From a very young age, we were all feeling emotions.
And we used to express these emotions in a varied array of displays:
- Hitting;
- Crying;
- Screaming;
- Throwing a tantrum.
These all are natural, intuitive ways of expressing emotions.
But there is something wrong with these ways of expressing emotions:
They can — and sometimes do — hurt those around us.
As a result, most of us learned that we better not express our emotions. We better bury them.
Or, in other words, we better suppress, or repress, our emotions.
When we stop expressing our emotions, we think those around us won’t get hurt.
The problem is, though, that suppressed and repressed emotions tend to linger inside of us, and they have a tendency to create some harm.
For example, they might keep on bubbling and flaring inside us — and then erupt at the smallest of triggers, leaving a trail of destruction all around us.
Or, we might become so good at hiding our emotions, that we lose access to them ourselves. We can live our entire lives thinking we don’t know how it feels to feel.
So expressing emotions is not so good (it may hurt those around us). But repressing and suppressing them is not so good either (it may hurt us in the long run).
What should we do with our emotions then?
The best thing to do with our emotions is to RELEASE them.
Emotions are never good nor bad.
Emotions are always neutral.
Although some emotions feel nice in our body (then we want more of them) and other emotions don’t feel nice at all (then we might want to get rid of them), at the end of the day emotions are basically a form of energy that is simply a part of being alive.
And the healthiest way to deal with emotions is to let them go.
In an ideal world, we want the emotions to move inside our body, compel us to the right action at the moment, and then move outside from our body.
Then we will be completely free to do whatever it is we need to do at any given moment.
Emotions won’t cloud our judgement when it is time for us to act upon anything that life presents us with.
So how do we let go of emotions, you might ask?
There are many healthy ways to do so, and they all have two things in common:
- Stirring away from the story that “caused” (or triggered) the emotions;
- Focusing on the emotion itself and stopping the urge to either change it or hold on to it.
We can practice letting go using our mind (a powerful tool which I often recommend is The Sedona Method, but there are others, of course),
And we can practice letting go using our body.
The principal of letting go of emotions using our body is that we find a safe space to release the emotions — all the energies that are stuck in our body — without hurting anyone else.
We can scream into a pillow, cry, or go for a jog.
Or we can use both our mind and our body.
Why is free-flow dancing my favorite tool for releasing emotions?
Apart form the fact that I simply love dancing,
I find that free-flow dancing can combine the mind and the body when releasing emotions.
We start by bringing our awareness into those emotions that bubble from within.
We allow them to flow freely and we notice that our essence — our true selves — has nothing to fear even when strong emotions circulate within us. Those emotions will not break us, nor do they have the power to change our core being.
Then, the free flow of our body allows all those energies that are stuck inside to move and they awake, giving them the freedom to run their course inside our body until they can escape from it altogether.
It is such a powerful tool that has the potential to create deep transformation.
I usually say that dance is the most powerful mediation I have ever experienced.
But I think you better give it a go yourself and see how you feel with this practice, instead of just believing me.
So here’s how you free-flow dance:
A) Put on any music that you like or that make your body want to move;
OR:
B) Don’t put any music at all.
Next step –
A) Start moving your body in any way you feel suit – with the rhythm or ignoring it;
OR:
B) Don’t move your body, and instead imagine yourself moving.
If you want to test it out, join my Free Flow Dance Event here.
