If challenging feelings are simply allowed to be felt, instead of resisted, the entire body lightens. Sometimes immediately.
The natural energy of every feeling itself is always fluid. It is only our resistance, the locking down against the fear of experiencing our feelings and emotions, that causes blockage.
More challenging feelings and emotions, like depression and rage, have a dense quality to them. But they still move. It is only our resistance to these feelings that causes blockage in the form of tension, tightness and heaviness – which we experience as suffering.
Different emotions move at different levels of fluidity. Take anger, for example. Although perceived as one of the most negative emotions, when anger is true, it moves through the body with a quick and precise energy. It is only when we resist the anger, perhaps due to guilt, blame, shame, fear, etc., that it becomes a problem. However, when anger is simply expressed appropriately, the body becomes light and expanded, comfortable.
Difficult things happen in all of our lives. No one is spared. A death of a loved one, an accident, a betrayal, the loss of a job or damage to a precious belonging. These are the harsh realities of life. They cannot be avoided.
When they do occur, if the sadness, or anger or grief is simply felt in the body and allowed to be expressed appropriately, the body will let go of the energy. And then something else can come in. We can return ourselves to joy, bliss, new possibilities.
This is our birthright. We refuse this because of our childhood-born perception of all or nothing. In this way of thinking, everything is always 100% right or 100% wrong. And there is a profound impatience. If I can’t have it now, I don’t want it at all.
The child in us experiences any negative emotions as wrong and unfair. Why should I ever have to be unhappy? We feel picked on, unfortunate, doomed by fate. We compare ourselves to others and believe what happens to us is worse than what happens to them. These childhood-born habits of perceiving the world keep negative emotions locked in our bodies.
It is the demand that we be happy all of the time that causes most of our unhappiness. It is our childish, immature refusal to allow for what is that keeps us from our greatest joy.