Feeling Emotional After A Breathwork Session
If you are still feeling emotional after a breathwork session, that is a good thing. It means your psyche has reached a level of trust in your ability to manage long-suppressed emotions that have lingered for years or even decades. It’s important to note that the emotions you’re feeling weren’t “caused” by the breathwork. Whatever your Inner Guiding Intelligence (IGI) brings forth during a session is already within you. And once you understand ways of working with your emotions, they can serve as a pathway to profound insights that significantly enhance your well-being and sense of wholeness.
Working with Emotions Tip #1: Welcome Them All
When emotions come up, welcome them and work with them, they are a gift. They were already there suppressed into your subconscious (disowned parts of yourself) and as long as they remain suppressed, they will:
- Result in sub-optimal health because so much of your body’s energy is being used to maintain the suppression.
- Act as a “ticking time bomb” where the suppressed emotion will pop out inappropriately. For example, if you have suppressed anger, somebody might do something minor, but it can trigger the intense anger that is already within you. This can lead to an overreaction, projecting your anger onto the situation or person in a manner that far exceeds the actual circumstances. In the aftermath, you might find yourself deeply regretting your actions and wondering, “Where did that intense reaction come from?”
Working with Emotions Tip #2: Recognize They Are a Gift
Emotions are your friends, they are not the enemy! They are a gift from your Inner Guiding Intelligence that can be used for personal exploration and growth. They are your body’s way of communicating with you and the more you can allow yourself to fully feel them, the more you will learn about yourself and grow personally. In fact, one of the most impactful actions you can take in your life is to cease the practice of suppressing emotions and wholeheartedly embrace and acknowledge them instead.
Working with Emotions Tip #3: Inquire Into Them
Emotions serve as your most potent tools for personal growth and transformation. They hold the key to understanding yourself, growing, and evolving. So inquire into your emotions. Make yourself into an “Emotions Detective”. Make this into a regular practice and transform yourself into your own unique version of Sherlock Holmes. If you do, you’ll find yourself looking forward to figuring out the underlying origin of your emotions, unveiling the underlying triggers, and identifying patterns that can be healed in your life. With time and dedication, you’ll refine this skill, growing increasingly adept at understanding yourself and managing your emotions.
Working with Emotions Tip #4: Journal And Look For Patterns
You create your reality through your thinking patterns, your belief systems, and your expectations. The more you can see the causal thinking patterns of your emotional states, the more power you have over your emotions in your everyday life. If after a breathwork session, you still feel strongly emotional, the first thing to do is to journal.
Ask yourself the answer the following questions:
Is this feeling familiar? Have I ever felt this way before? When else? When is the first time in my life that I remember feeling this way? Is this a pattern in my life? What thought patterns do I have that bring this emotion up?
Here’s an example: If you feel sad, you may remember back to when you felt sad when your girlfriend or boyfriend left you. Then remember back earlier to when your Father left your Mother when you were a child, then even further, when your younger brother or sister was born and you felt sad that you were no longer getting 100% of your Mother’s attention.
So, what you have now discovered is a thread of similar types of experiences in your life where you had the same emotional reaction and they were all related to abandonment. So, now, multiple apparently unrelated experiences have emerged as a pattern. Once the pattern is brought into your conscious awareness, it can be worked with and healed.
For More Information On Integrating Emotions After a Breathwork Session See:
What Is Breathwork Integration for a general discussion on integration.
Breathwork Integration Suggestions for other specific suggestions on how to integrate your breathwork experience.
Working With Your Emotional States for a detailed description of what to do when a strong emotion comes up in your everyday life in order to use it for personal growth and transformation.
Transcend Heavy and Suppressed Emotions with Free Breathwork
Our live, virtual Neurodynamic Breathwork Online sessions are hosted using the Zoom conferencing software and last approximately 2 hours. We offer sessions 6 – 7 times per week, so this is a great modality if you want to create a regular breathwork practice and really go deep in peeling back the layers. Click here to find out more about our online breathwork process.
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