Today, our guided meditation focused on the changing nature of emotions. Calling up different emotions while sitting creates a very full practice. Feeling into joy and anger reveals a slew of other feelings and thoughts, and how fluidly they can emanate, shift and disperse in the body.
Joy: It’s a sympathetic joy that comes up when I look for it this morning — I got to celebrate with and for a loved one last night. An aliveness, a glimmering across my chest and the tops of my arms. Behind my sternum, a warm, pleasant energy stirs, a bubbling conversation between my cells, an airing out. The experience is tinged with a bit of anxiety, a sense of a question. As happy energy rises to the surface of my skin and radiates out, there is an underlying abiding, a sense of being alright.
Anger: When I seek it, anger comes up as heat and pressure in the center of my chest, a tensing, a sense of hardness that extends down my arms. A pulling in, a closing of doors. Anger wants to protect me, and I am grateful for that. There is a sense of power here and also a tiredness.
A sensitive, hurt space, a frightened, electric vulnerability is here, too — fear — followed by a break into disappointment, opening, loss. The raw, painful clenching starts to fall away, to change. New air moves through; fear releases into sadness. I feel a judgement of the sadness, a sense that it isn’t supposed to be here. But I breathe into it; a falling, a dispersed ache, a stillness. Sadness observes energy gathering and leaving the body in waves. Sadness is witness to change. Sadness is a gift, too.
