Feeling is Healing

As a former overly sensitive person I used to cringe when someone said “Feeling is Healing” and I usually wanted to scream, “I feel all the time and nothing is healing”.

Then I tried to be the person that grew the thick skin and didn’t feel at all or felt very little. I was told I needed to be strong and hold it together. That worked for about seven years until one day I started crying uncontrollably.

Do you resonate with one of these two types, or both?

So, what is “Feeling is Healing” and how is it relevant to The Process to Change?

The latin root of Emotions is Energy in Motion. From the root of this word you can see that energy needs to move…therefore feelings need to be felt. Feelings or Emotions are physiological sensations that the body produces in response to something that is happening in our lives or happened in our lives (from a past memory).

When we don’t allow those sensations to move they get stored in the body. Check out work of Peter Levine PhD, Bessel Van Der Kolk MD and David Hawkins, MD, PhD to learn about the research and discoveries on how the body stores emotion and how it affects our every day lives when we do nothing about it.

It makes sense that someone who holds in their emotions or has that thick skin is not feeling their emotions. They usually get really good at not even recognizing them. I know I did over the seven years that I barely cried when my grandmother died.

Often I did’t feel anything and felt, what I would call as, fine. That is because I had numbed my emotions so well that I couldn’t feel them. As human beings we are meant to feel…feelings make life vibrant.

As for those who feel a lot and yet don’t release, it’s because often we are fueling the fire of emotions with our thoughts. We are trying to think our way through. Our thoughts are just reactivating the nervous system to create more sensations in the body. Eventually we stuff them rather than release them even though we feel as if we are releasing them.

All of this is relevant to The Process to Change because we need to move these energies out or our body in order to shift into something new. We need to learn to stop rejecting or judging our emotions and instead learn to accept and allow them.

Now this is a practice and I will be the first to say it is not a comfortable one to start. Though over time it gets easier and easier…as did walking or riding a bike. When you see the difference it starts to make in your life, you will be hooked.

Where to begin?

Begin with bringing awareness to your body and to your emotions(sensations in the body). Notice where they show up in your body, notice how they feel in the body, describe the sensations to yourself, allow them to be as you observe them. The more you can observe and not judge them the more you will discover and witness them move.

Experiment with this simple practice and let me know what happens. Enjoy observing your emotions and discovering new things about your body.

Much Love & Light,
Kerri-Ann
www.kerri-ann.com