Axtrualised Logo - Kim Ferranate

Recognize and Release - Axtualised Kim Farrente

The human body is a beacon for truth. Ever notice that when you’re anxious you have trouble concentrating or if you’re excited you get that flutter in your stomach? This is the mind body connection. 

Based in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) emotions, thoughts,and behaviors are connected and drive either suffering or satisfaction. Either outcome may have consequences which fosters an emptiness if unbalanced.

We are biologically wired to respond to feelings. The fight or flight response is the bodies’s security system. We have adapted over the years and have developed more advanced neurological processes to manage these responses, yet we are still driven by emotions or feelings. Our thoughts and behaviors are often guided by our feelings. Have you ever reacted to a situation when you thought it was particularly threatening but it turned to be really benign? Similarly, have you felt joy about something and then when it ended you were disappointed? The outcome is the same, we suffer as a result of holding on too strongly to any feeling. Therefore, can we truly trust our feelings?
When we observe or notice feelings as guests rather than relatives, we can be free from extreme feelings. Emotions are transient and should be observed than believed. So is our primal security system wrong? What evolutionary psychology says is that extreme behaviors had its place in the environment millions of years ago but tend not to be a reliable guide in modern day. Most of us do not live in a constant state of life or death.
So how do we manage these feelings and reactions? Judgement is our default; “good or bad”. Judgement doesn’t tend to be beneficial long-term as we often have debates within ourselves about the “good and bad”. However, by recognizing that feelings are a normal and healthy part of human existence and aren’t the drivers for our existence we can take the power out of them.

 

 
Rumi says, “The dark thought the shame, the malice meet at them at the door laughing and invite them in”.

Honoring all thoughts and feelings as part of you and sending them off in care can be a starting point for harmony. The mere act of noticing and releasing is a form of mindfulness meditation. You don’t have to do anything other than observe ;even if you get distracted allow your thoughts to wander and find a space. Keep that going until you can’t -that’s meditation. Being in a place of observation and allowing your thoughts and feelings to settle in that moment can put you in a place of alignment. Through the recognition of being human without judgement we can release suffering.