Meditation and Calming
Emotional Storms
Copyright
© 2001-2010 Jim Malloy
Other
Lectures in the Series
Enlightenment for the Rest of Us
Staying Connected
How to Get a Break from All Those Thoughts in Meditation
What in the World is Going On?! How the Consciousness Shift May Be Affecting You
How Deep Is Your Self Love?
Will & Grace
Having a Hard Time Meditating Daily? Listen to Your Evolutionary Angel
Higher Guidance: It's Closer Than You May Think
A Daily Dip in the Light
Your Cosmic Journey: The Earth Experience
 At
one time or another, everyone finds themselves in some rough
emotional weather. Can meditation help you get through these storms,
and even downgrade their future intensity? Yes, a regular meditation
practice can indeed, provide you with a safe harbor from emotional
storms. To understand how, let's have a look at both the long term
and short term effects of meditation on your emotions.
Long term effects of meditation on your emotions
Through continued
daily meditation practice, many profound inner
changes occur, which will gradually bring about greater emotional
equilibrium and well-being. These changes occur on several levels...
spiritual, mental, physical/etheric, which includes your chakra
system. Let's take a look at how these various levels of your being
are positively effected by meditation, and how that relates to
greater emotional well-being.
Spiritual
Meditation connects
you with your Inner Spirit... the perpetually calm center within
you. Your calm spiritual center may be compared to the peaceful eye
at the center of a hurricane. Connecting daily with your Inner Spirit helps you to remain more centered in
that calm space throughout the day, thus anchoring you from being blown about by the winds of change and adversity.
Mental
Your mind assesses
and interprets each situation that occurs in your life. If it
interprets a situation as stressful, i.e. threatening, aggravating,
sorrowful, etc., it signals your emotional body, triggering a
related emotional response... fear/anxiety, anger/impatience,
sadness/depression. etc..
By clearing your
mind, meditation helps you to view your circumstances more
"truly", free from the negative projections that often
color ones outlook. With this greater clarity, the mind begins to
interpret fewer situations as "stressful", and so becomes
less inclined to send unnecessary emotion-triggering signals to your
emotional body.
Physical/Etheric
- Your Glands and Chakras
From a biological
point of view, emotional well-being is somewhat dependent on a
healthy, well balanced endocrine system (your glands and their
interaction). Several of your glands act as chemical transmitters
between your mind and emotional body. These chemicals signal
the emotional body to respond to a particular situation in a certain
way.
For example, in a
threatening situation, your mind signals your adrenal glands, which
begin secreting adrenaline. The adrenaline produces a feeling of
fear in your emotional body, heightening your senses and readying
you to protect yourself, by either confronting the situation, or
getting yourself out of there.
If your adrenal
glands are functioning well, your emotional response is likely to be
appropriate to the situation. But if your adrenal glands are out of
whack, your emotional response is more likely to be
disproportionate... too little adrenaline, producing a lethargic
response... or too much adrenaline, throwing you into a state of
anxiety or panic, rather than clear readiness to respond.
This is just one
example of how a healthy endocrine system is vital to emotional
well-being and equilibrium. How does meditation restore and
maintain healthy, balanced glands? The main way it
accomplishes this, is by balancing and cleansing your spiritual
energy centers, also known as "chakras".
Your chakras are
vortexes through which the life force flows and is directed to where
it is needed... the different areas of your body, as well as the
various departments of your life. These energy centers are not
physical, but are a part of what is called your etheric body. (See
the chakra and energy body diagram in the FAQs Room.) http://www.meditationcenter.com/info/faq.html
Your etheric body is
composed of a subtler energy than your physical body, and acts as a
template... a sort of unseen framework on which your physical body
is built. Therefore, each part of your physical body has an
etheric counterpart. Your chakras are roughly the etheric
counterpart of your glands. Thus, when your chakras are in balance,
your endocrine system mirrors this balance.
Your chakras also
"feed" your glands with the spiritual life force, also
known as chi. When your chakras are clear and functioning well, they
are able to provide your glands with the necessary
nourishment. However, when your chakras are blocking the life
force, the health of your endocrine system suffers, and your
glands begin sending the wrong signals to your emotional body,
resulting in a variety of unwelcome emotional states.
Daily meditation
gradually clears your chakras of anything which may block the free
flow of spiritual life force, and restores them to a state of
healthy balance, so that they can better fulfill their role of
nourishing your endocrine system.
Another important
facet of this process is worth noting... As meditation is clearing
the energy blocks from your chakras, it is also healing and
dissolving away old emotional wounds. As these emotional wounds are
healed, your "emotional hot buttons" become less charged
and thus, not so easily triggered.
Short term effects of meditation on your emotions
Whenever you are in
the throes of rough emotional weather and want to get past it, 15
minutes or so of nearly any type of meditation can be an effective
remedy. However, here is a meditation specifically for calming
emotional storms.
 Because this
meditation is for gaining relief from rough emotional weather, it
would be best to not add more stress by worrying about doing it
correctly. Just follow the simple steps and accept whatever happens.
A meditation for calming emotional storms
• Sit comfortably
with your spine reasonably straight. It's fine to lean against
something. If you are feeling too bad to sit up, lie down flat on
your back. If you are in too much of a funk to do that, any
position will do.
• With your eyes
closed, take a few moments to pay attention to your breathing...
breathe naturally, and observe your breath coming in, filling you,
and going out.
• Next, try to focus
your attention on the emotions you are feeling. Take some time to
simply feel the emotions. Try not to analyze them, alter them, or
push them away. Just feel the emotions, remaining as present as you
can with them for a few minutes. (This is a powerful means of
emotional healing, but if it is too painful, you can skip to the
next step.)
• Next, imagine a
radiant face... the face of the most loving, caring, compassionate,
being you can think of. You may see this face, or you may
just sense or feel it's presence. However you experience it is ok.
This face may or may not be familiar to you. You may think of it as
a manifestation of Spirit, or as just an extremely caring and
compassionate being.
• Spend a few
minutes communing with this loving being. Converse with it if you
like, mentally or aloud... or just commune in silence.
• Then offer your
negative emotions up to this loving being for healing. Just turn
them over to be healed and transformed.
• When you are
ready, slowly come out of your meditation.
As you continue to
grow spiritually from your meditation practice, you begin to realize
that you don't have to be a victim of the ever-changing winds and
waves of emotion... you become empowered and more in control of your
life. That doesn't mean that you cease to feel things. Rather, you
may experience the entire spectrum of feelings, but you are no
longer at the mercy of the more turbulent emotional weather as it
moves through your life.
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