7 Steps to clear emotional blocks

The healing journey teaches us to pay attention to what’s happening in our lives. If the same situation—particularly the same emotional situation—keeps reappearing in your life, it’s a strong indicator that you’ve got a blockage. How can we clear emotional blocks?

No one is going to—or even can—clear emotional blocks for you. It’s up to you. But just as life unfolds on the consistently predictable basis of like attracting like, emotional blocks can consistently be cleared using a few simple steps.

1. Time

Clear some time to deal with the blockage. Prioritise it. Don’t try to do it while other people are around, the kids need feeding or your favourite TV show is on. Schedule a few hours when you know you will have peace and quiet. Stay away from social media and turn off your mobile.

2. Space

Clear some space to deal with the blockage. Find a comfortable environment like your bedroom or living room. Choose a large comfy chair, sofa or bed. Get some cushions and blankets. If there’s anything valuable or fragile around, move it out of harm’s way. Sometimes breakthroughs release rage and we lash out in the heat of the moment. If you need to punch something, punch a pillow. Apologise afterwards—pillows have feelings too.

3. Water

Have plenty of water to hand—preferably a couple of litres. Drink plentifully throughout the process as well as afterwards. It will help flush away the toxins released when you break through. Inner work consumes a lot of energy and generates heat inside the body. Drinking water keeps your radiator cool.

4. Breath

Settle into your comfy chair, sofa, or lie down on the bed. Breathe deeply and consciously. By consciously, I mean place your awareness on the breath as it washes in and out of your body. This will make you feel a little drowsy. You’re disengaging your rational mind. That’s what you want. Keep going.

5. Focus

Keep your conscious breathing going. While you’re doing that focus on the issue that your blockage is around. What’s the issue? If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll probably have a fair idea of what it’s about—that same situation that keeps repeating.

But you may not know exactly. It doesn’t matter; this is something that improves with practice. The important thing is to focus on the issue knowing with absolute certainty that because some challenging situation is manifesting in your life, you have a psychological block that needs releasing.

These psychological blocks dwell in our unconscious. By intentionally focusing on them, we draw them out of our unconscious into our conscious awareness.

These psychological blocks dwell in our unconscious. By intentionally focusing on them, we draw them out of our unconscious into our conscious awareness. Here we can deal with them. It’s like a psychological game of hide and seek. When you identify the block, the game’s up.

Now comes the tricky part.

6. Accept

If removing emotional blocks were easy, everyone would be doing it all the time and we would have a shiny, happy society. We don’t. We have a society full of people with emotional triggers that go off all the time.

This is because whenever our emotional blocks are activated—i.e. something triggers them—we unknowingly switch from consciously directing the course of our lives to unconsciously acting out from the wounded place of our blockage. So that old blockage stays stuck and whatever damaging feelings or behaviours are associated with just keep on looping around.

It’s our ego that does this. It’s been programmed to defend us from anything that it perceives as a threat. To clear the blockage, you must negotiate with your own ego. This is a tricky business because the ego knows it needs to let go but doesn’t want to.

Acceptance and neutrality are the tools you need here. As much as you can, remove all emotional ‘spin’ from the situation. It is what it is. Start a dialogue with your ego. Sounds silly, but it works. Tell your ego it has done a great job in protecting you—so great in fact that it’s in line for a promotion. It just needs to let go of this blockage and then it’s free to serve at a higher level. Be gentle and patient. The process takes practice but with time you will nail it and—

Bam! Breakthroughs can be short, sharp and painful. Buried pain floods through you, often accompanied by anger. If you’ve done your prep, you’re in a safe place to handle it. This too shall pass.

7. Rest

You need it and you’ve earned it, so don’t skimp on this bit. Get some sleep. Keep drinking water. Have a couple of early nights. Within a few days you will feel a level of wellbeing you’ve never know before. Well done.

Photo by Mihai Lazăr on Unsplash