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Join Brooke Snow in the journey of co creating a life from a place of unconditional love.
Hello friends. Welcome to the One Heart Podcast, I'm your host Brooke Snow and I'm so grateful you are here.
In this episode we are going to explore how to travel from one emotional state to another. We've all experienced what it's like to have emotions we resist, where we wish in the moment to feel different. To feel better, whatever better is. But the challenge with emotion, is that you don't immediately go from a low state to a high state. You don't immediately go from feeling anger to feeling happy. Or from disappointment to contentment. Especially if you are actively resisting what you are feeling in the moment. There's too big of a gap between the two states, and in today we are going to learn about what exists in the gap. It's what I call The Land of Observation, and knowing about this place in the gap has been transformative in my journey of Reclamation of Feeling.
Before we begin, I invite you to join me in a short three breath meditation to settle into your own heart.
In the last episode I shared about some heartbreak that I was experiencing in my life, and how even though I was allowing myself to cry and grieve, when the coach I was working with asked me to name the top three emotions I felt, the first emotion I noticed was numbness.
Ironic, since to feel numb means that you don't feel.
Probably a more accurate description of feeling numb, is that you are masking or suppressing feeling. When a doctor numbs your body, the anesthesia is turning off your ability to feel. If the anesthesia wears off the pain that is being suppressed will be felt once again.
When we are going through trauma, one form of protection your body may offer you in it's sympathetic nervous system response, is freeze. Fight, flight, or freeze. You may freeze your emotions. There is absolutely a purpose for this response. Your body is wise and knows how much you can handle. I have experienced several times in my life where I have been in shock about something and have felt no emotion, but it has allowed me to have a level head and make more wise decisions than I would if I was emotionally charged. You may find yourself freezing your emotions so you can manage to survive overwhelm or stress and your body is wise enough to know that allowing you to feel everything would be more stimulation than you could adequately handle in the moment.
Part of emotional intelligence and resilience, is developing the skill of being able to sit with the uncomfortable. Or as I've heard some teachers say, to develop the ability to get comfortable in the uncomfortable. I don't know that I'm ever going to be comfortable in the uncomfortable--as that is a bit of a paradox--, but I do think we can be willing to be uncomfortable.
This happens only when you are ready to heal and feel safe enough to allow yourself to feel. This is a moment of reclamation of feeling. You are ready to reclaim the temple of your body and make it a place you feel safe in once again.
There are times where it may be wise to have professional help from a counselor or coach or trusted friend to support you in this process. Other times taking the time to journal or be unplugged in nature is enough.
One amazing fact that has helped me feel safe in this process of unfreezing is research done by Dr. Joan Rosenberg who teaches that all feelings run their course in about 90 seconds.
This makes more sense when you understand the anatomy of emotion. Emotion is the story we tell about a feeling. And all a feeling is, is sensation in the body. What we are usually afraid of, is the bodily sensations. The tight throat or gut, the fast pulse, the flushed cheeks...these bodily sensations--if you are willing to feel them and not close off and supress them, they only last about 90 seconds. Afterwards your body needs to seek homeostasis again. But if you resist the feelings, you prolong the sensations. If you keep telling the story that triggered the emotion, you'll also start the process all over again. But beautifully, if you're willing to be just be present, to feel without judgement, it passes far sooner than you expect.
When we don't allow ourselves to feel emotion, it traps in the body. The only way emotions exit the body is by feeling them.
I think of it like water flowing through a garden hose. If I am willing to feel my emotion, I stay open and allow the emotion to flow through my body. If I resist emotion, it is like me clamping the hose. It has nowhere to go. And if the flow is still coming, the emotion is going to build and build until there is an eventual burst. It will demand to be felt at same point, whether it's in a day, a week, or even years later.
Eventually, if we accumulate more and more trapped emotion in our body, we are inhibiting more and more our ability to feel anything. Not just the emotions we may be resisting, but emotions we may desire to feel. Happiness, joy, humor, delight, playfulness, wonder, awe, love, peace, bliss, forgiveness, and beyond. I know I have many times experienced resistance to feeling joy, simply because I was holding so tightly to trapped emotions already inside me that I couldn't allow myself to feel anything else.
This is normal behavior of humans. We resist the uncomfortable. And thankfully there is a way out.
There is a way to go from feeling numb, frozen, or stuck in an uncomfortable emotion to living with freedom and access to peace and joy.
But here's the thing...
You don't instantly go from one state to the other. There is too big of a gap.
What I want to draw attention to is what lies in the gap.
What is it that lies between a state of trapped emotion and a state of emotional freedom?
What is it that lies inbetween?
What lies between one state of being to another state of being, is what I call the land of observation. It's perhaps one of the most basic yet important frameworks I have used in my reclamation of feeling.
What is THE LAND OF OBSERVATION all about? What do you do there?
There are 2 purposes in the land of observation:
1. Awareness.
2. Acceptance.
You cannot create a new emotional state before you clearly notice your current one.
You cannot create a new emotional state if you are still resisting your current one.
Most people-including myself-want to skip this step altogether. To practice awareness it means I need to notice what I'm feeling.
But awareness by itself is not sufficient . I also need to accept it. I need to practice grace and accept all that I am feeling without judgement.
If I were to summarize the practice of Buddhism in two words, this would be it.
Awareness.
Acceptance.
Those two practices can totally change your life. The Land of Observation could also be seen as the land of Transformation. This is how powerful these two practices can be.
Awareness.
Acceptance.
A few years ago our family went through some unexpected and unwanted changes. It was really hard on everyone. One day while I was out on a walk I realized how much of my suffering had to do with my own resistance. I was constantly wanting things to go back to how they were before and judging myself and other people in the process. I wanted my circumstance to change. I wanted other people to change. My higher self said to me,
"Brooke. You will suffer less if you accept the situation as it is."
That thought felt both dramatically true and also impossible at the same time.
What? You want me to just accept this situation?
But won't that mean I have given up hope for change?
Won't that lead me to become apathetic?
Those fears revealed how much I believed my resistance was helping me. But was it really helping? Had it done anything for me at all? No. And as it has been said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. The resistance wasn't helping. It was hurting.
Acceptance doesn't mean we have to turn a bad thing into a good thing. It simply means we are going to stop fighting and resisting the feeling so we can navigate the situation from a peaceful place instead. We don't have access to that when we are in a state of resisting. We have closed off.
The miracle acceptance brings to me, is that it immediately decreases the emotional charge. The moment I close off and resist it's like clamping the water hose. The pressure immediately intensifies and keeps building in pressure. It gets more and more uncomfortable and painful. But if I can remove the clamp and open back up, the emotion can now flow through and the pressure equilizes.
If I feel anger and then judge myself for feeling anger, and resist the anger, and close off or distract myself from the anger, it's going to build in pressure. Perhaps it builds up to a level 10 in pressure. But, if I accept the anger, and receive it, if I tell myself it is okay for me to feel anger, it opens the flow and immediately it might take the emotional charge of anger down to a 5. Going from a 10 to a 5 is a major difference in how something feels, and it is all due to my resistance or acceptance. If I really stay with this practice of acceptance then I can let the anger flow through me and fully feel it and eventually the 5 decreases even more until it's no longer there. All because I stayed open and accepted the experience. Think of all the brain space I gain, just by having the charge decrease. If I'm maxed out at a level 10 in my resistance, I don't have as much access to my mind and heart. But if I can decrease the charge even by degrees, each degree I decrease in intensity gives me back more access to an open mind and heart so I can choose a better response.
So what does visiting the land of observation look like in practice?
Awareness and Acceptance.
My best friend Kristi, is constantly inviting me to name my emotions. This is what gives me awareness of what I'm actually feeling.
I feel disappointment..
I feel sadness.
I feel betrayed.
I feel vulnerable.
And after I've named them all? She asks me to practice accepting them by completing the following sentence,
"It's okay that I feel...."
"It's okay that I feel...."
It's okay that I feel disappointment.
It's okay that I feel sadness.
It's okay that I feel betrayed.
It's okay to feel vulnerable.
That little tiny sentence is my shortcut version to acceptance.
I practice awareness by naming the thought or feeling.
I practice acceptance by telling myself "It's okay to feel or think..."
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
Telling yourself that it's okay to think or feel something is an immediate act of acceptance that opens the mind or heart. This is my short and sweet version of acceptance that I use in the heat of the moment.
It's okay that I feel mad.
It's okay that I feel betrayed.
It's okay that I feel overlooked.
It's okay that I feel jealous.
It's okay that I don't like this other person.
It's okay that I lost my temper.
It's okay that I said the wrong thing.
You'd think that this would intensify the problem, but it doesn't. It takes down the charge and keeps you open to love. It opens brain space to compassionately move forward using your agency to make better choices.
I have used this practice with my kids and it has been amazing. I'll have one of my kids come to me upset about something and my first response is, "How does that make you feel? Can you name the emotions?" They will name the emotions and then I respond saying, "It's okay to feel... and repeat back whatever feeling they identified. In most cases, this is enough to deflate the situation and they feel seen and heard and quickly move on.
Sometimes the situation is deeper. Recently, my teenager had some strong emotions about a geographical boundary change for his church congregation that put him in a group of new kids he didn't know. He was highly resistant to participating in this new youth group.
I sat down with him and asked him to name what he was feeling.
Anger.
Mad.
Anxiety.
Dread.
Frustration.
Not important.
Unheard.
Defeated.
Afterwards, I reflected back each emotion saying,
It's okay that you feel anger.
It's okay that you feel mad.
It's okay that you feel anxiety.
It's okay that you feel dread and frustration and defeat.
At first he was kind of shocked.
It is?
Of course it is. It's okay to feel all of those things.
Unfortunately, in parenting, I think I have too often skipped this step entirely, and jumped right into the think positive mindset.
"You'll totally make new friends."
or worse
I've jumped into shaming.
"Don't feel anger, there's nothing you can do about this."
Stop being mad about this, this is just the way things are so you might as well get used to it."
There was something so magical about not skipping this essential step.
Name what you feel.
And accept it.
It's okay that I feel _________.
Even though this situation was far more emotionally charged than the everyday dramas we have at our house, it was amazing to watch the transformation. We didn't talk at all about having to make new friends or have a good attitude. All we did was name the emotions and let every feeling be okay.
By the time he went to bed, the emotionally charge was significantly lower. It's once you reach the point of equanimity again that bringing in a positive mindset feels like it actually has power to work instead of just suppressing the reality of what you are really feeling underneath the surface.
To be honest, this tool has become one of the most used tools in my box. I use it every single day. I use it on myself, I use it in parenting. I use it in conversation with people to help hold space for their emotions and give them permission to feel.
It's stunning to see how much of life I actively want to resists and reject. This is teaching me a new way that feels so much better in my body and creates so much more peace in my relationships.
To live with One Heart, to live with access to the love that is always inside us, we need a way to let go of what gets in the way.
I invite you to visit the Land of Observation.
And what do we do there?
We practice Awareness, and Acceptance.
Name the emotion, and tell yourself its okay to feel what you feel.
This is a reclamation of feeling.
If this sounds helpful for you, I have a beautiful meditation on the Co create app called The Land of Observation that gently guides you through this process. In fact, as I have been preparing this series for the podcast, I realized that I have so much to say on this topic of Reclamation of FEeling, that I'm turning it into a new course on the Co Create app, complete with guided meditations to help you integrate these principles that we are learning about. I believe so strongly that the most transformative way to learn is by experience, not just by consuming information. I love to write my podcast lessons, but its so easy for it to just be information that I listen to and forget. When you can integrate meditation into the learning, it gives you the opportunity to embody the principles and experience them for yourself. While you can listen to the lessons here on the podcast, the meditations and the opportunity to submit questions is exclusive to the app. If you're cucrious to try out the app, I'd love to invite you to a free one month trial. Simply use the code ONEHEART30, for 30 days free. I'll link that code in the shownotes of this episode and would love to invite you to be part of the expdeirential version of this course along with me on the app.
In the meantime, dear one, I inivte you the Land of observation. Practice awareness and acceptance. This is a reclamation of feeling.
The light in me honors hte light in you.
Namaste.