Move Stuck Emotions: Practical Techniques for Lightworkers

In this Legacies of Light podcast episode, host Josette LeBlanc addresses the significance of confronting and moving through stuck emotions.

She delves into the challenges of emotional heaviness and the risks of bypassing these feelings. Josette presents valuable tips and strategies, such as mindfulness, curiosity, and authentic connection, to help manage and alleviate emotional burdens.

Additionally, she introduces a guided visualization exercise that aims to identify and process emotions, promote self-compassion, and track emotional shifts over time.

Listeners are encouraged to share their progress, fostering support and healing in their spiritual journey.

01:06 Understanding the Importance of Feeling Your Feelings
01:42 Navigating Through Shadow Work
03:19 Strategies to Move Through Stuck Feelings
03:27 The Challenge of Facing Uncomfortable Emotions
04:22 The Role of Community and Support
05:21 Mindfulness and Moving Energy
07:11 Getting Curious About Your Emotions
08:15 Identifying and Addressing Unmet Needs
09:35 Identifying Underlying Needs
10:52 Offering Self-Compassion
11:41 Guided Visualization Practice
15:07 Describing and Processing Emotions
19:21 Tracking and Celebrating Progress
21:31 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

SUPPORT FOR LIGHTWORKERS

This episode offers a glimpse into the type of support participants of Intuition Immersion School's DISCERN membership receive.

DISCERN is a year-long program for lightworkers who want to run their soulful business or creative projects with ease, integrity, and joy. No more doubting! 

DISCERN gets you there by helping you...

1. express your vision with courage 
2. clear what's in the way of you trusting yourself
3. honor your unique energetic frequency and gifts

Receive 1:1 energy work and mentoring and access to a powerful community and library of resources.

Learn more about DISCERN here https://www.intuitionimmersionschool.com/discern

Transcript

0:00

Hello, and welcome to the Legacies of Light podcast. The podcast for Lightworkers who are remembering their soul's purpose and why they came here to Earth. I'm your host, Josette LeBlanc and today's episode, we are going to be talking about how to move through stuck feelings or another way to look at it is how to feel your feelings. And this is something that is really important for Lightworkers because we can't do the important work we're meant to do, if we are feeling bogged down by an emotional experience that is keeping us from moving forward. This is really important. And so you'll want to listen to the end of the episode because I will be giving you specific strategies on how to move through this. And by the end of this episode, I have a feeling you're going to be feeling at least 10% lighter, if not 20%. And if you don't feel 20% lighter than you can just do the practices I offer, you can do them once again. So I'm sure you've all felt this. Somebody has told you, oh, you just got to feel your feelings or you're working through a patch of shadow work. I'm recording this episode just after eclipse season. And that time is a time where shadows come up. Guilt, shame, fears. And it's really muddy and sticky. It's easy, easy to get stuck in that rut in that feeling of this is never going to, and I don't want to feel like this anymore. And when you hear somebody say we just got to honor our feelings. Our shadows are important to experience and just feel it and it'll help. And then you hear other philosophies of it's important to be present. To be present with what we're feeling. And it just sounds so vague and mysterious. And it's even more vague and mysterious when we consider, I don't want to feel this. This is not fun. And it's not that you're bypassing it. It's just that you are just tired. You're tired of feeling the way. You're feeling you're tired of feeling stuck. You want to move forward. You want to change things. So the important thing here is that when we do feel our feelings, this is part of the not bypassing. Okay. And bypassing is something that happens a lot in my field of the field of Lightworkers right. Energy work. It's the new age spiritual movement. It can be something that we are told to do. Just look on the bright side. Create some affirmations and change your mood. This is so something we hear a lot. And this just doesn't work because we are living in this world. We have incarnated in this world for a reason. We've incarnated here to feel the human experience and part of the human experience is also the shadows, the weight, the heaviness, the mud. And the density, the density. And but we don't have to live in the density all the time. But it's not by ignoring the density that we are going to be able to move through it. So how do we move through it? Okay. We're going to look at some strategies today. On how to do that. I'm going to give you some practical tips. By the end of this episode, you should feel lighter. Really. So the challenge with feeling our feelings is that they can be very uncomfortable. Especially if we're dealing with shame, guilt, fear. It's scary. It's really scary to feel those feelings to experience them, especially if you're recalling a traumatic event. Our body is protecting us by helping us disassociate or numb from those feelings. And so it's really beautiful that our body gives us that opportunity to distance ourselves from these emotions. However, there comes a time when we do have to face them and we know that it's time to face them if they're always coming up and you just can't ignore them. So in some cases it'll be very helpful, important. Important. That you meet a mental health practitioner. In other cases, you can do the practices that I'm going to offer today. You can do it on your own. However, in any case, I do recommend that you have somebody you trust to be able to communicate what you're experiencing. Because, yes, it's good to do this on our own, and we can only do it our, on our own, but having a community or a trusted friend that you can say, these things that you're experiencing without judgment can be very energetically uplifting also because there's something about using our voice in expressing our pains and our realizations and our insights that is very liberating. It's part of the liberation process. And so if you have that person to be able to communicate what you're experiencing, then this is a beautiful gift. And it's part of the experience as well. So we all have experiences, events, feelings that weigh us down. Often these are stories or beliefs that are on a loop in our mind. It's something that comes back up time and time again, it's a pattern. And getting rid of that pattern is not easy. Buddhist traditions, yoga traditions teach us how to face this. Mindfulness meditation. Yoga where we work with the body to express the emotion. And so these are very valuable. Very valuable teachings. Very important teachings. And part of what I'm going to be exploring today, definitely touches on that. But if you're like me simply meditating or focusing on your breath, doesn't help me. It didn't help me dissipate the energy. Doing yoga and somatic work has definitely supported me in moving the energy. But as somebody who is very heady and enjoys reflecting and contemplating life. Some people could say, oh, you can go into over analysis mode, but really contemplation is a power, a superpower. And there are various ways to contemplate when we are experiencing stuck emotions. So when we're feeling stuck emotions, what do we want? We want to move that emotion. We want it to get it out of our system. We want it to move. And this is the point of any mindfulness practice. Really. We are present with the emotion. We acknowledged the emotion. Why? Not because we want to keep the emotion there, but because we want the emotion to move. This is what we're talking about. When we're talking about flow states, right? When we are present and involved in something, the energy is moving. It is not stuck. It is not blocked. And so the power of mindfulness and really being present with an emotion is that it creates a movement and this is what we're looking for. We're looking for movement. All right, so let's get into it. So how do we create that movement? Okay. Step one. It's important for you to get curious. Get curious about what your feeling and what you're experiencing. Curiosity doesn't have any judgment. Curiosity, just ask questions. And genuinely wants to know what's up? What's happening? Why are you feeling this way? There's no judgment around it. So when you can get curious about your experience, this is the first step to alleviating some weight. Okay. So how do you get curious? Getting curious, the first part is naming what you're feeling, not naming the story or the details of the story, but naming the feeling. So are you feeling frustrated, confused, fearful. Resentful. These are often very much the core of our stuck feelings and the weight of our feelings. Okay, so you name it. Now, if that doesn't dissipate the energy, then let's do the next step. The next part of this, once you've named the emotion. You can name the unmet need that is underneath the emotion, right? What is the need behind the emotion? And I'm going to give you an example of that in a moment. This need is not the story. Okay. This is not the why. So you might say, I feel frustrated because I hate my job and I don't want to be doing this. And these people are doing this and I feel like that. And. Okay. That is not what I'm talking about here. The need is the genuine desire that you have the genuine. Human need that you have. Okay. So let's give an example. So imagine, let's say that you are just frustrated at work. The people you're working with are kind enough and you're paying the bills. You're maybe even making more than paying the bills. You're saving up for retirement. You're very secure in this job, but you come home every night, exhausted, frustrated. And disconnected, frankly. You know that there's something else that you'd rather be doing. But you can't figure it out and it just doesn't make sense to quit. It's just confusing. Why would you quit? If you don't know what else you're going to do. So you're in this loop of frustration. Confusion. Dissatisfaction. Those are the emotions. So we named the emotions. All right. What are the needs underneath that? So you might have a need for connection, right? Authentic connection. You might want to be connecting with people who are more on your wavelength. You spend eight hours a day with people who don't really know you, who don't really understand you, who don't really have conversations about the things you care about. You might be needing meaning, more meaning in your life. Something about your work, doesn't bring full meaning to what you want to express or connect with. This could be spiritual meaning it could be. Just really any kind of meaning artistic, creative. There's no sense of deeper understanding and deeper life meaning in the work that you do. You might be desiring more of a communion with life. So this kind of co-creative process with your day with the people, with the essence of your work. This type of communion also gives a meaning to your life. You might be, want to be more of service and your work isn't about service. It's about something else. So these are the deeper needs that are underneath the emotions you're experiencing. So now you've named the emotions, you've named the needs under those emotions. Now, can you offer yourself some compassion for what you're experiencing? Can you be your own shoulder to cry on? Can you offer compassion to yourself just as you would offer to a friend who's coming to you and expressing these needs. This part of you wants to feel that compassion. And, just as you feel light, When you feel heard by a friend that if you could experience this for yourself, with yourself, you would feel a lot lighter. Okay. So if you feel that compassion just goes so far, and yes, you can offer yourself compassion, but you still have this"yes but" feeling. Here's the last practice that I want you to try. This practice, it's going to be a guided visualization. And I want you to choose an experience that is not super heavy. Okay. And the reason for this is that this practice can bring emotion to the surface. It should bring emotion to the surface. But it will bring emotion to the surface to release it. If you are working with something very traumatic during this practice, please make sure that you have a mental health practitioner near or not. On speed dial. No, not necessarily, but that you have someone there who can support you in processing these emotions more deeply. Okay. Okay, so bring an experience to mind so for example, the experience of the dissatisfaction of work, that could be something that you could bring to mind. Bring that experience to mind and then close your eyes. Okay, so let's go through it. Close your eyes. And take three deep breaths and with every breath. Imagine the energy of the day melting into the Earth. And feel the support of the Earth underneath you. Feel the floor. Feel the bed. Feel the chair beneath you. Just feel the weight of your body. And understand that this weight is Gaia or the Earth supporting you. Gaia is always there to feel your weight, to hold your weight. To support you in transmuting, the emotional weight that you're experiencing. This is the co-creative relationship with Gaia. Now bring to mind the experience that is causing you grief. And with this experience in mind I want you to name the weight of it. On a scale of one to 10. 10 being super heavy. And one being super light. And if you have a pen and paper close by, this can be a good time to just write the number. The number of the weight of this emotion, of this experience. Because we're going to be coming back to that number. Breathing into it. One more time, feeling the weight of it. Eyes closed. I want you to describe this emotion. Of course, you don't have to say it out loud. But as I ask you questions, You're going to describe the weight of this experience. So when you have this experience in mind, what color is it? What color where does this experience or this feeling, this emotion, where is it in your body? Where do you feel it? Where do you feel it? What color is it? What size and shape is it? What texture what texture is it? What temperature? When you touch it. Or come near it. What temperature does it have? Does it have a smell? What does it smell like? And take a moment. Just really feeling all of this. The size, the shape. The texture. The temperature. The smell. The weight you might even want to give it a name. And as you become more familiar with this experience, What starts to happen? Does it move? Does the texture change the color? The temperature. The weight. Sit with the energy. Sit with this as it morphs and as it melds into other parts of you. You can pause now, if you want to feel it more. And if you're ready. You can gently open your eyes. Now again, on a scale from one to 10, how is your experience of this emotion now? Okay. You might notice a slight change. You might notice a significant change. And for those of you, remember I said at the beginning, if you don't notice a change, you can just try this again. You can also draw what you experienced, what you felt. Use colors, get really creative with it. But really describing the essence of it. You might even want to write about it. Descriptive writing. You might want to share this with somebody you trust. To help it move even more. But it's important for you to try to do this again. Because what can happen often is that we believe that we have felt this feeling forever and it's never changing when in fact it has shifted over time. And the proof of that is that you are making progress. You are changing. You are making different decisions. And it's important for you to celebrate the changes that you are experiencing. So if you have shifted this energy, 10%, 5%, 1%, it's important to celebrate that. To be grateful to yourself for the work of being with that energy. Truly. Being with the energy is such a courageous act. And you should be grateful for that. Now I can't tell you how to feel, but gratitude is so important. Celebration again, sharing with somebody you trust. And just over time, you are going to notice a change. And so the reason why it's important to track it is because it gives you this visceral proof that you are shifting your energy. Otherwise, you're just ruminating and keeping it in your head. And that is just not really helpful. It's never helpful to keep it in your head. So there we have it. If you enjoyed this practice, please share it. Please share it with your friends, your family. Let me know in the comment section. If you are listening to this on YouTube, please subscribe to my channel and and comment. It helps me out. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, do the same. And this episode offers a glimpse into the type of support participants of Intuition Immersion School's discern membership, receive. Discern as a year long program for Lightworkers who want to run their soulful business or creative project with ease, integrity, and join. Uh, and joy sorry. And please join. So, yeah, we do energy work, a group energy work, one-on-one energy work. We have a powerful community of like-minded lightworker trailblazers. It's really about helping you clear your throat chakra. And express your vision. It's a magical experience. Check out the link in the show notes. And if you have any questions, you know where to find me. Thank you so much for listening.