A safe and easy exercise to help you access your fear For this exercise, you’ll need a quiet place where you can sit or stand comfortably. When you’ve found your quiet place, lean your body forward a little bit, and try to hear the quietest sound in your area. Keep your shoulders down and away from your ears; good posture helps your hearing. You can also … Read More
Welcoming the gifts of fear! Many of us have been taught to see fear as a problem, but it’s actually an intuitive emotion that helps you orient yourself, connect with your instincts, and act and respond skillfully. Fear helps you orient you to change and novel situations, and it focuses on the present moment and your immediate surroundings. But if you think of the ways we … Read More
Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.
Your emotions are essential aspects of your awareness, your intelligence, your social skills, and your ability to communicate — and each one has a specific purpose. Every emotion has a specific function and a specific action for you to complete so that it can move back and make room for your next emotion, your next thought, and your next idea. As we explore emotions as distinct … Read More
Dancing with your emotions Online course starts February 27 at Empathy Academy Most of us have been trained away from our emotions and away from our bodies, but both carry forms of genius that can help us live whole and vibrant lives. In this experiential online course, you can access your own inborn genius. You can learn to embody all of your emotions Using creative … Read More
You can play with your emotions! A Somatic Mini-Workshop at Empathy Academy Saturday, February 18 from 10am to 12:30pm Pacific Talking and reading about emotions is a good way to learn about them, but playing with them can help you understand and work with them in healing new ways. By accessing your body’s wisdom, you may find that you’re already working skillfully with your emotions, … Read More
Understanding hatred Previously, we looked at our tendency to express our hatred instead of working with it more deeply. Often, we can become obsessive about our hate targets and project all sorts of troubling material onto them. The fascinating thing about hatred is that you choose your hate targets not simply because they’re odious, but because they’re specifically odious in ways that cause specific, shadow-driven hatequakes … Read More
Hatred: The Shadowy and Necessary Emotion As we take a tour through the emotional realm, we’ve started with the Anger Family emotions that help you set boundaries: Anger, shame/guilt, and apathy (the protective mask for anger). Now, we’ll look at an emotion that can set boundaries in very troubling ways if you don’t know how to work with it: hatred. Actually, we’ll continue to look at … Read More
Your apathy steps forward to protect you for many reasons. You may be in an unworkable relationship, job, or situation where you can’t set clear boundaries. You may not have a practice for your anger yet. You may be avoiding your fatigue. Your apathy may be protecting you from moving into a necessary depression if you don’t have time to slow down (or if you don’t … Read More
We’ve looked at anger and shame, and now, we’ll focus on what I call the masking state of apathy (or boredom). Empathically, when I look at behaviors, I seek the emotions that underlie them. In apathy and boredom, I see a state that serves to mask fatigue and depression, certainly, but most of all, I see that apathy and boredom mask anger that can’t be dealt … Read More