Are You Free to Feel?
Alone, provide yourself a quiet, relaxing atmosphere. Focus your attention on relaxing your body until you feel calm, centered, and comfortable. Th en imagine that you are a miniature explorer traveling around inside your body, searching for diff erent energies or feelings. Where in your body do you experience joyful feelings? In your face, eyes, mouth? In your chest or legs? Where in your body do you experience feelings of anxiety or fear? In your stomach? In your chest? In your cold hands? Where in your body do you experience anger? In your hot cheeks or ears? In your throat or neck? In your stomach? Where in your body do you experience feelings of sadness? Where in your body do you experience feelings of confusion, indecisiveness, ambivalence? Where in your body do you experience feelings of sensuality and sexual desire? Write down what you observe. Be specifi c about each feeling’s “location” in your body. What are you learning?
Are You Free to Feel?
Your feelings are valuable sources of personal information, but don’t let them run your life. It is not always a good idea to act on them—especially impulsive sexual feelings. Whether and how to act are ethical choices that you need to make. For example, a feeling of anger off ers personal information to you about your situation, usually one in which you feel frustrated, treated unfairly, misinterpreted, hurt, threatened, or blocked. Th ese feelings get your attention by agitating your body so you recognize the problem. What you do with this information is the issue. Th e guiding principle is to accept your feelings and judge your behaviors. When you make this distinction between feelings and behaviors, you are free to feel. You can feel frustration and choose not to express this feeling to your partner. Rather, you can choose a more positive course by pausing to calm your body (feelings) and then asking your partner for a few moments to cooperatively discuss the matter. You want to learn from your feelings but not let them dictate to you. You want to listen to your feelings, consider their counsel, and then decide how to respond in a constructive, eff ective fashion. Integrating your feelings and reason gives you a more complete picture of your life, relationship, and sexuality.