Connecting With Our Emotional Body

I created this script for you to create some time and space in your life to get in touch with some of your feelings and where they reside in your body and some of your thoughts in your internal world that you may not always take time and give attention to.

So let's take a moment to get your phones turned off or put on silent and you've told everyone who's in your environment that you're not to be disturbed right now.

That this is your time to be quiet and reflective.

This is your space.

This is your space for you to really drop in and explore the experience of your body and your deeper mind.

So I invite you now to make yourself really comfortable.

You may close your eyes or you just may gaze softly not really looking at anything in particular but maybe narrowing the field of vision.

Now allow your awareness to start dropping downwards and inwards.

Bring your attention and your awareness into the simple sensation of your body contacting with the chair,

The couch,

Whatever surface you notice.

And notice that feeling of contact down your spine,

Down your back,

Underneath your legs and if not already,

If you're sitting,

Plant both of your feet squarely on the ground just bringing your attention to the simple sensation of your feet touching the ground.

Breathe normally,

Naturally,

Just drawing your awareness downwards and inwards.

Scanning through your body to cultivate a curiosity about what's happening in each moment.

Even though some of the sensations you may notice could be a bit painful or uncomfortable,

We're just going to notice the vast spectrum of sensation inside the experience of our body as we allow ourselves to tune into it.

Take time now to cultivate a curiosity about what you're experiencing right now.

As you allow your consciousness to keep dropping downwards and inwards,

Now bring your awareness to your breath.

Without changing it,

Just notice.

Is it in your chest?

Is it down in your belly?

Does it feel calm and relaxed?

Does it flow easily or do you notice a tightness?

There's no right or wrong about this.

We're just noticing our body and our breath.

If you do notice that you're breathing quite shallowly,

Just ease into breathing a bit more deeply now and in this practice,

Breathe in and out through your mouth.

If you're not doing that right now,

Just opening your mouth a little bit and allowing the breath to flow in and out through your mouth.

It might feel a bit unusual at first,

But it is important in opening up to feelings and allowing us to connect a bit more deeply.

Now as we draw our awareness down and into our body,

We're really inviting these deeper parts of ourselves that don't always get to express themselves.

Earlier in our life,

For whatever reason,

We may not have been able to feel them or make contact with them.

It's very common.

It's part of our human existence.

When there isn't space in our lives,

We often push these parts of ourselves down out of our awareness.

And as Dr.

Sarno observed,

Sometimes these unspoken feelings can initiate symptoms of the mind-body or TMS process.

Disconnecting our mind from our emotions and our physical body can manifest as pain or some other kind of persistent symptom,

A mind-body symptom.

So we've started to open a space now for a deeper self to emerge.

I'd like you to imagine it as an invitation,

An invitation to be more whole,

To be more grounded,

To be more authentic.

You may feel a little bit of fear or trepidation at creating space for all of these feelings,

All of these parts of yourself,

Your emotional life,

And you don't have to force yourself into it or force yourself to feel something.

If you're approaching this with an attitude of effort or doing,

Just let that go and try to be easeful.

Ease into it.

The essence of this practice is really allowing yourself to accept and surrender to what is.

So just keep drawing your experience downwards and inwards and just notice the sensations in your body.

Perhaps you notice that your stomach is a bit tight.

You might notice there's warmth in your arms.

You might notice a bit of tingling or tightness in your head or your neck.

Everyone's experience in each moment is absolutely unique.

So just notice your experience in this moment.

What do you observe in your body right now?

Coming back to the breath,

Breathing in and out through your mouth.

If you notice that your breath has gone quite shallow,

I want you to open your breath a little bit more.

Breathing a little more deeply,

Perhaps down into your belly.

If you're noticing a symptom starting to flare up or a spark a little bit,

It could be that it's trying to stop you from feeling something,

Trying to prevent you from connecting with something a little bit deeper.

Sometimes our mind and our body try to protect us.

As you practice,

You'll get more comfortable knowing that its intentions are good but reminding yourself that you are safe and capable.

That is,

After all,

What these symptoms do.

They keep us busy,

Distracted and even too tired to look at other things and our awareness.

So let's just take a moment and talk to this symptom.

Talk to that protective part of you and say,

I don't need your protection right now.

Thank you for trying to keep me safe.

Right now I'm ready for the feelings instead of the symptoms.

Give me the feelings and not the pain or discomfort.

And as you say this and pause afterward,

Stay curious.

You're safe in the moment,

So create an opening for those honest feelings and see if you can just take your awareness a little bit below the pain or below that symptom,

Whatever it is that is distracting your attention.

Just see if you get a subtle sense.

It might be there's an anger there,

Perhaps a sadness.

It could be fear.

It could be guilt.

It could be a combination of feelings.

It could be joy.

Sometimes we don't let ourselves feel the positive feelings either.

Positive feelings might let our guard down.

So keep bringing your awareness down and inwards into your body,

Into just whatever you're noticing in your body and your feelings right now.

There's no right or wrong.

With this experience you might be having a strong and intense experience or you might just have a subtle,

Hard-to-notice experience.

You might feel like there's nothing happening at all.

And if you do feel that nothing's happening,

I just encourage you to relax a bit more.

Breathe a bit more deeply and just keep bringing your awareness downwards and inwards into your body and just trusting that what needs to show up is going to show up.

You don't need to make yourself feel anything.

Just allow yourself to feel.

If you notice your body starting to twitch or move,

Jerk or vibrate,

Just go with it.

Let it happen.

It's just a sign of some energy moving,

Some nerves waking up.

Just embrace it.

Allow it.

Noticing if some feelings have shown up.

Deepening your experience of them a little bit by naming them so you can actually say it out loud.

Wonder to yourself,

What would this feeling say if it could talk?

And I want you to say that out loud right now.

You can work with this sentence stem.

If this feeling could talk right now,

It might just say.

If this feeling could talk right now,

It might say.

And just allowing yourself to complete the sentence speaking from that feeling.

Okay now coming back to your body again,

Scanning up and down,

Moving your attention down into your legs,

Up into your arms.

Keep working and ask yourself again.

If these feelings could talk right now,

What would they say?

And ask yourself if that's helping you to connect with your feelings or express your feelings.

And now let's just take our attention to our whole body and notice whether anything has changed in your experience of your body a little bit since we started.

Maybe it's changed a lot.

Maybe it hasn't changed at all.

There's no right or wrong.

We're just noticing and the more we practice this,

The more we'll notice and the more our body will ease and trust that we can handle the emotions and the sensations and all the things it's giving us.

Now we're going to start to come out of the practice.

So that's making a last observation of what's happening in your body and your feelings right now.

And then opening your eyes.

And we'll end there and spend a little bit of time integrating whatever emerged in whatever way feels right.

You might just want to spend some time noticing and allowing how you feel or noticing the room and how the objects in them appear to you now.

Or maybe you feel a little different about yourself or something in your life or just feel different.

There's no right or wrong.

Just spend some time doing what you need to do to integrate and move on with your session and your day.