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64. Feelings and Emotions                                            12/07/04

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)

        Vast, vast is this subject; however, I will touch on emotions or feelings as they manifest in our body and a possible way of handling their intensity by inspection with breath and awareness.

In the Manual of Abhidhamma,* a major Buddhist text, where mind and thought patterns are microscopically analyzed, this statement appears; “Of the 89 types of consciousness,…in 85 are found either a pleasurable feeling or a neutral feeling”. This indicates that emotional states like sorrow, grief, anger and jealousy are relegated to some brief conditioned states of consciousness. These are just a few possibilities of the whole potential of consciousness yet; so many people spend a lot of their waking moments in lesser states. The neutral feelings (what some may associate with boredom) are actually potent opportunities to move into those refined conscious states that are accompanied with Joy and Happiness.

In assisting others with breathwork and alignment over 40 years it is interesting to note that in the initial stages of working, the emotional states that are near the surface of each person will come out and run there course. For some, the problem to releasing an emotion is the interpretive values that are placed on feeling one emotion or another. In other words; “I am griefy because” or I am angry because”. In most cases, by not interpreting the emotion but, by inspecting it, with attention and aware breathing, as a sensation in the body we can feel the content of the sensation and its location. By doing this we are more apt to release the content of an emotion, which can have more karmic roots then we assume. So instead of labeling Anger as anger viewing it as a sensation that has texture, we change our perspective slightly and interact with the actual sensation or energy.

Let’s look at a way grief as an emotion can be processed rather directly by applying this idea. Generally in the lying down position, working with full breathing, when the feeling of grief does arise, it is welcomed. The instruction is; to breathe fully and allow the sounds and motion of the grief or sensation to come out. If the grief/sensation is intense then it will tend to pull our attention and upper body down to the stomach area. When this is felt the breath can be made full and expansive again to keep one above the grief and allow the sounds and knotted energy to release. As we breath out the grief/sensation may intensify, allow this, and then breathe in again to stay above the pull of the intensity of the emotion. The key of the chin towards the collar bone is very useful here. By doing this exploration with oneself or in assisting another you will find that the grief can run and change in texture so the releasing of this particular emotion is a series of episodes until resolution.

Some people may attempt to stop the process of release, to continue their story behind the emotion, which misses the opportunity to completely run the upset off the body with out interrupting it. By encouraging full breathing and allowing the grief to run, in a touch and go fashion, the individual picks up the hints and good sense of the instruction. Of course, each session is special and specific, and requires ones compassionate attunement to who you are working with. There is no harm in listening and then getting back to the lesson for releasing.

Traditionally the native populations had many different modes for releasing grief from the body, they recognized 1, that there is grief and 2, we need to get it out of the body. This was often accomplished by dancing around a circle and making sounds that came from the feelings of deep loss or suffering. Certainly this is a reasonable way of diffusing energy. Dancing or moving the body in a relationship with the ground and singing, or making mournful sounds, is something that comes up in sessions where a person is moving in a circle around a room. Most often people will feel they are running past life experiences or feel very primitive, while at the same time, finding the experience childlike and intuitively informative.

Personally, I have experienced grief emerge while standing or walking around and will just breath fuller and allow the sensation to unravel. There are times when it would arise and mix with laughter. By allowing it and not thinking about it, something releases. This can have the feeling of toying with the emotion rather than making it serious.

Anger, the mother of all hindering emotions, is a good emotion to keep in check by the method of transposition to sensation. The questions are; what is the sensation in the body? What is its texture? Where exactly is it in the body? Can I move it around with breath? What is its intensity? Etc.

This provides an alternative method for handling anger, before it gets out of hand and becomes a dramatic episode. Some immediate release of sound in response to anger will diffuse its intensity but the sensation is real and there in the body and does require that we give it the attention and breath required to come out of it.

In a breathing session when anger releases it generally comes off with a energetic display of motion and sound and can run for several minutes. This is like a mini explosion of energy, bottled up in the system, that the body is happy to let go of. The roots of such an event are usually extensive and attributing one story or another to it, while interesting, is a disservice to the strength of our own being. However, this also needs a compassionate inspection for some traumatic roots are worth talking about to release all the residue of the imposing energies.

While we are active in the world there are many external annoyances that can bring emotional charge to the body. If we immediately feel the internal pressure that an event is generating we are more apt to side step this energy, rather then let it build up. As I have explored this idea in myself I have noticed that my equanimity as well the external space does respond favorably.

Letting go of an emotion is not to ignore it, or count from 1 to 10, but getting into it somatically, until you feel it has released and there is a move back into neutral or more joyful states of mind. I think our body is intuitively inclined in this direction and we can become immune to the “be a big boy or girl”, show no emotion, nonsense that comes from bewildered minds passing on habit patterns. To me healthy development is part and parcel of knowing what you are experiencing right now. However, dramatizing an emotion versus releasing an emotion is an important issue for us as we live the good life.

All this being said, feelings and emotions still remain a vast, vast subject. Your comments are always appreciated and enlightening. Thank you.

Anger weakens the body, impairs the digestive system and chases man fast into old age.
Sathya Sai Speaks, Volume 8, Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Peace

* A Manual of Abhidhamma, 1968 Buddhist Publication society.
Translated by Narada Maha Thera,

Posted by harmon at December 7, 2004

Comments

I have found that in my sessions with you there has quite often been, once into posture, breathing and releasing motions, an intense - almost compulsive desire to talk about, and explain in minute detail the emotional stresses and turmoils that have been festering inside. I usually have resisted the impulse, and have always been amazed once I "come out the other side" of intense muscle release, etc. - that this almost unbearable desire to express these things verbally has vanished! What you have written here is quite interesting and goes a long way toward explaining and diagramming what I'd been experiencing myself.
A quote that relates to your Kahlil Gibran:

the wounds in my heart you carved deep and wide,
hollowed and washed with the tears I've cried,
but now there'll be more room for love inside,
it should be easier now...

from "It Should Be Easier Now"
by Willie Nelson

its all about a man coming to terms with grief of lost love - and a great country song

Posted by: Scott Williams on December 7, 2004

Harmon,

Do you feel that people come into this world with an overlay of negative emotions, such as anger? That is, are there angry people from birth? And if so, is it possible for them to release their anger without eroding their own core identity?

-- Jordan

Posted by: Jordan on December 8, 2004 07:15 PM

"i'm just a man, i understand the wind
and all the things that make the children cry

book after book,i get hooked every time the writer talks to me like like a friend

deep in my heart, theres a house that can hold just about all of you"

if i sat for days, it would be possible to come forward with words, that could describe my sessions with harmon. marc bolan has done it already for me, many years ago.
i have had the pleasure and honor of working directly with harmon for several years now.
we have used this and other methods to bring me back from very dark places that i, for one reason or another found comfortable at the time. i was not aware of where i was traveling, these places were so dark. only upon revisiting these places, do i see, that light and love truly exists.

Posted by: jamie cipriani on December 8, 2004

Scott
Thanks for sharing this and confirming the point that we are hardy souls that can over come all manner of emotional turmoil . Love the Willie Nelson quote.

******

Jordan
Great question Jordan, I am inclined to think the evolution of the soul carries some karmic residue that needs to work out over lifetimes. This fits in with Gurdjieff’s discussion of 3rd 4th and 5th level beings on the planet currently, while 6th and 7th levels are in non material plains. Then sometimes the notion occurs to me that any work we do in untying the knots of confusion are done for the whole. This meaning each of us may be doing a collaborative work with out necessarily having brought a particular karmic propensity with us. This form of evolution being innate, for cleaning up the junk of particular cultural ignorance’s we are born into.

Of course “The bad seed” label seems to be earned by some who may even have the best of upbringings and circumstance. This could be an embryonic result or the lord just wants to keep everybody on their toes.

It is also possible that we are pure at birth and there is so much earthly garbage hindering the natural good potentials in us that anger is the manifestation of being pulled down into so many unnatural (indigestible to the systems we are born with) activities. Anger can arise as a result of thwarted potentials in the innocence of our young age. This anger can surface and run as a primal scream that knows its true nature and feels cut off from it. There are some forms of releasing anger that do get my goat, one of which is banging on pillows and blaming mom or dad. This to me builds the story and misses the somatic releases that are possible.

So both sides of this question are interesting to speculate on. A quote has stayed with me of a dying Zen Master. As he was listening to his students talk about him as if he had already past. He pronounced; “I have come from bliss and I return to bliss, so what is this?”

As far as releasing anger, which I allude to as strong and raw sensation in the article, sure this can be released if the person is lucky enough to run into you or I.:)) Then the core child mind is born again.

Posted by: Harmon on December 8, 2004

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