Q&A with Lincoln: I’m overcome with emotion when I do the breathing meditation. Why?

I’ve been doing the breathing practice everyday since we spoke (baring 1 day). I’ve done it every day since the new year and it is my resolution to do it every single day no excuses. I just want to give an account of how I feel after doing it. And I’m going to swear and I mean no offense.

Sometimes I’m overcome with anger, I feel so angry after I’ve done it. Also, I feel starving for some reason after the practice and the first thing I want to do is go on gorge on some food. I’m not sure why this. I also feel agitated, like I want everyone to leave me the fuck alone while I do what I need to do in a morning. It is making an impact and lifting my mood. There has been mornings where I’ve broke into tears and feel really upset for the rest of the day.

I just feel like maybe I need to do more then I currently am with the practicing because I quite quickly get drawn back into my old emotions and ways of thinking and then yet again is helpless.

Any advice is appreciated thank you.

Lincoln’s Answer

The breathing method is very powerful. It is helping to release the repressed anger that you have in your psyche and nervous system. I understand that this can be an uncomfortable process but it is very healthy and is helping you.

When we look at the psyche we see four layers of psychological response to trauma. The top layer is denial and avoidance. It’s the air element in a dysfunctional expression. Many people in our world act as if there is nothing wrong when inside they feel shut down, non-responsive, disconnected emotionally because of their suffering. They aren’t feeling their suffering because they are avoiding it or denying it as a type of psychological survival mechanism. The subconscious mind decides to deny and avoid. It’s not a consciously-created process.

When we start to get our consciousness back into our physical body and energize the physical body with our concentrated awareness, intention and breath, we wake the psyche and nervous system up. The shut down system starts to feel again. The avoidance and denial is broken through and we feel our emotions again.

The next thing we run into is anger. The psyche is holding onto anger about what happened to us, anger about what made us suffer, anger about what we could not change in life because we were children and powerless in those situations. Anger and frustration is the fire element in a dysfunctional expression. By continuing the meditation and breathing practice, the anger will get expressed and released out of the body during the meditation. We want to be mindful to not express from a place of anger onto people while we are processing past emotions. So we may need to be less social or more deliberate in our choices of who to interact with. We don’t want to harm our relationships when we are clearing out old emotional energies that were repressed in our psyche and nervous system.

After we process the anger by allowing it to be there, allowing it to be felt, then we unlock the sadness. The sadness is the water element. It lies beneath the anger. During the difficult experiences in our life, we felt rejected, not cared for, not honored, not given what we need by our parents, other people or God. This caused sadness. If the situation was never fully processed and understood in our psyche then the emotion will still be felt. We will carry around a deep, constant sadness and believe that life just isn’t a happy experience and can’t be a happy experience. We feel disappointed constantly. We want to be happy but have difficulty feeling it.

Under the sadness is loneliness, aloneness and separation. This is the earth element energy. In our traumatic experiences we feel alone and afraid. The experience hurt us and no one saved us. No one stopped the bad things from happening. We lost our faith in God and our trust in other people. We also lost our confidence and trust in ourselves to live as creators. The meditation and breathing practice will have reached the bottom of the psyche when we start feeling the powerful loneliness of being human. Temporarily we may feel more fear and disconnection from life. But as we continue to use the practice we are adding energy to the psyche and nervous system which is purifying the psyche and removing the shut down emotions.

As we work through all of these layers of the psyche in our meditation and breathing practice, we are re-awakening the human emotions and we start feeling alive again. With each dysfunction emotional allowed to be felt, not rejected but honored to be as it is, we allow a physiological processing to occur. Just by feeling the emotions that are arising without rejecting them, they are processed and resolved. Automatically they stop coming up.

During this time of allowing ourselves to feel the emotions that the meditation and breathing practice brings up, the psyche is accepting the psychological realities of being human. We learn about emotions by feeling our emotions with our awareness present. We learn how emotions are the true human language communicating to our consciousness. How we feel tells us how we truly understand a situation. Words are disconnected symbols that can lie and distort an experience in our minds. Emotions are authentic.

Naturally as you let yourself feel, you will watch the psyche express these layers. We move from denial and avoidance – the state of feeling shut down and disconnected – into anger and sadness, then into loneliness and fear. After reaching the bottom, the loneliness and fear, we break through into a powerful state of peace. The past traumas in our life feel emotional resolved. We are no longer feeling ourselves holding onto the past emotions and the suffering. We feel a resolution when we feel the peace. True peace comes after we go through this process. What many call peace is actually the avoidance and denial of their emotions. True peace feels present and connected to life. Whereas the peaceful quality of avoidance and denial feels disconnected and lonely. The two are noticeably different.

Last, the true peace of psychological resolution is the fertile space into which genuine happiness and a love of life can emerge. Inside of that peaceful feeling and connection to life, we begin to feel a genuine unconditional, constant happiness. It is our love of being alive, our love of existing as consciousness inside of creation. Now we have re-discovered the happiness that a child feels before trauma takes that away and covers it with fear, loneliness, sadness, rejection, anger, frustration, avoidance and denial. We have entered into the authentic “natural state” of being human.

This is what lies ahead for you. Stay with it. Trust the process. Allow yourself to feel what is arising within your nervous system. The practice you are doing is very powerful. You are experiencing this effectiveness because you are feeling the emotion getting unlocked.

If you would like any help at any time during this process, we can work together again. I’m here to support you when you feel that you would like support.

Blessings and Love,

~ Lincoln