done alone unless you are very self aware and experienced with the wide range of phenomena that emerges. I alluded to this before, but releasing stuck emotional energy sometimes means allowing the past experience to replay. This tends to be in bits and pieces rather than a logical sequence. What is so striking is that these memories are characterized by full sensory detail. This reminds me of a story from my breathwork training that illustrates the point. A friend of mine had been working with a sexual abuse survivor. At the lunch break she sought him out and verbally upbraided him for wearing the very same cologne as her abuser had. My friend wore no cologne at all, during the internal experience, her senses were recapitulating the constellation of elements present during the original event. As she cellularly relived the experience she had an olfactory memory of the cologne. Interestingly enough, my friend recognized that it was empowering for her to express anger and a boundary at that particular moment, and he willingly accepted the projection.

 

Resources:

1. Working effectively with emotions was the single most freeing part of my own journey. For this reason I have studied emotions for thirteen years now. I've put a lot of love into the tape set called Understanding Your Emotions This is meant to be a user's Guide for the Emotions.
   
   
2. Asking yourself, "What must I be believing in order to feel this way?" is enormously helpful. Sometimes the realization that you are carrying an outdated belief is all that is needed to create positive change. For help in shifting belief patterns please see the article entitled, Process for Shifting Limiting Beliefs.
   
   
3. Begin to notice the sensations within your body that characterize emotions. Name the feeling. This is a simple intervention that bridges back to emotional health.
   
   
4. The book entitled Emotional Clearing : Releasing Negative Feelings and Awakening Unconditional Happiness by John Ruskan is a helpful introduction to working effectively with emotion.
   
   
5. The book entitled Conscious Breathing : Breathwork for Health, Stress Release, and Personal Mastery by Gay Hendricks gives profoundly helpful advice and guidance for using the breath to release as well as rebalance. Many will find it easier and get more value from the audio tape.
   
   
6. Our Acorn Solution called Emergency Blend will support any deep releasing process. It removes shock from the energy field, and body. Then Emergency Blend helps you to rebalance.
   
   
7. Working with shame is some of the most difficult work I know of. For working with shame I would recommend Shame Less Blend. I feel it's important to know that shame is one of the emotions that really tends to heighten before release. For this reason good support is sometimes needed. Shame is not only very painful, but it causes blind spots that interfere with self acceptance, insights and integration. If you work with shame and feel the need for a little help please consider using the phone services on this site. I have a lot of experience in helping people ease through this most difficult process. For a better understanding of how systemmically shame diminishes life we suggest reading Healing the Shame That Binds You by John Bradshaw.
   
   
8. Grief tends to cause a loss of vitality and connection to life. Our Acorn Solution called Grief Relief Blend will begin to lift it right out. The description we provide will help you to work effectively with this process. For me in my life grief was a big one for that reason I know that the person in grief often needs tenderness and so for that reason my phone services might be advisible and very comforting.
   
   
9. For those working with the toxic emotions produced by sexual violation I strongly recommend Reach for the Rainbow : Advanced Healing for Survivors of Sexual Abuse by Lynne D. Finney.
   
   
10. Sometimes working intensively with strong emotions can be ungrounding. We can feel rocked at the core and nervous and accident prone. In such cases I recommend Grounding Blend, even if you don't purchase the product please read the description of the blend for helpful information.

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