Life is for Living….maybe now is the time to embrace Emotional Detox
Do you feel like you’re in the same place that you were a year ago? Are you truly living the life that you want to be living? Are you feeling at the mercy of your emotions? Do you feel as if you are on a treadmill, going round in circles? Does life feel like a struggle or an emotional rollercoaster?
If you have answered yes to any of these questions, then you need to embark on an emotional detox
If you are not living every single day from a perspective of joy and a place full of possibilities, it is costing you energy (life force) and keeping you from expressing and experiencing your full potential. There are boundless opportunities throughout the day to change your life for the better, it is just a matter of learning the tools necessary to be free from your negative emotions.
Maybe you’re content with your life, living day to day, working, socialising and fulfilling your basic requirements in life, but there is a longing within you, you can’t put your finger on what it is you are longing for, but it feels as if there is something missing; you feel as though you are searching for something. A sinking feeling washes over you from time to time and you are overwhelmed by a sense of there must be more to life than this.
If you are feeling restless, despondent or just that there is something missing in your life then Emotional Detox is for you!
Typically, people who embark on a detoxification process do so because they want to feel purified, clear of toxin and because they enjoy feeling the effects of lightness, well-being freedom, and increased energy. These qualities are sought after primarily as a bodily experience, by fasting, juicing, and eliminating certain foods, drinks or stimulants. The Emotional Detox method teaches you detox methods that benefit you beyond the body; positively impacting on the mind, emotions, and spirit
Emotional Detox is an all-inclusive detox: for instead of just concentrating on flushing toxins from your physical body it uses physical detox methods to support the emotional detox process. For you cannot feel truly light and free if you are suppressing anger or fear for example, however much you fast or juice. Similarly, however much you meditate to purify spiritually, if your body is full of toxins from eating, drinking, smoking and abusing substances, and you are holding onto old resentments, negative emotions and trauma the benefits of meditation fall short of their potential. There is greater potential for our wholeness and well-being when we make an effort to detoxify all the aspects of our being that is mind, body emotions, and spirit, respectively.
How Do We Emotionally Detoxify?
There continues to be an ever-widening scope of therapies and practitioners available to us and it can be a bewildering process to find appropriate help. The difficulty with emotions is that they are not outwardly visible so we cannot treat them as physical wound nor are they easy to articulate, hence the debatable effectiveness of just sitting and talking to a therapist. Talking therapies, whilst they can be helpful to a degree, tend to keep us in our heads rather than in the emotion and as you will discover in the contents of this course, emotions are stored within the body, not the mind. In fact, talking about feelings related to trauma, abuse, violence or unspecified unhappiness can implode the situation. It is a bit like sweeping dust from one end of the room to the other. It does not shift anything permanently; it just moves things around and disrupts them. Talking about our emotions can excavate the sense of confusion, panic, despair and disorientation associated with a negative event or situation that we are experiencing, but then it leaves it there and you are left stranded in a tumultuous state, feeling unaided and powerless. Therefore the kind of therapy needed is a therapy which can help us to contact, re-experience and then let go of suppressed emotions. Emotional Detox is a unique and unparalleled process that blends ancient and modern deep techniques including breath work, movement, and sound.
What Can Emotional Detox Do for Me?
Positive Relationships
It is a natural instinct to want loving and caring relationships with those closest to us. We need positive, stable, relationships with not only partners but with our friends, as social isolation is a strong driver of low well-being.
When negative emotions are seeping into our present relationships it can often mean that all of our relationships with others are filled with angst. It is easy to understand that unresolved emotional issues create tension and drain energy. These damaging issues range from difficult relationships with our family in the past to and the pain of failed marriages and relationships. We may try to bury negative emotions but we humans have a nasty habit of constantly picking at our emotional wounds, rehashing past traumas and revisiting painful past situations.
We unconsciously relive break-ups, physical abuse, arguments, and indiscretions. These daily reminders of past difficulties do nothing to resolve them. Living in the past gives energy to the past and that means less energy for the present.
We cannot move on and have positive relationships if we are all consumed by our deep-seated negative emotions and if we are judging our present relationships by the negative emotions associated with the past.
Resolving past negative can be extremely difficult, especially when the problem is a long-standing one, but through embarking on a full emotional detox it is possible to let go and move on.
Acceptance and Ability to be Present
Many of us have grown up in an emotionally repressed environment where we have not been allowed to fully express our feelings and this can mean that problems we experience emotionally are due to our negative beliefs about them. Parents who withhold from emotional expression out of fear of appearing weak teach us that emotions should be suppressed, including positive emotions like love and its expression of affection. The good old Western traditions including ‘big girls don’t cry’ and adopt a ‘stiff upper lip’ in times of sadness or crisis to not nourish us and mean that we do not know how to experience strong feelings without resistance. Similarly, we do not know how to be comfortable or support others when they are emotional. This difficulty in expressing and accepting emotions means that we are often left with a feeling of isolation and when we become parents we are in danger of passing on this unnatural behaviour to our offspring. Staying present with a feeling, accepting it and allowing it its natural momentum are crucial to emotional detoxification. This frees us from our past, our conditioning, and enables us to be authentic in the present. It empowers us to be who we really are. This is a subject that is explained in detail in our accredited Emotional Detox Courses
Emotional Suppression and Illness
Countless people have been brought up to believe that anger and expressing anger are wrong. This attitude does not stop the feeling; it merely stops it moving through and out of the body as a natural course of action. Over time, with habitual suppression, often through food, alcohol, tobacco or drugs, individuals cannot express any anger naturally and instead it accumulates as blocked energy. Suppressed negative emotions, specifically anger, are widely accepted to be major contributors to depression, clinical stress and all its implications including high blood pressure. Emotional Detox techniques to clear underlying suppressed emotions are fundamental to achieving the total healing of illness and experiencing balance and well-being. When stored anger and guilt about anger are released, we regain control and experience a surge of energy because it takes energy to suppress emotion. Those feelings of lethargy and weariness are probably down to the harbouring of stored negative emotions. When stored anger is released as and when it occurs without the abuse of others, then it is healthy and allows for a healthy body and mind. The suppression of anger means that we just keep anger alive and ultimately get ill or end up taking it out on someone else (often those we love the most and are closest to) and then the reactive cycle of anger is perpetuated.
Emotional Detox and Self-Esteem
If our self-esteem is low, we will deny ourselves what is good for us and what we want in life. The caustic and self- limiting and usually unconscious belief causing such denial can be “I am not important” or “I am not good enough”, or ‘’I do not deserve’’. It is most often a learned response from childhood, when parents, teachers, and people with authority over us give us less than positive loving support. When young we are vulnerable and easily influenced by others beliefs, values and judgements, we tend to seek approval as we attempt to shape our own identity. Unless the toxic principle is made conscious and challenged it will limit us all through adulthood, negatively influencing our behaviour through fear, self-loathing and guilt. When the limiting self-belief is replaced by one that unconditionally loves and self-supportive, our reality can begin to look very different. These learned negative or toxic belief principles are not only limiting within their own right causing a lack of self-esteem, but they are a catalyst for negative behaviour and decisions.
Guilt and Self-Punishment
If we have a core belief from childhood that we are inferior and not good enough, then our internal response is associated with punishment because we store all the negative emotions associated with how this inadequacy made us feel. In our adult life, we enact the negativity of these trapped emotions by not expecting or giving ourselves what we truly want because we feel we do not deserve it.
We unwittingly punish ourselves or allow others to punish us with abuse, which can be as commonplace as taking us for granted or not paying us any respect but can also mean that we keep ourselves trapped within toxic relationships and situations.
Punishment can also take the form of self-sabotage, for instance never making social engagements because you are too overloaded with other commitments, never quite achieving the rewarding job by missing deadlines for interview applications, allowing others to use up our time and energy, using obligations, family ties and friends’ needs as excuses not to get our own needs met. We also self- sabotage by being late, losing things, being disorganised, being untidy, getting flustered and getting ill.
Letting go
If our present reality is one lacking in loving relationships or friendship, or if our job is unfulfilling; we hate where we live, we have financial problems; we feel sadness or despair then there is a lot of inner work to move through and many negative emotions to release. When the old emotions are finally allowed to be released we emotionally detoxify. Like body detoxification, it is not always a comfortable process, but it is a rewarding and necessary process.
As the layers of negative emotions are peeled away layer by layer, positive transformations take place and negativity is replaced with positivity. It is important to let go of stagnant, negative emotions because they become toxic to the body and impact on every aspect of your life.
