Cultivating Emotional Awareness Through a Simple Practice
As a man with an established meditation practice, I found asking myself a simple question during the pandemic that has profoundly supported me in living with authenticity and integrity.
While meditation cultivates presence, it didn’t automatically translate to alignment in my daily life. I could still operate from old habits rather than inner truth. And like many men, I have been subject to conditioning that can keep me out of touch with my emotional landscape, except for possibly anger and frustration.
Having also had an experience in my 20s of living with panic disorder and agoraphobia, I found that during the lockdowns, my life began to mirror that past experience and I wasn't quite sure why. So I began to practice a simple form of inquiry and self-reflection to find out.
Pausing repeatedly throughout the day to ask, “What am I feeling?” and then naming those emotions without judgment brought with it the effect of grounding me in my experience.
The practice of asking myself this simple question, “What am I feeling?”, has helped me embrace the full spectrum of emotions, fostering wisdom and greater emotional maturity.
This simple check-in has helped me:
Recognize unskillful patterns and their roots.
Consciously witness how my feelings drive behaviors.
Develop greater emotional intelligence.
Fully process experiences rather than suppress feelings.
This ritual evolved organically. I started first by trying to name my feelings throughout the day. I noticed that my “emotional vocabulary” was limited - happy, sad, lonely, mad. I found and began using a chart to help me name my emotions specifically and kept a log of them to become familiar with my emotional landscape. I have learned more about what triggers my stressful emotions and what welcomes affirming ones.
The question, “What am I feeling?” became an embodied practice. Repeatedly returning to emotional awareness recalibrates my compass when off course.
When I am aware not just of what I think, but bring to it my emotions, I feel significantly more focused, purposeful, and guided by my inner compass.
This simple practice has proved to me that self-inquiry brings transformation, one feeling at a time.