If you are seeking greater fulfillment in your life, it would be prudent to start by developing a positive relationship with your emotions and refrain from shunning them. If you are interested in doing so but don’t know where to begin, I recommend working with a professional who is skilled in emotion regulation, emotional releasing, or disarming maladaptive defense mechanisms. A clinician with a depthful approach would be ideal. The emotions are powerful energies, the misuse of which can lead to harm toward self and others so please proceed with caution. If you’d like to try this on your own, here are some general guidelines:

12 Steps for Opening the Heart

1. Carve out some time and a quiet space to sit down comfortably.
2. Set an intention to uncover and release unconscious feelings.
3. Slow down your mind, heart-rate, and breath by practicing deep breathing (inhale for 3 counts, hold for 3 counts, and exhale for 5 counts) for several rounds until you feel relaxed and ready.
4. Allow your mind to think about an experience that causes distress and notice how the body begins to react.
5. Bring your awareness to the greatest area of tension or sensation in your body and relax the muscles around that area, breathing into it.
6. Try to identify the presence of an emotion arising in that area.
7. If you are unable to identify an emotion within the physical tension/sensation, then try to identify the presence of a defense mechanism instead (i.e. notice all the ways you may be resisting opening your heart to feel something). If you recognize a defensive process, then put it to the side and return your awareness to the body.
8. When you identify an emotion, name it – happiness, sadness, love, fear, anger, surprise, or disgust. If it is not one of these seven core emotions or their synonyms, then there is most likely a defense mechanism or a thought interfering in the process.
9. Once you name the emotion, explore it. What does it feel like in the body? How is it shifting? Does it contain any information or behavioral impulse?
10. After exploring the emotion, relax and allow it to release on its own. Do not engage it and do not avoid it. Simply let it be. With patient awareness and acceptance, it will flow through on its own.
11. Once it has moved through the body (with or without accompanying emotive behaviors), you will notice a sensation of feeling lighter. You may even gain important insights about life. This is you evolving.
12. Rinse and repeat. With every successful emotional releasing session, your emotions will gradually become more positive and purer, and you will be closer to health, well-being, and Self-realization.

Conclusion

Emotions are intelligent energies that, when properly embraced, teach us about ourselves and help us navigate life. Although it is impossible to control them, we can control how we relate to them, and this makes all the difference. By shifting our perspective and increasing our self-awareness, we gain the power to open our hearts. And when we allow our hearts to open, we find an infinitely deepening river of fulfillment. This river ebbs and flows, revealing a range of feeling we didn’t know was possible. It takes us on unexpected journeys to uncharted places, yet if we can stay afloat during both the highs and the lows, we will eventually arrive at the river’s source – the ocean of our limitless being – in which we experience a peace that passes understanding.

∞

Resources for Further Reading

• The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin
• Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life by Paul Ekman, Ph.D.
• Living Like You Mean It: Use the Wisdom and Power of Your Emotions to Get the Life You Really Want by Ronald J. Frederick, Ph.D.
• Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brene Brown
• Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament by Michael A. Singer
• Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender by David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D.