For many people, repressed emotions contribute to mental health issues such as stress, anxiety, and depression, which can lead to physical problems as well. And many people are carrying around emotions that they don’t even know they have.
Unfortunately, society really doesn’t teach us how to deal with emotions. We’re taught to either stuff them down and not express them or take a pill and make them go away. “Be happy. Get over it. So-and-so has it so much worse than you.” We’ve all heard this said, to others or ourselves.
But what if there was a better way? What if you could learn to deal with your emotions in the moment and let them go, rather than stuff them to blow up later or get physically ill from not expressing them at all?
Over the past 15 years I have committed to learning how we can be healthier, happier, and calmer by caring for ourselves emotionally. I developed a set of tools for releasing emotions so that they didn’t weigh me down. Here are three you may want to try:
Envision Emotional Release
- Make a note of how much the emotion is affecting you on a scale of 1-10. This will help you assess your progress with the technique.
- Get in a quiet place if you can, but in a pinch, just get quiet in your mind as much as you can.
- Identify the emotion(s) you want to release. Say them out loud if possible, along with an intention, such as: “I choose to release [emotion] and whatever is attached to it.” If you have to say it in your mind, do so. (It would look a little weird to say it out loud in the middle of class or in a meeting!)
- Next, envision the emotions leaving your body.
- Take a couple of deep belly breaths. Breathe in through your nose while placing your hands over your belly until you feel it move with your breath. Breathe out completely through your mouth.
- Envision the emotions coming out of your body and floating away, such as a dull, dark cloud of energy or smoke that rises out of you and floats off. The more relaxed you are, the easier this is to do.
- Keep doing the envisioning technique until you feel like the emotions have dissipated or you don’t “see” them anymore.
- Take a couple more deep breaths.
Feeling and Releasing a Stuck Emotion (Entire Body)
- Make a note of how much the emotion is affecting you on a scale of 1-10. This will help you assess your progress with the technique.
- Get in a quiet place if you can, but in a pinch, just get quiet in your mind as much as you can.
- Identify the emotion you want to release.
- See if you can feel where the emotion you named is stuck.
- Set your intention, “I choose to release (emotion) and whatever it is attached to.”
- Next, envision the emotion rising up and floating off from its locations in your body.
- Take a couple of deep breaths.
- Continue this technique until it no longer feels that the emotion is stuck in those places and or you don’t “see it” anymore.
- Take a couple more deep breaths.
- Now scan your body from your head to your toes and see if you can “see” or feel the emotion stuck anywhere else. Repeat the technique until you feel it is gone from all its locations.
Breathe From Your Belly
- Breathe in a deep breath through your nose while placing your hands over your belly until you feel it move with your breath.
- Breathe out completely through your mouth, repeating to get the feel for it.
- Once you get the hang of belly breathing, you don’t have to put your hands on your stomach. This makes it easier to use this technique when you are driving a car, or something else where you need to use your hands.
- Next, after you take a deep breath in through your nose and hold your breath for four seconds.
- Now breathe out completely through your mouth. Do this ten times. This will get you to a relaxed state, but not so relaxed that you can’t get up and go do something afterwards.
Next time you are stressed, try taking some of these deep belly breaths to reach a calmer state. No matter where you are or what you are doing, these techniques can help you calm your body, mind and energy system, so you can feel more confident, focused and centered.