7 Stories for Mastering Your Emotions

The emotional body is widely overlooked for overall health and happiness. Explore these 7 stories on how to understand, cope with and use your emotions appropriately.

8 Creative Techniques to Cope with Painful Emotions Many of us have a hard time coping with negative emotions. For instance, the anger we feel when we’re hurt is the same as the flight, fight, or freeze response we experience when our survival is seriously threatened. This can wreak havoc on our wellbeing. Here are eight creative ways for coping effectively with painful emotions.

How to Control Your Emotions Your emotions are essential. They connect you to other people and provide you with information about yourself. Emotional control has to do with regulation; it doesn’t mean avoidance or white knuckles or stoicism. It doesn’t mean squashing your feelings or needlessly expanding them. If you have control over your emotions, you’re not afraid to feel, and you understand that your feelings won’t last forever. Read on to learn how to use your emotions as a path toward greater understanding and as a way to inform the decisions you make about how to behave in the world.

What’s Hiding in Your Hips? Yoga teachers often refer to the pelvis as “the junk drawer of emotions.” It leads me to picture an emotional can opener clattering around next to an emotional package of old batteries. But junk drawer imagery aside, the link between the hips and one’s emotional state is actually quite profound and fascinating. Read to find out more.

A Little Mind Wandering During Meditation Helps Process Emotions Do you have trouble staying completely focused during meditation? Do your thoughts tend to wander? New research, published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, says this is OK and that a specific type of mind-wandering meditation actually helps your brain process emotional experiences, leading to better stress management and wellness.

The researchers categorized meditation into two basic types: concentrative—in which the meditating person only focuses attention on breathing or on a specific thought (while suppressing other thoughts); and nondirective—in which the individual effortlessly focuses on breathing or a meditation sound, but beyond that, it is OK for the mind to wander. Learn more about this exciting new development.

Emotional Intelligence: A Practice for the Chakras Emotional intelligence (EQ) is of vital importance. Medical professionals are learning that a huge, overlooked reason many North Americans get sick with terminal illnesses is our cultural tendency to repress emotions.

The chakras are centers of energy, or “wheels” that relate to certain parts of the body and have specific emotional and energetic resonances. Here’s how to boost our EQ using the chakras.

The Yoga Sweat: How Our Glands Process Emotion It’s long been understood that yoga is a practice for body, mind, and heart. We often talk about chakras in yoga, and how certain emotions may be stored in specific places in the body. More literally, perhaps, yoga moves our bodies into positions that have intuitive emotional resonance, and we can’t help but respond emotionally. Learn how our glands process our emotions in this story

How to Remain in Balance with your Emotions Emotions are a part of a person’s being that is highly overlooked. It’s always body-mind-spirit. But emotions play a very important role in all three “bodies” and have the power to transform nothing into something. If used properly, the emotions can be a catalyst for change and a hidden force behind manifestation and creativity. When we are out of balance with our emotions, it can wreak serious havoc, not only in ourselves, but also in the people around us. Read more to find out how to remain in balance with your emotions.