Mindful Parenting by Susan Bögels & Kathleen Restifo

Author:Susan Bögels & Kathleen Restifo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer New York, New York, NY

Embodied Emotions

Our emotions begin in our body. So another reason it’s important to get in touch with our bodies is to get in touch with our emotional states, which often originate as rumblings in our abdomen, or the appropriately named “gut feelings” that fuels our intuition. When we are emotionally upset, we can also go back to our body. What does this sadness actually feel like, in my body? Where do I feel it? What can I notice about it? Does it change or shift? Get more intense? The body can be a safe haven for experiencing emotions, much safer than our thoughts, which can whisk us back to past sadness or future worries. When we experience strong emotions like sadness or anger, and we feel them in our bodies, we are allowing ourselves to be with the emotions, with nothing else extra on top. Using the breath to guide us through the body sensations, we may find we can stay with painful emotions longer, with more gentleness and curiosity towards ourselves, than when we stay in our heads. Staying present with the feelings offers us a chance to explore them, not with words, but with sensations, to give them more space and perhaps to view them from an expanded, larger perspective.

Try this experiment: the next time you feel sad or another strong emotion, try paying attention to where you feel it in your body. You may find that you feel it more intensely, maybe tears will start rolling down your cheeks. But it’s just as important what you’re not doing – you’re not trying to solve the sadness, push it away, or deny it – all of which take energy and are more likely to make you get stuck in feeling sad or even depressed. So learning to be in our bodies and really paying attention to all of our body signals is also helping us to develop the ability to be with our emotions, which we will talk more about in Session 5.

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