New Consciousness Review Spring, 2017 | Page 24

1 .
You Exercise To Escape Yourself .

INSPIRATION HEALTH

Our emotions are there to be felt . We may judge some to be good and some to be bad ( that ’ s how our parents and society raised us to think ) but in reality they ’ re just energy in motion . And that energy wants to be heard . It wants to be acknowledged and felt- not judged , ignored , or escaped from .

1 .

Exercise can become a subtle addiction when you use it as an escape from your emotions . You might be telling yourself that exercising helps you gain mental clarity

- which I concede , it can - but mental clarity does not necessarily equal healthy emotional processing .

You Exercise To Escape Yourself .

Feeling bad ? Go for a run . Angry ? Take it out at the gym . Frustrated ? Get on that bike and pedal like crazy .
We ’ ve convinced ourselves that this is a healthy way to deal with our emotions . We ’ ve convinced ourselves that drinking our problems away is bad , but exercising them away is good . And while of course I ’ m not saying that exercise isn ’ t a much better alternative than drinking , what I am proposing to you is that they can both act as means for addictions . Sure , escaping with alcohol is much worse for your physical health , but remember that there ’ s much more to your health than the physical aspect .
Exercise can become a subtle addiction when you use it as an escape from your emotions . You might be telling yourself that exercising helps you gain mental clarity - which I concede , it can - but mental clarity does not necessarily equal healthy emotional processing .
Acknowledging and accepting the energy of powerful emotions such as anger , sadness , lust , and guilt , allows them to be felt in the moment and processed in a healthy way . And this is very healthy for your emotional self .
You might think that you are processing your emotions by hitting a punching bag at the gym when you ’ re angry , or running on the treadmill like crazy , but this outward expression ( or venting ) is only relieving the symptoms . Yes , you feel better when you release the energy in this way . But what about the cause ?
You see , the truly healthy way to process emotions is to work on the causal level . If you don ’ t do that , the same emotions are going to keep coming up over and over and you ’ ll be continually trapped relieving the symptoms by letting it out at the gym .
But is this what you want ? Don ’ t you want to be happy and peaceful in your life ?
Well , happiness and peace come from processing the emotions on the causal level . And to do that you don ’ t need to analyze what happened to make you feel upset . What happened is just a mental story . To do it you need to sit with the emotion with awareness and let it express itself internally without your judgment or resistance .

Acknowledging and accepting the energy of powerful emotions such as anger , sadness , lust , and guilt , allows them to be felt in the moment and processed in a healthy way . And this is very healthy for your emotional self .

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