energy.
let's talk about what energy means as it pertains to the human body. energy is more than the tangible 'thing' you feel or do not feel when you live your life. sometimes you just wake up and you crush the day, other times you wake up and the day seems to crush you. but there are other ways in which energy is gauged in the body. there is the energy that is stored or the energy that is used. it's important to understand what it is to feel and what it is to have emotion. you can feel anger but feeling it doesn't mean you are expressing it. you can feel grief but again, you could have learned over time how to veil that feeling from the outside world.
so, then what is the difference between feeling and emotion? feelings are something you literally feel viscerally in your body. when you feel something, it is your body talking to you. yes, our body has a language. energy is then created and expressed or created and stored.
when energy is expressed it then becomes emotion. emotion is when we alchemize the energy of feeling into the energy of movement. when we transmute this energy, we are capable of healing, growth, education, maturation, etc... but only when it's conducted in a balanced manner. when we move feeling to energy, sometimes we can get overwhelmed in the emotion and become excessive with it. emotion is a powerful tool and is capable of great things; but this kind of practice requires a dash of maturity. we need to know when the emotion has fulfilled its purpose and it's time to settle back to a homeostatic state. so too do we need to exercise how much is really enough i.e. anger vs rage, sadness vs despair, fear vs terror. it's easy to get swept up in the waves of emotion and lose our sense of grounding ~ no sense in throwing a bomb at a cricket for 'that cricket issue'. why is it so hard at times to know how much and when enough is enough? we can form patterns over our lives with certain feelings and our bodies get addicted to the chemical responses that come with them. once we start engaging emotion, we are in a full-on drug induced state and i'm not kidding. each feeling has a chemical receptor attached to it. once we press that button enough in our lives it does not take much for that 'drug' to be released. when this happens it's just a full-on rampage of energy coursing through the body. now you can see why maturity is required to be able turn away from the chemical addiction accompanying the emotional surge.
having seen what can come of feeling that becomes flowing or overflowing emotion, let’s turn our eye to feeling that becomes stuck. feeling that becomes stuck is, for example, getting angry but now letting that out. anger and grief can do some serious damage if left unattended in the body. one of the main triggers for not channeling feeling into emotion is fear. fear of conflict, fear of repercussion, fear of loss/rejection. but that fear can be a far more compelling master than our other feelings. of the two it's better to over express than under express but as i mentioned, expressing one’s feelings must be done with maturity and respect. it may require some time in sitting with the feeling(s) to gain a better understanding of them lest we run off raw emotion.
what are the ways in which we can begin the process of moving energy constructively out of the body? first thing is to identify what you are feeling. that can take some time and may require some assistance. once a feeling has been identified then we simply sit with it. i say 'simply' but simple isn't always easy. sit with it and let it move in its own way. resist trying to navigate it or control it, just let it move freely. next is to process it. i prefer talking to a trusted friend but others prefer to journal. either way it is important to either speak or write what you have felt. it's like putting a period at the end of a sentence. when we talk and/or wright it requires us to use our minds to convey feeling and remember... it's all about the reintegration of the mind and the body to become whole. just talking won't work and just feeling won't work, so we must combine the two for healing.
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