What are you best tips for 'feeling' you emotions within your body?

What are you best tips for 'feeling' you emotions within your body?

When I 'sit' with my emotions I often find myself drawing a physical blank... What helped you to get your emotions moving from labels in your mind to being able to feel them as sensations in your body?

And deep breathing - I read that this actually suppresses emotions yet others recommend it go get into your emotions... Any thoughts?

Thank you

 

Sara, I never spent much time "feeling" my emotions. They were just there. I concentrated more on believing my repressed emotions caused TMS paim.

I am a HUGE believer in the healing powers of DEEP BREATHING. I like the Guided Deep Breathing on Youtube.

 

benefits of deep breathing:

Breathing correctly is not only important for living longer but also to have a good mood and keep performing at your best. Let us look at the benefits of deep breathing and why you should make it part of your everyday living.
1. Breathing Detoxifies and Releases Toxins
Your body is designed to release 70% of its toxins through breathing. If you are not breathing effectively, you are not properly ridding your body of its toxins i.e. other systems in your body must work overtime which could eventually lead to illness. When you exhale air from your body you release carbon dioxide that has been passed through from your bloodstream into your lungs. Carbon dioxide is a natural waste of your body's metabolism.
2. Breathing Releases Tension
Think how your body feels when you are tense, angry, scared or stressed. It constricts. Your muscles get tight and your breathing becomes shallow. When your breathing is shallow you are not getting the amount of oxygen that your body needs.
3. Breathing Relaxes the Mind/Body and Brings Clarity
Oxygenation of the brain reducing excessive anxiety levels. Paying attention to your breathing. Breathe slowly, deeply and purposefully into your body. Notice any places that are tight and breathe into them. As you relax your body, you may find that the breathing brings clarity and insights to you as well.
4. Breathing Relieves Emotional Problems
Breathing will help clear uneasy feelings out of your body.
5. Breathing Relieves Pain.
You may not realize its connection to how you think, feel and experience life. For example, what happens to your breathing when you anticipate pain? You probably hold your breath. Yet studies show that breathing into your pain helps to ease it.
6. Breathing Massages Your Organs
The movements of the diaphragm during the deep breathing exercise massages the stomach, small intestine, liver and pancreas. The upper movement of the diaphragm also massages the heart. When you inhale air your diaphragm descends and your abdomen will expand. By this action you massage vital organs and improves circulation in them. Controlled breathing also strengthens and tones your abdominal muscles.
7. Breathing Increases Muscle
Breathing is the oxygenation process to all of the cells in your body. With the supply of oxygen to the brain this increases the muscles in your body.
8. Breathing Strengthens the Immune System
Oxygen travels through your bloodstream by attaching to haemoglobin in your red blood cells. This in turn then enriches your body to metabolise nutrients and vitamins.
9. Breathing Improves Posture
Good breathing techniques over a sustained period of time will encourage good posture. Badbody posturewill result of incorrect breathing so this is such an important process by getting your posture right from early on you will see great benefits.
10. Breathing Improves Quality of the Blood
Deep breathingremoves all the carbon-dioxide and increases oxygen in the blood and thus increases blood quality.
11. Breathing Increases Digestion and
Assimilation of food
The digestive organs such as the stomach receive more oxygen, and hence operates more efficiently. The digestion is further enhanced by the fact that the food is oxygenated more.
12. Breathing Improves the Nervous System
The brain, spinal cord and nerves receive increased oxygenation and are more nourished. This improves the health of the whole body, since the nervous system communicates to all parts of the body.
13. Breathing Strengthen the Lungs
As you breathe deeply the lung become healthy and powerful, a good insurance against respiratory problems.
14. Proper Breathing makes the Heart Stronger.
Breathing exercises reduce the workload on the heart in two ways. Firstly, deep breathing leads to more efficient lungs, which means more oxygen, is brought into contact with blood sent to the lungs by the heart. So, the heart doesn't have to work as hard to deliver oxygen to the tissues. Secondly, deep breathing leads to a greater pressure differential in the lungs, which leads to an increase in the circulation, thus resting the heart a little.
15. Proper Breathing assists in Weight Control.

If you are overweight, the extra oxygen burns up the excess fat more efficiently. If you are underweight, the extra oxygen feeds the starving tissues and glands.

16. Breathing Boosts Energy levels and Improves Stamina
17. Breathing Improves Cellular Regeneration
18. Breathing Elevates Moods
Breathing increase pleasure-inducing neurochemicals in the brain to elevate moods and combat physical pain
How to Breathe properly?

In order to breathe properly you need to breathe deeply into your abdomen not just your chest. Even in the old Greek and Roman times the doctors recommended deep breathing, the voluntary holding of air in the lungs, believing that this exercise cleansed the system of impurities and gave strength. This certainly is of great value to you in your work in the world. Breathing exercises should be deep, slow, rhythmic, and through the nose, not through the mouth. The most important parts of deep breathing has to be regulating your breaths three to four seconds in, and three to four seconds out.

1.Inhale through your nose, expanding your belly, then fill your chest. Counting to 52.Hold and Count to 3. Feel all your cells filled with golden, healing, balancing Sun light energy.3.Exhale fully from slightly parted mouth and Feel all your cells releasing waste and emptying all old energy. Counting to 5.

Schedule your deep breathing exercise just as you would schedule important business appointments. Set aside a minimum of two 10 minute segments of time everyday although you can begin with two five minutes segments if you prefer.
Honouring yourself enough to schedule time with yourself is the first step in mastering stress. Tend your relationship with yourself and your relationship with life and with others will be enriched and deepened accordingly. Remember to share with your children and all your friends and loved ones so that they too can reap its untold benefits.

- See more at: http://www.onepowerfulword.com/2010...p-breathing-and-how.html#sthash.P5qezjnY.dpuf

 

Hi Sara,

Most people do not have an acute awareness of the sensation of emotions or feelings in their body. I think you have a great goal, because the more you tune into your feelings, in your body, the more truth you get in touch with. As one of my teachers said: "The body doesn't lie."

For instance, you may say to yourself "Everything is fine." But sense into your body, and you might notice a lot of fear. This has real value.

I have taught this to many people. It takes time. A little daily practice is great. Curiosity about how you're feeling can become a habit.

Here are some tips I have:
--Notice a thought, feeling or emotion, and ask yourself where you feel this in your body.
--If you can locate the feeling, try to name some basic properties it might have: size, shape, depth, heat, warmth, cool, pressure, sharpness, numbness, space, empty, etc. You may also find the sensations remind you of familiar materials: plastic, cardboard, wood, putty, syrup, honey, sheet metal, molten lava, cast iron, etc. You may even notice colors and smells. It can become multi-sensory, and quite pleasurable at times. Put all these noticings into words to yourself, to help make it more real, and to check for accuracy.
--Gently "follow your breath" into this location, allowing your mind to rest into the sensation, supported by a natural, gentle breath.
--As you place your attention on the sensation, it will likely become more vivid. It can also change.
--As you are with the sensation, notice the emotional affects.
--Bring your attention gently to

This "Not Feeling" may actually have a subtle feeling. What does blank feel like?
--Approach your "training" with gentleness and patience. You can't force awareness and sensitivity.

Andy B.

 

Thanks, Walt. 'Believing' sure is an important step and thanks for the info on breathing - it's quite an impressive list of reasons to breath!

 

Hi Andy,
Those tips are really helpful, thank you. I see what you mean about the 'blank' feeling. It does have an 'emptiness' and 'dark' feeling to it, I think a type of sadness, which now that I think about it relates to some things I have been journalling about.
Thanks again for the helpful advice

 

Hi Sara.

Purely out of curiosity, can I ask why you are trying to feel emotions in your body?

For me, the pain that I feel in my body is the actual emotion I am experiencing.
So, I first visualize the pain (rather than the emotion that it represents), as a physical "thing", giving it color, texture, etc.
I always imagine the pain dissipating...so if its a red hot lava-like liquid, its "spreading out" over my body and then exiting out of my skin.
I know this sounds weird, but this is my way of observing, then accepting, then releasing my pain.
If the pain is really bad, I will then visualize a color/texture/form that I deem more soothing (for me thats a cool blue), that I replace the "exiting" red-lava-pain with.

I feel this establishes a new connection and end result in my brain, whereby when I get pain, I now automatically feel like it will ultimately (and quickly) "convert" to my preferred color and texture, and then begin to spread out and dissipate.

This thing I do is actually combined with deep breathing, which for me is presence inducing and takes my attention away from the emotion which for me is usually rooted in the past.

 

Hi Avik,
To answer you question (and apologies for the slow reply), learning to feel emotions within the body seems to be a common thread in pelvic pain success stories and is also a common thread of programs offered by pelvic pain mindbody coaches, so as a person experiencing my TMS as pelvic pain, it seemed like an important thing to learn! Feeling rather than repressing the emotions.
Thanks for you tips