Today, I heard a great breakdown of the word EMOTION:
e is the universal symbol for energy
moto = latin for movement / motion
ion = charged particle (positively or negatively charged particles)
EMOTION = “The movement of charged particles”
Last Saturday night, a week after the first protests began in response to the tragic death of George Floyd , my husband and I were watching a movie about a true story of a black lawyer in the 1980’s who made it his mission to help people on death row who were incorrectly convicted.
As you can imagine, the visuals of brutality on black people were disturbing. I felt their pain, viscerally in my body.
Eventually, I could not watch any more. I felt ill.
And then, a wave of emotion came up from my belly, into my throat, and I started to heave and sob, with intense feelings coming in waves through my whole body.
I lay on the floor in the lounge for a long time (my husband had put headphones on to continue watching the movie so he didn’t hear me for a while) – sobbing and heaving.
And all the memories of my own life in relation to black people came flooding back to me and the feelings were a mixture of pain for myself, for the people who suffered and are still suffering, for the world as it is , because everyone suffers from the effects of racism, and guilt for being white, and for not doing more to change the situation. And sadness for the individual black people who I know and have known in my life, for how hard their lives are.
So… my head went into bringing up memories and stories that were necessary for my healing.
In the past, I would have stayed with that and run further and further down a rabbit hole and into a deep dark place of sadness, and carried it around with me for the next few days, unable to really function properly, steeped in my sadness.
But I know better now. I know that I must acknowledge these emotions, name them, feel them and then let them move through me, to be released. … and I must not remain attached to the mental stories ( whether they are true or not). The stories are there. But they remain stories.
What I need to do, as a responsible adult in the world, is to feel the emotions, observe the stories and then be able to clear my energy field, fill up with goodness and, even if I feel tender, be able to move into the world again feeling full and wholehearted – and do whatever I have to do to make a positive difference.
Because I have felt the emotions, and come to a place of calmness, I can then look at the stories and work out what is true and what is no longer true for me, and decide, with clarity, guided by my intuition, what my next step is to move forward so that I can add positive change to my life, and to the lives of others.
When we love ourselves more by allowing ourselves to FEEL the emotions, we can love others better, with more genuine compassion from a place of clarity and fullness, not depletion.
Where are you allowing your emotions to take over, get stuck and cause you more suffering, so that you feel unable to function responsibly?
Remember, I am not down-playing emotions – they are real and they must be felt – in fact if we stuff them down, we are heading towards physical illness. Emotions have to be acknowledged and fully felt in the physical body as ‘sensations’ and ‘energy’ and moved out of the body system, so that we can truly be free to move forward, feeling lighter and clearer, and being more true to ourselves.
What I know to be true is that when we are being true to ourselves, we have more energy and vitality to serve the world and help others where we are most needed, and we give others permission to be true to themselves too.
It creates a cycle of deep radical self-acceptance, and therefore, acceptance of others. When we accept and love ourselves more deeply, we will, by default, accept and love others more deeply too.
And so the world will have more loving people in it.
I could go on.. but you get my point here for now.
Keep coming back to read more of my thoughts if this interests you.
What do you do to release stuck emotional energy? Let me know in the comments
I get bodywork, doodle (make intuitive drawings), paint, dance, go for a walk, do stretching and strengthening exercises, and sometimes I just let it all come out in a good cry on the lounge floor.
PS> I’m also very lucky to have a husband who understands this, and he can hold the space for me to let go – he came to me on the floor and just held me, in silence, not needing to know or asking questions about what was going on for me. He just held the space for me. Amazing! I am blessed and grateful.
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