Due to trauma our emotions (energy in motion) can be suppressed and get stuck in our system. This is generally harmful because it creates all kinds of stagnant energy and blocks in the system that can hinder us later in life.

In our youth, up to 7/8 years of age we navigate our environment mostly on our emotional brain also called the limbic system. After that age our neocortex, our rational mind gets more fully formed and starts regulating the emotions from the limbic system more.

Trauma that forms in this first stage of our life needs to be addressed on this level. It is important to learn to reconnect with these older suppressed stuck emotions, to fully allow them and feel them as they are in the here and now so the energy can get released/transmuted.

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Eckhart Tolle calls this reservoir of repressed and suppressed emotions the pain body, it contains all unprocessed emotions from the moment of conception up until present time.

Here is a simple but effective method from Eckhart Tolle to process the pain body and it’s stuck emotions.

4 steps to process the pain body.

1) Notice when negative thoughts or bad feeling energies are hijacking us.
2) See if you can find the emotion behind those thoughts or energies.
3) Bring your attention to the sensation of that emotion in your body.
4) Reach toward that sensation with your heart, breathe into it from your heart.

When reconnecting to these ‘stuck’ emotions it can feel like you are the age again when that emotion originally got repressed. So don’t be too surprised if you feel like a 3 year old when this happens. However now you have much more processing power and can regulate that emotion and bring it up to date to the here and now and transform it.

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Gangaji uses a very similar process, she teaches people to be with the emotion that is here and stop trying to move away from it, stop trying to solve it, simply be with it. Here a demonstration from one of her satsangs.

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Another method that can help with reconnecting, feeling and transforming your suppressed and repressed emotions is the Letting Go method from David Hawkins. He mapped the different human emotions on a scale. Once you learn about the different emotions it’s easier to recognize and identify them.

Once you recognize the emotion you can use his map and method to work with it. In his book – Letting Go – he describes the following process.

Step One: What am I feeling? — STRESS, DESIRE, FEAR, GUILT, SHAME, ETC (sit with this as long as you need to). Focus on the EMOTION not the thought loop of who did what.

Step Two: Run TO it, not FROM it. — Let it be. Spend 1-10 min here. Be with the feeling, we instinctively like to turn away from unpleasant emotions or we try to distract ourselves or suppress them. Do the opposite. See if you can fully embrace whatever emotion you are feeling without any judgement or desire to change anything. 

Step Three: Can I allow this feeling? — NEUTRALITY. Ask yourself can I allow this feeling? Can I be fully present with it without the desire to change it in any way? 

Step Four: Could I let this go? — WILLINGNESS. Ask yourself if you could let this emotion go. See if there are any hooks connected to the emotions why you might be holding on to them. 

Step Five: Would I let it go? — SURRENDER. Ask yourself if you would let this emotion go. See if there are any reasons why you might be holding on to the emotions. 

Step Six: When, now? If you have allowed and felt the emotions fully without any judgement, and then asked the questions, could I let this go, would I let this go. Then ask yourself when you could let it go. Could that be now? If so simply let go of the feeling and see what happens. 

In this video you can see this process explained.

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There is another method that is very similar to the Letting Go method and it is called the Sedona Method. Most likely the Letting Go method has been inspired by the Sedona Method. In this playlist a short introduction to the Sedona method.

With these methods people should be able to navigate their emotional bodies a lot better. The more you practice the better you get at both allowing your feelings and by doing that you will see that it becomes easier to let go of them later on also, or they tend to transform or discharge by themselves the moment you let go of any resistance towards them.

Being able to connect to, and release/transform stuck emotions is a great step towards more inner peace.

Related articles: 
-) The Transformation of Trauma with Bessel van der Kolk and Gabor Maté
-) Tension and Trauma Release Technique (TRE) – Body Shaking to Release Stress
-) Breathwork – Breath yourself to Inner Peace
-) Becoming Whole: Healing the Wounded & Protective Parts of Ourselves
-) Connect to your Feelings and Needs and learn how to Set Healthy Boundaries
-) Inner Child work with The Completion Process
-) Emotional Freedom Technique – Energy Tapping
-) The 5 step cycle of creation – How our thoughts shape our (experience of) reality
-) Investigating, turning around and transforming (bad feeling) thoughts