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Accepting difficult feelings like anger or irritation can help us keep our cool, feel better overall, and find calm on the other side.
Link to episode transcript: https://tinyurl.com/n6hm5yhz
How to Do This Practice:
- Begin the practice by settling your mind and body. Notice your breath and any sensations that arise in your body,
- Shift your attention away from your body, recalling an instance where you felt mildly irritated or frustrated. Give yourself a few moments to fully feel this emotion.
- Notice any physical sensations that arise. Then, release that memory, refocusing your attention on the body.
- Allow these sensations to shift and move, giving them the space to change and observing them with a sense of curiosity and kindness.
- Consider shaking hands with the emotion the next time it arises in your daily life.
Today’s Happiness Break host:
Eve Ekmanis a contemplative social scientist and meditation teacher from San Francisco, California.
Learn more about Eve’s work:https://tinyurl.com/2vhuarh8
Find out about Eve’s Emotional trainings with Cultivating Emotional Balance:https://tinyurl.com/5n95m7yx
Explore Eve’s Project, The Atlas of Emotions:https://tinyurl.com/mt75ytm3
Follow Eve on Facebook:https://tinyurl.com/3txahape
More resources from The Greater Good Science Center:
How to Regulate Your Emotions Without Suppressing Them:https://tinyurl.com/4x29denx
What to Do When You Feel Stuck in Negative Emotions:https://tinyurl.com/mwczxfya
How to Turn Your Brain from Anger to Compassion:https://tinyurl.com/57upkcfa
How to Overcome Destructive Anger:https://tinyurl.com/49zu6whw
We love hearing from you! How do you manage your emotions? Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.
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We're living through a mental health crisis. Between the stress, anxiety, depression, loneliness, burnout — we all could use a break to feel better. That's where Happiness Break comes in. In each biweekly podcast episode, instructors guide you through research-backed practices and meditations that you can do in real-time. These relaxing and uplifting practices have been shown in a lab to help you cultivate calm, compassion, connection, mindfulness, and more — what the latest science says will directly support your well-being. All in less than ten minutes. A little break in your day.
Dacher Keltner:I’m Dacher Keltner, welcome to Happiness Break, where we take a few moments to try a practice to support our minds and hearts, and helps us feel happier throughout the rest of our day.
A lot of our happiness comes from gaining perspective on the hard things in life, so today we’re zeroing in on anger.
We can’t will ourselves to never feel angry, nor would we want to. But we can learn how to process this emotion in a healthy way – by accepting it mindfully. When we do this, studies show we don’t flare up as much in the moment. We handle conflict better, our moods are more elevated and overall, we’re less stressed out in our daily lives.
Today’s practice is led by contemplative social scientist Eve Ekman.
It starts with some guided deep breaths and then we’ll call to mind something that’s just a little bit frustrating - because it’s often good to start small – and then we’ll just observe what that feels like in the body, what it’s like to cultivate acceptance and then hopefully, leave you feeling more relaxed.
Here’s Eve.
Eve Ekman: Let's begin by settling our body and mind,connecting with the breath and the body.
To help us do so, let's pay attention to the breath. Inhale, noticing the sensations of breath and inviting a sense of vividness.
Exhale, relaxing, allowing yourself to feel ease.
Inhale, drawing in with that sense of vividness.Exhale, relaxation and ease.
And as we inhale, we might have a sense almost of elongating the spine, being more upright with that vividness. And as we exhale, we could imagine softening and relaxing through the face and the chest and the belly.
Then allow your attention and awareness to be throughout the body, noticing the sensations in the face and the chest and the belly once again. Maybe there's areas around the eyes that feel tight, or around the shoulders, or around Maybe we notice something like warmth or tingling.
Be curious and bring this sense of exploration to noticing sensations throughout the body.
And then as we shift, to move towards shaking hands with our emotion. We bring forth our mind, memory, and imagination, and recall a time in which we felt maybe a little frustrated, irritated.
Maybe we were stuck in traffic. Maybe we feel like someone we care about wasn't listening or didn't hear us. See if you can bring to mind just one memory, and really vividly bring forth the details. Who was involved and what was happening? What were you thinking and feeling?
Often, when we remember an emotion, we start to feel the emotion. And in this practice we use that feeling of emotion as a way to practice being with the sensations of emotion. So give ourselves just a couple more moments here to really enhance and bring forth this frustration, this irritation.
So now release the memory, release the story, and bring your full attention and awareness to the body. Noticing the sensations that might be associated with this frustration or irritation. What do you notice around the eyes? The jaw? Do you notice sensations in the hands or the chest? The belly?
And when we shake hands with our emotion, we just allow these sensations to naturally shift and move.
Even strong sensations will start to settle down if we give them the space they need. So feel or imagine that they're there. These sensations have all the space they need.
Most of our emotions only last about 30 to 90 seconds, but it's rethinking about them that makes them feel stronger, longer. So without an agenda or expectation of anything shifting or moving, just keep noticing and observing with curiosity and kindness these sensations throughout the body associated with this memory of frustration.
Let the emotion be by just focusing on the sensations, giving it space to shift and change and unravel.
Whether the sensations of emotion have felt strong or light, whether they've completely dissipated or are still around. We can just focus on these lingering sensations in the body, and also a sense of real care and kindness towards these emotions that we feel so naturally throughout our life.
As we bring this brief practice to a close, consider shaking hands with the sensations of your strong emotion the next time it arises, whether in a meditation or in the world.
