Feeling our Way to Freedom

When we eat our feelings, we don't get rid of them.

We shove them down, so deep that they disappear and we get relief. We feel free, for the time being.

When we eat our feelings, we don't move through them. We don't surrender to them, or make a temporary home for them, or finally release them to move beyond us, leaving only openness where they once were.

When we eat our feelings we pack them in, tighter and tighter until they weigh us down, not letting us forget what we've been trying to ignore.

What does one emotion feel like anyway? What is so unbearable that we'd prefer to put it off forever, ready to deal with any other painful distraction than feel that.

Do you know the energy of your emotions, floating through and filling up your body? Not from what you think about when you experience an emotion, but what you feel? Their tightness, or emptiness, their vibration, their pain, their colour. Do they radiate? Do they reside here? Or there? Or there? Can you make space for this energy by moving your body, swaying your hips, opening your jaw, stretching your arms and shoulders open. Can you make space to feel it, be gentle, listen to it, or at least say a small hello? Would that be bearable?

How much time, curiosity, discomfort and awareness would you offer up, in exchange for your own freedom? A freedom that exists where heavy, stagnant emotions used to sit? A freedom that lies in the willingness to feel anything, to welcome it in, and watch it leave, so you can settle into the lightness of being once more.