Exploring Emotions, Part 1

Our next two months in Living Vividly focused on our inner emotional landscapes. For the first month, I challenged us all to get to know the terrain of that landscape. We strove to approach our feelings with warmth and curiosity. What are these feelings? They don’t have to carry labels of ‘pleasant’ or ‘unpleasant’. They just are–states of body and mind, that we can observe without judgement, and become more familiar with how they arise, and move, and leave us. This challenge offered a chance to build emotional resilience through greater self-knowledge.

Habit:

Notice and name an emotion to yourself

Daily:

Journal today’s most noticeable feelings (Write privately, on paper or on a screen. How did today’s emotions feel in your body? What words would you use to describe them? How long did they visit? How did they shift?)

To Do:

Reflect on your journal of feelings (What trends do you notice? How would you describe your general emotional tone or range? How does paying non-judgemental attention to your feelings affect your feelings?)

Make art inspired by your feelings (Sing, dance, color, paint, make a collage or write a poem–however you feel moved to express yourself.)

Reflection:

I tend to be pretty in touch with my feelings already, but keeping a journal was enjoyable anyway, because it let me look over the trends of the week or the month. Guildmembers seemed to get some positive value out of participating in this challenge, too!