Good morning, beautiful people. Today, I’m practicing something I call Emotional Yoga—turning a negative feeling upside down to find its positive attributes.
This is the kind of Yoga you practice off the mat, when you’re in stressful situations that bring you face to face with emotions you’d really rather avoid. Envy. Obsessive thinking. Other unhelpful ideas about yourself and others. You know these characters, and they have a tendency to sneak up on you and mug you, hijacking the day, making things spiral out of control.
But it doesn’t have to go that far if we practice Emotional Yoga and turn these negative traits into positive qualities.
Example: Turn envy upside down and you can transform it into inspiration. Instead of feeling jealous of someone else’s success, you can befriend them, learn from them, and let them inspire you to find your own success.
Another example: Make your obsessiveness do a headstand and you’ll discover a superpower—you have laser-beam focus that helps you complete projects and do your work well.
This Emotional Yoga is a variation on Pratipaksha Bhavana, the Yoga Tool of swapping out negative thoughts for positive ones. The things you don’t like about yourself can become your greatest assets; it’s all a matter of perspective.
There are more exercises like this in YOGA MIND: Journey Beyond the Physical. Get your copy here.