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Emotional Body
The Emotional Body

http://freeingthespirit.co.uk/

Our emotional body or astral body is an egg of energy that penetrates and extends beyond our physical body for a few feet in every direction. This energy body is very fluid in nature and can be seen and felt by anyone with enough sensitivity.

Emotions are different frequencies of energy that flow throughout this field. Problems occur when we start believing that certain emotions are wrong and seek to repress them. Because some emotions maybe too painful or intense they are avoided, justified, rationalised or squashed. When emotions are felt and expressed our emotional bodies are fluid and healthy. When emotions are suppressed they turn toxic in the psyche. In the West we are trained to think about how we feel rather than feel the feeling. When we live in our heads we cannot feel what is happening in our gut. In extreme cases this causes us to squash our emotions so that we end up feeling depressed. To feel whole we must reconnect with our entire spectrum of emotions and learn not to squash any of them. We must learn to own and acknowledge all our feelings no matter whether we label them 'good' or 'bad'. We can re-learn being authentic with our emotions rather than hiding them away for fear of embarrassment or humiliation. When we smile when we feel like crying we are heading for trouble.

'Unfortunately time alone does not heal.
It is expressing and releasing the emotions that heals.
Crying, sobbing and raging are essential to the healing process'
- Gill Edwards

Anger - is a force that in its most positive aspect is meant to protect our boundaries and our sense of vulnerability. when we feel we have no right to be angry then it is often repressed or communicated inappropriately. When anger is expressed with blame then it will cause discord and become stuck in our emotional body. Anger that is owned and communicated clearly without blame is more likely to be heard and honoured by others. Forgiveness can cleanse our emotional bodies of anger.

Depression - is where we feel frozen and unable to feel the power of our deepest emotions. Often depression comes where we repress feeling grief and anger. When we freeze out painful feelings we also freeze out our joy. Depression will lead to mental confusion and physical exhaustion. Depression is melted by connecting with the fiery feelings (anger) or the watery (grief) feelings that lay beneath it. Our tears and our hot anger will melt the ice of depression.

'Fear is a place that has not yet discovered love'
- Orin

Fear - is often generated by fearful limiting beliefs we hold about ourselves and about life. We may feel humiliation, rejection, exposure, loneliness and pain, even in relation to things like intimacy, love and success. At its most limiting aspect fear is caused through a belief in separation. We live in a world where there is a lot of fearful psychic pollution. The media is often a great transmitter of fear. Healing comes through not accepting fearful messages about reality and by learning to release/express any fear held in the emotional body. Facing fear is an essential method of transforming it. Most fears are simply irrational thoughts about reality that must by faced and seen for what they are. Such fears will always hold us back in life and prevent us moving forward. Fear can generate tremendous attachment and neediness. Fear can also generate a feeling of needing to be fiercely independent. Some fears are so great that we may seek to escape life itself. Other fears are more tangible and should be listened to such as if you are faced by an immediate threat. Fear usually seeks to keep us safe yet most fears when faced can change into its sibling - excitement. The Course in Miracles reminds us that every choice is a choice between love and fear.

Grief - all humans love and are subject to feelings of loss. We will naturally feel grief when loved ones leave this life and go to the next realm. We will feel grief when one phase of our life ends such as childhood or adolescence. It is essential that we grieve for the things we love and lose so that we can move on and live fully. Rites of passage helped indigenous peoples honour and release different periods in life. Nowadays many modern rituals lack real depth of meaning and keep us stuck in resolved grief. It is important to find meaningful ways to  honour and let go of the past.

Guilt - is similar to shame in that it comes with a feeling of having done something wrong. In its extreme form we may feel guilty for even being alive, that our existence has caused another pain. We may feel angry or resentful and feel we have no right to feel that way then it converts into feelings of guilt. In a world with so many puritanical belief systems around we may be tempted to punish ourselves with feelings of guilt for any minor misdemeanour. The companions of guilt are often self-blame and valuelessness. These feelings will stop us in our tracks from leading a happy life. Guilt will keep us hooked into sacrifice. It is important to remember that guilt comes from erroneous beliefs for example a belief in sin which but a misguided invention of religion. There is no sin we can commit that will send us to eternal punishment. The universe does not seem to work that way. However, we can make mistakes and every mistake can be corrected.

Joy - is suppressed when we believe that life must be hard and full of suffering. Joy is a wonderful emotion that lifts the spirits and sees the beauty and hope in life. Joy will not live within us unless we learn to honour and nurture its presence. When we focus exclusively on the pain and misery in the world then joy cannot breath in our lives. We may feel it is wrong to feel joy and thus we add to the misery in the world. We need to give ourselves permission to feel joy. We need to look for it in the world so that our own joy is fed and kept alive.

'A broken heart is really a broken expectation that
another would fulfil your needs'
- Chuck Spezzano

Love - is one of the most powerful emotions we can feel. Although it is a glorious innate emotion problems arise when we repress feeling love for others. We may feel we have no right to express love to another. We may feel that we have blocks to intimacy. Love that is unexpressed will become toxic and turn into resentment or even hate. This will help to freeze the heart chakra. Similarly we may be frightened to express love because it may be misunderstood for sexual attraction. The way out is to feel the emotions that lead back to the original feelings of love. Opening to loving ourselves in all our aspects, all the places within that feel small and frightened opens the way for a tremendous healing.

 'You add to the suffering of the world when you
take offence as when you give offence'
- Ken Keyes

Rage - comes when we have bottled up our anger so that it explodes violently perhaps even causing harm to ourselves and others. Denied anger will eventually come out somewhere. Rage is healed by connecting with our anger and bit by bit learning to express it appropriately. It is healed by noticing the triggers to anger and also the warning signs that our rage is about to explode. We always can choose how to express our anger. We can pause and take a breath and just allow our emotional energy to flow unimpeded through us. We can own our anger and stop seeing others as the cause of our rage.

Self-Pity - feeling a victim in life, and bemoaning the few crumbs that have been received from life. Self-pity comes from the feeling of being powerless to shape one's destiny. Everything feels futile, nothing works. This leads to despondency and giving up. Victims constantly seek help yet they tend to suck others into their confusing state of helplessness. Victims need to be encouraged to take full responsibility for their lives and need help in connecting to their innate power. Self-righteous martyrhood is a more severe form of feeling self-pity. Whereas victims blame themselves, martyrs blame other people. Martyrs are caught up in a need to suffer. In order to break free they need to own their judgements of others and learn to stop silently and remorselessly attacking others.  

'It is a deep cut felt primarily from the inside.
It divides us from ourselves and from others.
In toxic shame we disown ourselves.
And this disowning demands a cover up.'
- John Bradshaw

Shame - is the feeling that we are defective, flawed, and never good enough no matter what we do. Feeling worthless and that we need to be fixed in someway. We may feel ashamed about our physical body, our sexual nature, that we are a failure in life, or that we can not live up to the demands and expectations of others. Sometimes we try to cover shame with arrogant behaviour or masks of feeling confident and competent. However, unless the issues of core shame are addressed and healed they will continually affect our ability to feel authentic and loving individuals. Shame exists at many levels within our being. We can heal shame by working with accepting the totality of who we are and by knowing that we are all imperfectly perfect. John Bradshaw's book Healing the Shame that Binds You is a must read for this type of work.


When we have emotional blocks then it is possible to take on the emotional energy of other people. If we have blocks to expressing anger then it is possible to absorb the anger of other people. It is important not only to release any limiting beliefs that cause disruptive problems in our emotional bodies but to release any emotional energy we have taken on from other people. This is essential when it comes to our parents from whom we are very susceptible to taking on unhelpful mental and emotional patterns. Working with visualisation can work well - imagine standing in a waterfall and washing off other people's emotional energy, alternatively imagine a violet flame burning around your auric field cleansing and purifying your energy and lifting your vibration. For more ideas see the page entitled Energy Cleansing.