FREE TO LOVE FREE TO HEAL: CHAPTER 3Learn How to Start Gaining Emotional Freedom
Every experience in the mind is accompanied by shifts in the body’s chemistry. Whenever you say, “I feel anxious, angry, disappointed, or hopeless,” you are acknowledging that your body is generating disturbing sensations. These sensations result from shifts in hormone levels and in the pattern of nerve firings within your nervous system. These physiological shifts can persist well beyond emotionally upsetting experiences. Over time, your body reflects your emotional history and reinforces your expectations about the future. Just as changing patterns of thought can influence the body, changing the position of the body can influence the mind and facilitate emotional release. Stretching your muscles and expanding your range of motion shifts the bodily patterns that trap emotional pain. This week we will focus on three powerful practices that will subtly yet profoundly prepare your mind for the emotional release process:
• Meditation
Meditation’s Timeless Healing Power Heart-centered meditation can provide refuge from the turbulence of emotional commotion and a platform to access and work through emotional pain. Knowing that there is an inner sanctuary of harmony and wholeness that transcends the distress of loss, disappointment, betrayal, and violation enables us to face and vanquish the demons disturbing our peace. There are certain skills in life that are easy to learn, but require some instruction at the beginning. In my experience, meditation is one of these skills. Just as a responsible parent wouldn’t give their child a video or book to learn how to swim or ride a bike, the optimal way to learn meditation is through hands-on instruction and guided practice. It’s not that meditation is a difficult skill, but rather that early instruction can ensure competence that lasts a lifetime.
Heart-Opening Yoga The ancient wisdom tradition of yoga offers practices that prepare the mind and heart to release what is not useful and to open to that which is. Since body, breath, and mind are intimately connected, practices that enliven one dimension influence the others. Therefore, we want to begin with a set of heart-opening poses known as asanas.
The third step in preparing to clear negative emotional residue is to become intimate with the purifying power of your breath. From time immemorial (time extending beyond the reach of memory, record, or tradition) in cultures around the world, people have used breath work to change their awareness and shift perspective. Breathing provides a doorway between our conscious and unconscious patterns of thought and behavior. Deep primitive centers in the brain regulate the rate, rhythm, and depth of respiration, dynamically adapting to our changing perceptions and interpretations of the world. Whenever we feel threatened, our mind and body become activated to either flee from or aggressively attack the perceived danger. Spontaneously, our breathing adjusts to our interpretations, influencing and responding to shifts in our neurological, hormonal, and circulatory systems. Most of the time, the intimate connection between our breath, mind, and body is automatic. We don’t have to pay attention to our breath for it to operate. It’s as if the universe is performing cosmic CPR on us day and night. Unlike many other automatic functions of our body, however, our breath can be consciously controlled. We learn this as small children when we hold our breath to get a response from our siblings or parents. You may have experimented with hyperventilation, noticing how you can make yourself dizzy. Just as activity in the mind and body influences the breath, the reverse is also true – altering the breath influences the mind and body. Find instructions for heart-opening breathing exercises here. Link to
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO START GAINING EMOTIONAL FREEDOM Begin today to move your body. Right now get up from your computer and do at least three heart-opening poses. Perform one or more of the breathing techniques to energize you, and then spend at least a few minutes meditating and experiencing the quiet and peace within.
Get Ready for The Next Chapter Emotional freedom is both the root and the fruit of a life lived in present moment awareness. This is only possible when all the dimensions of our life are unencumbered by the toxic residue of past experiences. Living in this state enables us to use our past but not allow our past to use us. This week you will begin to open the communication channels between your body, breath, and mind, through practicing heart-centering meditation, opening yoga postures, and enlivening breath work. Next week we will take the next step to healing by accessing and identifying the emotional toxicity from your past that is not serving you in the present.
Dr. David Simon is the co-founder and medical director of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Carlsbad, California. He is the driving force behind the Chopra Center’s flagship programs and workshops and is the author of Free to Love, Free to Heal: Heal Your Body by Healing Your Emotions; www.freetolove.com |
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