The rich life we seek is on the other side of our painful emotions.

"David saved my life. These last few weeks have been some of the most emotionally turbulent and downright STRANGE that I've ever experienced. All kinds of fears came to the surface, and deep emotions of sadness, loss, confusion, and anger coming out. And it would have been 100x times harder if it wasn't for the loving kindness, genius, and generosity of this dude! He taught me what to do to move through emotion and get to Peace." - Chris H.

[Originally posted May 2019 on my old site. My process has evolved since this post, obvs, but I stand by everything written here.]

Lovely words from my friend above, and still, don't believe what he is telling you.

I didn't save him, and I didn't teach him. All I did was point him toward his natural capacities to move energy and free himself. His body wanted to move the emotions. Just like yours does. He did everything for himself.

The "positive thinking" of most of the spiritual world avoids looking at our pain, because the theory is that putting attention on it will manifest more of it. This is so utterly incorrect.

Your emotional pain is already in your energy field. Whether you look at it or not it is already manifesting and influencing your reality and your actions! It's already there in your subconscious, emanating its vibration. Ignoring it just keeps the pain in our lives, under the surface. The only way to help it and end it is to look directly at it and work with it.

This emotional work is what the Universe wants, and what your Soul wants.We are all trying to heal into wholeness and re-discover our Oneness. This is why we are here. We are here to experience what we think is not love, so that we reconnect Love into that situation and experience that love. So we remember the ecstasy of oneness in a human body. This process facilitates that re-connection.

Life is a performance of separation where the game is to get back to Oneness (Love).

The Universe is going to keep trying to get you to play this game. It's going to keep showing you where you think you are separate and not safe and not okay and feeling that pain. Because only you can embrace your pain and reconnect it with love. This brings more love to your life. No one can do that for you. Go through to the other side of your feelings and the situation then transforms.

By now, I have experienced this transformation hundreds of times. Anger turned into appreciation. Despair turned into joy and new relationships. Lack turned into abundance and new projects. Jealously turned into deep spiritual connection and internal security without any external effort on my part, except being will to just feel. All the action was internal, and then I felt different, I acted differently, and my reality became different. I do this again and again.

These painful parts of you are screaming for your help. They are going to keep coming, because your Soul and body want you to work with them so that you heal and experience more love and freedom, and send more love and freedom through you to the world. From this perspective, going through your pain that you are carrying is actually the most direct path to your joy and helping others.

Healing your emotions internally is the most direct path to changing your life externally.

So how do we do it? I will share here a simple version of the technique I have been using every day for 4 years [7 years at time of reposting] to change my internal state and my external world. I've honed this through relentless practice of the methods I've learned from Brandon Bays, Michael Brown, Teal Swan, Matt Kahn, Dr. Darren Wiessman, and Dr. David Hawkins. Look up any of those teachers and their work for more.

Emotional Surrender

This moment is not a mistake. You and your feelings are not a mistake. The Universe is asking you to look directly at it and be fully in it, even if it hurts for a few minutes. Surrender to this process and your joy happens more quickly. You will transform. Then the outside will transform.

Here's the great news. You don't need to know how to do this, even though I will tell you. Your body knows exactly what to do. You will see that your body wants to do this. If you just can let your body do its work, you will move stuck energy. Don't take my word for it, try it for yourself.

Here is a simple version of the process. You can do this in the morning when you wake up or when you feel an uncomfortable emotion happening in you.

The Emotional Surrender Process

1. Sit somewhere quiet.
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2. Set a timer for 15 minutes. Or 10 or 5 if that's all you have.
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3. Start breathing with deep breaths into the belly. Fill the belly with air as low in your body as you can. Breath in and out from this spot purposely for the duration of this process. If your mind takes over and you forget to do this, that's fine, just start again.
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4. Scan the body. Let it relax. Feel the emotion or emotions happening for you. Let them come. For just a few minutes today, you are going to welcome your experience no matter what it is.
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5. As the emotion happens, find the physical sensations of it. Where is it in the body? Does it feel hard or soft? Is it hot? Is it trembling? Is it tight? Do not try to analyze anything. You may have thoughts about the emotion or thoughts about what you should do to "fix" the situation. You don't need to fix anything in this moment. Ignore these thoughts. You may have thoughts that say you should not be feeling what you are feeling. Ignore these thoughts. Focus entirely on the physical sensations. Address your emotions as the physical sensations. Put your awareness into the physical sensations and find out what they are. Let them all come up. Get a full body sense of what is happening. Tip: you can describe the sensations out loud to help keep you focused on them.
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6. Let them get stronger. Invite the physical sensations to come. This is your actual felt experience of the emotion and you can handle the physical sensations. They are actually much easier to handle than thoughts most of the time. You do not have to know what the emotion even is or why it is happening. Very often those insights will come automatically. You might see visions or memories or hear words from your emotions. You don't have to look for these. They can happen by themselves. Just stay focused on the physical sensations, let them come, and keep belly breathing.
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7. Relax into these sensations and surrender to your body. Don't try to change these sensations. Just keep relaxing the body. The emotions will tense you up. Keep relaxing. Surrender. Just put your awareness on the physical sensations and stop trying to resist anything. Let them happen fully. Let your body have control. Relax the body into the sensations and let it do whatever it wants. Stand, bend over, lie down, shake, hum, make noise, cry, laugh, scream, squirm on the floor, twist and turn, curl into a ball, shake your hands, stomp, punch (a pillow). Most of the time I do this process sitting and my body releases the emotion by crying. Sometimes, for really strong emotions I am lying down and shaking quite a bit and also crying to release. Sometimes with anger I need to punch pillows or flex my lower abs very hard several times, and I will have a release. There is nothing wrong with any of this. There is nothing wrong happening. All of this body activity is your cells naturally moving the old stuck energy and releasing. Let them do it.
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8. Keep belly breathing. All the time. Keep belly breathing and focusing on the body sensations. Most likely they will come in waves. They will build up and it will seem hard to handle. Your mind will try to escape. It will try to distract you. That's okay. Whatever you see in the mind is okay. Just keep relaxing into the physical sensations and surrendering to the body. This is your body trying to heal. The wave of sensation might build up until it breaks with you crying or shaking or some other release. Then the sensations will subside and you might feel relief or peace. And then another wave might come. Or that particular disturbance might be done, forever. Huzzah!
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9. The timer will go off in 15 minutes (or less) and you are done. That's it. No need to force yourself. 15 minutes is enough. You can do it for 15 minutes. You don't have to "finish" any emotions. Every moment you are surrendering in this way is clearing space inside you. You might find, however, once you learn how energy moves through you and once you encounter the peace and relief on the other side of your emotions, you might want to continue this process until the waves are complete. You might find it is actually easy to let these waves pass through. And then they are done, and the emotion is gone. You might find you actually enjoy it. You might be amazed at what happens in your thinking and life.

If that sounded like a lot, or complicated, here is the summary:

1. Sit. Set a timer.
2. Breath deeply into the belly. Relax.
3. Scan the body, see what emotions are coming. Invite them. Relax.
4. Find the physical sensations of the emotions and focus entirely on that. Ignore thoughts.
5. Keep breathing and relax the physical body as the waves of sensation come. If your body needs to move a certain way, let it.
6. Stop when the timer goes off.

What is actually happening in this process? You are surrendering to what the Universe is asking you to look at. You are surrendering to the energy that needs to move through your body.

When you give these hurts parts your full awareness and acceptance you reconnect them with your love. You are welcoming them and embracing them, and letting them come through you, and this heals it!

Emotional surrender lets healing happen. Your body knows what to do, we are just restricting it almost all the time. Give your body the gift of freedom, just for a few minutes today.

If you want to be a little more active with your mind in this process, you can consciously imagine dropping your defenses, opening your heart, and you can literally invite the sensations, emotions, and energy through your heart. I like this too. It's like, "welcome hurt parts, old friends, you did some difficult work feeling all this pain, it's time to come home."

What if the emotion isn't done after the timer goes off, and I still feel bad? That's normal. For most of us, one sitting isn't enough space to let all the energy move. But every moment we spend letting the energy move is more internal freedom we have gained for ourselves. It all accumulates and very soon the painful emotion is resolved and you have so much more freedom.

After you do this process, reward yourself. Do something that feels good. Do something that feels fun.

If the emotion comes back strong later in the day, do some alternate nostril breathing to help the nervous system, and ask yourself, what is the most loving and self-caring move for myself right now? It might be just to go for a walk or talk to a friend or do something fun. And then you can revisit the emotion when you do your next process.

The point of the process is not to get rid of anything, the emotions dissolve by themselves when they are ready. The point of the process is to create space so this release happens at whatever pace is the best match for your system. If you are consistent with this you will notice big internal differences in a very short time.

I typically do emotional surrender for 20 minutes every morning as soon as I get up. It takes me to more joy. When I find an uncomfortable emotion, I know going through it is the next most direct step to my freedom. I know my discomfort is the next wall I am holding between me and my real Self that I can let crumble with surrender. This is the next part of me that feels hurt and separate. I know that I will return to the warmth of Oneness by feeling this emotion fully. The payoff of this process has been evident to me every time I have done it. It has helped me change my life more than anything else.

This is possibly the most important skill I could ever encourage you to learn. Because it is the most direct way for you to permanently increase your vibration and move stuck energy all by yourself.

When you release the old, your life will become new. The first difference you will notice is how much lighter you feel in old situations that haunted you. Then you will see that your life starts to look differently externally. New things will happen, and you will have more love available to enjoy them.

But don't believe me, or my friends, or any of the people I work with. Just try it. Seek out your own experience of moving old energy and finding freedom on the other side. Your own experience is your best teacher. Let me know how it goes.

Love, David