emotion

For the past while I've been learning what it really means to feel. For most of my life I essentially considered feeling an emotion to be equivalent with expressing it (or more accurately, reacting to it). Feeling anger = stomping, yelling, losing patience. Feeling sorrow = crying, withdrawing, shutting down. Feeling joy = smiling, laughing, doing a little jig. Things like that. And since I'd learned to stop expressing I eventually considered myself to be unemotional, which has turned out to be far from the truth. The actual energy of it was just moving outside of my awareness.

For a time, regaining awareness and access to my emotional energy made me feel way more reactive. Lately I've been practicing tuning in and feeling what comes up while disengaging from the narratives playing out in my mind. I've found that if an emotion is really felt and given space to run its course, its expression can be far more nuanced and a matter of conscious choice. I can feel intense anger and choose to express it by slowing down. I can feel deep sadness and choose to express it by dancing. I can feel profound joy and choose to express it by weeping.

There are no rules. I can even choose not to express anything at all, allowing it to be a private movement occurring entirely within.