Everyday Practices
Making Room for What I Feel
For Letting Emotions Be Energies in Motion
US$6 5 practices · 8 tracks · listen or download
Get the pack · US$6Some days a feeling arrives and we don’t know what to do with it. It might be sadness, or a flat, heavy mood that follows us around all day. Sometimes it’s a mix of feelings we can’t even find a name for.
When that happens, the mind usually wants to fix it. We try to think our way out, or push the feeling away, and the struggle with the feeling can end up harder than the feeling itself.
In these practices I call feelings energies in motion. They’re part of being human, and they’re there for a reason, even the ones we’d rather not have. So these practices don’t try to make a feeling stop. They help you notice where it sits in the body, and make a little room for it while it’s here.
There are five tracks: a body and breath check-in, affirmations for honouring yourself, a short teaching on inner resistance with a simple release practice, a one-minute reflection on a heavy feeling, and a piece on the grief of letting go of old ways of coping. Two of them come in more than one length, for when time is tight.
What’s inside
Energies in Motion
2 versions
Full version · 11 minShorter version · 6 min
For checking in with yourself, just as you are. It’s spoken in the first person, starting with ‘This is me, choosing to be here now.’ You notice how you’re holding your body, then how your mind is showing up, in pictures, words or a bit of both. Attention drops to the pull of gravity, then to wherever you usually feel emotions, with no need to feel anything in particular. It ends with the breath. The shorter version goes from the body straight to the breath.
Honouring Myself
3 versions
Full version · 14 minFrom the countdown · 12 minStraight to the affirmations · 9 min
For when you need to be on your own side. After a count down from ten, the affirmations begin: ‘I choose to honour myself.’ They turn to the body and its feelings, sadness especially, as energies in motion that are there for a reason. It ends with ‘I am a miracle within this miracle.’ The full version opens with a few questions about who can always be there for you. The middle one starts at the countdown, and the shortest goes straight to the affirmations.
An Inner Resistance Formula
8 min
For when you’re struggling with how you feel, as well as with the feeling. I talk through why this happens, with the well-known formula ‘suffering equals pain times resistance’ and some words from the psychologist Susan David. Then a short practice. You bring to mind something tough, notice the thoughts and feelings, and clench your fist. As you let go, you say a phrase such as ‘This too will pass’ and form a soft half smile, letting whatever’s there linger.
The Shape and the Mirror
2 min
For a heavy day. This is a short reflection, under two minutes, spoken to a feeling: ‘my flat, heavy feeling.’ Walking into a cold, still room and seeing yourself in the mirror as the feeling, you bring a little awareness to it, and it becomes a shape. An uncomfortable one, but a shape. The feeling comes along to a coffee shop, and it ends simply: ‘You are still here, and that’s okay.’
When Letting Go Feels Like Grief
7 min
For when giving up an old way of coping feels like a loss. Most of us have reached for something to avoid discomfort, from scrolling and shopping to alcohol and other substances. Letting go of them can bring real grief, because they once helped us get through. The track asks, ‘Can you thank it as you let it go?’ A few words to say to yourself follow, and it closes with a rhyme: ‘Grieve the ways that helped me cope, and let them go with love and hope.’