What options do you have when you’ve eaten too much at Thanksgiving? You need to let the food digest, right? And you can trust, even though you overwhelmed your digestive system, that eventually you will get through it. It might be uncomfy, it might even be stinky, but your body will process, digest, assimilate and … well you know purge what is needed.
Why wouldn’t we have the same system in place for emotions?
Well, we do.
We process emotions in our body and through our heart. We do not process emotions in our head. Understanding them does not matter, we need to allow emotions not control them.
I don’t need to understand how my body digests in order for it to digest. I allow it to digest, and trust it.
Emotions were never meant to be so difficult. We’ve been taught emotions are silly, illogical or downright crazy. Feeling anything other than fine, became the societal norm.
So, it’s not your fault if you never were taught how to feel feelings. Very few people were.
Unfortunately, the consequences of not knowing how to feel feelings builds up over time. Just like undigested food would.
When all our old feelings come up at once it is overwhelming. It is really vulnerable and scary to feel big emotions, let alone not have any tools to deal with them effectively and lovingly.
What I see in clients all the time is their fear of feeling their emotions fully. They fear they will either be swallowed up by the emotion or they will go crazy and not be able to keep up with life.
The only reason people fear these things is because they were not taught how to let emotions move through their body, and be transmuted naturally in their heart centre.
How to Get Started
The first step to letting your body process emotions is to be in your body.
I recommend breathing exercises, heart breathing, and body scans.
If you’d like these exercises emailed to you go to
jennasmithcoaching.com/joinjenna
Once you get in your body you can begin to let the emotions move and access your intuition.
After you get better at being in your body, you can begin to allow the full spectrum of emotions to exist and be, without needing to understand them or make them wrong. Just like notes on the piano, you want to have access to them all and none are “better” than another, they all serve a purpose.
You do not need to know where an emotion came from either or what caused it for it to process. You don’t need to change the emotions at all- you just need to feel them. Let your body feel the sensations of the emotion, and don’t try to control it. The idea is to get the thinky mind out of the way, so your emotional intelligence system can do its job.
Emotionally healthy people allow their emotions to move like the digestive system moves, intelligently and automatically. We trust our digestive system to do its thing, we probably even take it for granted. Our emotions can digest just the same way, through our body and with an intelligence that doesn’t need our direction.
How Emotional Intelligence Strengthens Intuition
Our body is essentially the physicalization of our subconscious mind. And by learning to use the intelligence of our emotional system, we can access intuitive information our mind alone cannot access. We cannot get access this aspect of our intelligence if we have years of gunked up emotions shoved down and locked away in the body and heart. So what can happen is you get triggered. And just like double clicking a mouse, files and files of past experiences and emotion can flood your system. The reaction rarely seems equivalent to the current event, and people judge themselves about that. The cycle of shoving down the discomfort to get by usually continues until we either get sick of it and want to change, or the emotional backlog becomes so big we cannot cope anymore and need to change.
Why does this emotional health matter? Because during times when strategy and planning will not do, presence and intuition are extremely effective tools.
Our subconscious mind has a far superior computing capacity than our conscious/cognitive mind.
“The subconscious mind can process 20 000 000 bits of info per second. The conscious mind can only process 40 bits of info per second. So the subconscious mind can process 500 000 time more what the conscious mind is able to.”
Bruce Lipton – The Biology of Belief
Being brainy smart will not help you with your heart.
In my practice, I work with Intelligent, Sensitive, Powerhouses. Super smart people that are equally sensitive and carrying out a big purpose.
I love the first couple of months when these super-smarty-pants peeps attempt to make sense of everything from their old way of being. Their old way of being meant having the right answers, having a plan, doing the plan, then doing the next plan for the most part.
When years of old experiences build up and all their accomplishments cease to evoke satisfaction these smart successful people look for another way and seek methods outside their comfort zone.
Letting our emotional intelligence co-pilot with our heady intelligence is WAY outside of anyone’s comfort zone, but the benefits are worth it.
The cognitive mind is not meant to be the emotionally intelligent mind. I teach people to allow ALL of their intelligence systems to work together. It’s hard for people to put the brakes on not understanding everything, or needing to control or strategize in order to feel confident. It’s a big deal to begin to trust your emotional intelligence system. But, what happens over time as our intuition is naturally strengthened because there isn’t anything in the way of it. When we aren’t carrying baggage from the past our receptors to our intuitive intelligence are squeaky clean and clear. Being clear here, means being confident in life. And the good kind of confidence. Anyone can feel confident on a good day when everything goes right. I am talking about the unconditional confidence that comes from having your intuition unencumbered by your humanness. When you get here, your self-trust grows and very few things phase you anymore. It is the ultimate resilience. (and its much more fun!)
Keep in mind emotional health which leads to a powerful intuition cannot be realized by merely reading this article or a book. Just like reading about running or pushups will not get you in shape. We can use our mind and mindset to enhance our emotional intelligence, but true emotional health is the ability to trust the emotions, let them move, and come to the other side of them with fresh eyes, a clearer mind and lighter heart.
Once we are clear, then we can hear our own guidance.
Now is a great time to start.
For more info or to get help tapping into all your intelligence systems reach out to me here:
jennasmithcoaching.com
Photo credit:
Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash