For Personal & Planetary Thriving

for personal & planetary thriving The Gifts & Messages in Your Emotions

by Morella Devost, EdM, MA

I

magine yourself as a musical instrument. Pretend for a moment that you’re a piano, or a guitar, or a drum.

Imagine the edges of your body being the walls of the instrument, and imagine feeling the hollowness inside — your body is the resonance chamber for the sound your particular instrument will emit.

Now imagine the music being played — the waves of sound moving through the piano, the guitar, or the drum. You know that these vibrations, though invisible, are absolutely real. You can hear them. The walls of the instrument are moving to the rhythm and frequency of the waves of sound being produced by each piano key, each guitar string, or each wrap or beat of the drum-hide.

That’s exactly what happens with your emotions and your body. In fact, sound is the perfect metaphor for emotions. They are

Photo by Geert Pieters

both very real vibrations that we can’t normally see, but we do perceive them with other sensory organs — our ears, in the case of sound, and our kinesthetic and chemical receptors in our bodies in the case of emotions.

Each emotion carries a specific frequency that is measurable in Hertz (just like sound); the highest-frequency emotions being peace, joy, and love, and the lowest frequency emotions being shame, guilt, and apathy.

Just as you hear the waves of sound moving through space, the vibrations of your emotions are not only clearly felt within your body, but they too are projected into the space around you. That’s why if someone is in a really bad mood or “vibe” when they walk into a room, you can often notice the change in the room. The person doesn’t need to say anything in order for you to know that they’re not feeling joyful or at peace. Same thing

with a really upbeat, happy person; they lift the energy of a room as soon as they walk in.

So what’s the point of knowing this? The point is that your emotions are not only real, they are powerful.

They are powerful because they touch every single cell in your body and the world around you. And just as the person with the bad vibes and the happy person both affect the energy in the room, your emotions will have an effect on the “atmosphere” both within your body (inside each cell) and in the outer world you engage with.

This can be a really good thing when you’re feeling joyful, peaceful, or any emotion in the broad range of positive feelings. Those good vibes are well known to have a positive effect on your health. They will also predispose people to respond positively to you, and generally put you in the way towards having “good luck.” But of course, the opposite is also true: when you’re not feeling so cheery — perhaps you’re feeling angry, depressed, or downtrodden — those not-sopleasant emotions will have not-so-great effects on your health, and are more likely to elicit not-so-lovely responses from the world around you.

One of the most extraordinary stories of the impact of emotions on health and life is the one famously told by Anita Moorjani in her book, Dying To Be Me. Anita shares the story of having a near-death experience (NDE) as her body went into full organ failure while dying from stage IV cancer. In her NDE, she became acutely aware that it was deep fear that had fueled her cancer all along. But even more powerfully, she also realized that there is nothing in life she needed to fear. She woke up from her NDE completely free of fear and overcome with a deep peace and love for all of life. Her doctors expected she’d soon take a turn for the worse and warned her family to be prepared, but to their astonishment, her tumors began to disappear and never came back. When the fear was gone, the cancer disappeared.

We don’t need to wait for an NDE to explore the emotional “background music” we’re playing. We can start paying attention now. When we pay attention and listen to the sounds of our emotions, we discover the gifts that they come bearing.

The first gift is that your emotions are constantly communicating with you. Therefore, by becoming aware of your emotions, you become aware of the “vibe” you are emitting.

The second gift is that you can learn to discover the deep insights underneath your emotions. Let’s go back to the musical instrument analogy. The sound of a musical instrument is the vibrational output of a certain note being played — a piano key, or a guitar string. So, if emotions are also a vibrational output, what might be the equivalent of the “note” that generates the “sound” of emotion? What are the keys or strings that make the “sound?”

In the case of a human instrument, the equivalent of the guitar string and piano key are your thoughts and beliefs. When you set a specific thought in motion (whether it’s a conscious or a subconscious one), an emotional vibration is created. Just like when you set the string of a guitar in motion, sound emerges.

We don’t always know the exact content of our thoughts, especially not the subconscious ones, but we can always feel our emotional state. Just like we may not see the piano in the neighbor’s house, but we can hear the music she’s playing.

When you tune in to listen to the background music of your emotions, you become aware of what type of vibrations you’re emitting from moment to moment, for the benefit or harm to your cells and the world around you.

That’s the first gift: the opportunity to become aware of where you are vibrationally. The second gift is the opportunity to learn what the “music” of emotion is telling you, so you can do something about it.

Only when you begin to become aware of the emotional music that constitutes the soundtrack of your life can you truly begin to change it to the tune you want to live by. And in that way, you too can become the master of your health and your happiness, just like Anita Moorjani did.

And, when you pay attention to the music of your emotions, you realize that all emotions are perfectly valid. Just like the deep tones you hear when the notes to the left of a piano keyboard are played, and the high tones you hear when you play the keys on the right, every emotion has its place. Every emotion is a messenger letting you know where your mind has been going, what keys you’re playing. The more you pay attention, the more masterful you become at hearing the music and gradually changing it for a happier tune.

Of course, just like playing the piano, you don’t become a virtuoso overnight, but you can master it by showing up to play every day.

Morella Devost is a counselor helping her clients turn their deepest challenges into their greatest source of strength. After receiving two masters degrees in counseling from Columbia University, she became a Clinical Hypnotherapist, NLP facilitator, and Reiki Master. Morella is a VenezuelanVermonter working with people all over the world from her RVoffice as she travels the US with her family. She is the host of the Thrive With Morella TV-radio-podcast show.

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