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A 10-Minute Meditation to Work with Difficult Emotions

Can you feel the heat?

Life feels a little more intense these days: at home, work, out in the world. When life begins
to feel more intense than normal, it’s important to remember to slow down, turn toward these
bigger feelings, and see the bigger picture. Take each day at a time.

Life is always in flux. Every thought, feeling, and moment is quickly changing into the next.
In the moment, when something feels difficult, it seems like it will never pass. The practice is
learning how to stay with and turn toward the difficulty.

The power of learning how to live a mindful life is to embrace this truth as much as you
possibly can and live for the moment with some future planning that you hold loosely.

What I hear from most of my clients and students is that uncertainty is what creates the most
difficulty. As much as we would like to know, to control, and to plan every little part of our
lives so that it all works out in a way that creates more security and ease, we cannot. Life will
always be impermanent and therefore always uncertain. We never really know what is
coming next and sometimes the best and most courageous thing we can do is put one foot in
front of the other and keep breathing through all of it. The power of learning how to live a
mindful life is to embrace this truth as much as you possibly can and live for the moment
with some future planning that you hold loosely.

The more we can meet any difficulty with presence, compassion, and kindness, the easier we
can move through it. It requires that we learn to stay by turning toward the difficulty versus
pushing away.

Meditation trains you to be resilient. The more you can learn to stay with all the highs and
lows of your thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations, the more strength you can bring
to each moment and experience.

For example, the other week, a good friend was going through a lot of difficulty and loss.
After meeting with him recently, I was struck by how intense the feelings of sadness and loss
were transmitted between us. I spent a few days afterward feeling off center, crying off and
on, and feeling a bit agitated in my body. At first, I was taken aback by how intense these
feelings were and noticed my mind trying to make sense of what was happening. The more I
could turn toward my experience, and the physical sensations in my body, with compassion
and understanding, I could feel the emotions passing and releasing.

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor shares in her research that most emotions don’t last
longer than 90 seconds. I first heard about the lifecycle of emotions several years ago. I felt
relieved to hear this 90-second timespan because it had mirrored some my experiences as a
meditation practitioner for nearly 20 years. In the beginning of my practice, I had big waves
of emotions that definitely lasted longer than 90 seconds. Why? I had never really sat with
myself or allowed these feelings to be seen so there was a lot inside of me that wanted to
come out. However, with time and practice, whatever feeling I was having passed through
me more easily—as long as I brought my attention, understanding and compassionate
observing to the table. In the case of grief, PTSD, and/or depression there may be more time
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needed to work with these feelings and I recommend that anyone with depression or mood
disorders consult a mental health professional before beginning or altering any course of
treatment.

I have also found, personally and professionally, that other somatic-based therapies can
be complimentary to a meditation practice for approaching difficult emotions,
including somatic release, acupuncture, yoga, and daily movement.

Guided Meditation for Difficult Emotions

1. Come into a comfortable sitting position. Imagine something difficult that you are
going through. It doesn’t have to be the most difficult, but something moderately
difficult. We want to practice with moderation before we move into the most difficult.
Now, recognize your desire to push away the difficulty, to reach toward something
that would soothe the difficulty in the moment (reaching out to someone, chocolate,
distracting with technology, etc.), or denying that this difficulty is actually happening.
2. Now turn toward it. Breathe deeply in through your nose and out through your mouth
a few times. Now invite into your awareness a large figure of compassion and strength
who envelops you in a blanket of love, acceptance, and security. It can be a big cloud
of compassion, a large grandmotherly figure, anything that feels loving and kind.
Now, imagine this figure is holding you.
3. Turn fully towards your difficulty. Face it, head on. There is no need to be scared.
Feel this wise being enveloping you and speaking kindly to you: “It will be okay, you
are okay, you are lovable, you are enough, you are not alone, and we will get through
this together.” Let yourself offer and receive loving and kind statements as many times
as you need until your mind and body can soothe and slow down.
4. Each time, you notice yourself reaching for the old familiar way of turning away
from discomfort, try gently turning toward it. The more you train the mind to
acknowledge and name whatever difficulty is here, it won’t feel so challenging. In
addition, your limbic system and specifically your amygdala will send a signal to your
sympathetic nervous system that you can physiologically relax.
5. When I do this meditation, I often hold stones that are comforting to me, such as rose
quartz, while sitting on my meditation cushion. You can find the props or comforts
that speak to you.
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The RAIN Practice

RAIN is an acronym for a practice specifically geared to ease emotional confusion and
suffering. When a negative or thorny feeling comes up, we pause, remember the four steps
cued by the letters, and begin to pay attention in a new way.

R — Recognize: It is impossible to deal with an emotion—to be resilient in the face of

difficulty—unless we acknowledge that we’re experiencing it. So the first step is simply to
notice what is coming up. Suppose you’ve had a conversation with a friend that leaves you
feeling queasy or agitated. You don’t try to push away or ignore your discomfort. Instead,
you look more closely. Oh, you might say to yourself, this feels like anger. Then this might
be followed quickly by another thought: And I notice I am judging myself for being angry.

A — Acknowledge: The second step is an extension of the first—you accept the feeling and
allow it to be there. Put another way, you give yourself permission to feel it. You remind
yourself that you don’t have the power to successfully declare, “I shouldn’t have such hateful
feelings about a friend,” or “I’ve got to be less sensitive.” Sometimes I ask students to
imagine each thought and emotion as a visitor knocking at the door of their house. The
thoughts don’t live there; you can greet them, acknowledge them, and watch them go. Rather
than trying to dismiss anger and self-judgment as “bad” or “wrong,” simply rename them as
“painful.” This is the entry into self-compassion—you can see your thoughts and emotions
arise and create space for them even if they are uncomfortable. You don’t take hold of your
anger and fixate on it, nor do you treat it as an enemy to be suppressed. It can simply be.

As we get closer to it, an uncomfortable emotion becomes less opaque and solid. We focus
less on labeling the discomfort and more on gaining insight.

I — Investigate: Now you begin to ask questions and explore your emotions with a sense of
openness and curiosity. This feels quite different from when we are fuelled by obsessiveness
or by a desire for answers or blame. When we’re caught up in a reaction, it’s easy to fixate on
the trigger and say to ourselves, “I’m so mad at so-and-so that I’m going to tell everyone
what he did and destroy him!” rather than examining the emotion itself. There is so much
freedom in allowing ourselves to cultivate curiosity and move closer to a feeling, rather than
away from it. We might explore how the feeling manifests itself in our bodies and also look
at what the feeling contains. Many strong emotions are actually intricate tapestries woven of
various strands. Anger, for example, commonly includes moments of sadness, helplessness,
and fear. As we get closer to it, an uncomfortable emotion becomes less opaque and solid.
We focus less on labeling the discomfort and more on gaining insight. Again, we do not
wallow, nor do we repress. Remember that progress doesn’t mean that the negative emotions
don’t come up. It’s that instead of feeling hard as steel, they become gauzy, transparent, and
available for investigation.

N — Non-identify: In the final step of RAIN, we consciously avoid being defined by

(identified with) a particular feeling, even as we may engage with it. Feeling angry with a
particular person, in a particular conversation, about a particular situation is very different
from telling yourself, “I am an angry person and always will be.” You permit yourself to see
your own anger, your own fear, your own resentment—whatever is there—and instead of
spiraling down into judgment (“I’m such a terrible person”), you make a gentle observation,
something like, “Oh. This is a state of suffering.” This opens the door to a compassionate
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relationship with yourself, which is the real foundation of a compassionate relationship with
others.

By allowing ourselves this simple recognition, we begin to accept that we will never be able
to control our experiences, but that we can transform our relationship to them. This changes
everything.

We cannot will what thoughts and feelings arise in us. But we can recognize them as they
are—sometimes recurring, sometimes frustrating, sometimes filled with fantasy, many times
painful, always changing. By allowing ourselves this simple recognition, we begin to accept
that we will never be able to control our experiences, but that we can transform our
relationship to them. This changes everything.

Excerpted from the book REAL LOVE by Sharon Salzberg. Copyright © 2017 by Sharon
Salzberg. Reprinted with permission from Flatiron Books. All rights reserved.

My Stroke Of Insight Summary

1-Sentence-Summary: My Stroke Of Insight teaches you how to calm yourself anytime by
simply tuning into the inherent peacefulness of the right side of the brain.

When accomplished neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor was just 37 years old, she suffered a
stroke out of the blue. It was caused by a malformation she’d unknowingly had since birth
and bathed the left side of her brain in hemorrhaged blood for hours.

Taylor first noticed a headache upon waking, but soon found herself descending into an
increasingly bizarre psychological state. She became a spectator of her own body which,
unsurprisingly, led to trouble in moving around and performing ordinary activities.

Despite the mounting effects of the stroke, Taylor managed to call a colleague, who
immediately put her into medical care. She spent about 8 years recovering from her injury,
which she now considers a transformative experience.

ather than debilitating her, the left-sided stroke and resulting brain damage revealed to Taylor
the power of the unharmed right side of her brain. As it turns out, it can be an immense
source of psychological poise and serenity.

In My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey, she tells the whole story and
explains how we can tap into this source of calmness and peace ourselves.

Here are 3 great lessons I’ve learned from the book:

1. The human brain has tremendous potential to heal and change itself.
2. The left side of your brain is noisy, while the right side is peaceful.
3. You can choose how to feel in any given moment.

Sometimes, you really do have to learn things for yourself. Thankfully, suffering a traumatic
brain injury to get better at mindfulness isn’t one of them. Let’s see how Taylor’s hard-won
wisdom can teach us about the happiness hidden within every human mind!
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Lesson 1: Your brain can heal and change in amazing ways.

You know from the beginning of this book that Taylor must have recovered reasonably well
from her stroke. After all, she wrote a book! Yet it still feels surprising that anyone could
survive, let alone thrive, with such a brain injury.

Luckily, most of us won’t face a stroke or similar in our lifetime. Still, there’s huge value in
the simple observation that human brains can heal and change dramatically. Called
“neuroplasticity,” this property means that from birth to death our brains are always
changing and learning.

Better yet, how your brain changes and what it learns is largely up to you. At first, Taylor felt
hesitant about leaving the experiences of her stroke-damaged mind behind to rejoin the
regular world. But once she set her mind to it, her recovery proceeded quickly.

If people with literal brain damage can so often regain the abilities they’ve lost and even
continue to develop new ones, imagine what you can do with a fully functioning, healthy
brain.

Lesson 2: You feel like just one person, but your brain really has two totally
different parts.

You may have read in a textbook or heard in a lecture that the human brain has two separate
and very different sides. The left side of our brains deals with language and numbers. It
allows us to see patterns and perceive time in the world. The right brain is responsible for
sensory perception and the big picture in the present moment.

But in the abstract, this whole two-sides stuff is hard to take seriously. And why does it even
matter that our brains have two different sides?

Taylor’s experience with a one-sided brain injury drives the point home. With her left brain
mostly out of function by the stroke, Taylor discovered that she felt calm and totally in touch
with the world. Because her right side was in charge, she was now neither scared about
the present, nor fearful for the future.

Most of us enjoy the luxury of a well-integrated brain. But, like Taylor, we must realize that
our brains are actually complex entities, trying to fulfill a variety of hugely disparate goals.
Evolution made the human brain this way, cobbling together lower and higher functions over
time, and it shows.

Lesson 3: You can opt out of many negative emotions and choose to feel mostly
the positive ones instead.

Speaking of “mindfulness” like a character trait makes it seem like it’s a quality people either
possess or lack. Meditation gurus have it, and everyone else doesn’t, right? Maybe, with
enough practice, we can cultivate our measly powers of mindfulness into more robust ones.

Well, Taylor’s stroke experience suggests a different way of looking at mindfulness. If a

sense of peace, wholeness, and calm simply comes from the right side of the brain, then
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mindfulness is actually within you all along. This stays true whether you’ve ever meditated
or not, whether you’ve ever deliberately undertaken mindfulness exercises or not.

This is what Taylor means when she insists that “peace is only a thought away.” If you take
to heart that the special orientation of the right brain is always there for you, you’ll feel more
confident in accessing it at times when you badly need an emotional breather or a reality
check. You don’t have to wait until you’ve developed a special new mindfulness talent.

You can choose to visit that mental place right now.

My Stroke Of Insight straddles the line between science and self-help. Between the compact
summary of how the human brain works, the gripping tale of Taylor’s life-threatening injury,
and the nearly unbelievable description of her remarkable recovery, there’s something in here
for everyone. While Taylor does tend to downplay how difficult it can be to tap into our rig

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Story of the author

I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother who has been diagnosed with a brain
disorder: schizophrenia. And as a sister and later, as a scientist, I wanted to understand, why
is it that I can take my dreams, I can connect them to my reality, and I can make my dreams
come true? What is it about my brother's brain and his schizophrenia that he cannot connect
his dreams to a common and shared reality, so they instead become delusion?

So I dedicated my career to research into the severe mental illnesses. And I moved from my
home state of Indiana to Boston, where I was working in the lab of Dr. Francine Benes, in the
Harvard Department of Psychiatry. And in the lab, we were asking the question, "What are
the biological differences between the brains of individuals who would be diagnosed as
normal control, as compared with the brains of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia,
schizoaffective or bipolar disorder?"

So we were essentially mapping the microcircuitry of the brain: which cells are
communicating with which cells, with which chemicals, and then in what quantities of those
chemicals? So there was a lot of meaning in my life because I was performing this type of
research during the day. But then in the evenings and on the weekends, I traveled as an
advocate for NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. But on the morning of
December 10, 1996, I woke up to discover that I had a brain disorder of my own. A blood
vessel exploded in the left half of my brain. And in the course of four hours, I watched my
brain completely deteriorate in its ability to process all information. On the morning of the
hemorrhage, I could not walk, talk, read, write or recall any of my life. I essentially became
an infant in a woman's body.

If you've ever seen a human brain, it's obvious that the two hemispheres are completely
separate from one another. And I have brought for you a real human brain. So this is a real
human brain.

This is the front of the brain, the back of brain with the spinal cord hanging down, and this is
how it would be positioned inside of my head. And when you look at the brain, it's obvious
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that the two cerebral cortices are completely separate from one another. For those of you who
understand computers, our right hemisphere functions like a parallel processor, while our left
hemisphere functions like a serial processor. The two hemispheres do communicate with

one another through the corpus collosum, which is made up of some 300 million axonal
fibers. But other than that, the two hemispheres are completely separate. Because they
process information differently, each of our hemispheres think about different things, they
care about different things, and, dare I say, they have very different personalities.

Excuse me. Thank you. It's been a joy. Assistant: It has been.

Our right human hemisphere is all about this present moment. It's all about "right here, right
now." Our right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the
movement of our bodies. Information, in the form of energy, streams in simultaneously
through all of our sensory systems and then it explodes into this enormous collage of what
this present moment looks like, what this present moment smells like and tastes like, what it
feels like and what it sounds like. I am an energy-being connected to the energy all around
me through the consciousness of my right hemisphere. We are energy-beings connected to
one another through the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family. And
right here, right now, we are brothers and sisters on this planet, here to make the world a
better place. And in this moment we are perfect, we are whole and we are beautiful.

My left hemisphere -- our left hemisphere -- is a very different place. Our left hemisphere
thinks linearly and methodically. Our left hemisphere is all about the past and it's all about
the future. Our left hemisphere is designed to take that enormous collage of the present
moment and start picking out details, details and more details about those details. It then
categorizes and organizes all that information, associates it with everything in the past we've
ever learned, and projects into the future all of our possibilities. And our left hemisphere
thinks in language. It's that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and my internal world to
my external world. It's that little voice that says to me, "Hey, you gotta remember to pick up
bananas on your way home. I need them in the morning."

It's that calculating intelligence that reminds me when I have to do my laundry. But perhaps
most important, it's that little voice that says to me, "I am. I am." And as soon as my left
hemisphere says to me "I am," I become separate. I become a single solid individual, separate
from the energy flow around me and separate from you. And this was the portion of my brain
that I lost on the morning of my stroke.

On the morning of the stroke, I woke up to a pounding pain behind my left eye. And it was
the kind of pain -- caustic pain -- that you get when you bite into ice cream. And it just
gripped me -- and then it released me. And then it just gripped me -- and then it released me.
And it was very unusual for me to ever experience any kind of pain, so I thought, "OK, I'll
just start my normal routine."

So I got up and I jumped onto my cardio glider, which is a full-body, full-exercise machine.
And I'm jamming away on this thing, and I'm realizing that my hands look like primitive
claws grasping onto the bar. And I thought, "That's very peculiar." And I looked down at my
body and I thought, "Whoa, I'm a weird-looking thing." And it was as though my
consciousness had shifted away from my normal perception of reality, where I'm the person
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on the machine having the experience, to some esoteric space where I'm witnessing myself
having this experience.

And it was all very peculiar, and my headache was just getting worse. So I get off the
machine, and I'm walking across my living room floor, and I realize that everything inside of
my body has slowed way down. And every step is very rigid and very deliberate. There's no
fluidity to my pace, and there's this constriction in my area of perceptions, so I'm just focused
on internal systems. And I'm standing in my bathroom getting ready to step into the shower,
and I could actually hear the dialogue inside of my body. I heard a little voice saying, "OK.
You muscles, you gotta contract. You muscles, you relax."

And then I lost my balance, and I'm propped up against the wall. And I look down at my arm
and I realize that I can no longer define the boundaries of my body. I can't define where I
begin and where I end, because the atoms and the molecules of my arm blended with the
atoms and molecules of the wall. And all I could detect was this energy -- energy.

And I'm asking myself, "What is wrong with me? What is going on?" And in that moment,
my brain chatter -- my left hemisphere brain chatter -- went totally silent. Just like someone
took a remote control and pushed the mute button. Total silence. And at first I was shocked
to find myself inside of a silent mind. But then I was immediately captivated by the
magnificence of the energy around me. And because I could no longer identify the
boundaries of my body, I felt enormous and expansive. I felt at one with all the energy that
was, and it was beautiful there.

Then all of a sudden my left hemisphere comes back online, and it says to me, "Hey! We got
a problem! We got a problem! We gotta get some help." And I'm going, "Ahh! I got a
problem. I got a problem." So it's like, "OK. OK. I got a problem."

But then I immediately drifted right back out into the consciousness -- and I affectionately
refer to this space as La La Land. But it was beautiful there. Imagine what it would be like to
be totally disconnected from your brain chatter that connects you to the external world.

So here I am in this space, and my job -- and any stress related to my job -- it was gone. And
I felt lighter in my body. And imagine all of the relationships in the external world and any
stressors related to any of those -- they were gone. And I felt this sense of peacefulness. And
imagine what it would feel like to lose 37 years of emotional baggage! (Laughter) Oh! I felt
euphoria -- euphoria. It was beautiful.

And then, again, my left hemisphere comes online and it says, "Hey! You've got to pay
attention. We've got to get help." And I'm thinking, "I got to get help. I gotta focus." So I get
out of the shower and I mechanically dress and I'm walking around my apartment, and I'm
thinking, "I gotta get to work. I gotta get to work. Can I drive? Can I drive?"

And in that moment my right arm went totally paralyzed by my side. Then I realized, "Oh my
gosh! I'm having a stroke! I'm having a stroke!"

And the next thing my brain says to me is, "Wow! This is so cool." (Laughter) "This is so
cool! How many brain scientists have the opportunity to study their own brain from the
inside out?" (Laughter)
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And then it crosses my mind, "But I'm a very busy woman!" (Laughter) "I don't have time for
a stroke!"

So I'm like, "OK, I can't stop the stroke from happening, so I'll do this for a week or two, and
then I'll get back to my routine. OK. So I gotta call help. I gotta call work." I couldn't
remember the number at work, so I remembered, in my office I had a business card with my
number on it. So I go into my business room, I pull out a three-inch stack of business cards.
And I'm looking at the card on top and even though I could see clearly in my mind's eye what
my business card looked like, I couldn't tell if this was my card or not, because all I could see
were pixels. And the pixels of the words blended with the pixels of the background and the
pixels of the symbols, and I just couldn't tell. And then I would wait for what I call a wave of
clarity. And in that moment, I would be able to reattach to normal reality and I could tell
that's not the card ... that's not the card ... that's not the card. It took me 45 minutes to get one
inch down inside of that stack of cards. In the meantime, for 45 minutes, the hemorrhage is
getting bigger in my left hemisphere. I do not understand numbers, I do not understand the
telephone, but it's the only plan I have. So I take the phone pad and I put it right here. I take
the business card, I put it right here, and I'm matching the shape of the squiggles on the card
to the shape of the squiggles on the phone pad. But then I would drift back out into La La
Land, and not remember when I came back if I'd already dialed those numbers. So I had to
wield my paralyzed arm like a stump and cover the numbers as I went along and pushed
them, so that as I would come back to normal reality, I'd be able to tell, "Yes, I've already
dialed that number."

Eventually, the whole number gets dialed and I'm listening to the phone, and my colleague
picks up the phone and he says to me, "Woo woo woo woo." (Laughter) And I think to
myself, "Oh my gosh, he sounds like a Golden Retriever!"

And so I say to him -- clear in my mind, I say to him: "This is Jill! I need help!" And what
comes out of my voice is, "Woo woo woo woo woo." I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh, I sound
like a Golden Retriever." So I couldn't know -- I didn't know that I couldn't speak or
understand language until I tried. So he recognizes that I need help and he gets me help.

And a little while later, I am riding in an ambulance from one hospital across Boston to
[Massachusetts] General Hospital. And I curl up into a little fetal ball. And just like a balloon
with the last bit of air, just, just right out of the balloon, I just felt my energy lift and just -- I
felt my spirit surrender.

And in that moment, I knew that I was no longer the choreographer of my life. And either the
doctors rescue my body and give me a second chance at life, or this was perhaps my moment
of transition.

When I woke later that afternoon, I was shocked to discover that I was still alive. When I felt
my spirit surrender, I said goodbye to my life. And my mind was now suspended between
two very opposite planes of reality. Stimulation coming in through my sensory systems felt
like pure pain. Light burned my brain like wildfire, and sounds were so loud and chaotic that
I could not pick a voice out from the background noise, and I just wanted to escape. Because
I could not identify the position of my body in space, I felt enormous and expansive, like a
genie just liberated from her bottle. And my spirit soared free, like a great whale gliding
through the sea of silent euphoria. Nirvana. I found Nirvana. And I remember thinking,
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there's no way I would ever be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this
tiny little body.

But then I realized, "But I'm still alive! I'm still alive, and I have found Nirvana. And if I
have found Nirvana and I'm still alive, then everyone who is alive can find Nirvana." And I
pictured a world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people who knew that
they could come to this space at any time. And that they could purposely choose to step to
the right of their left hemispheres and find this peace. And then I realized what a tremendous
gift this experience could be, what a stroke of insight this could be to how we live our lives.
And it motivated me to recover.

Two and a half weeks after the hemorrhage, the surgeons went in and they removed a blood
clot the size of a golf ball that was pushing on my language centers. Here I am with my
mama, who is a true angel in my life. It took me eight years to completely recover.

So who are we? We are the life-force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two
cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we
want to be in the world. Right here, right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right
hemisphere, where we are. I am the life-force power of the universe. I am the life-force
power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form, at one with all
that is. Or, I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere, where I become
a single individual, a solid. Separate from the flow, separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte
Taylor: intellectual, neuroanatomist. These are the "we" inside of me. Which would you
choose? Which do you choose? And when? I believe that the more time we spend choosing
to run the deep inner- peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will
project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be. And I thought that was an
idea worth spreading

The 90 Seconds Rule to Control Your Emotions

So… how would you rate your levels of stress over the last week? We are in the middle of a
very busy period: shopping, cooking, cleaning, more shopping, family gatherings, meeting
friends etc. There is no doubt that towards the end of the year we are exposed to many
challenging situations. We may find ourselves in stressful circumstances… often involving
our own family members! Our communication skills and ability to be assertive become a
priority. Without them we may lose our temper and say or do things we don’t really mean.
This is the moment when we look for a quick remedy, something that will help us to stay
more in control of our own emotions and ultimately ourselves in the middle of the storm
(should one happen).

Here’s some great news that we’re happy to share with you. It’s been proven that we are
capable of choosing our emotions. That means, it can be totally up to ourselves whether we
feel angry, frustrated or stressed. Sounds intriguing, or maybe if you’re prone to being ruled
by your emotions, it might sound like freedom! So how can you do it….. ?

Here’s the science part

The stress hormone – Cortisol – is released in your brain every time you find yourself in
challenging circumstances. A quick dose of this substance makes us more alert to what’s
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happening around and alarmed, in case a quick reaction (fight/flight) was necessary. If you
are in a life threatening situation then you want this happening. However staying stressed and
alarmed every day and responding this way to every situation in life is not good for us at all.

In order to choose the response to the event, the key is to understand that the Cortisol that is
released stays in our body for only 90 seconds. In her book “My stroke of insight”,Dr Jill
Bolte Taylor explains that in simple terms if we continue to experience strong emotions
beyond 90 seconds, it’s a result of our own choice. You can’t control the quick chemical
response, but you can choose what happens next.

When a person has a reaction to something in their environment, there’s a 90 second

chemical process that happens in the body; after that, any remaining emotional response is
just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop. Something happens in the external
world and chemicals are flushed through your body which puts it on full alert. For those
chemicals to totally flush out of the body it takes less than 90 seconds.

This means that for 90 seconds you can watch the process happening, you can feel it
happening, and then you can watch it go away. After that, if you continue to feel fear, anger,
and so on, you need to look at the thoughts that you’re thinking – that are re-stimulating the
circuitry – that is resulting in you having this physiological response over and over again.

Steps to use the 90 seconds rule

Start by tuning into yourself and experiencing the feeling. Don’t deny it, acknowledge it
instead but don’t give into it. You know that your immediate decision is needed to shift your
thinking and bring your attention elsewhere. You have a power to select. Your conscious
awareness will enable that. Find your own individual, best solutions that work: count to 90,
clench your fists, breathe or do whatever else you can to get through the emotion.

So what can you do to manage what happens next? What works for you? The next step is to
give your brain something else to do. You can replace your thoughts and redirect your
attention towards topics that are more positive and relaxing. This means that you will
continue to rely on your left hemisphere. Or you can choose to focus on your senses and e.g.
notice the environment (what you smell, taste, see, hear and physically feel) which will mean
that your right hemisphere is stimulated. Move your thoughts away from the stressful matter,
before you even begin to believe that what you are thinking is true.

Our natural ability

If you can master your own emotions, you can truly trust yourself. Using the 90 second rule
can enable that in a very real way. It takes practise, but it can be done. This method is
entirely based on neuroscience and the mechanisms that occur in the brain. It is aligned to
how we as humans function. It answers questions about the way to use the natural processes
that happen inside us to make our existence more effective. Practice this and become the
master of your emotions. Author : Joanna Sobczak, PSG
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Mindfulness Exercise – Sitting with Emotions

Feelings can’t hurt us. They are felt in the body and even the most difficult emotional pain is
actually minor when it comes to its physical sensation. For example, let’s try to conjure up an
intense feeling such as anger/resentment, fear, or craving for a fatty food or alcohol. Bring back
the thoughts, pictures, and sensations as if the situation was happening now. Notice your body.
Where in your body are you feeling the sensations? Is it a tension in your shoulders? A burning or
hollowness in your stomach? Tightness in your forehead?

If you were to rate that physical sensation on a scale of 1 to 10, how bad was it really? Maybe the
situation felt like a “10” but the actual physical sensation of an emotion hardly registers on the
scale of physical pain.

What is the problem is our thinking about our emotions – “I can’t stand feeling this way.” “It isn’t
right that I feel so bad.” These thoughts tend to fuel the emotion and tend to make the emotions
stick. The thoughts also interfere with effective problem solving.

An alternative to reacting to strong emotions is to “sit with” the strong emotion and observe it as
it ebbs and flows in our body. All emotions will come and go if we let them. Once the emotion has
softened, then you can think of ways you want to respond (or not respond) to the situation.

Let’s get started (exercise is about 3 minutes):

• Close your eyes and focus on your breathing.

• Gently let your mind wonder to a recent situation that was stressful for you. Replay
the situation in your mind. Conjure up the emotions you were feeling at the time.

• Do a brief body scan. Where are you noticing sensations? Stay with whatever is
there. Notice the sensation (maybe tension in an area of your body) and investigate
it with curiosity and without judging. Just notice its rising and falling and shifting.

• If you get lost in thought, come back to the breath and then again, rest your
attention on the body sensation. See if you can ride out the sensations like you
would a wave in the ocean. Keep awareness on the sensation until it subsides.
Then, come back to your breath and do another body scan to see if there is
anymore sensation that is prevalent. Let your attention rest there, paying full
attention to that sensation.
• Once you have concluded this exercise, slowly open your eyes.