“By starting to notice and to play around with your emotional tones, you discover that you can ‘change the song of your life’ like a composer re-working her compositions.”
Dear Integral Meditators,
This weeks article points out some playful ways to work with your emotional experience and range using mindfulness, I hope you enjoy it!
Last call for the 2021 New year releasing and inviting meditation, The Wednesday live class is already full, there are a few live slots for the Tuesday session, and of course online attendance is possible.
I am currently plotting the events for January 2021, watch this space!
In the spirit of composing your feelings,
Toby
Your emotional feeling tones
One way of thinking about emotions is that they are ‘The feeling tone associated with any experience’. By experience here I mean a broad range of things:
- Different thoughts you have
- Of a conversation or social interaction
- Of a place; its atmosphere and ‘tone’
- Of an image or memory that comes into your mind
- In response to something that happens to you
- Of a time of day
Each experience has a different feeling tone, like the note on a musical scale. Moreover, our own feeling tones are interacting with the emotional tones of other people and of our environment. Sometimes this creates a beautiful symphony, and sometimes this creates an almighty racket!
We are not in charge of the feeling tones of others, but we can start to become more aware of our own habitual feeling tones and patterns. If we do this we can then start to see how we can change our feeling tones and moods for the better, and put them into more beautiful ‘musical combinations’ with each other. Ways of starting to do this include:
- Noticing the feeling tone that arise with particular thoughts, images and memories you have. Rather than looking at the content of the thought, look at the emotional tone of it.
- With particular patterns of thought and image, you will notice that the feeling tones they produce for you are brighter and more harmonious. You can focus on deliberately holding these thoughts and images as a way of raising the vibration of your feeling tones.
- You will notice that there are some images related to landscape and place that, when you think of them naturally raise your emotional tone. Likewise passages of music, images of characters in stories that you know (and so on) can all lift your overall feeling tone.
- If you notice that you get stuck in a negative or ‘low level’ feeling tone, you can practice just experiencing it as a feeling tone, rather than taking the content too personally!
- If you notice that a friend or colleague you spend time with really lifts your feeling tones, then deliberately open to them and allow their tones to affect you when you are with them. Similarly, if there is someone whose emotional tones bring yours down, then when you are with them, then practice ‘closing’ your energy to them in their company, so you are not so affected.
In a coaching session the other day I explained to a client that sometimes it is like your range of feeling tones is a bit like being one type of composer. Maybe if you notice are a more ‘serious’ composer like a Wagner or a Beethoven, you might like to introduce another composer into the mix. For example, you could practice creating more playful feeling tones like a Mozart or a Vivaldi. Or if your feeling tones are all ‘heavy metal’ you might like to practice creating feeling tones like a Prince, Taylor Swift or other more whimsical pop star. Of course this works the other way around; if you are all Taylor Swift and Mozart, maybe practice bringing a bit more gravitas into your feeling tones.
When you start to work mindfully with your feeling tones, it can be very creative and playful. By starting to notice and to play around with your emotional tones, you discover that you can ‘change the song of your life’ like a composer re-working her compositions.
Enjoy playing with your feeling tones!
Article content © Toby Ouvry & Integral Meditation Asia 2020. you are welcome to share, but please cite the source, thanks! Contact info@tobyouvry.com
Tues 29th & Weds 30th Dec, 7.30-8.30pm – 2021 New year releasing and inviting meditation
About the class: This meditation session is focused upon setting up the 2021 new year energies in a way that invites the best possible experience moving forward. We will be:
- Releasing and letting go of energies, events and experiences from the past year that may hold us back from moving into our full potential, and
- Developing a flexible, soft, ‘beginners mind’, renewed and ready to be ‘born again’ with energy and enthusiasm in 2019
- Focusing both consciously and intuitively upon the inviting of new energies, aspirations and goals that we wish to bring in and manifest over the course of the new year
Re-starts Monday January 11th! – 7-8.30pm – The Men’s Group – The path of conscious manhoodHow can you move from coping to thriving in your life as a man?
Much is asked of men in their traditional roles as fathers and sons, partners and husbands, students and teachers, employees and employers. The men’s group is a professionally moderated and confidential forum for men. A forum is a safe place for exploring, learning and sharing the successful perspectives, skills, and strategies needed to address and manage the unique issues, problems, and triumphs in our community.
Read full details…
Life-fullness – The Integral Life-Coaching Program with TobyAre you looking a coach who can help you to:
- Meet the challenges, stress and changes that you face in a more effective and mindful way
- Become happier within yourself, in your relationships and at work
- Be actively accountable for finding a sense of balance/well-being in your life and fulfilling your personal potential?
- Guide you to find and operate from a deeper sense of meaning, motivation and connectivity in your life?
All upcoming classes and workshops for at IMA in December:
Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule
Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby (Bukit Timah)
Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby (East Coast)
Tues 29th & Weds 30th Dec, 7.30-8.30pm – 2021 New year releasing and inviting meditation
Re-starts Monday January 11th! – 7-8.30pm – The Men’s Group – The path of conscious manhood
January 16th & 23rd – Shamanic meditation and mini-retreat (Details to follow!)
Integral Meditation Asia
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