14 Jun FEELING WITHOUT THOUGHT

Hello All!

The other night as I was drifting off to sleep, I was jolted awake by a deep sense of sadness over the prospect of losing my mother. It came to me, all-of-a-sudden, as if my mental and physical defenses against this possibility needed to go offline in order for the immensity of this event to come to the surface.

I was paralyzed with a primal, deep fear of being alone without one of my parents there to protect me. Slowly, I began to breathe into my belly and let the sensation wash over me without attaching any kind of thought to what was happening. Within a few minutes the fear subsided and I was able to go back to sleep.

Many of my clients struggle with the emotional impact of strong habitual thoughts…a running narrative of self-talk stimulated by a feeling or a need that loops over and over, creating a new emotional experience that is overwhelming and painful.

What I have learned is that the more we are embedded in our thoughts, and less embodied in our actual felt-experience, the more we are prone to this kind of suffering.

Experiencing our feelings and needs without a mental story attached to it, allows the experience to move through us rather than get stuck. Emotional states are perpetuated when we feed them a steady stream of thinking. Take the thoughts away and all you are left with is an energetic experience that may be painful but is transitory.

I invite you to practice this sometime with a challenging experience. Breathe…then focus on the feeling or felt-sense of the experience…keep all of your attention on what is happening in your body without judgment or analysis, just be and see what happens.

Yours in Warmth,

Tony