Foundations of Emotional Mastery

Welcome friends,

Lack of control, uncertainty and feeling helpless all create emotional distress. Emotional stress can cause us to feel stuck in:

• A stressful job we hate
• Dysfunctional relationships
• An anxious lifestyle
• Unhappy situations

Emotional mastery leads to:

• Ability to feel our emotions so that we’re aware when we’re feeling stressed
• Ability to express our emotions in a skillful way so that we can assert our needs and maintain healthy boundaries
• Ability to feel more positive feelings because we’ve processed our ‘negative’ feelings

EMOTIONAL RANGE

Emotions provide contrast and meaning to our lives. We can’t just feel the positive emotions and ignore or avoid the negative ones.

When we block our ability to feel negative emotions, we reduce our emotional range. We limit what we can feel, which means we limit access to positive emotions too.

It’s human to feel the full spectrum of emotions. There is nothing wrong with feeling angry, sad, jealous or resentful. If we feel bad for feeling bad we end up suppressing the emotion even further, and suppressed emotions are stored in our body as tension, unease and anxiety.

EMOTIONS AREN’T PERMANENT

Our emotions are always changing. Just like the weather we can have sunny stretches and stormy periods, but the sun always returns. When we allow emotions to move through us they pass much faster. Emotions become stuck when we suppress them.

The intensity of our emotions last for about 5 minutes, if we can stay with the intensity without numbing out, the emotions will pass through us and out.

NON-LINEAR MOVEMENT (NLM)

NLM is a freestyle movement practice to move what we’re feeing. It’s a powerful tool to regulate and release emotional charge.

There are only 3 rules for NLM:

1. Stay on the ground (no standing)
2. Eyes closed or downcast (to reduce external stimulation)
3. Don’t stop moving (the constant movement helps our emotions to emerge from being stuck or frozen)

The paradox of emotional mastery is that we won’t feel good until we let ourselves feel bad.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Emotional Mastery is part of a larger body of work called Yoga Alchemy.