Feel It To Heal It! – Clean Your Emotional House Part 2

In the last blog, I shared why we disconnect emotionally and some of the detrimental effects that ensue. Let’s talk a bit about the benefits of feeling and how we can actually process our emotions. So, the thing to remember is that emotions are energy, and energy is never destroyed, it can only change form. So, if you feel something and you stuff it away, guess what? It has nowhere to go so it hangs out in your physical body. It can literally weigh you down or make you sick if you’ve been doing it for long enough, and most of us have been doing it since childhood. I’m sure you’ve heard before about the connection between emotional issues and weight issues or emotional health and cancer. Many studies have been done showing a higher rate of cancer in those that repress their emotions than in those that give vent to their emotions. When we process our emotions by bringing awareness to them, feeling them, giving them space and expression, they tend to pass through us and get released. In this way, they do not have the opportunity to become toxic and weaken our immune system or contribute to illness.

For so many people this process of emotional expression can seem very scary, especially if those emotions have to do with a past painful experience. So we run from them, we push them away, we deny them, and we convince ourselves we’re fine. There is this unfounded fear that if we allow ourselves to feel then it will consume us and we will die. Yes, I know that’s a bit dramatic but it’s the bottom line. Actually, it’s the opposite that’s true, and we get to live more fully by learning how to feel.

When we decide to transform our lives and we know real change needs to happen, we will have to decide to reconnect and restore our ability to feel. This is the next step after we’ve gotten radically honest about those things in our lives we haven’t dealt with. We may have to go to places emotionally that scare the hell out of us. God knows I spent many years talking to therapists about my emotions and never really getting anywhere. I knew a lot about my emotions and my problems but it didn’t seem to change anything or make me any clearer inside. Now I understand that it’s vital to heal on an energetic level by connecting to emotions viscerally. Now I understand how to get out of my head and into my body where the energy of the emotion is, to stay with it, to see maybe what message it has for me, and to allow it expression. I am still working to clear old emotional energy but since working with my emotions in this way, I am lighter for releasing the trapped energy. The process of emotional clearing, which can also involve forgiveness (a topic for another blog), allows the frequency of your energetic vibration to rise. It rises because of the released density of that stored and sometimes dark energy. When you are vibrating at a higher energetic frequency, you are able to attract more of the good stuff into your life, your immune system is stronger, and you may even become physically lighter.

I know this process has allowed more to flow through me and to me. Even the good emotions are not so scary anymore (yes, good emotions can feel overwhelming and scary as well). When someone wants to love me or care for me or extend themselves to me, now I have more room to receive it and a way to be with it. I get the benefit of a fuller experience of life that includes the full spectrum of feeling.

So, now that you’ve gotten radically honest with yourself about what is happening in your life and where you are stuck, it’s time to start the process of healing. That first step is to emotionally reconnect yourself, process the emotions and allow them release. Trust me, it will be a huge relief. There are so many techniques you can use on your own or with the aid of a practitioner. Releasing old emotional energy that has been trapped for many years can be a difficult process to handle on your own. It may be helpful to be guided by a professional such as a holistic healer, therapist, coach or counselor. To get you started, though, here is a simple suggestion to try when you find yourself having an emotional reaction that you want to push away or avoid. First, bring awareness to it by checking in your body where you are actually feeling it. Is it tightness in your chest, a rapid heartbeat, a lump in your throat, or upset in your stomach? Maybe it just feels heavier in a particular area in your body. Then just observe it, breathe into it, and allow it to be without trying to change it. Don’t worry that it will consume you because if you just allow it to be, it will leave. Remember that what you resist persists and this is absolutely the truth when it comes to emotions. If we resist feeling them they will persist and hang out longer than we can handle. Maybe part of your process in connecting emotionally can include journaling, giving it vocal or physical expression through sound or movement, or sharing it with another. Let me be clear that this is not about expressing story, it’s about expressing emotion. You can write it, speak it, pray it, cry it, scream it. It doesn’t matter as long as you feel it and release it. Then watch how life opens up for you even more. Clear those energetic blocks keeping your natural light from shining into the world. We need your light, because as Deepak Chopra said on Oprah’s Lifeclass this week, “In your personal transformation is the transformation of the world.”