Week 5
What are your emotions trying to tell you?
This week in class:
We’ll start a conversation with our emotions.
Anthropomorphize: to attribute human form or personality to things not human.
Proactive Engagement.
This week’s practice is loaded with imagery. Don’t worry, you’ve got this!! If you’ve ever had a daydream, it’s much the same. As the images arise some of you will feel like you’re creating the images, others will feel that the images are just arising, others still will not notice any imagery. All these are fine! Keep feeling into the emotion whether or not any imagery is taking shape.
First decide on an emotion. It might be helpful to remember a time when you felt this emotion. Once you have a sense of it, invite it to grow. Get curious and explore the sensations that this emotion elicits. Sink into your body to recognize the size, shape, texture, temperature of this emotion. Once you have a deeply felt sense of the emotion you’re working with, invite it to take shape outside of your body. This requires imagination, as much as possible, just let it flow, even if the image seems silly or weird, go with it. It is useful to let this shape/object become an animate object. Invite it to have a face, arms and legs. If you lose track of it, go back into the felt sense and allow the image to blossom again – notice what it looks like, what is it wearing, is it old or young? Short or tall? Animal? Human? Other? What is it’s color? Gender? As much as possible, allow the image to really take shape. This imagery is being flushed out of your subconscious. Look it in the eyes as if it was sitting or standing across from you and when you’re ready you’ll ask:
· What do you need?
· What do you want?
· Is there any action you need me to take in the world or anything else you want me to know?
Homework:
Feel, feel, feel, feel, feel! When an emotion arises, pause and just feel it. And then feel it a bit more. If it feels right ask it “what do you need?” “what do you want” “is there an action you’d like me to take?”
Continue your list of emotions that show up during the week. If you have time, as they arise, stop and notice what is happening in your body as the emotions arises. Keep note or make a map of the shape, size, temperature, consistency, location, color, texture of each emotion.
Since Week 6 has been postponed - I’m posting week five here in case you’d like to do that!
