Your Emotions Are Messengers, Not Enemies

Wellness Minutes explores the practice of meditating on feelings, teaching listeners to observe the space between events and actions where thoughts and emotions influence behavior. This episode introduces the powerful practice of emotional awareness for more mindful living.

• Between external events and our actions lie thoughts and feelings that influence our behavior
• Taking a "riverbank position" means stepping back to observe your emotions rather than being swept along by them
• Universal feelings across cultures include happiness, sadness, fear, and disgust
• We often confuse thoughts for feelings—when you say "I feel like," you're usually expressing a thought
• Feelings act as sensitive thermometers that reveal how events affect us
• Naming your feelings during stressful times can help tame difficult experiences

Try observing your feelings and associated thoughts this week and notice how this awareness affects your responses to situations.

Opening Music by Jeremiah Alves from Pixabay

Closing Music by Aleksandr Karabanov from Pixabay

Chapters

• 0:40 Welcome to Wellness Minutes
• 0:46 Introducing Meditation on Feelings
• 1:55 Taking the Riverbank Position
• 3:32 Distinguishing Thoughts from Feelings
• 5:02 Naming Feelings to Tame Experiences

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:22

Hi, welcome to the next episode of Wellness Minutes. This is your host, githika. So after talking about breathing and body scan and grounding, I thought we could get into something that's a little more abstract Meditating on your feelings. And this is particularly abstract and difficult to do because we're very used to events taking place and doing things about them. We don't realize that between events and our actions, there is an experience that happens, there are thoughts and feelings generated by the events around us, and then those thoughts and feelings end up influencing our behavior. So I'm inviting you today to try something a little different. You today, to try something a little different.

Speaker 1: 1:29

Absolutely take a deep breath, pause, like we've been talking about, but today, maybe, insert some self-observation into that pause, and that self-observation is really looking at your thoughts and feelings in response to whatever is going on in your life. Maybe the next time you're walking on the street and suddenly feeling this sense of discomfort, take a minute to actually notice that. What is that discomfort? How does it feel in the body? What are the thoughts that are going through your mind? Whether they are memories, whether they are things you're seeing in front of you Basically develop the sense of curiosity about what is going on. I sometimes talk to my clients about taking a riverbank position in their lives. You know, our life is a river and we are constantly swimming upstream or downstream, and at the heart of it we are swimming. But taking a riverbank position is actually sometimes stepping back and watching the river flow, noticing what's going on, instead of constantly being inside the river. One way of taking a riverbank position is actually observing an event and then noticing how it impacts you. So, really, what?

Speaker 1: 3:14

Most broadly, most universally, the feelings that nearly every culture experiences include happiness, sadness, fear, disgust. So the next time you are in a particular situation and you find yourself doing things or behaving in a certain way, step back for a minute and notice what was the event and what was your feeling in response to that event. And our feelings and thoughts frequently go hand in hand. In fact, a lot of times we end up confusing our thoughts for our feelings. I feel like I hate this ice cream. Whenever you find yourself saying something like I, feel like that's usually a thought, not a feeling, and you're usually expressing an idea or an opinion or a judgment.

Speaker 1: 4:04

Feelings are spontaneous, but they're also ever-changing, just like the weather, and yet they're the most sensitive thermometer that we have as human beings. Our feelings tell us a lot about how events around us are affecting us, so they are something really useful to observe, and you might even notice in times of stress. If you name the feelings that you're experiencing, you will find a very interesting way of taming the experience that you're having. Just a thought, try it. So that's all from me for this episode of Wellness Minutes. Hope you get a chance to actually observe your feelings and those associated thoughts and see how that affects you. Until next time, take care.