In this module: Three human operating systems: Cognition, sensation, emotion.
Guided Embodiment Exercise: The relationship between sensation and emotion.
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Full transcript of Module three:
I’m Justice Schanfarber, and this is module three of the gentle art of emotional mastery seven day audio course, where you learn to create preferred emotional states from the inside out, regardless of past history, current circumstances, or other people.
Human beings have three primary modes for engaging the world. These can be seen as three aspects of self. I sometimes call them the three human operating systems because each has its own language, its own functions, and its own unique qualities and quirks.
First, there’s sensation. The body. The somatic self.
Next, cognition. The mind. The mental self.
Then there’s emotion. Sometimes associated with the heart. The feeling self.
Sensation, cognition, emotion. Three distinct but connected aspects of each and every human being.
The first two are relatively easy to access, to assess, to understand, and to engage directly.
Sensations in the body send clear signals. Using your body intentionally in body-specific ways is straight-forward. If your foot itches, you can use your hand to scratch it. If you’re uncomfortable sitting in one position, you can change position.
The body communicates literally. Get hungry, eat food. Get thirsty, drink water.
Your cognitive or mental self is, by nature, a little more complicated, but still accessible by fairly direct means. Thoughts and thinking, including ideas, concepts, imagination, dreams, symbols, language, and so on are the domain of the cognitive self. Thoughts are quite different from sensation. They can take on a life of their own and get away from us. Words like “grounded” and “embodied” are used in relation to the sensations of the body, but don’t really apply to the thinking cognitive mind.
The cognitive mind deals in symbolism and metaphor. When the body is hungry, it wants food. When the mind is hungry, it wants… any number of possible things.
The cognitive operating system runs on complex patterns of interpretation and meaning-making. These complex patterns are established in each of us, by each of us, before we have any idea of what we are doing. This means that we build fully operational cognitive schemas, patterns for understanding our self and the world, unintentionally. We do it by default, based on infinite influences. This is normal, and it is fine, but at a certain point some of us realize that the patterns of thought and meaning that we built for ourselves unconsciously do not reflect or support our desire to feel good. In fact it is often just the opposite. Those default patterns of thought are often obstacles to the easy joy and well-being that we discover we want.
Part of the gentle art of emotional mastery includes assessing our default cognitive patterning for alignment with our desire to feel good. This is actually pretty high level stuff that many people will not bother addressing in their lifetime.
So there’s sensation, of the body, and cognition, of the mind.
And then there’s emotion.
Emotion is a little harder to apprehend. It’s a little harder to talk about in terms that are objectively defined or collectively understood. And it’s a little harder to engage and shape directly.
Emotion is related to sensation, and cognition, yet it’s distinct.
The purpose of this course is to teach the gentle art of emotional mastery, which means learning to create preferred emotional states from the inside out, regardless of past history, current circumstances, or other people. But there’s no obvious dial on emotions. You can’t just reach into your emotional apparatus and fiddle with the settings until you’re satisfied. Most people end up frustrated when they try to change how they feel directly.
And so one of the methods we use to create greater emotional mastery is to approach emotion through one of the other two operating systems. We can get some access to our emotion via cognition, and we can also get there through sensation. In other words, we can access and optimize emotion through mind and body.
That’s what we’ve been doing in our first two guided embodiment exercises.
In the first one we started with the body. By paying attention to our body, specifically breath and posture, and by making adjustments in these areas, we can start to access and shape our emotional experience. Watch for this as you do these exercises. Notice how caring about how you feel physically starts to expand into caring about how you feel emotionally. And notice that making small adjustments to yourself physically, so that you feel better in your body, extends into feeling better emotionally.
There’s a connection, a relationship between how you feel in your body and how you feel emotionally. This connection is so strong that we use the same word, “feeling”, to describe the experience of sensation in the body and to describe mood or emotion.
We can work with the body to shape our emotion. The body is like a window or access route for creating positive emotional experiences, if we have a knowledge of this.
If you’ve already noticed this, keep refining it. If this is brand new information to you, give it some thought and experiment with what I’m saying here the next time you go back and do that first guided exercise.
By the way, you should be using the guided embodiment exercises in this course again and again. There’s no reason to stop. They’re simple, but the benefits are literally endless. The subtle power that you will discover and cultivate through repeated use of these recordings has no ceiling, no limit, no end. If you get bored of them, don’t stop attending to your inner world. Make your own embodiment exercises or find new ones. In fact, I will be offering ongoing new teachings, guided embodiment exercises, live group calls, and more for subscribers.
In the second guided exercise we brought in cognition more explicitly. We used our imagination or memory to think of something that delights us, and then we applied our cognitive apparatus even more intentionally to bring out the details of that delightful thing.
Cognition became the window or access point for creating a preferable emotional experience.
Emotion doesn’t always respond very well to direct requests for improvement or change, but it will respond through the sensations of the body and the thoughts of the mind.
Some people prefer one or the other of these two windows or access points. I love using both.
Do you know why?
Why do I like to use both sensation and cognition as access points for refining emotion? Consider this question for a moment.
Do you think it has something to do with better outcomes? Do you think it’s because it’s more effective to use two windows into emotion rather than one? Do you think it’s because results will come faster?
These might all be true, but I want to use this opportunity to drive home the most important point, one that is so easy to forget when we’re focused on accomplishing something.
It’s because it’s more fun, more satisfying, more expansive feeling.
Each one, the body and the mind, when used as a tool for optimizing emotion, brings a different kind of intrigue, a different style of engagement, and a different flavor of satisfaction.
It’s the journey that matters. Emotional mastery is not about accomplishing something and THEN letting yourself receive satisfaction. The journey truly is the destination.
Start training yourself now, allowing yourself really, to take as much satisfaction as possible in every single moment of this wonderful journey of discovering the power of simply wanting to feel good. This is about being really nice to yourself. Be so nice to yourself that you stop holding out on any emotional rewards. Give it all to yourself at every opportunity.
Now let’s do a guided embodiment practice on this module’s theme: Three operating systems.
In a way that should be getting familiar to you now, take a moment and get comfortable in a seated position. You want to be alert, not sleepy, but relaxed and open. Turn off your phone so you won’t be disturbed.
Close your eyes now if that feels OK, and as you close your eyes, let that mark a shift in your perception. Let your attention move from the outer world of things, to your inner world of thought, feeling, and sensation.
Start to notice the natural rhythm of your breath, and as you notice the quality of your breathing, make adjustments based on your desire to feel good. Maybe a slower breath would feel better. Maybe breathing a little more deeply into your belly would feel better.
Start making whatever adjustments feel good in relation to how you are breathing.
Now let your awareness expand to include the rest of your body. Start making adjustments, big or small, to how you are holding your body. We usually call this posture. Posture also means how comfortably and intentionally you are inhabiting your body. Let yourself inhabit your body comfortably and intentionally. Your intention is to feel good.
You’re bringing mindful awareness to your breath and your body. “Mindful” just means that you’re really noticing your experience in each moment. Mindful is a good way to be when we’re building new intentional patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior. The alternative to mindful is default, or unintentional. If you like your default patterns, do nothing and they will continue. If you can imagine better feeling patterns, be mindful. Practice noticing the experience you’re having, in real time, as you’re having it.
Right now, notice the sensations in your body. Observe the operating system of sensation that is always active in you, often below perception. Let yourself feel subtler aspects of sensation in your body than you usually notice. Being quiet and still for a few moments helps you focus your attention on your body and the sensations that are active in it.
Now shift your attention slightly, look for the emotion that is active in you right now. Keep paying attention, feel the emotion that is present. It might be obvious or it might be very subtle. To start, just observe. If it changes, stay with it. Not in any insistent or forceful way; that won’t help. Just softly, following, observing.
Now watch for the opportunity to nudge that emotion in any direction that feels better. Be gentle and easy about it. You can always go back to focusing on sensation in your body. In fact, practice shuttling back and forth a few times. Imagine you have a magnifying glass, and you hold it over the sensation in your body for a little while, getting a clear view of sensation-feeling. Then imagine repositioning the magnifying glass and focusing on your emotional experience in this moment, getting a clear view of emotion-feeling.
Sensation to emotion. Emotion to sensation. Play with this a little. Get nimble moving between the two. Notice the different qualities of each, and also the similarities. Let yourself find satisfaction in your exploration of this.
See if you can use your body as a window or access point into your emotion. Find that bridge. First you’re just observing whatever emotion is active in you, big or small. Then try shaping it according to your preference. How would you like to be feeling? Move yourself gently in that direction.
Notice the connection between how you are breathing and how you are feeling emotionally. There is a connection, I guarantee it. Make adjustments to your breathing – maybe deeper, slower, whatever feels better – and as you do, feel a simultaneous adjustment emotionally. Do the same thing with your posture, or releasing tension in your face, neck, shoulders or anywhere else in your body.
Find the window or access point or bridge that is most available, most satisfying, most interesting or compelling to you right now. Which part of your body seems to be giving you access to your emotion? How can you adjust this part of your body so that you feel better sensationally and emotionally. Again, look for the bridge. This is inner work, and it takes some familiarity, some exploring. Be curious as you experiment with finding and refining these powerful associations between sensation in your body, and your emotional feeling-state.
You might find very subtle connections, you might find very strong connections. Work with whatever you find. Be nice to yourself at every single step. Be gentle with yourself always. This is what opens the door.
Keep exploring the connections between the operating system of sensation and the operating system of emotion. Work with the connections you find, always using your desire to feel good as your guide. Have fun with this. There’s so much to discover. This hidden inner world of connections within you is for you alone. No one else can do this for you. Siri can’t help. AI will be useless. It’s just between you and you, and this is such a blessing. Let it be a blessing. Bless yourself with this practice, and enjoy receiving your own blessing. There’s nothing better.
This concludes our embodiment exercise, and module three.
Tomorrow we’ll explore how the inner world that we create through emotion contributes to our creation of the outer material world. I’ll share some personal stories from my life, and we’ll do a guided embodiment exercise to lead you into the felt connection between your cognition or mental activity and your emotion.
The gentle art of emotional mastery is something we do for ourselves, but it’s more fun with good company. Invite your friends to check out this course, and consider sharing the info and sign-up page on your Facebook or other social media.
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