Watching Your Emotions During Meditation

It is quite common to experience strong emotions during meditation. If you are by nature an emotional person this may not be a problem for you because you are used to experiencing high levels of feeling, but if you are a cool, unemotional type who is used to keeping their feelings in check, coming face-to-face with your emotions may be a shock. Be prepared for this eventuality.

Rather than being caught up and pushed around by our emotions so that they overwhelm or govern us, through meditation we can learn to observe our emotions and then to understand their nature and to discover why they are occurring. In these ways, we can learn to manage our lives more calmly and rationally, not by turning our feelings on and off at will, but by becoming more aware of them and understanding how best to encounter them and respond to them.

Fighting to suppress our emotions or to gain control over them is usually futile. The struggle can often be stressful and tiring and it is rarely of any psychological benefit.

Our emotions help us to form relationships and in meditation we are learning to develop a relationship with our inner selves. When you experience strong emotions in meditation, monitor how they affect you and whether the feelings are negative or positive. Become an observer of your emotions, not only in meditation but also in your daily life. Try to detect patterns in the way you react to situations, and find out what the triggers are.

If you have a well of strong, overwhelming emotion inside you that you want to release, try to let it out gradually and express it in a constructive way, writing about or even drawing a representation of the feeling can be therapeutic and will help you to understand it better. You need to be able to step back from your emotions. If you discover that you are being taken over by them, you should stop and try to let them lie down.

A good way to deal immediately with powerful emotions, such as rage or burning desire, is to close your eyes and imagine that you are being soothed by a gentle shower of cooling rain. In doing so, you may feel your inner turmoil gradually being washed away.

Overcoming Negative Emotions

This exercise will help you to deal with overwhelming or negative emotions that may arise at any time, but especially during meditation.

Close your eyes and breathe deeply for a few minutes. When you feel calm, imagine that you are holding a large stone, rock or crystal in your hand. This is your �â'¬Å"worry stone�â'¬ï¿½. What is its texture and colour?

Now bring to mind the negative emotion that you wish to control or dispel. Imagine that you channel this emotion along your arm, down through your hand and fingers, and into the stone, which is able to absorb it.

Visualize the stone absorbing all the thoughts that trigger a negative emotional response in you. Allow the stone to soak up these thoughts until you sense that they are dying down and ceasing to trouble you.

When the thoughts (and your emotions) have receded, imagine that you wash the stone to cleanse it, in doing so you wash away all your negative emotional energy.