Ways to dispel energy that is feeding unhelpful or unkind thoughts:
Move. Move move move move move. Strong feelings are energy. Transmute that energy into physical action. Take a hike, turn on music and dance, scrub your shower, shake and wiggle your entire body. The more vigorous the better, the more absorbing the better (you can actually intensify the energy by ruminating while you move, so do something that captures your attention). Go for many minutes—for me, it’s at least 20. Until you’re warm or even sweating.
Write. Grab a pen or pencil and some paper (better than typing!) and pour it all out. Forget about structure and mechanics. It doesn’t even all have to be words. Extinction writing just keeps going and going and going until you are empty, until you’ve said everything that there is to say. Let your arm cramp, let it be illegible, but get it out.
Chant or sing. Out loud or silently in your head, though out loud is a better dispeller of energy. It doesn’t matter what—you could shout the alphabet repeatedly and it would do the trick. Go for many minutes, until the mind is quiet.
Balance. Have a negative thought? Purposely think two positive ones. Find yourself ruminating on a person? Send them blessings. You don’t even need to believe the positive thoughts or feel the blessing that you’re sending, but you do need to be disciplined about it. Every time you catch yourself in a negative spiral, find your way home with positivity and gratitude.
Forgive and be patient with yourself for being caught in the whirlpool. As you more deeply self accept and self forgive, it will flow to others naturally. Falling into a dark place is nothing to be ashamed of, it’s human nature. Kriyananda called this the greatest Yoga pose: picking yourself up, brushing yourself off, and beginning again.
This list is related to a newsletter article that I published on 5 November 2024. It appears below.
Lately, I am thinking about throat (Visuddha) chakra things: thinking, speaking, listening. Particularly noting that you are your own best audience—the only person who’s heard everything you have ever said is you. And your subconscious mind has soaked it all up, constructing your reality from it.
Also note that the mind directs your energy. Energy follows your thoughts. So if you’re thinking and thinking about a particular person or a particular issue or a particular contest, your most precious resource is flowing there. Exponentially more so when you speak about that person or issue or contest. Consider, is that a person or issue or contest deserving of your energy? Do you want to feed him or her or it from your body?
Consider this process that happens all day every day, even when there’s not an election happening: a thought arises. The body responds to the thought by creating a physical sensation, a feeling. Because physical sensations are the most important and immediate sensory information perceived by the nervous system, that feeling is immediately recognized by the mind, at which moment it turns into an emotion.
And then we’re off to the races.
“That makes me so mad.” “That person is such a _________.” “I don’t understand how anybody could _________.” “Don’t they understand that _____________.”
The energy of the feeling is powerful. It gives birth to a cascade of thoughts, which then spark more physical sensations, which then feed even more thoughts and all of a sudden, we’re an emotional mess.
We then use these strong emotions to justify all sorts of ugly thoughts, words, and deeds of our own, directing our precious energy to feed a conflict that I’m convinced isn’t do any of us any good.
Never mind that, while we’re engaged with conflicting, the world goes on. We step right out of the divine flow of love and abundance and into turbulent whirlpool waters that trap our raft and keep it spinning.
And often, we like it. There can be an addiction to emotion just the same as to our screens or food or booze. Humans often get trapped in the waves of passion—be it passionate love or passionate disgust—and from that emotional place, construct meaning and identity.
“I belong to this party (or none).” “I believe ___________, not that.” “Those people are wrong and need to be stopped!”
We confuse strong emotions with truth, and then act from that place.
But what if that intense sensation—I used to call it “the bees buzzing up in you” when my kids were little—is just that? An energy? A sensation? Transitory like all other sensory input.
Logic tells us that there are people on the other side of the aisle who are having the exact same experience of those sensations arising and constructing meaning and identity completely opposite of ours. So who’s correct?
It doesn’t matter.
It’s a distraction.
And you’re drinking poison.
It’s not that you shouldn’t feel strong feelings. You sure should. When somebody deeply offends your values, that’s what happens.
It’s not that you shouldn’t feel energized. Of course you’re activated. Strong feelings are BIG energy in the body, and it needs to be expressed.
And I beg you. Step back. Discern: what is the nature of the energy coursing through me right now? Creating thoughts and speech and action? Is it the energy that I want to be made of?
The energy of conflict? Hatred? Anger? Judgement? Pain?
Is that what I want to fuel my actions, my thoughts?
Now, I will give you that extricating yourself from the trance of the conflict it no small task. Even when the conflict is over, its energy and the thoughts stemming from it will reside in the body for some time. The greater the emotion, the longer the time.
Because we do want to let go of it, move on from it, it is wise to take action to dispel this energy. I’ve spent the past many months dispelling the energy of a tremendous personal trauma, and wish to share with you some strategies that I find helpful.