Building emotional resilience is an essential task in a fast-paced world where you can feel easily overwhelmed or triggered by circumstances or people around you. Emotional resilience refers to your ability to adapt to emotionally charged situations. Research shows that the more resilient you are, the less stress you carry and the quicker you bounce back after set-back.
My personal experience has shown me that to be emotionally resilient, there needs to be a capacity to ‘feel’ whatever emotion is passing through, to use the energy and wisdom it carries, and move through it without a lingering after effect. This is challenging when you have a backlog of emotions stuck in your energy and tissues.
Think of all the times you have pushed down, avoided, or negated your emotions. This leads to an emotional stagnation that can keep you in holding patterns of suffering. These suppressed emotions can ‘color’ whatever other emotion you are experiencing in the moment, making it hard to distinguish or work with the primary emotion that is naturally arising in response to your situation.
We live in a culture that views anger, fear, and sadness, as something to avoid and therefore you may be in the habit of suppressing them until they come out sideways. Do you try to manipulate circumstances so that you don’t have to feel certain emotions? Do you question the validity of the emotion as it arises? Do you externalize the feeling, making it about someone else so that you don’t have to ‘feel’ it yourself?
Each core emotion has something to teach that alerts you to something important. Anger alerts you that a boundary that has been crossed, or an attachment to something that has not worked out. Anger initiates a powerful energy of manifestation or clear boundary setting. Fear calls you present to the moment; it opens your senses, raises your heart rate, and can allow you to perceive where a potential threat is coming from. Sadness alerts you to something that either has been lost or must be let go in order to adapt and grow. These are generalizations but you get the idea. All base emotions have a point, they are connected to your instinctual gut brain and are one of the ways your body is translating your instinctual response from either the outer (circumstances) or inner world (thoughts and memories).
A powerful function of Kundalini yoga is to use kriyas (sequences) to release stagnant emotions and to build emotional resiliency. Kriyas awaken and circulate your energy, balance your nervous system, and release ‘your issues from your tissues’ through dynamic physical movement with breath, mantra, mudra, and meditations.
If you are interested in practices to build emotional resiliency, please check out my new series on GLO.
The ‘Emotional Healing Kundalini Series’ is designed to help you move through stuck energy, build emotional awareness, and establish an experience of harmony and flow. These are short and powerful practices. They will challenge you to go beyond your comfort zone and awaken new energy and inspiration. Please let me know how you like them!