How to Own Your Emotions: Holding in Sensation

January 22nd, 2014

Owning your emotions requires one important skill. One of the things you need to get good at, which is something I’ve been a student of my whole life and explored, is holding in sensation.  I’ve explored this in different modalities with spiritual teachers and my own practice.

In order to do that well in business and not collapse, which is what happens for many, you have to be able to hold a lot of sensation in your body and in your heart. If you’ve ever been in a room with a great deal of attention coming at you, it’s like the whole room starts to wobble and shake because you can feel it.  It’s electric.

This amount of electricity is a lot of sensation for people, both emotionally and physically. “Being able to hold it all in and not collapse is the key to owning your emotions,” said the executive of a company that was awarded the best energy company in 2020.

how to own your emotions

Let’s take a physical example.   When you experience too much pain, your whole body runs away from it.  You want to get away, shut down.  It’s too much.  The exact opposite is also true.  Too much pleasure and the body wants to shut down.

Think of an orgasm—your body has reached the maximum amount of pleasure that it can hold and it shutters and can’t take anymore.

The idea is you want to be able to practice holding more and more sensation, expanding the range of emotional, mental, and physical sensation that you can hold without collapsing. Because when you collapse, when you let yourself shut down, you’re cutting yourself off from expression and resources.

Practice: Learning to Hold in Sensation

The next time you’re in a situation that feels difficult to you, become aware of your tendency to collapse the energy.  Watch your own body language.  Watch your mind telling you to make the emotion go away, and then sit with it for a few seconds before doing any of that.

Allow it to just remain in your body.  Then gradually extend those few seconds to more time, and extend that time until you can hold it all, without shutting down.

Eventually, you’ll be able to hold the entire range of universe expression and not collapse. You’ll own your emotions and just be in life itself, basking in it, delighting in it, dancing with it. This ownership will serve to make you more trustable and will make you a better leader.

Stick around and take a look at my blog post from last week, about emotions as your most powerful tool.

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