Breathing Through Dark Emotions

“Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful…How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow? It is natural–you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh

During challenging times, we can sometimes feel overwhelmed by the dark emotions of others or ourselves. Our boss’s grief might emerge as unjustified anger at us, our child’s or partner’s frustrations might pollute a peaceful environment at home, our feelings of despair at world affairs or criticism from others might threaten to paralyse us in our tracks and lead to a period of depression.

One of the exercises we use on Work That Reconnects workshops for dealing with these kinds of strong emotions as they surface is called ‘Breathing Through’. The idea is that this method gives us a form for acknowledging and processing those emotions in a life-serving way. The result is usually a feeling of release and also of reconnection with what is meaningful to us. Here, I’ve modified the group exercise to something that is quick and easy to do individually:

Make yourself comfortable in a sitting position, feet flat and stable on the floor, hands resting softly in your lap or on your knees. Settle into your natural groundedness and connection with the earth…

Closing your eyes, bring your attention softly onto your breath and just observe it without actively controlling it in any way. Stay with this for 30 seconds or so…

As you continue to observe your breath, become aware also of any sensations arising in your body, any areas of tension, tight muscles, sharp pains, that have arisen as a result of dark emotions surfacing…

Breathing in, contract those areas, feeling deeply into the pain, acknowledging its presence, embracing its message for you… Breathing out, relax the tension, allowing the pain and the emotions to leave, to be transmuted into love… Breathing in, imagine the energy moving from your head and through your heart, to be infused with love…Breathing out, allow that loving energy to flow… Repeat this transformative breathing and relaxing, giving the dark emotions and any accompanying pain and tensions permission to be transformed and to flow out of you as a force for good…

Remember as you breathe that this air has been breathed by countless others as they dealt with adversity, as they have dug deeply into their courage, their confidence and their faith in order to help restore themselves and others… Breathe in their strength, their love for you as a fellow human being, breathe out your breath of life, infused with the compassion of millions…

Remember as you breathe that this air has been enriched with oxygen by the trees and plants around us and touch your gratitude for our symbiotic relationship to other living things. You are deeply and fortuitiously connected in a gigantic, living and breathing web of life. Breathing in, feel your gratitude, breathing out, return the air for the benefit of other living things.

If you find that you’re feeling numb, or that you cannot feel anything in your body, breathe that through too. The numbness is just as much a part of our reality and it too can be transformed. No need to force it, just pass it through the heart, on the tide of your breath, and let it go.

Finally, return once more to simply observing the breath. Allowing it to flow, just watch internally as your abdomen rises and falls. Continue for around 30 seconds… Then, in your own time… when you’re ready… open your eyes.

This looks like quite a long process written down. In fact, in practice, and once you’ve become competent at it, it can take just a few minutes – ideal, I hope, for dealing with everyday ups and downs.