Counter Intuitive Approach To Release Emotions

[Christian]

Peter Ralston in his amazing book "no boundary" shares a powerful exercise on how to release emotions. You can find it in Leo's book list in the consciosness-section. 

Some people have certain energy blocks in their body. It might be in their chest, shoulders, neck, lower abdomen, etc.

These energy blocks are causes by muscle contractions that keep emotions restricted in the body. One problem with restricting emotions in the body is that when we hold in pain or pleasure, we become numb to our emotions and our experience of really becomes very bland. 

Secondly, we unconsciously begin to make it a habit to tense up certain muscle groups to resist certain emotions.   This habit is a great expenditure of energy and in my opinion this energy could be used a lot more resourcefully. It also makes us unaware of how we are the ones who resist our emotions by tensing our muscles. When we do not see this, we are unable to release the tension and let whatever emotion bubble up to the surface of our consciousness. 

So without more rambling, let me explain you the exercise. 

First, locate the energy block - it might be in your shoulders, jaw, throat - give it your full awareness, feeling just where the tension is and which muscles seem to be involved. Then, slowly but deliberately try to increase the tension and pressure in those muscles(this is the counter intuitive part). Normally, we are told to relax the areas of our bodies which are tense, but Peter Ralston suggests otherwise. 

While you increase the tention, simultaneously notice that you are not just clamping your muscles, you are actively trying to hold something in. You can even repeat out loud or in your mind: No, I won't let go, I'm resisting so that you can realize that you are deliberately holding in or resisting the flow of an emotion. 

To summarize, the first step is to deliberately increase the tension in those muscle groups involved in holding in a particular emotion.

Then, the second step is to experience the emotion that the energy block is designes to restrict. 

If you perform the first step successfully, you will notice that you will be able to experience your emotions more intensely. When you encounter a strong emotion, you might want to cry, scream, hit something or laugh. Allow these side-effects to happen as you calmly observe your experience. 

The last point is that it takes time to release energy blockages, but with time and dedicated hard work, it is definetly possibie. Peter Ralston claims that if you do this exercise in 15 minute blockages per day for 30 days straight, you will almost certainly  see significant improvement in the release of these energy blockages. 

 

 

[Toby]

The more or less famous "Progressive muscle relaxation" works similar and is also proven to work.