“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”

One of the most effective strategies for regulating emotion is this: cultivate an attitude of acceptance towards your emotions and the emotions of others. Practice saying ‘yes’ to your emotions, your children’s emotions, your partner’s emotions, and your friends’ emotions and notice how, not only your relationship with emotions changes, but also your relationships with people. When it comes to emotions, what we resist persists. By accepting our emotions, and the emotions of others, we give emotions space to move, to come and go, to rise and fall. Our own experience with emotions tells us that no emotion lasts forever, but when we resist and struggle against our emotional experience, we are more likely to get stuck in our feelings. We can’t push our emotions away (at least not for long), and we can’t push our children’s or partner’s emotions away either. When we are open to the full range of our own emotions, it becomes easier to open to other’s emotions, and this emotional openness provides the fertile ground for deep emotional connection to grow.

And what is emotion?

It is simply allowing the bodies authentic energy to be in motion. Flowing, moving, shifting, evolving and ever changing, not habitually controlling or suppressing in a stuck or fixed or certain "correct" way. When we block or control somatic energy we fall out of alignment with our true self. We may eventually become emotionally inhibited, disconnected from self or possibly even depressed and dis eased. It is empowering to be aware of and allow authentic embodied energy flow. This is one facet of holistic health.

Emotion is firstly The Somatic Energetic Connection to Self, and then being able to connect and feel and flow inter dependently with others. Knowing and feeling and responding to your own energy and letting others do the same without telling them or trying to "fix" or "heal" their energy. Unless the other specifically consents, invites or asks and seeks assistance in aligning energy in motion.

To Be aligned and more alive is feeling an ever increasing range of subtle energy in motion. In yoga these are the 5 koshas. Not trying to fix energy or heal it or control it or suppress it. Simply feeling your own more subtle energy and allowing it to Be, so be more curious, "I wonder what's going on in there with my energy, my emotion? and then let it Be real and let it flow.

Then after feeling the presence of your own moment to moment energy in your body, and being curious and wondering, you then get to choose the most discerning external behavioural response to that felt energy.

Event, response, outcome.

Feeling my internal energy, then I get to make a conscious choice, of my overt external behaviour. This process can all happen in a split second. However through the conscious breath, we can learn to create a pause by acceptance (not reactivity or resignation) and slowing down, internally. "Science" and "psychology" and other relatively modern "beliefs" now also support (catch up and prove) what ancient emotion and energy "healers" have always known. Our health stems from our internal energy and our karma is that cause and effect or "e motions put in motion".

The conscious pause between the event ("the trigger") and response ("our choice") determines future energetic cause and effect, the outcomes, our karma. One thing leads to another. And then another. We set off a train of energy with our appropriately discerning healthy choices and that Energy flows outwards towards others.

Think "Pebble, pond, ripple, simple".

The waves of our inner energy by our choices flows outwards.

Like throwing the pebble in the pond.

We pay energy forward and we get to create and choose the qualities and depth and alignment of those ripples with our conscious choices.

If you would like to gain a deeper understanding of and insight into yogic perspectives on karmic origins of energy flow, these topics will be explored in this upcoming course offered at Yogic Studies.

"Our upcoming course YS 117 | Karma, Rebirth, and Liberation taught by Dr. Philipp Maas, begins on August 30th. This course will examine the multiple conceptions of karma and rebirth in the traditions of Jainism, Buddhism, and the systematic philosophies of Hinduism, with particular reference to the Yogasūtras and their ancient commentaries.

This historical and religious overview provides the stage for introducing the arguments in karma-related philosophical debates and polemics in ancient India. The course explores different views on how karma works on the basis of specific premises and how spiritual liberation is attainable.

Module 1 of the course is titled Introduction: Karma and Rebirth in Ancient India and the World. Teachings of rebirth are traceable in numerous religious traditions. They figured in classical western antiquity, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and in the so-called primitive religions.

This fact led some scholars to conclude that conceptions of rebirth are fundamental to belief systems in general. In how far do historical sources support this claim? What was the role of teachings of rebirth in Judaism, Christianity and Islam? How are they related to ancient Indian teachings of karma and rebirth? What are the particular characteristics of traditional Indian conceptions of karma and rebirth? Where did the latter originate? To which area of knowledge do teachings of karma and rebirth belong, and what were (and still are) their social, philosophical and religious implications? The first module provides the conceptional frame for the following module that provides a historical overview of ancient Indian teachings on karma and rebirth by addressing these and related questions."