Banner Photo by: Madison Lavern @yogagenapp
When strong, unpleasant emotions arise, as happens during grief, anger, jealousy, confusion, sadness and so on, it triggers a lot of aversion towards those feelings. This aversion makes us want to hurt ourselves or someone else, indulge unhealthy addictions, run away, freak out, or give up. Unfortunately, all of these reactions strengthens the ego’s grip on us.
The FEEL Technique teaches us how to courageously feel our feelings, without identifying with them. When we identify with our feelings, it causes them to turn into suffering spirals of compounding delusional thoughts and feelings, which cause us to act unskillfully in ways that harm ourselves and others.
The FEEL Technique helps us wield our mindfulness like a surgeon's scalpel to cut away all of the unnecessary mental suffering that is needlessly added to the physical sensations of emotions. The more we use the FEEL Technique on any arising afflictive emotions, the less power they will have over us.
The FEEL Technique is based off of spiritual teacher Ekhart Tolle’s teachings. In his book, The Power of Now, he encourages people to address emotional pain that arises in the body in this way:
Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body [He defines the pain-body as “a negative energy field that occupies your body and mind.” It results from past emotional pain that lives on in you. It can be either dormant and unnoticable, or active and overpowering when triggered.] Accept that it is there. Don’t think about it — don’t let the feeling turn into thinking. Don’t judge or analyze. Don’t make an identity for yourself out of it. Stay present, and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you. Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of “the one who observes,” the silent watcher. This is the power of the Now, the power of your own conscious presence. Then see what happens.
The FEEL Technique is a practice that helps us remember the key elements of Tolle’s instructions in the heat of the moment, when we are trying to respond skillfully to difficult emotional states that arise in the body.
FEEL is an acronym that stands for:
Feel the emotions
Establish that you are the awareness; not the impersonal feelings that you feel
Exclude thinking; do not identify with the thinking
Love and accept the feeling.
Here are the details behind what we ask you to do in each step:
1. FEEL THE EMOTIONs.
Put all of your awareness into feeling the emotion directly with your senses. The mind, with its judgments and emotional resistance, may encourage us to not feel it. Therefore with as much courage, compassion, and curiosity feel the emotion, no matter how unpleasant it is.
Some meditators remember the slogan “The way out of suffering is through” to remind them to feel and accept unpleasant emotions with love and wisdom.
2. ESTABLISH that you are the awareness; not the THE impersonal feelings that you feel
This step reminds us that we are the awareness, not the objects of awareness. If helpful, use the slogan, “What I see I cannot be,” to remind you that you are the formless awareness, not the objects of awareness, which in this case is the temporary, passing feelings.
This step reminds us to not identify with the sensations. As long as you don’t identify with them, you can skillfully allow them to be, move, and release without it becoming trapped in the body and without acting it out unskillfully.
Remember that these sensations are “not me, not mine.” They are merely a temporary passing cloud in your open sky of awareness. Just as clouds do not disturb the sky, sensations can be held peacefully by the unchanging awareness without being harmed by them, and we can experience this peace of mindfulness, as long as we do not identify with the sensations.
3. Exclude thinking; Do not identify with the thinking
Tolle encourages us to eliminate thinking, but many of us find that too challenging to do. However, it is OK that thinking continues as long as we don’t identify with it. Here are three ways that our meditation practice has given us to help us exclude thinking and not identify with our thoughts:
A. Have a calm, quiet mind. Do some breath meditation to quiet and calm the mind. If your practice has helped you become adept at breath meditation, thoughts may fall away into the background of your awareness.
However, the habit pattern of the ego is to generate a lot of delusional stories when a deeply disturbing emotion arises, so do not fear, if this technique does not work that well. Try the other two.
B. Intensely focus all of your awareness on feeling the emotion. By doing this, there is less energy left to generate thoughts, and those thoughts that do arise are ignored in the background of our awareness.
C. Assume all thoughts are delusional and pay them no heed. Meditate with the anchor of your awareness being the sensations of emotion in the body. Just as we practice in mindfulness meditation, when thoughts arise, label them “thinking” and with as much compassion as possible return your full awareness to feeling the emotion in a calm, courageous, compassionate manner.
As we did with the sensations, remember that thoughts are “not me, not mine.” Thoughts are simply our conditioning which we had no control over, unfolding according to natural laws which we did not create nor control. Thoughts are objects of our awareness. We are the formless awareness that is aware of the thoughts. This remembering will help us to not identify with them.
4. LOVE AND ACCEPT THE FEELING.
With love, acceptance, and compassion we allow the feeling to be as it is. We do not do this technique to “get rid of” the feeling. That would be the delusion of aversion. Instead, we feel the feeling while relaxing and calming the body as much as possible. We appreciate that this feeling is here to teach us how to be mindful and help us awaken from our misery and our identification with our emotions.
We can use the slogan “I am formless, this can’t hurt me,” to remind us to not be afraid of feeling the feeling.
When feeling grief, or deep sadness, part of loving and accepting these feelings is allowing them to move through the body the way they need to. This may involve allowing the body to sob, keen, shake, cry out, and engage in other grieving processes. Do not impede this. Allow the body to use its own wisdom to grieve the loss. These forms of grief are deeply healing and why we always allow and make space for them at our meditation trainings and practice meetings.
When feeling anger, rage, or jealousy, part of loving and accepting these feelings is allowing them to express themselves in the body without acting them out unskillfully. If you are with others, excuse yourself, and retreat to the bathroom or other place where you can do the FEEL Technique in private.
If these feelings have generated a lot of energy in the body, use that energy to do something constructive and skillful such as: mow the lawn, mop the floors, do cleaning that involves vigorous scrubbing, run up and down the stairs, go for a jog, or similar activity. If you are watching the kids and can’t leave the room, jog in place, dance, do push ups, jumping jacks, or other exercises. It helps to use rhythmic activities to release this energy skillfully in a way that will leave no residues of emotionally pain in the body.
We continue to do the four steps of this technique until the emotion moves away on its own, or we have enough balance in the mind to skillfully go about our business.
Try this technique out for a month and see if it helps you be more mindful, and live with more love, peace, compassion, joy, and wisdom.
Commit to the Practice
Here are some tips to help you remember to use this technique every day.
1. Every morning, maybe after your meditation, set an intention to use the FEEL Technique when any emotional disturbance arises, no matter how major or minor it is. If you are with people when it happens, set an intention to excuse yourself to find some privacy where you can focus on doing the technique.
2. Carry a note card on you to reference on how to use the technique. It might read:
The FEEL Technique:
• Feel the feeling. “The way out of suffering is through.”
• Establish that you are the awareness; not the impersonal feelings that you feel. “What I see I cannot be.” “Not me, not mine.”
• Exclude thinking; do not identify with the thinking.
• Love and accept the feeling. “I am formless, this can’t hurt me.”
Then whenever an emotional disturbance arises, find some seclusion, reference the card and do the technique.
3. Journal about your experiences using the technique every day or two. This will help you remember the experience and the insights you make. It will also provide you proof that something is happening and keep you motivated to keep going.
Wishing you peace, love, light, and success!