Emotional Shift

I was never taught anything about emotions when growing up, so I believed that emotions were something in their own category: mind, body and emotions.  Later in life, spending many years working as a practitioner in addiction recovery, studying HeartMath, and practicing Yoga I now know that emotions are not in a stand alone category.

An emotion is physiology.

Physiology is the functioning capacity of the body. We have 11 functional systems of the body. Emotions are a combination of the nervous system, the endocrine system, the circulatory system and the respiratory system. The thing that drives all 11 physiological functional systems, and keeps everything alive, is energy (prana).

Emotion = E + Motion = Energy in motion.

So an emotion is just ENERGY. Energy moving in a specific way through the nervous system, the endocrine system, the circulatory system and the respiratory system. Depending on the combination of the cellular activity of these systems depends on the type of emotion we feel.

This is a great news, as this means we have the capacity to change and control our emotions at will because we have the ability to change our physiology at will. 

Each emotion has its own frequency.

High vibrational emotions heal, rejuvenate and raise our consciousness.

Low vibrational emotions slow all the functions of the body down, cause decay and disease, and move us into primitive or destructive behaviours.

On the emotional spectrum Fear is the lowest vibrational emotion and Love is the highest vibrational emotion.

If you took the time to go deeper into any ‘negative’ emotion like guilt, shame, sadness, anger, depression, anxiety, judgement, hate, or frustration, you will find that fear is at the root of it.  Fear is related energetically to the Base / Root Chakra. The Base / Root Chakra is all about stability, grounding, security, safety, survival, how we perceive ourselves in the world, and our focus on our basic needs of food, water and shelter. When the Base Chakra is out of balance, or when we are solely functioning energetically from our Base Chakra, we become fixated on ‘I’ and stop caring or thinking about ‘us’ or ‘the other person or other people’ creating unhealthy relationships, judgement, blame and separation. A lot of people at the moment are living from their Base Chakra due to fear of the coronavirus and changes that humanity is going through.

Regardless of the type of ‘negative’ low vibrational emotion, a lot of us find these emotions so uncomfortable that we don’t want to feel them and we end up doing one or more of the following to not feel: 

– Take a prescription tablet 

– Drink, smoke, eat, take drugs

 - Push it down 

– Avoid it

 - Ignore it

 - Keep ourselves distracted by keeping busy and focusing on other things outside of ourselves.

 - Spiraling with it. This means adding lots of mental meaning and adding a range of ideas and reasons to validate the way we feel. This makes it unbearable, uncontrollable and destructible.

 - Hurt or harm ourselves or others.

So what CAN we do when we find ourselves in a low vibrational emotion?

We can raise our energy and vibration.

1: Well, I’ll first refer to blog 1 of 5 on raising your frequency. There I wrote a list of things you can do to raise your vibration. These will also help with shifting your emotions in a healthy way.

2: If you want something specific to do for a specific emotion you can chose a Kundalini Yoga Kriya.

For example: Kriya for Removing Fear OR Kriya to Burn Inner Anger OR Meditation to conquer self-animosity.

3: We can change our physiology to change our emotional state.  Changing our breathing, changing our heart rate, and changing our brain wave activity are 3 areas we can easily influence. 

– Brain activity can be changed with sound or breath.  
– Heart rate can be changed with body movement or breath. 
– Breathing can be changed by taking control of our breathing.

You don’t have to figure this out on your own.

I am here to guide you to:

Discover your life’s purpose?

To identify the patterns, thoughts or behaviors keeping you stuck?

Too connect with your higher self and a higher power?

To have more fulfilling relationships, careers, and experiences?

Change your Physiology to Change your Emotion

Here’s a step by step way to shift your emotions by changing physiology using the breath:

Step 1: Realise that what you are feeling is an emotion.

Step 2: Remember that you are in control of your emotion and not the other way around.

Step 3: Allow yourself to fully feel the emotion. Don’t add thoughts, judgements or reason to why you have the emotion. Just feel it. Notice where in the body you feel it. It also helps to be able to name the emotion by saying: I am feeling ________.

Step 4: Change your physiology by taking control of your breathing. When we control our breathing through any breath practice we change the breathing rate, the heart rate, the heart rate variability and our brain wave patterns. When we do this the brain stimulates the nervous system and the endocrine system to function differently than they are currently doing (currently they are creating the feeling of an uncomfortable low vibrational emotion).  A good universal breath practice for all emotions is harmonising the breath. This is where you breathe in and out of your nose slowly, gently and deeply with awareness. The breath is a full breath where you breathe into your abdomen and rib cage to have full lung capacity and functionality. Continue with this smooth deep breathing and then balance the inhalation and exhalation in speed, intensity and depth. In other words the in breath and the out breath must be the same. Ideally 5 counts or more for the inhale, and 5 counts or more for the exhale.

Step 5: Shift your focus to something other than the emotion. It is best practice to be focusing on something within yourself like: focusing on your breath, or the feeling of the breath at the nostrils, or counting the breath, or focusing on your heart.

 Practice for as long as you need, but at least 5 minutes.

Steps 1 to 5 changes the physiology and therefore the emotion, and we move into a state of Ease.  Once you are in a state of Ease it is easier to reach into higher vibrational positive emotions like appreciation, joy and love.

Other Tips to change your emotions

– Practice gratitude
 - Practice mindful eating by eating slower and appreciating every bite of your food
 - Spend time in nature or look at nature 
– Pet or cuddle your pet 
– Slow down 
– Meditate 
– Practice the breathing practice mentioned above daily, even if you don’t feel any negative emotions.  
– Do these two Kundalini Yoga Classes on Mental & Emotional Balance: click here.