How to ‘Start feeling’?
As humans, we all have the innate capacity to feel, NO ONE is an exception to this.
We are all wired the same ➡️ our being responds to stimuli which, in this context, — are life experiences , with a ranging spectrum of emotions, which then in turn elicit different body reactions. These body reactions caused by emotions tend to be universal to all human beings. For instance:
when we feel happiness it’s the sensation of warmth in the chest, lightness in the body, euphoria, and a general sense of well-being.
when we are under the influence of anger we feel an increased heart rate, heat or pressure in the head or chest, rapid breathing, and tense muscles.
whereas, the typical characteristics of sadness is heaviness in the chest, lethargy, and a feeling of sinking. For more check emotion “vocabulary”.
Yet the problem is that some people are too detached from their bodies and sensations and are left with a false belief that they are ‘unable to feel’.
But just because someone feels disconnected doesn’t mean the system has stopped responding to stimulus. The emotional signals are still there — only muted, bypassed, or unheard thus the task becomes rebuilding this inner line of communication with your system.
One of the most direct ways to do that is by returning to the body — because bodily sensations are one of the clearest languages your being uses to speak with you, to show it’s states, likes and dislikes. Alongside them, inner imagery, spontaneous words or phrases may also arise — all part of how your deeper self send info.
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Create a safe space
First big step in ‘starting to feel’ is to put attention away from the outside world and bring it inside.
For this to actually work you need to create for yourself a safe and undisturbed environment for whatever duration you are planning to do this internal landscape exploration practise. Usually people do know what distracts them the most — so eliminate these factors, and what relaxes them the most — increase these factors for yourself. If you feel kind of lost on this one point already, contact me — I’m willing to help you through whatever step along the way of this process.
Go On An Internal Journey
Now once we have the environment set up — we go within.
Comfortable position and eyes closed or masked is a must.
Your body is a part of your being, a part of your system
and how you ask yourself “what I want to eat today” in the very same manner you can ask the self other questions like “dear body, where is the past still alive in my body?” — in a few moments you will feel your attention drifting to one or another specific area of your body.
Mind you— “attention” might not even be the most accurate word here. The way your body responds to the question can show up in many forms: a tingling or wave of heat in a certain area, a sudden image, or just a subtle sense of being pulled toward a certain area in your body, as if your system is showing / pointing you "here", "look here". The most common zones where the past tends to linger are the hips, solar plexus (belly), chest, throat, head, or anywhere along the spine.
Then, depending on how deep you want to go each time you tune into your body, you gently begin asking questions that point to the root — the cause behind the stored energy in the specific place of your body that you are exploring
You might ask:
“Dear body, what memory is stored here?”
“What emotion is held in this spot?”
“What age was I when this first happend?”
“What I didn’t felt through that is still sitting with me in the here and now?”
When you start be given answers to your questions from your system you most likely will get a bit mind-blown like “wtf, I’m able to communicate with my body” , at least that was the experience I had 😃
However, accept this as super normal practise as at some level it’s absolutely the same as siting with your friend and being like “so what’s going on” “what’s up there? what hurts and what presses you down ? what do you have to tell me? go own. I' hear you. I’m here for you”
This practice is pure magic — a kind of inner communication we were never taught growing up. Yet, it might just be the most essential emotional skill you could ever learn.
🔴🔴🔴 a tricky part with this is being influenced by the mind/ego while trying torebuild and/or improve this inner line of communication with one’s system. It’s a super common experience because majority of people tend to lead their lives out of the mind/ego and so whenever one is trying to do something new — the mind will want to jump in and lead the way.
and yet this process of inner exploration doesn’t work like that
because the questions we’re asking aren’t for the mind to be answered. It’s not “think” your way to a conclusion — it’s about feel your way through the subtle language of your system that may come up in whatever form - an image, a word, a face, a scene, or just a wave of grief, anger, fear, or tension and be with the information provided. undisrupted. as long as you are can.
because this aspect of ‘mind taking control’ over this process is multi nuanced i can help you to model how your session without mind/ego intervention looks like while us doing this practise together through 101 space.
what to do with the answers coming up..
When your system begins to throwing info at you, in whatever form it may be then your upmost task is to let it speak — let the info flow, keep the communication channel open by remaining open and acceptant to what the system is spitting out to you.
and this in itself is a significantly hard task to do because usually what is being presented to us —are the traumatic life experiences — in a form of words, faces, scenes, sensations that once were too overwhelming to experience fully.
So now when we come back to these emotionally charged pieces of memories by connecting with our body/system we are creating ourselves a chance to let that emotional intensity to dissipate from our being — by finally letting the feeling to move through it, or said more straightforward and simple — by feeling the stuff that is surfacing up.
You see, emotions follow a natural course of action that consists of three phases:
emotions rise → they want to be felt completely as only through that full feeling of an emotion can we receive the specific message it carries about the self and the world → once emotion is fully received and fully felt, it naturally dissolve — as it has fulfilled its purposes of information provision, and there’s nothing more left for it to do in our system apart of leaving it.
all the problems start when the second phase of natural emotional energy movement is hindered— when an emotional experience is suppressed by our psyché’s defense mechanism due to it being too overwhelming. That’s very often the case of our childhoods, a phase in our development when we need ‘a someone’ to experience the emotional intensity with. Child’s system is unable to process and adequately go through intense emotional experiences alone — it needs a reliable and safe adult who stays with the child through out the intensity and together stays present with what the child is feeling — letting the pain be painful, letting the discomfort be discomforting as these are too parts of life. Yet, doing this in an emotionally safe environment — a relationship in which the child feels deeply understood and not belittled or dismissed with his\her emotional experiences. This type of relating to intense emotions rising helps the child’s system to understand that no matter the emotional intensity — the world is not ending — it’s just an emotional experience passing through me.
I know that great majority of us hadn’t had this type of adult in the picture while growing — the one who could sit with us through the emotional intensity without turning away. Yet this ‘meeting the inner self/rebuilding inner line of communication’ practise is all about becoming that adult for ourselves — becoming someone who cares enough to come back emotionally to those experiences that were once too overwhelming to endure and during which we hadn’t had the safe figure to share that intensity with as to process it through out fully — now it’s us — the adult version of ourselves that is showing love through its actions — coming back and willing to sit through the intensity that our system is craving be be released of. (check the signs of suppressed emotions)
remain consistent in doing this — schedule time with the self
like in everything else in life, so as here, if you want to experience some outcomes — you have to pour in first
this skill, like any other, requires time, consistency (commitment ) and strategic effort from your side thus I highly advise to schedule this time with the self and devote specific time slots within days/weeks for you to cultivate this inner skill — the skill of connecting with the self and building the infrastructure of inner line communication. It’s like you show up for your job’s scheduled meetings, so why it should be different with the self? 😃
It's a super-gradual process
Reclaiming back the connection with your system is a super-gradual process,
something similar to a physical trauma recovery during which you have lost a leg, got an implant and had to re-learn how to walk again thus patience with the self is everything here. - thus if you’re getting frustrated in this is because you have an expectation to the self that do not reflect the actualy reaity, for example, wanting the system to open up sooner than it is ready to.
Curiously - The Best Mindset To Have
Just treat the info you get from your system as an alive creature whom you’re eager to get to know better. Ask any questions that just “pop into your head” — as this inner system is already guiding you along the way to see and feel the places of the self that need the most attention from you .
