What Does It Mean to Be with Your Feelings?

by Ryan Biddulph

All products and services featured on this site are independently selected by our authors and editors. If you buy something through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Confusion sometimes reigns in the mind concerning being with your feelings.

What does this mean? How can you be with your emotions?

Ego wants all types of practical tips. Perhaps you crave a guide for how to sit and be with your feelings.

But the only step to being with your feelings is to……be with your feelings. Sit and wait. Go ahead. Relax. Chill. Stay in one spot. Stick around. Observe. Watch. Right now, you can be with your feelings. Calmly observe your emotions as you read these words. Does your mind race forward into the future? Does your mind sprint back into the past?

Are you being with these emotions? Or do you attempt to distract yourself with these words? Be with your emotions. Sit with your feelings. Watch your feelings. This is the beginning of being with your feelings.

Being with your feelings often creates unpleasant emotions. Who enjoys sitting with fear? I feel a bit exhausted now but I am being with the exhaustion. Even though I am writing – not meditating – I am being with the feelings arising in my mind and body. Mental agitation surfaces. I want to fall asleep because tired-ness appears to invade my mind. Bodily discomfort arises, too.

My preferred option: sitting with my feelings allows the feelings to move along.

Feeling fear feels bad but the fear moves along to make way for love, peace and relaxation, as I write.

Enemies of Being with Your Feelings

Choosing to distract yourself is the chief enemy of being with your feelings. Sit down. Watch TV. Eat. Gossip. The moment fear arises in the being, most humans rush to distract themselves in order to avoid feeling the feeling. Entire industries seem built on the concept of distracting yourself to avoid feeling your feelings. Note entertainment. People mention watching mindless TV to unwind or destress at day's end.

People call TV the idiot box for good reason. Humans who watch hours of television nightly for years on end generally become less intelligent. People who watch TV lose intelligence by suppressing fear through this distracting habit. Burying fear goads you to make stupid decisions. Making stupid decisions leads to an unhappy, bound life.

Other enemies of being with your feelings include:

surrounding yourself with scared people
resisting practices like meditating and doing Kriya yoga
gossiping

The direct way to be with your feelings is by creating space around your day. Create space by following a silent habit. Spend 5-10 minutes in silence on waking and before sleeping. I devote 20-30 minutes to meditating after waking.

Meditating anchors me in one spot. Being in one spot allows me to be with my feelings. No matter what emotions arise during the 20-30 minute block I:

face
feel
release

the emotions. I go nowhere but within. Re-read that line. I sit still or lay still for 30 minutes. I do not evade my feelings by leaving the room. Nor do I check my phone to distract myself.

Being with feelings seems uncomfortable because fear often arises during being sessions. However, facing, feeling and releasing fears lets you clear these energies, allowing you to become more skilled in facing, feeling and releasing fears in the future. Being with future fears expands your awareness even more. Observe how this cycle of expansion allows you to be with any emotions without resisting or fighting these energies.