21. Releasing Emotions – Let’s Make a List

Based on my journal entries dated February 23^rd, 2015

I love the freedom that follows when I recognize and release the feelings that are stored within me. Last week I was talking about some of the many ways this can happen for me. Sometimes it’s through verbalizing, and sometimes simply through releasing the energy in the body. I don’t quite understand how it all works, but Deepak Chopra’s books including Ageless Body, Timeless Mind and Quantum Healing offer fascinating insights into this mind/body/spirit connection.

Last week, in my tongue-in-cheek ‘course’ entitled “Releasing Feelings 101”  I amassed quite a list, didn’t I? Here are some more I can think of:      

• Boxing at the gym. To all you trainers out there, I reckon you’re doing a great service for the emotional health of your fitness clients, but I suspect you already know that. Pounding away at those punching bags has gotta’ be releasing loads of pent up anger and aggression!
• I often walk past a gym where teenage girls are playing basketball. I can feel the pure exhilaration of all that screaming and yelling
  and tearing up and down the court, and I’m not even inside! It’s gotta’ be releasing locked energy. It’s gotta’ be good for you!
• And what about going for a run? Or any form of exercise for that matter. I can’t cite specific studies, but the research is conclusive. (Oh my goodness, I just googled “Can running release stored emotions?” and there are dozens of fantastic articles, including a brilliant one called “Deepak Chopra’s 7-Step Exercise to Release Emotional Turbulence”.)

I think I’m onto something!

Here’s another one: I was talking to my cousin last week and was fascinated to hear of her recent training in TRE (Tension Release exercises)—a way of releasing locked energy in the body. Here are some quotes from the TRE website: “TRE is a revolutionary approach that deliberately uses the body’s own innate process of involuntary shaking and tremoring in a safe and controlled way to physically release the effects of chronic stress and unresolved trauma including PTSD. Originally developed and named ‘Trauma Release Exercises‘ as a self-empowering trauma recovery process for large populations in the third world, it also came to be known as ‘Tension Release Exercises‘ for it’s ability to reduce chronic stress, muscular tension, anxiety and pain (especially in the low back and pelvis.)       As the process uses a series of simple exercises to invoke tremors that are then able to be self regulated, it does not require talking about or recalling past events.”  If this sounds like your cup of tea, see if you can find your nearest TRE practitioner. I can’t wait for my practice session when my cousin visits next time.

Many books, such as “Love and Awakening” by John Wellwood and “Letting Go – The Pathway of Surrender” by David R. Hawkins describe a process of simply ‘being with’ the feeling, opening up a space around it and breathing into it, without trying to change it or judge it in any way.

Do any of my readers know of any others to add to the list? Does anything else work for you?