Mindful Breathing

Morita teaches us that we are subject to emotions much of the time and therefore not entirely in control of them. Indeed in many situations we are not in control of them at all, for example when feeling ill, having a depression, anxiety or bipolar mood state, a feeling of OCD panic or other severe emotional response.

In these situations it is often a mistake to try to rationalise or directly combat the emotion. Methods like the over-sold NLP techniques of resource anchoring try to convince us to have a designer approach to how we feel. In practice this only works with the milder emotions, not with severe emotions such as those driven my mental health conditions.

Morita suggests that we learn acceptance instead, and operate from the position of letting the emotion be, and learning to co-exist with it. Instead of fighting it, resisting it and spending valuable energy in combat with it, allow it to be, accept it and respect it. However do so in a mindful way.

Begin by pausing, choosing a moment of peace, and breathing deeply. This is important, STOP and breathe deeply.

Next breathe into the problem, allowing your body rythms to slow as you breathe into and through the feeling.

Allowing the emotion to stay with you if necessary, continue to breathe as you continue life, not surrendering and becoming frozen, but also not entering into worthless combat. Instead learn acceptance.

The comparison that is often made is with having a bad leg so you limp, or having flu so you feel under the weather. You might take some pain killers or flu remedy, but you would not stop and rage at the condition fighting it and trying to make it "not so". You would either rest, or get on with life accepting a hindered capacity for the time being. Breathing into the problem and taking moments of peace, and exercising acceptance allow us to do the same with emotions.