Feel the Way you Want to Feel
An Interview with Dr Ann Weiser Cornell
There is a moment-to-moment wisdom that is available to us if we don’t get in the way, says Ann Weiser Cornell, my guest on today’s Neurosummit.
It’s now been seen that the gut has 100 million more neurons than the spinal cord. We’re starting to see that the mind is not just situated in the brain. The body and the emotions are a part of the mind, as well.
If you bring awareness down into your body, then your body and emotions will sum up for you everything you need to know, including — what you are hiding from yourself.
Ann teaches Focusing, a practical process to help you go from a state of overwhelm to a state of calm and clarity. It works by just asking yourself a few simple questions when you are in an emotional state.
4 Questions for Inner Relationship Focusing
We get confused when we have emotions, and our language can actually trap us into identifying with the emotions we are having. Thankfully, Ann has a PhD in Linguistics, so she is able to unravel the word choices that trap us, and provide us with different ways to ask good questions of our feelings.
With any negative emotion, she says, give yourself a three word sentence to recite when you are having it. Identify it, and say, “I am…” or “I feel…”
Then try saying, “Something in me is anxious, annoyed…” whatever the feeling is for you in that moment.
Do you see how your language is separating you from your emotion? It is no longer “I am annoyed,” but instead, “Something in me is annoyed.” You are no longer identified with the emotion, instead it is something inside of you that is feeling it. And that something is only part of you, that’s not you.
Step 3 creates even more awareness, “I am sensing something in me is anxious.”
That makes it smaller. It distances you from it. By making this transition, you are not ruled by your emotion; you are aware that a part of you is having an emotion, and that is so much different than being the emotion. It is a very detached, observant, and aware state, that reminds me of the state of Neutrality we talked about yesterday with Howard Martin.
When I used this process, I arrived at the statement, “There is only a part of me that is in fear.” This was very empowering for me to realize!
Your Emotions Try to Guide your Mind
“Most people, most of the time, don’t have a relationship with their own feelings,” Ann said during the interview today. We try to ignore our own feelings, or shame ourselves for having them, or reason ourselves out of having our feelings. It’s so much different, even radical, to welcome your emotional state as it is, and even to be compassionate to having your feelings.
She has many Focusing techniques that focus on where, specifically, you can feel an emotion manifesting in your body. She teaches these techniques regularly through her online courses, which she has graciously discounted for my listeners.
Watch the interview replay, and get in touch with your own feelings.
Originally published at theawareshow.com on February 18, 2015.
