by Pompe Strater-Vidal
Zen Sensei and founder of Relax Breathe Flow
When it comes to meditation and mindfulness, learning how to let go of our emotions is just as important as letting go of our thoughts.
Are you an empath, highly sensitive, emotional and intuitive? Do you know one? Married to one? Then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Emotions can be a wild ride.
Awareness teaches us to recognize our feelings, and label them, ie. anger, grief, fear, sadness, envy, jealousy, resentment, etc. Acceptance teaches us to allow them just to be, without acting them out, and without judgment. And finally, letting go of our emotions is the practice of nonattachment.
Nonattachment means that you are not your anger, your grief, your fear. And remember, our emotions are not the problem. It’s our attachment, our clinging to them that gets in our way. Emotions are just feelings that come and go, like thoughts. If your thoughts are clouds in the sky, emotions are waves in the ocean. And just like waves, they roll in, and they roll out.
When you let go of your attachments to your emotions, you settle into a place of neutrality. This is the experience of equanimity.
Waves travel across the surface of the ocean, like our feelings. Sometimes big, and sometimes small. In meditation, we are the essence of water itself.
There is a time and place for working on our emotions, and all the issues connected to them. Meditation is the place to let them come, and let them go.
Let me know your thoughts and questions on the how of letting go. I’m listening 🙂
Questions? Feedback? I love them! You can email me at [email protected] or leave a comment below 🙂
All the best,
