Do you know when it is inside you and you don´t know what it is?
That bad feeling,
That emotion,
Something happened to you,
But you don´t know exactly why it is that disturbed you so much and then it comes in the form of a physical feeling somewhere in your body.
It happens often to me.
The last time it was like a ball of fire located in the lower chest, really in the center.
I had an unlucky encounter with a friend and I couldn´t react quickly (I can almost never), so, as usually I let it rest until I could understand what I was feeling and why.
Hours passed and I got to name it.
I was mad.
I felt anger.
So badly.
I knew I had to talk to this person about it; otherwise the fire ball would come out in an inappropiate moment and in the wrong way.
Anger grew up along the day.
I tried to stop that growth using three tools in the following order:
- Talking to friends. That does wonders to me, because it helps me understand what is going on inside.
- Exercising. In this case I used yoga, a whole 1.5 hours-practice of Ashtanga Yoga. It helps chanelling emotions and let them integrate in your body.
- Getting drunk. I needed it in the evening. I had a pretty hard time with anger during the day so I knew that escaping from my mind and being a bit crazy for a good while would help. And it did.
The following day I encouraged myself and opened my heart to this person, letting her know in a calm way what I had felt and why I was mad. From a first conversation I still had a bad feeling inside, even though she apologized, so I tried a second time, in a much friendlier and relaxed way, since we both already knew what was going on.
In that second approach smiles and hugs happened naturally.
It´s beautiful when:
- Something moves inside you, good or bad emotion, you call it. That means you are alive and you are not just a cow that eats grass all day long.
- You take the time to understand what is going on inside you.
- You approach the person with whom you have the problem, explain to her what you feel and you solve it together. By the way, hugs cure.
You feel lighter afterwards, something releases inside yourself, the knot gets undone.
what I learnt
I only needed 5 minutes into my yoga session to understand why I was feeling anger so hard.
Really, 5 minutes.
On the 3rd sun salutation.
I felt anger because I needed to grow. That´s why we experience bad emotions: to grow, to understand better ourselves, to overcome a new problem, to understand better other people.
Anger, sadness, apathy, fear…
Whatever you can call a bad emotion is actually the best help for your personal growth. They move you so that you feel so unconfortable that you have no other chance than to solve them. When you can name them, understand what caused them and solve them, new emotions will come back in the future, but you already have that background to understand more easily what´s going on.
So be thankful.
Appreciate those bad emotions, because they are there to help you.
They are part of you.
Enjoy them.
Accept them.
And take them with care.