Relearning It's Safe to Feel
One Conscious Breath: Issue 25
How feeling fully in the present allows us to release the echoes of the past
Before we begin, I invite you to take one conscious breath. Feel the cool air as it enters your nostrils. Follow it as deeply as it goes into your body. And then exhale. Out of your mouth. Slowly. Elongate the release as much as you can. And as you exhale, feel your shoulders drop. Feel your jaw soften. Feel your feet firmly on the floor. Now pause. Give yourself permission to simply be. In this silence. For just one conscious breath. And then gently meet whatever arises ~ whatever has been waiting underneath all the inner and outer noise ~ for a moment of stillness like this one. And when you’re ready ~ let’s begin.
Last week I shared The Most Generous Gift I’ve Ever Received. My daughter’s innocent cry activated the deepest wounds buried within me. What I was experiencing when I heard her cry was an echo of a memory feeling being activated. She wasn’t doing anything wrong. And I wasn’t under an actual threat. This gift of being triggered by her cry was the opportunity for me to finally feel and release emotions I didn’t even know were still lying dormant within me.
And after more than 20 years of helping people safely return to feeling, I get this question more often than any other:
"How do we return to safely feeling when our nervous system has learned that feeling is a threat?"
We know emotions are energy in motion ~ simply physiology ~ alerting us to something happening within us. Our emotional radar is so sensitive ~ our body senses threats before our brain can discern if they are real or remembered. We need to know if this signal is alerting us to something happening in present time. Or if it’s an echo of a memory feeling, an emotional charge of an event long since passed, that was never adaptively released. This is where memory feeling continues to live in our body.
The event causing the emotion may be long over, but the emotional charge has yet to be released.
We may not have learned it was safe for us to fully feel our emotions when we were little. We needed an adult to teach our nervous system to remain flexible in feeling and releasing emotions. If this didn’t happen, the energy of emotion got stored in our bodies, never adaptively released. Even though we grew up, our nervous system may be continuing to sense emotions as threats.
Until we learn how to feel and release this energy, it will remain in our body to be triggered over and over again. So, it would make sense, intellectually, to avoid anything that may trigger this reactivation. I get it. But emotions are physiology ~ they simply are. And the more adaptive, healthy way to live is by meeting them from our fully resourced, present-day self. A self that is safe to feel in the present moment.
What I love about this work is that it is never too late to learn something new. It’s never too late to rewire our brain and update our nervous system to safety in the present moment.
When we tune into our bodies, we have the capacity and accessibility to move our nervous system from being stuck in a perpetual threat response to a state of safety, flexibility and flow. The way our nervous system is meant to operate and we are meant to live. Freely feeling our feelings ~ receiving a signal from an emotion and then releasing its energy.
And releasing is the part where a lot of people get stuck. Most of us see our patterns, know our attachment strategies and can retell our stories. Yet the energy remains. The deeper work, the more aligned work, is being able to feel ~ our emotions, our bodies, our hearts. We know now that we don’t think our way into emotional release. We feel our way through it.
Practice ~ Feeling Again, One Conscious Breath at a Time
If you feel most comfortable and safe in your head, disconnected from the wisdom of your body, or if your nervous system senses feeling as a threat, I invite you to take this practice slowly. Knowing at any time you can stop. You have more choice now than you ever did when your body first began learning what was needed to keep you safe and help you survive. There is no rushing this work and, in fact, the slower and more intentionally we go, the faster we’re able to feel safe in the present moment.
The slower and more intentionally we go, the faster we’re able to feel safe in the present moment.
Slowing down and feeling sensation in your body, one conscious breath at a time, gives you space enough to ask: Is this a reaction to what is actually happening now? Or is it a thought or a memory feeling from something that happened long ago ~ something I have already survived?
Since our body reacts to a thought as if it’s happening in the moment, a memory can trigger an emotional response that makes us feel as if we’re back in time, re-experiencing it. So, instead of thinking a thought that will induce a threat or fear response in our bodies, we are going to use our thoughts to work for us, to invite feelings of safety back into our bodies in the present moment. This felt sense of safety within allows us to have increased capacity and space to feel and adaptively release any emotions that may arise.
Think of a time when you felt safe. This may be a stretch for some. If that’s too big of an ask, think of anything ~ an experience, person, animal, place, event, song, smell ~ no matter how big or small ~ that made you feel alive. Something or someone that ignited a spark within you. Invite as many of your senses into this remembered experience as you can access. What was happening within when you felt this sense of safety?
I often use the ocean as my anchor to safety. I can feel my feet digging into the warm sand. Smell the salt in the sea air. I feel the cool water of the Pacific Ocean splash on my skin. I see the waves come in sets. And then hear them crash into the shore. I marvel at the expansiveness of the sky, the horizon, the sun. I feel my whole body buoyed by the strength of the water. Whatever memory comes up for you, really bring it alive in your body ~ feel it, as fully as possible, in this moment, here and now.
Think of this exercise as a dance where you shift your awareness away from the thought and into your body ~ moment by moment, breath by breath. Privilege any sensation you feel in your body. What do you notice? Any increased awareness or movement in your breath? Any more heat or coldness anywhere? Do you notice your hands or feet more acutely? Or perhaps you feel nothing at all.
There’s no right or wrong answer here. We’re simply getting curious about what happens in our body when we think a thought. Something is always happening in our body. This is just an exercise to help you tune into it.
Notice any sensations ~ don’t judge them. They’re neither good nor bad. They simply are.
At the core, we’re slowly re-learning that it’s safe to feel. And as adults, we have the capacity to be with ~ and feel ~ any sensations as they arise, knowing and trusting that no feeling lasts forever.
Our fully resourced, present-day self can meet whatever arises ~ and let it release.
One conscious breath at a time. This is the practice.
Slowly. Gently. Intentionally. Compassionately.
I’d love to hear from you.
When a threat has passed ~ what do you actively do to return your body to a felt sense of safety?
How you return to feeling safe in your body could help someone else find their way back to safety in theirs.
Let me know in the comments ~
With love and One Conscious Breath,
Jody
Comments