Mindfulness of Emotions: What to Do When You Feel Bad
by Katharine Bierce
Written around 4 am on Earth Day, April 22, 2021
When you feel anxious, angry, or sad, so often, it’s easy to reach for an unhealthy “quick fix.”
However, from the point of view of Buddhist practice, or Taoist philosophy, so-called negative or difficult feelings are not the problem. Just like thinking is not a problem. The problem is how we relate to our feelings or our thoughts. Especially if we are raised in a Western culture that emphasizes thinking over feeling, doing over being, the individual over the community, separateness over connectedness, it is easy to get stuck in blaming ourselves for our feelings.
As a person who identifies as white and female, I’ve absorbed a lot of unhelpful views about how I “should” be in the world. The idea that I “should” look a certain way, have a certain weight, body type, skin type, productivity level, what counts as “productive” (e.g. doing rather than being), or only express happy emotions externally and something is wrong if that’s not the case… I’ve internalized the patriarchy when I succumb to the narrative that if I’m feeling bad, it must be my fault, that I’m doing something wrong.
When it is imbalanced or overactive, masculine energy is hyperactive, thinking, running around trying to fix something rather than being with what is happening. When it is balanced, masculine energy is action in the service of one’s highest values or intentions.
When it is balanced and healthy, feminine energy is receptive, wise, nurturing; open to receive the gifts of the universe that want to come through. (I don’t know as much about an excess of feminine energy as I tend to run a lot of masculine energy in my system.)
It’s normal and healthy to have emotions. It’s not possible to just have the good ones and not the bad ones. Even the bad feelings are not “bad” if we relate to them in a helpful way. I say “helpful” because “right view” tends to reify the unhelpful relationship to these feelings; “wise view” might be a better translation of that part of the Eightfold Path.
I’ve been studying qigong lately and the Taoist approach to feeling the body, relating to emotions, etc. has been very helpful. In the Taoist view, from what I understand of it, emotions are simply energy. They are not yours or mine. They are thus not your problem, because energy is not a problem. Energy wants to flow: the problem is when it get stuck or stagnates, or when we scatter our energy and dissipate the energy of our life force rather than dispersing stagnation. Knowing it feels like to have energy flow well is a different way to relate to emotions. What would it be like if you trusted your body to know how to heal, in each moment, with each feeling? That the feelings were a signal to act on just what you needed in that moment, rather than something to fix?
It’s nearly 4 am as I write this, and I’m tired and I could be in bed resting. But I feel compelled to write this since it feels like I am receiving a transmission from Mother Earth, because today is the day we’ve designated as Earth Day, to help bring ourselves back into balance with ourselves. As we experience more of a sense of how to navigate the balance of energies and emotions within ourselves, we are better able to bring that into the world in a helpful way.
The patriarchal and Western way of relating to ourselves, to our feelings, to our relationships and our world hasn’t worked so well. Trying to push away the negative, to pretend that we are separate from nature, that there is an independent “other” outside of this Earth biosphere system… it’s ludicrous and causes suffering not just for ourselves, when we blame ourselves for “doing it wrong,” but for the planet as well.
If something is imbalanced, the way to bring it back to harmony is to cultivate the opposite polarity. If there is too much stillness, like sitting all day, movement is good medicine: like a vigorous Ashtanga sequence before or after computer work, perhaps. If there is too much movement, like running errands all day, stillness is good medicine: like yin yoga or meditation seated or lying down. How we relate to our experience is thus not about right or wrong, but about what is helpful, given the way energy is flowing in the system at any given time. The way to know what to do, or how to be with it, is to listen to the feelings and ask: What do I need right now?
In this way we can nurture and nourish ourselves, and this world.
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Emotional Awareness Resources
Mantras
Meaning: “Out of the elements, the wisdom that comes from silence gives birth to loving-kindness.”
This is helpful for meditating on your already-existing wholeness. That we are not separate entities. Interconnectedness and not-self.
Translation:
“That is the whole. This is the whole. From Wholeness emerges Wholeness.
Wholeness coming from Wholeness – Wholeness still remains.
Peace (in my heart), peace (with each other), peace (in the cosmos).”
Yoga Nidra
(guided relaxation, great to do before sleep)
I like the ones by DeeDee Boies (www.ddboies.com) - details and instructions here.