July 2023 - Schaffhausen - Inside my body
Let's go back to that Meditation session in July.
And talk about those human emotions.
Bad Emotions?
In the book Emotional, the key thesis is that humans differ from animals, not because we only have emotions.
Our mind, which can differentiate and decide how to react, makes the difference.
Yet, for our mind to realize something is going on, yes, you guessed it:
We have to feel and allow our emotions to surface.
All of them.
In Vivianne Dittmar's book, she introduced five base emotions:
Fear, Anger, Shame, Sadness, and Joy.
Since childhood, some of us learned not to express them freely, especially the "bad" emotions.
"Stop crying, don't be angry, what a shame, no, don't be silly, there is no monster underneath your bed…"
About that body intelligence
The good news is that all is there.
You, I, and every human have that body intelligence, that basic pillar of informed and smart decisions.
It was the way we learned as babies.
As adults, it's very soft and subtle and gets easily drowned in our thoughts, smartphones, and other louder signals around us.
And that was the moment during the Meditation session.
We activated our body intelligence for a few minutes using the following techniques:
Closing our eyes, feeling the breath, the entering and exit of the air we breathe
Gentle Yoga Asana stretches of the neck and shoulders area
A body scan while re-experiencing some of our highest and lowest moments in the past weeks
Accept = Release
For those "bad" emotions, fear, shame, anger, and sadness, I am still learning that they are part of everyday life. And that they are part of that decision-making system.
In those few minutes during the body scan on that day in July, I was close to tears while guiding my colleagues through the session.
I was angry and ashamed that dear friends and colleagues had to leave the company. Why them? Why not me?
I was deeply sad for the little life I'd lost earlier in June.
I felt a little fearful, sitting there with closed eyes, not knowing whether the 100+ people online and offline heard my voice cracking.
I felt my chest tightening, my breathing flattening, my stomach cramping.
And I stayed there with those emotions and my body's reactions to them.
And then, they started to subdue.
My breath became deeper, the nausea ebbed, and my body relaxed.
Joy as operating model
Here is the good news: All emotions that can be freely released tend to disappear after 90 seconds.
The only emotion that can hold longer when fully expressed, is joy.
Rutger Brugman wrote a book about the theory that humans survive as a species because we are inherently good and kind.
We sometimes forget to be joyful and kind.
To others around us.
And most importantly, to ourselves.
our bodies, our emotions and our minds make us human…