As much as we sometimes don’t like it, all emotions ever want is to be felt. That’s their purpose. And the more we can do that, the quicker we can connect with our inner peace and fully love ourselves. (Yay!)
(Spoiler alert! In this article, I’m going to show you a simple way to feel your feelings so you can heal them and love yourself all at the same time. #winning
Spoiler alert #2! There is a whole lesson in my new online course, Radical Self-Love, dedicated to helping you through this powerful process. #justsayin)
If an emotion keeps coming up, again and again, it’s most likely because you haven’t allowed yourself to fully feel it yet. And if you’re not willing to feel it fully it’s most likely because you have disowned that part of yourself.
If an emotion keeps coming up, again and again, it’s most likely because you haven’t allowed yourself to fully feel it yet. Tweet It!
But the more you resist something, the more it persists. So if you can just take a few moments to pause and feel, you’ll be surprised at how quickly that emotion is resolved.
That’s why today I would like to share with you a simple, yet profound emotional healing technique I learned from Matt Kahn in his amaaazing book titled Whatever Arises… Love That. (Highly recommend everyone take the time to digest this text.)
It’s been helping me greatly to make peace with all my feelings and I know it will help you too so that you can stop the constant search for certain emotions while avoiding their opposites along the way.
Here’s how you do it!
(Also be sure to download these free 21 self-love journal prompts today to get started on cultivating more love for your awesome self!)
1. Let Your Feelings Come Up
The first step is to do what naturally wants to be done, feel your feeling(s).
Don’t resist, don’t push against, don’t judge anything as wrong or invalid, just let it happen. Allow how you really feel to come to the surface for healing and integration.
It might be hard at first, but you’ll thank yourself later. Have courage. You can do it!
2. Relax Your Body
Begin to slooow down your breathing in order to relax your body. Start to sink into a nice relaxed and open state.
You can even use the affirmation, “It is safe to let my emotions in now” to signal to your nervous system that you’ll be alright.
3. Welcome All The Feels
Now it’s time to fully embrace your feeling(s) with open arms. There’s no need to analyze it, find the root, or the original trauma that probably caused it all.
Just feel it. Let it in.
If it’s a painful emotion, let it feel painful. You might start crying, that’s totally perfect. Just keep opening up your body and letting the feeling in.
Accept that this feeling is only here to be embraced as it has never been embraced before.
4. Identify The Body Part
Try to identify where this emotion feels the strongest in your body. If you can’t seem to pinpoint an exact physical location, just assume the emotion is mostly in your heart.
Once you’ve done that, it’s helpful to place your hand on that body part so you can keep your attention focused there. Maybe you feel it in your heart, or your stomach, or your head or your throat, put your hand there. (Hint: Chances are the emotion is going to show up on one of your chakras.)
5. “I love you.”
For at least two minutes simply think or whisper to yourself, “I love you” and mean it. Over and over again…
I love you… I love you… I love you.
The idea is to love yourself as you allow your feeling to be felt and also to love the feeling itself. The more love you shower your self with during this time, the deeper your emotional healing and integration will be.
Love yourself like you would love a small innocent child because in your heart that’s what you are. You may look like a grown up on the outside, but on the inside, you’ll still the same little kid.
Love yourself like you would love a small innocent child because in your heart that’s what you are. Tweet it!
Take this opportunity to give yourself the unconditional love you may not have received when you were younger (or ever for that matter!). Because no matter what anyone says, you always deserve more love, not less.
When you’re sad, you deserve more love, not less. When you’re angry, you deserve more love, not less. Even when you’re proud of yourself or thrilled about something, you still deserve more love, not less. Even if you think you’re a bad person, you deserve more love, not less.
In case you haven’t caught on yet, the rule of thumb here is always more love, never less.
Tips for self-loving/healing:
If resistance comes up and you’re not able to fully let yourself experience the emotion that’s coming up, love the resistance. Say to yourself something along the lines of, “It’s ok that I don’t like feeling this, and yet it’s here so that I can make peace with it. I love the part of me that wants to resist for trying to protect me.”
If you’re scared that you might lose your shit if you go all the way there (emotionally) it might be helpful to do this exercise in the company of someone you love and trust so that this person can hold space for you. Although, some people may feel safer if they can do this alone. Either way is totally fine and up to you!
Be extremely gentle with yourself during this process. Like any practice, it might take you a few tries before you get “good” at it. Don’t worry. Any attempt at loving yourself and all your emotions is better than none!
Get support and guidance from me! If you resonated with this article on any level then there is a good chance that your life would be greatly benefited by my new course, Radical Self-Love. In the course I walk you through all the BEST self-love techniques and practices (this is only one of them) so you can finally realize your divine perfection and start loving the F out of yourself!
So if you’re searching the interweb for resources on how to love yourself, search no more and just enroll here. Trust me. I can help you. :)
And that’s it! Relax your body, breathe in all your feelings, see where they are the strongest, put your attention there and then love the crap out of yourself for at least two minutes.
Try this exercise on for size and let me know how it goes in the comments.
