EMOTIONAL DISCIPLINE: Core Practices

SIFTING

This exercise provides a way to understand and experience your feelings when you’re not sure what is going on with you, nor what to do about it.

Prepare
- Find a quiet setting where you will be undisturbed.
- Place your body in a position that supports being comfortable and alert.
Observe your Thoughts
- Without trying to control them in any way, take a step back from your thoughts as they flow through.
- Observe each thought, letting it come and go.
- Identify what are the recurring concerns (one or more), and what you are telling yourself about them.
Scan your Body
- Let your awareness move around freely within your body.
- Notice what the energy is like in particular places (warm…cold, soft…hard, open…tense, flowing…blocked, and so forth).
- Just notice what you notice, letting it be what it is. No need to change it!
Follow your Breath
- Allow your awareness to carefully follow each breath.
- Notice what is happening (flowing softness…resistant tension, shallow…deep) as you breathe in and as you breathe out.
Gather what’s Unclear
- Be aware of any resistance to an easy flowing breath.
- Recognize disorganized thoughts: obsessing, racing, jumping, confused, etc.
- Experience any bodily tension, discomfort, block, etc.
Breathe Understanding
- Deepen your breathing while noticing all elements of #5 above.
- Stay with holding all this in your awareness until an understanding and direct experience of your feeling(s) arises.
Breathe your Feeling(s)
- Allow the full flow of your breath to connect with the feeling you are experiencing.
- Stay with it as the energy in the feeling heightens into clarity, and then recedes.
Decide what To Do
- Now that you understand and have experienced your feeling(s), what do you choose to do with the energy that has been stirred? Is simply experiencing the feeling enough, or is action required?
Spirituality
- What might you add to, or notice in your experience of, each of the above steps, that would support your awareness of your relationship with the divine?

[ back to top ]