Have you ever cried late at night, feeling emotionally broken?
Do you often fall into a cycle of anxiety, frustration, and fear, unable to escape?
Or perhaps, you feel emotionally numb, yet constantly fatigued and unable to feel happy?
If any of the above applies to you, it means that you really need to pay attention to your inner world and learn how to properly manage your emotions.
Today, let me guide you on how to properly release emotions, so you don’t cause blockages in your body!
Allow the Emotions to Happen
Imagine a scenario like this: A parent is helping their child with homework, but the child is distracted, only thinking about playing, and the parent becomes angry.
At this moment, most parents will have two reactions. One is to get angry, punish, or use silent treatment, ordering the child to focus on homework.
The other is to suppress their anger and try to reason with the child, coaxing them to do their homework.
The former is venting emotions, and the latter is suppressing emotions. Regardless of which one the parent chooses, neither will make them feel better nor solve the problem with the child.
Because one attempts to solve emotions by changing others, and the other suppresses emotions through self-control. In essence, both are forms of resisting and not allowing emotions.
We believe that resisting can solve the problem, but the truth is, the more you resist something, the more you strengthen it.
The only way to resolve it is through acceptance first.
Since the emotion has arisen, accept its occurrence, let go of the impulse to immediately resolve the emotion, but do not ignore it.
So, the first key to properly releasing emotions is to admit your true feelings without judgment:
Yes, I am angry / anxious / fearful / sad right now…
Admitting is a form of acknowledgment, shifting your attention inward, retracting the external grasp, and only then will healing begin to happen.
I am not my emotions
Essentially, emotions are just a physiological response, triggered by the body secreting chemicals that stimulate brain nerves.
It is just a feeling, yet we often identify ourselves with this feeling and get lost in it.
It’s like when you’re driving on the road, and suddenly it starts raining. You turn on the wipers, but get distracted by the wipers’ shaking, forgetting to look ahead.
Therefore, the second key point to properly release emotions is to look at yourself from a broader perspective, not to identify yourself with the emotion, not to focus only on the emotion.
For example, when you’re really angry, tell yourself: I am just feeling the emotion of anger.
When you’re disappointed or even hopeless about something or someone, tell yourself: I am just feeling the emotion of disappointment / hopelessness.
By doing this, you stop the mind’s tendency to amplify and ferment the emotion, preventing yourself from making inappropriate decisions or irrational behaviors under the influence of emotions.
And you will find that sometimes the emotions you feel are not even yours; they are just influenced by others.
Thus, we understand that what is needed is not to control emotions, but to ensure that we are not controlled by emotions.
Relax and Fully Feel
We often hear in traditional Chinese medicine: anger harms the liver, overthinking harms the spleen, worry harms the lungs, fear harms the kidneys. Additionally, there is one more that people often don’t quite understand — joy harms the heart.
Suppressed emotions can cause blockages in the body, and happiness is also an emotion. Suppressing happiness, joy, or excessive joy can similarly harm the body.
But why do we rarely hear of people getting sick from being too happy? — It’s because we like the feeling of happiness and don’t usually suppress it.
However, sadness, anger, and fear are different. They cause us to feel unpleasant, so when they arise, people instinctively try to avoid or resist these feelings.
Not wanting to experience emotions, we begin to suppress them.
But the key to correctly releasing emotions is precisely — to experience them fully.
Because the hormones released need to be fully processed before being metabolized, and the chemical reactions that have started need to be completed before they can end.
Fully experiencing means allowing the emotion to flow through our body until it naturally dissipates, rather than suppressing, interrupting, or driving it away.
This is the third key point in correctly releasing emotions.
After understanding these three key points of releasing emotions, what can we actually do?
We will introduce a small method for emotional release that takes five minutes. By practicing it regularly, you will gradually find the right feeling and apply it flexibly.
5-minute exercise
First, when you realize that you’re experiencing an emotion, don’t use the usual way to deal with it. Find a quiet place to sit, let your spine relax and straighten, and make your body comfortable and relaxed.
Regardless of whether you think you have an emotion or not, you can try to experience what it’s like to accompany your feelings.
If there is emotion, tell yourself, this is just an emotion, don’t let it lead to thinking or excessive imagination.
Bring your attention back to the present moment, back to your body. Just focus on experiencing the sensations that this emotion creates in your body right now.
Completely allow any reactions that this emotion creates in your body, accompany it without interfering, controlling, guiding, avoiding, or judging. Let any feelings be released through your body and fully experience them.
Relax and accompany the emotion and bodily sensations, just like being with a child who is throwing a tantrum, as if you’re accompanying a part of yourself, allowing it to release freely.
During this process, many thoughts might arise, such as “How long will this last?” “Is this really going to help?”
Whether it’s worry or doubt, just realize that these are merely fleeting thoughts in your mind, and then bring your attention back to your body. Continue to relax and accompany your body’s sensations, allowing them to be as they are right now, and let any changes occur.
Here, let me explain a small case to everyone.
We have a student who has been practicing Buddhism for many years. He said that every time he sees his child throwing toys around, he gets angry. He knows this is not good, but he just can’t control it. He tried all sorts of methods and none of them worked.
Later, after learning the correct way to release emotions, he followed the steps and did nothing when the emotion arose.
He didn’t rush to correct his child’s behavior, didn’t vent, suppress, or tell himself not to be angry.
He simply observed his emotional reaction without judging, and relaxed his body in the present moment.
And after a short period of time, this emotion was naturally released, and he found that his child was no longer as aggressive as before.
This is just one small case of releasing emotion. You can try this method and see the effects.
Here is another case related to physical health.
One student frequently felt anxious, depressed, and had poor health.
One day, he felt anxiety rising again and felt scared. He asked Teacher Xiao Xuan: “Is my illness caused by anxiety? If anxiety comes back, will it make my body worse?
Teacher Xiao Xuan explained: “This is your fear. It causes tension in your body, which actually worsens the blockage. Anxiety is not the problem; it’s when it arises, and you start to fear and tense up, suppressing the anxiety. So now, let’s learn to release the anxiety.”
So he followed Teacher Xiao Xuan’s guidance, took deep breaths, relaxed, and allowed himself to experience the anxiety.
After relaxing, he started feeling the anxiety moving down, and it seemed like his ribs hurt more.
This was because the Qi and blood finally started circulating to the previously stiff and numb areas, which caused the pain. The movement of Qi and blood was a very good thing.
Then, he continued to relax, accompanying the emotions without controlling or resisting them. After a while, he felt much better. His ribs still hurt a little, but it was much better, and he felt really much more comfortable.
After the guidance, he said with emotion: “Was it really that simple?”
It really is that simple. Most people either fear experiencing emotions or try to make them go away quickly out of disgust.
The excessive involvement of the mind disrupts the emotional release process. In fact, if you simply ignore the mind and accompany the process, the emotions will naturally release.
Later, this student gave feedback saying that the method worked great. He tried it again and really succeeded. He was moved to tears and finally understood that those fears were all self-imposed.
Now, everyone should have a clearer understanding of the emotional release process, right? Next time when emotions arise, you’ll know how to handle it.
It’s such a simple process, repeating the practice, and gradually, you’ll be able to quiet yourself and learn how to deal with emotional release.
Correctly viewing emotions and no longer resisting them is the premise for effectively dealing with emotions. Without this foundation, it’s hard to truly eliminate the impact of emotions, and it may even backfire.
With an understanding of emotions, using this basic practice is the start of effectively releasing emotions.
Each person’s emotional depth is different, and the underlying reasons are complex and diverse. Some deeper healing may require guidance from a healer.
Ultimately, to learn to handle emotions easily in life, we need to improve awareness, see the truth behind emotions, and reduce the occurrence of emotions from the root.
In future articles, we will delve deeper into: Where do emotions originate from? And how can we practice awareness to make our body and mind increasingly transparent and free?
Follow us, let’s resonate together, and be healthier!
