Be The Captain Of Your Ship: The 4-Steps To Emotional Freedom

Namaste,

Welcome to this meditation.

So I just want you to come into a nice comfortable position.

You don't have to be in a particular lotus position or sitting like a guru.

Just make sure you're sitting nice and comfortably.

Just take a moment to come into this meditation position.

Just making sure at least that your back is straight and that you're comfortable.

And when you're ready to,

Just closing your eyes.

I want you to take a nice deep breath in through the nose.

And let it out through the mouth with a sigh.

Take another nice deep inhalation through the nose.

And exhale through the mouth,

Letting it go with a sigh.

And just one more nice deep breath in.

And just let it all go with a sigh.

Feeling your shoulders drop,

Feel your body relax.

And I want you now to drop your right ear to your right shoulder.

And just breathe into the left hand side of your neck.

Just releasing any tension that you might be feeling.

And just breathe.

And then inhale back to centre.

And now take your head,

Take your left ear over to your left shoulder.

And stretch and breathe into the right hand side of your neck.

Maybe noticing any differences here.

Perhaps you're a little bit more tense on one side than the other.

Just breathe.

Inhale back to centre.

Exhale,

Take your right ear over to your right shoulder.

And breathe into the left side of your neck again.

Inhaling back to centre.

Exhale,

Taking your left ear down to your left shoulder.

And breathe into your right side of your neck.

And inhale back to centre.

Now I want you to drop your head back and really open up the front of your throat,

Your neck.

And breathe into this space.

Opening up your throat area,

Your throat chakra,

Your vashuddha chakra,

Your centre for communication.

And inhaling back to centre.

Exhaling,

Dropping your head forward and tucking your chin into your chest as you stretch out the back of your neck.

And inhale back to centre.

Now I want you to take your right hand and place it in a pranayama mudra.

So you're going to either fold your index finger and your middle finger down into your palm.

With your ring finger and little finger and thumb sticking up.

Or you can place your two piece fingers,

Which is your index finger and your middle finger,

You can place them on your third eye.

It's really up to you,

Whichever is most comfortable.

And I want you to take your right thumb and place it on your right nostril.

And what you're going to do is we're going to be doing some alternate nostril breathing for about five rounds.

So that means breathing in through your left nostril,

Out through your right.

Breathing in through your right and back through your left.

That's one round.

Always starting and ending on the left nostril.

So let's begin together.

So inhale through your left nostril.

Close your left nostril off with your ring finger and little finger.

Release your right and exhale through your right nostril.

Stay right here.

Breathe in through your right nostril.

Use your thumb to close your right nostril off.

Release your left and exhale left.

That's one round.

We'll do four more.

So inhale left nostril.

Close your left.

Release your right.

Exhale.

Inhale right.

Close your right.

Release your left.

And just continue in your own rhythm.

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When you next come to exhaling on your left nostril,

Just release your right hand down to your lap and just breathe normally.

Just relax.

Maybe noticing any changes in your body.

Any differences to how you were feeling maybe five or ten minutes ago.

The alternate nostril breathing is a balanced breathing practice that balances our energy centres,

Our Ida and our Pingala.

Which crisscross around our Sushumna,

Which is our central energy centre,

Our energy superhighway.

By doing this alternate nostril breathing we're balancing the energies in our male and female energies,

Our left and right energies,

Our moon and sun energies.

Just brings us to a point of balance.

What I want you to do is I want you to bring your awareness to the top of your head.

I want you to imagine almost like a shower has been switched on and feel the water hitting your skull and cascading down around your head,

Around your skull.

Just imagine that water as you relax your skull.

Feel the water.

Like a wave of relaxation washing over your head.

Now bring that awareness down to the base of your skull.

Down to your neck and just feeling into any tension you might still be holding there.

Now take your awareness down your right shoulder,

Past your right bicep,

Your tricep and into your right elbow.

Past your elbow into your right forearm,

Both the outside and the inside of your forearm.

Into your right wrist,

Relaxing your right wrist,

The back of your right hand,

Your thumb,

Your fingers,

Your right palm.

Your right arm is now completely relaxed.

Now I just want you to transfer that energy,

That attention from your right palm into your left palm.

Relaxing your left palm,

Your left fingers,

Your left thumb,

The back of your left hand,

Your left wrist,

Your left forearm,

The inside and outside of your left forearm.

Coming up into your left elbow,

The bony part of your left elbow,

Your left bicep,

Your left tricep,

Your left shoulder.

Just coming across your shoulder to meet again at the base of your skull,

At the top of your spine.

And as you have your awareness here,

I just want you to become aware of your spine and of the spinal fluid that travels up and down your spine.

The spinal fluid that transports our chemicals,

Our hormones and specifically our emotional molecules.

The molecules that travel around our body,

That make up the feelings and the emotions that we experience.

So maybe just wiggle your spine just a little bit,

Maybe just feeling into any tension.

Just as you do so,

Take your awareness down your spine.

So starting on the upper back,

And your shoulder blades,

Coming to your middle back,

Down your lower back,

Down into your tailbone.

And coming to rest in your hips and in your sit bones.

I just want you to now just be aware of what it is that you're sitting on.

Just with each exhale,

Just sinking a little bit deeper.

Maybe you're sitting on the carpet,

Maybe you're sitting on a chair,

Maybe you're sitting on your meditation cushion.

Take a deep inhale.

And with the exhale,

Just sinking a little bit deeper into that connection,

Grounding you into whatever it is that you're sitting on,

Grounding that connection.

And now taking your awareness into your hips,

Your hip joints.

We hold so much tension in our hips,

Still so much emotional tension,

Emotional energy.

I want you to take your awareness now down the back of your legs,

So your hamstrings into your knees,

So the back of your knees,

The middle of your knee,

The sides of your knee.

Maybe becoming aware of any aches or pains,

And just breathe into that.

Knowing that if you are feeling any discomfort in your knees,

As soon as you stand up,

That pain will go,

So it isn't really real.

Not really.

Coming down the backs of your lower legs,

So your calf muscles,

Coming past your ankles,

The tops of your feet,

The soles of your feet.

Just resting for a moment here,

Just feeling that energy in the soles of your feet.

Good.

And if you've noticed that your attention is drifting,

That's okay.

Every three to five seconds,

The mind is always going to start thinking about something.

Just be happy that you noticed.

Just smile.

Bring your attention back gently to your breath,

To this awareness in your body.

As we start to bring that awareness now up your front body,

So starting on the tops of your feet,

Bringing your awareness up your shins,

To the front of your knees,

The sides of your knees.

Up past your thighs,

And back into your hips.

Just placing a hand on your lower abdomen now,

I just want you to feel as you inhale,

Just feel your belly inflate.

And as you exhale,

Feeling your belly fall.

This isn't about changing the breath at all,

This is just simple awareness,

Just pure awareness of what this energy is doing to your body physiologically.

Just as you inhale,

Your belly rises,

And as you exhale,

Belly falls.

Bring your awareness up to your chest,

To your heart space.

Again,

Just feeling that with each inhale,

Feeling your chest expand.

And with each exhale,

Feeling your chest just fall.

Again,

Not trying to change the breath here,

Just pure awareness.

Just feeling into the sensations of the body.

And bringing your awareness up past your front of your neck and into your face.

Starting with your jaw,

Just being aware of your jaw,

Is it clenched,

Is it tight,

Is it loose?

Maybe just parting your lips slightly,

Just to release the jaw,

Rather than grinding your teeth.

Imagine relaxing each one of your teeth.

And then bring your attention up to your cheekbones,

So your left cheek,

Your right cheek.

And now to your eyes,

So your left eye,

Your right eye.

Your eyelids are feeling nice and heavy as we sink deeper and deeper into this relaxation.

Relaxing all the muscles on your forehead.

And just keeping your eyes closed,

Your whole face is now completely relaxed.

And keeping your eyes closed,

I want you to look up towards your forehead,

Towards your third eye,

Or your Arjuna chakra.

This is the centre for our higher consciousness.

The more we can open our third eye,

The more we can receive wisdom,

Intuition,

Creativity.

So I just want you to look up towards your third eye,

Towards your forehead,

Towards the centre of your eyebrows,

In between your eyebrows.

Just imagine this third eye opening,

And imagine a bright white light beaming into it.

Just receive that bright white energy in through your third eye.

Good.

And now what we're going to do is we're going to start tapping into our emotional intelligence.

And this literally is the power to just become aware of the emotions that are happening inside of our body.

And not only that,

But to take control,

To be the masters of our minds,

To be the captains of our ships.

So that we're in control of our emotions rather than our emotions being in control of us.

And there are four steps,

Or four keys,

To this emotional freedom to boosting and strengthening our emotional intelligence.

So many of us have stuck emotion or pent up emotion that we were never really taught how to express or release.

And often that emotion can get blocked inside of us.

When we talk about the chakra system,

A lot of the time there are blockages in our energy centres or our chakras.

And it's often related to pent up energy,

Or emotions that have literally become stuck in the body causing a blockage.

But if we learn to recognise our emotions and not become attached to them,

Learn to let them flow through us like free flowing water or pass through us like a wave,

The more we can learn to do that,

The more free and light we become in our lives and we move into a space of enlightenment.

And that's what we're going to learn to do today.

So the first step to emotional freedom is simple awareness.

I want you now to just become aware of what triggers you,

What causes you to have an emotional reaction.

You know,

Who annoys you?

Or maybe something happened yesterday and you got really angry.

Just think about the triggers in your life.

Maybe think about patterns of emotion,

Maybe a theme that comes up in your life often.

Maybe you feel frustrated or rejected,

Not heard.

Maybe you feel angry.

Whatever it is,

Just start to tune into what your triggers are and what emotion that causes in you.

Maybe think of the last time you got angry.

Just focus in on what caused you to become angry.

What was the trigger?

And then I want you to ask yourself,

As a result of feeling that emotion,

What did it cause me to do or think?

So maybe being angry,

Did it cause you to shout or lash out?

Did it maybe cause you to think that that person doesn't care about you?

Or that you think that they're doing something in a way that they shouldn't be doing?

Maybe they're not meeting your expectations.

Just be mindful of the actions and the thoughts that this emotion brings up in you.

So the triggers,

The emotion,

What it causes you to do and think.

This is the first step to emotional freedom,

To strengthening our emotional intelligence is just purely to bring awareness to what's going on,

To shine a light and to take ownership for it.

So just think and meditate on that feeling,

That emotion that you're experiencing right now,

Just for a few moments.

Good.

Now the second step to our emotional freedom is to learn to acknowledge that whilst the triggers are happening outside of us,

Whilst we might be being annoyed by someone else or a scenario is happening that's irritating us.

Whilst that's happening on the outside,

We learn to acknowledge that actually this anger,

This frustration,

This fear,

This rejection,

It's a sensation that's happening inside of us.

So with our emotions,

With our emotional reactions,

There are two sides to the coin.

On the one side is the external trigger and that may be being triggered by thinking patterns or conditioning on the one hand,

But still an external trigger,

Someone or something that's triggering us to feel a certain way.

And then on the other side of the coin,

There's the physical sensation that's happening within our body.

So the physical sensation of anger might feel like you're clenching your hands or your jaw.

You can feel your body constricting,

Tightening up.

Or if it's fear,

Maybe it's the physical sensations of just making yourself small.

Just start to tune into that emotion that you were working with before.

Just ask yourself,

What does it feel like to feel anger or to feel sadness?

Where do you feel it in your body?

Is there a particular body part?

Maybe you feel anger in your hands.

Maybe you feel fear in your heart or in your stomach.

Just start to use your powers of perception to tune into what's going on in your body when you feel that emotion,

What's happening internally.

And just recognize that that is happening inside of you,

Which means that you have the power to do something about it.

Recognize also that these are just sensations that we have labeled as fear or anger.

But actually,

When you look at it or when you feel it,

The physical sensations of excitement are exactly the same physical sensations as fear.

So we might feel that our heart is racing.

We might feel that our palms are sweaty.

Both of these emotions actually exemplify very,

Very similar physical sensations in the body.

And yet we label one as fear and we label the other as excitement.

So just,

I want you now,

Just like a curious kid,

I want you to feel into what this emotion feels like and I want you to take notes in your mind.

What does this emotion feel like in my body?

Good.

Now our third step to emotional intelligence,

Emotional freedom,

Is learning to accept that this is simply how we're feeling.

No attachments,

No judgment,

No criticism.

We are simply feeling this emotion.

We're not getting stuck on being identified as that emotion.

We're simply experiencing that emotion.

Our consciousness is experiencing anger.

You could almost say to yourself,

This is me experiencing fear.

This is what fear feels like.

And that's just what's happening to me right now.

And as best you can,

Just learn to allow those feelings to wash through you like a wave,

Knowing that they will pass.

With no attachments to it,

No expectations.

Just simply learning to accept that fear and anger are just as much a part of you as love and compassion.

You don't have to react to these emotions and in fact we can learn to introduce a pause between what's happening to us and what we choose to do about it,

How we choose to respond.

And this is really where the strength of emotional intelligence starts to come from,

Is this ability to choose how we respond to a situation.

We can learn to adapt and adjust to our environment.

Really choose our response rather than simply reacting in a preconditioned way.

The more you do this,

The more you practice this,

I promise you the more liberating it will become.

And as part of this acceptance,

What I want you to practice now is maybe something you haven't done before.

I want you to imagine that emotion that you've been working with today or a pattern that you experience,

A theme.

And I want you to almost imagine it,

Embody it as a small child,

Maybe a younger version of yourself.

Just imagine this emotion out in front of you.

Maybe you've tried to push this emotion away or suppress it or ignore it.

But what I want you to do now is I want you to hold your hand out and I want you to ask it to come and sit with you.

I want you to take its hand.

Ask your fear,

Ask your anger,

Ask your hatred to come and sit with you.

Invite them in.

Turn and face these emotions with love and light.

And as they sit next to you,

Maybe put your arm around them.

I just want you to nurture them,

Make them feel loved.

And I know it maybe can be challenging coming at this depending on which emotion it is or which scenario or which story it is that you've gone to.

But coming from a place of complete safety,

I just want you to nurture and welcome in this emotion.

Put your arm around it,

Maybe hold it like a young baby if that feels better.

But just sit in its company.

Because actually when we start to embrace all of our emotions,

The full spectrum of our emotions,

We can start to use them as a compass.

As a compass that tells us where we need to grow and what lessons we need to learn.

So for example,

Hatred or anger might teach us that we still need to show more loving compassion either to ourselves or to other people.

And fear might show us that we need to have more courage in ourselves.

So just invite those emotions in next time you feel those denser emotions.

Invite them in,

Get to know them.

Lean into them to find out what lessons they have to share with you.

Don't turn them away,

Invite them in,

Welcome them in.

The more you're able to do this,

The more empowered you are in your own liberation,

I promise you.

And then the fourth step on our emotional freedom journey is to look and use the exact opposite emotion as a means to melt away,

To liberate,

To transform and transcend those emotions.

We're not rejecting those emotions but sometimes we can get stuck,

We have a grip or they have a grip on us which is just stopping us from moving forwards.

And in order to break ourselves free from those patterns and to really liberate us so that we can embrace all our emotions equally,

We can use the opposite emotion to what we're feeling in order to liberate ourselves and transcend and transform.

And I really want you to understand this point that if you have hatred inside of you then you also have love and compassion.

If you have fear or sadness inside of you then you also have courage and hope and joy and bliss.

Every single human being on the planet has this capacity for all the spectrum of all the emotions.

But often times we get stuck thinking that the denser emotions are our only option and we just get stuck in those lower vibrations.

But we can use the exact opposite to help us liberate and move past,

Transcend.

So what I want you to do now is I want you to take that emotion that you've been working with,

So maybe it's anger,

Maybe it's frustration,

Maybe it's sadness.

And I want you now to just imagine and focus on the exact opposite.

So if you've got anger in your heart then you've also got love and forgiveness.

If you've got fear you've also got courage and confidence.

If you have sadness you also have happiness and joy.

Just using the power of your mind right now to focus on the exact opposite and shine your light on this exact opposite emotion.

Raising your frequency,

Raising your vibration to a higher state of consciousness as you do so.

And the more you do this the more you learn to transcend the levels of consciousness to the higher states of consciousness.

And the more we stay in the higher states of consciousness the healthier our immune system is,

The more wisdom we garner.

So just for a few moments I want you to just feel that opposite emotion,

Whether it's love,

Happiness,

Bliss,

Courage,

Confidence.

Just feel what that feels like in your body,

The exact opposite.

Where do you feel it?

Do you feel it in your heart,

In your head,

In your tummy?

Just breathe into it for the next few moments,

Just really feel that emotion filling your body up.

Amazing.

Now I want you to take that emotion,

That feeling,

And I want you to specifically bring it into your heart space,

Maybe placing your hands in your heart space.

I want you to imagine your heart beginning to glow with each breath like how you would burn,

You'd blow on the embers of a fire and the fire would glow and grow.

With each one of your breaths I want you to imagine there's a spark of light in your heart that's made up of this energy and with each breath the spark is going to get brighter and brighter and brighter in your heart like you're blowing on the embers of a fire.

Allow this light to consume you,

Getting brighter and brighter as it fills your whole heart and now it fills your entire body and it's all around you.

You're now sitting inside a bubble or a sphere that is full of this light.

Just feel that all around you,

That energy.

Maybe an arm width distance all around you.

Just sitting in that sphere of bright white light filled with this positive energy and as you do so I want you now to imagine projecting this energy out to the world,

To every single being on this planet.

Just beam it out,

Just project it out as far as you can feel beyond your borders.

I want you to imagine every single being receiving this into their heart space.

Maybe you can imagine other meditators around the world right now receiving this into their heart space in their own now moments whether they're receiving it now or whether they're meditating in the future.

We all are connected.

Just imagine them all receiving this energy into their heart space.

As you do so I now want you to imagine every single one of those beings,

Those meditators who have received your energy into their heart space.

I want you now to imagine that they are projecting that exact same energy,

That same frequency back from their heart space into yours.

Receive that energy into your heart space now from every single one of the beings on the planet that received your energy.

You receive it back ten,

A hundred,

A million fold into your heart space.

Just take a moment to receive that energy like a thunderbolt coming directly into your heart space and just feel that.

Allow it to fill you up.

Allow a smile to come across your face.

Amazing.

From this state of bliss,

I want us now to plant seeds of intentions together.

Seeds of higher states of consciousness that we can plant into this freshly cultivated furrow of our minds.

In this place of pure awareness I want you to plant seeds of intentions.

So just repeating after me mentally.

Joyful,

Energetic body.

Joyful,

Energetic body.

Loving,

Compassionate heart.

Just bringing your attention up to your third eye so look up to your forehead as we think.

An alert,

Reflective mind.

Just bring your attention to the top of your head for a lightness of being.

Just taking a moment now to feel into any sensations in the body.

Just taking a moment now to feel into any sensations in the body.

Plant these intentions just feeling how your body responds to that.

Maybe you felt them in a particular place.

Just bring our meditation to a close.

Taking a nice deep breath in,

Bring your arms up overhead.

Bring your right palm to meet the left.

Bring your hands down through your centre line,

Coming to rest at your heart centre.

Taking a nice deep breath in.

And as you exhale just bowing in gratitude to yourself.

You the one that brought you here to do this work.

You the one that is connected to all that is.

When you are ready just gently flutter your eyes open to come back into this space and time together.

Namaste.