The shaman knows that everything is energy.  Strong emotions are energy, and its important to know the difference between expressing an emotion versus sending it.

Paying it Forward – Not in a Good Way

When you send your emotion, rather than express it that energy ends up being dumped on the receiver.  Often times that person will then react in a way that dumps the emotion on the next person.  Traffic anger is a really good example of this.  An aggressive driver speeds up and moves around you cutting you off.  Your get angry, and when a new person comes along to pass them you refuse to let them in.  They respond by speeding up and cutting off someone further on in traffic.  The aggressive energy of such situations gets passed on and sometimes grows.

We can all think of a time when we yelled at someone, or was short with them.  Maybe we said, “I’m sorry, I was really angry because this guy at the bank…” fill in the blank.  You took on energy from someone’s actions, and needed an outlet.  A release valve to let out the steam.  You needed that outlet whether the person you released it on really did anything to provoke you or not.

If you think about some of your interactions with people lately, you can often discover if you have sent any emotions.  If you can recall an incident where you were really mad, really sad, or really upset and think about who was there when you had that feeling.  Imagine for a moment that you can see the emotion leaving you.  Maybe red light for anger, or flowing water for grief.  In your mind watch that water or light leave you.  Where did it go?

 

Old Emotions Feed The Fire

Sometimes when we are feeling a great deal of emotion, it really isn’t about the situation at hand.  Whatever happened, whatever that person said touched on an old store of emotions.  Usually feelings should be in proportion to an event.  When they are very strong, then its likely they are being fueled by older emotions.  If your child does something that puts their life in danger, that can provoke a naturally strong reaction.  However, you really don’t know the cashier at the fast food store well enough for extreme anger.

This is why it really is a good thing to express and release your emotions as they come up.  There is no way to avoid feeling an emotion.  It just gets stored away for another time.  At some point it reaches a tipping point and it all comes pouring out.  Sometimes at someone who wasn’t the true reason for your reaction. If you pour all of the emotions onto the person who triggered your reaction, no healing can occur.  That person ends up with that energy.

It is also important to recognize that the person who triggered your reaction may not be the reason for the reaction.  The important part of the equation is that you recognize the emotion, feel it fully, and release it in a way that it doesn’t go forward to effect other people.  (Whether they seemed to deserve it or not.)

 

How To Avoid Emotional Pollution

The way to avoid emotional pollution is allow you feelings out without sending them. But this concept can be a little confusing to people.

If I shouldn’t keep the emotions inside, don’t I create emotional pollution when I let them out?

As explained above, keeping emotions for longer can cause them to come out with a force later.  Then the emotion is more likely to end up going to the person who triggers the feeling.  So the key is learning the difference between expressing an emotion and sending it.  When you send an emotion, the energy of that emotion leaves and goes to someone else or becomes part of the atmosphere of that place.

Expressing emotion means that you feel that emotion, allowing it to leave you.  However, at the same time the energy is allowed to become transformed because you aren’t sending it out like a rock from a sling shot.  Expressing also means that you are allowed to tell another person how you feel in a situation, but as information not as sending.

When you really allow yourself to feel an emotion in your body, that will often transform the energy.  What you release then becomes neutral energy.  The process of really feeling an emotion can lead you through the transformation of that emotion.

However, even though the process of feeling the emotion in your body can transform it, most of us have strong habits for sending energy.  Its really hard for us to tell when we’ve truly felt and transformed an energy or when we’ve sent it.  Also, there are some categories of emotion that are a mixture of thoughts and feelings.  Things like jealousy or blame are difficult to feel without sending the emotions to the person who seems like the focus of that emotion.

Usually, additional safeguards are needed to make sure the energy is getting transformed into a neutral energy.  Changing energy is sometimes called transmutation.

 

Transmuting the Energy of Your Emotions

Transmutation sounds like a big word, but there are some pretty simple ways to do this.  As mentioned in the previous post, visualization is very powerful when working with energy.

One of the visualization that works well is seeing the emotion turn into light as it leaves you.  It may be best also to see it rise up as if going into the heavens as well, to be clear that is not being sent to someone.  You can visualize that the suns rays turn the energy into light.

If you are doing shamanic work, or have a relationship with helping spirits you can also ask them to  transform the energy of your emotions as they leave you.  You tell them that you want to express your emotions and would they please make sure they don’t get sent and also get transformed into neutral energy.

 

More Information

Just becoming conscious of when you send emotions, can do a lot to help with emotional pollution because it can shift your habits.  To find out more ways to transform or transmute the emotions you are feeling, there is a book focused on the transmutation of thoughts and emotions called: How To Heal Toxic Thoughts