Managing the Negative...

Let's face it, we're living in some challenging times. As such, we are bound to experience negative energy more often these days, but that's not necessarily a bad thing...
​
Negative and positive energy are like the yin and the yang, both are needed to exist in the Universe.

​However, generally speaking people carry negative energy not because they choose to but because they don’t know how to choose differently.

(Read that again!)

In other words, they don’t know have the right tools to process their negative emotions (energy in motion.

Let’s start with a universal truth...
All emotions are VALID. If you are happy - VALID. If you are angry - VALID. If you are sad - VALID. If you are generous, kind, agitated, hurt…. VALID. VALID. VALID. VALID. AND VALID.

All of your feelings are valid. However most of us were taught from a young age to invalidate our negative emotions; we learned that feeling good is “good”, while feeling bad is “bad”. This kind of labeling teaches us to push aside our negative emotions because we don’t want to be “bad”. So we go about life, bottling all the things that hurt us, make us feel awkward and upset, and we’re rarely given the opportunity and tools needed to process our negative energy.

So what happens to that negative energy? They:

• get trapped and accumulate in the body, causing us to feel chronic tension and pain in our jaw, our hands, our belly, and our joints
• get trapped in our minds, causing us to repeat the same behavior
• simmer until one day they erupt in some subconscious abrasive manner like rage and violence​

Negative energy can teach us so much about ourselves,
but only if we’re willing to sit and process it.

You may be wondering, how does one process negative energy?
Here are three things that always help me manage negative energy:  

Awareness, Movement, and Grace.

As a a double water sign and highly sensitive and energetic being, I can’t tell you how often I feel hurt and angry in just one day.  I use these practices to navigate energy and calm my nervous system. 

Awareness 
When I’m becoming upset, I notice my fists clench, my stomach turn, my jaw drop and lock, and an overwhelming sensation to burst into tears/rage. That's because energy impacts the physical body. Pausing to give yourself the space needed to explore and name the sensations you feel allows you to name and own your feelings (whether that be tight, pulsing, sad, angry, guilty, etc..) without any shame. It empowers you to step into a space of self acceptance.  Once you are here, you are ready to move the energy.

Movement
By move, I really mean move. More and more  research shows that unprocessed energy stays stuck in our body, causing all sorts of tightness and tension. To move that energy, you have to move the body. And I don't mean some fancy choreographed movement. No. I mean literally moving your hips, our shoulders your feet. STOMP the ground if you are angry. Roll your shoulders if you feel stressed.  Sway your hips! JUST MOVE! It doesn't matter what it looks like.  All that matters is what it feels like.
Movement is Medicina for the Soul!

Grace
Once the nervous system has been brought back to parasympathetic mode, call upon Grace. Grace empowers us to treat negativity with acceptance. She reminds us that we’re all human, and that negative energy is not so much a reflection of you but rather of whatever the other person is going through in their own life. Negative energy and grace go hand in hand.

Grace encourages you to meet negative energy with a vibration of love. After living most of my life trying to fight everyone who fought me, Grace taught me how to surrender; that every battle doesn’t need to be fought or won, and that most things in life are as they say “not that serious.” Grace taught me how precious my energy is, and constantly encourages me to meet the negative energy with a vibration of love.

Grace is not spiritual bypassing. Grace teaches us that we are all alchemist, fully capable of transmuting negative energy into love and lessons learned. She is a powerful weapon that gives us the space needed to see things with clarity. She encourages us to do the hard work without having to drag our feet along the way. She allows us to hold the positive and negative without every having to choose because she understands you and the world are both.

Grace is Karmic and Universal. Practice grace enough and she’ll remind you that you are a child of the universe, always held and supported even if sometimes it doesn't feel that way. 

So the next time you experience negative energy, instead of allowing yourself to get down about it, remember these three practices, and remember even though you are allowed to feel what you feel, you don't need to take on others' feelings.  <3