Emotions: The Gateway into our Bodies

Emotions offer a gateway into our bodies. As with any gateway, we have a choice. We can ignore the access point, walking past it as if it doesn’t exist. We can walk through it into a different realm. Or we can hover uncertainly in the portal without a commitment in any particular direction. So, with regard to our emotions, we may live in denial of our feelings, never acknowledging them, or we may live at the mercy of our feelings, feeling but not understanding them and unable to move beyond an inexplicably tangled confusion. Or, the equivalent of walking through the gateway: we may use our feelings as entry points into our bodies, allowing them to inform us about our selves, our behaviours and reactions, using this refined understanding to transform these, and thus our relationships.

Bodies speak. The language is one of physical sensation like warmth, pain, tingling, so many others, images both bizarre and commonplace, memories and emotions. Using a physical discipline, like Kundalini Yoga, is one way of tuning in to this specific frequency. The way in which the various postures, breathing exercises and points of concentration are arranged to flow in a sequence allows the practitioner, experienced or complete novice, to become aware of the body in a way that is different, with cumulative effect, every time the sequence is practiced. Awareness develops. The body morphs from an unknown mysterious mass, made of cells and tissues that either operate efficiently, or don’t, into an organism that separates out into specific sensations and emotions that progressively reveal aspects of the psyche that are ready to shift and change.

Feelings lodge themselves in the body from the time we become aware of the world outside the womb. Environment and genetics both play their part in how we process experience as an infant, toddler, and small child. When the world around begins to frighten and confuse, a child will respond by relentlessly finding a way to re-establish equilibrium. The strategy generally involves ‘disappearing’ the emotions that threaten to overwhelm. A foetus experiencing her battered mother’s fear understands only the physical wash of adrenalin, the rise in stress hormones, the cramping of her mother’s body as it reacts. These sensations are stored in the physical memory of the body, called the body-mind in Kundalini Yoga. Every new fearful experience in that child’s life will deepen the memory imprint, creating, after not too much time, an energy pattern. In Eastern disciplines this energy pattern is seen to be responsible for the way in which the body manifests health, or the lack thereof. In everyday life, this energy pattern is responsible for the feelings that govern reactions and eventual behaviours.

A child develops a basic thought of, “I’m not safe”. Then continually responds to the feelings of fear that result from that thought. This can, and mostly does, last well into adulthood and very often into old age. Response to this fear may be the purposeful seeking out of risky situations in order to validate the thought. It could be the opposite behaviour of cowering away from life and experience. The fear may be denied, locked away in some part of the body and never allowed expression. From here, the lurking feeling governs decisions about relationships, careers, self-esteem and confidence. From this dark place the fear governs other emotions. Anger. Jealousy. Insecurity. Not good enoughness. Much easier to persuade ourselves that the other person is behaving badly and thus responsible for the angry feelings we are experiencing than to pinpoint the anger as the gateway to that very old feeling of fear. The one that tells us in insidious incessant whispers: “I’m not safe”.

The ancient spiritual principle of “No reaction” is very similar to the principle behind spontaneous healing. Very simply, if you react to your feelings you lose the opportunity to reveal what lies beneath them. The energy of anger is intense and very difficult to ‘hold’. It is much easier to ejaculate your anger onto another person. With that ejaculation, like the sexual version, the energy is released, relief is experienced, and it takes time for the build up to reach the same proportions of intensity. When the intensity is held, and there is no ejaculation, the body can begin to speak its own special language. The opportunity presents itself for you to listen, understand, and translate yourself to yourself. In this instant permanent change is possible. This process can be called spontaneous healing. It can be called being in the present moment with all that it has to offer you. It can also be called meditation.

The true practise of Kundalini Yoga offers these opportunities in every set practised. A guide is necessary, as with every potentially emotionally hazardous journey for which there is no map. The most efficient guides are those that make themselves redundant by passing their knowledge and skills on, so as to constantly create more guides. The initial skills needed to become aware of the body, and its particular form of communication, are quickly learned. Subsequent skills of translation and refining take a little longer but with dedication and guidance, are also learned to the benefit of the practitioner. The result is an awareness of your feelings and all the power for change that they contain, coupled with the ability to allow the body enough time with each particular signpost of your individual character to create a new energy pattern within. This new energy pattern is only one of many new patterns, each building on the last, continually improving the versions of yourself you wish to create.