Emotional Awareness Meditation 

This meditation brings about a great deal of equanimity with emotions. They will not seem to affect us as deeply or adversely. 

Many people have trouble contacting their emotions directly. Even if we feel that we know what emotion we are having, that does not necessarily mean that we are contacting it directly. 

To contact an emotion directly means to feel it in the body. This is the opposite of most people's experience, which is too related to ideas about or conceptualizations of, the emotion.

Here is an example. A person asks you how you are feeling. You respond by saying, "I am angry, because..." You then go on to tell the person all the reasons you are angry.

In this example, only the first three words, "I am angry" have anything to do with contacting emotion. All the rest of the explanation is conceptual.

A fuller example of contacting emotions directly, somatically, would be to say, "I am angry. I can feel a sort of gripping tension in my belly that is uncomfortable. The tense area feels kind of twisted and sharp. Parts of it are throbbing. It also feels like it is radiating heat outwards." 

Notice that the cause of the anger is irrelevant. The practice here is to feel the physical expression of the anger as completely as possible. 

Extended practice of this meditation will bring about "skill at feeling," that is, a tremendous amount of clarity in the emotional world. Emotional intelligence. 

It will also help emotions to process and release much more quickly and completely, because we are not holding on to ideas about the emotions, or people or concepts associated with the emotions. In the absence of such ‘clinging’, the body processes emotion quickly, naturally, and fully. 

Feel the physical expression of an emotion as completely as possible. 

1. Settle into a comfortable meditation posture. 

2. Breathing normally, bring your attention to your emotions. Notice if you are feeling any emotions, no matter how faintly. It is not necessary to know precisely which emotion you are having, or why you are having it. Just knowing that you are feeling something emotional is enough. Guessing is ok.

3. Once you detect an emotion, see if you can find its expression in your body. Maybe there is a sensation of tension, gripping, tightening, burning, twisting, throbbing, pressure, lightness, openness, etc. These are just some examples, describe the sensation in whatever way arises and is natural for you.

4. If you like, you can mentally make the label "feel" when you detect a body sensation of emotion. Other labels are possible ("emotion" for example). This helps to allow ideas and concepts to ‘be set aside’, or to be out of the way, that you might feel directly.

5. Each time you detect an emotional body sensation, try to actually feel the sensation in your body, as completely as possible. Feel it through and through.

6. Completely let go of any ideas you have about the emotion, or any ‘self talk’ you might have about why the emotion is arising. Return to the body sensation of the emotion.

7. Continue contacting these emotional body sensations for as long as you wish.

At first, practicing this meditation may make it seem as if the emotions are getting bigger. If they are held to be, or regarded mentally as ‘negative’ emotions, this may seem overwhelming for a while. This is natural. It is occuring not because the emotions are actually getting bigger, but for two interesting reasons. The first is because we are no longer suppressing them. We are allowing them to actually express themselves fully. The second is because we are observing them (actually feeling them) very closely. Just as a microscope makes small things look bigger, the "microscope" of attention makes the emotional body sensations seem larger than they really are. 

The good news here is that as the emotions express themselves freely in the body, they are being processed, and not disregarded or suppressed. Usually this means that they will pass much more Freely, naturally & quickly. 

If we are feeling a ‘positive’ emotion in this way, it may pass quickly, but we will also derive much more satisfaction from it, because our experience of it is far more connective, satisfying, rich and complete.

If we are feeling a ‘negative’ emotion in this way, we will experience much less suffering from it, because we are not adding resistance and suppressing it.