Positive Emotions > Positive Emotions and Your Health | Printable Version |
Your emotions exist to signal your body to act appropriately in given situations. As such, emotions can have profound effects on your ability to cope with life challenges. Emotions significantly impact your ability to learn and store memory. In turn your experiences, especially childhood experiences, significantly influence your emotions. Negative emotions, therefore, can be your direct conduit to old wounds that want healing. Positive emotions, in turn, give you direct access to positive memories, expectations of feeling good.
The key is to observe your emotions, even the negative ones, work through them and then focus on the positive.
EXERCISE: Observing Your Emotions
• Close your eyes. Bring your awareness to your chest, to your heart
• Just notice what your chest feels like
• Notice your breath moving in and out
• Notice any sensation in your chest
• Simply acknowledge your heart
• Acknowledge that it carries all your memories, from the past and the present
• Introduce yourself
• See if the heart answers back
• Just become aware of your heart
Now observe the emotions in your heart. Notice the sensations that arise, the physical feelings, the movement of your breath, etc.
Now give yourself time to identify your feelings and bodily sensations around each word below (do not rush this exercise).
• Sad
• Joyful
• Not enough time
• Plenty of time
• Open
• Closed
• You are bad
• You are good
• White sandy beach
• Garbage dump
• Injustice
• Triumph
• The face of someone who angers you or someone you dislike
• The face of someone you love
How did that feel for you? Did you notice any sensations? Did your heart feel tight or relaxed? Did you feel nothing at all? What emotions came up for you?
Allow yourself to simply sit with any negative emotion that comes up and notice how you feel. Notice the rhythm of your breath or the tightness in your muscles. And do the same with the positive emotions.
Once you notice the difference, you gain the ability to choose how you feel when bad situations come up later. You can notice how you feel, then choose to think about a positive thought or experience, which will move you into more positive emotions and feelings. Once there, you will feel better, be able to think more clearly, and most likely, make better choices.
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