Understanding Emotions

We have spent the last couple of weeks focusing on our thoughts and understanding how if we have more negative thoughts than positive, this will affect our emotions and we will find ourselves experiencing more of the emotions that we don't enjoy so much.

Meditation is a really good way to observe and transform our thoughts. In the last session, we focused on the solar plexus, the area above our belly button below our rib cage (our power centres) We focused on the colour yellow and the element of fire feeling our power from within, a great reminder not to try and gain our power from outside of ourselves. We then spent the rest of the meditation practising positive affirmations, letting our inner cheerleaders speak to us with words such as: I am calm, I am confident, I am powerful, I am ready for challenges, I am motivated, I can control my responses, I rely on myself. It is also useful to envision a lion and imagine embodying the courage of this animal.

After sharing our weeks and affirmations, we listed all the emotions we already know and recapped how emotions are visitors and messengers. We welcome them with ACCEPTANCE even if we don't particularly like them because as the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung once said, "Whatever you resist persists." So we can lie to ourselves and others and pretend everything is ok but if we do that we will either become sick (mentally and/or physically) or it will come back even stronger next time. I shared this important acronym for how to deal with challenging emotions and that is STOP. S - Stop, T - Take a breath, O - Observe your thoughts, what is the feeling you are feeling and do you know why? (It's ok to not know why, the important thing is recognising the emotion and enquiring into it. P - proceed (but only go on with your day if you are feeling better, otherwise go back to the stopping and breathing. We touched a little on the nervous system, comparing the sympathetic (fight and flight) to the parasympathetic nervous system (the rest and digest) and how to get back into rest and digest. Some awesome ways for your family to try at home when emotions become overwhelming are: hum, sing, have a cold shower, meditate, have a massage, gargle water, belly breathing, mindfulness, yoga, crossing your arms and tapping your shoulders. There are many others but these are quick things to try at home. This week, we will be delving into how to manage worries and trying some zentangle art.

Have a great week!