Hi! And welcome to the Cultivating Abundant Life Podcast! I’m Kait Palmer, and I am passionate about helping women cultivate better lives physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Last week I talked about emotions–what they are, how they affect our bodies, and how essential oils can physically help us release those emotions. We also learned how to release four emotions–anger, fear, sadness, and joy–and the affirmations to accompany them. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet I highly recommend you go back and listen to that one first!
Before we dive into today’s topic on identifying emotions, I want to talk about a Young Living product I’ve been ESPECIALLY thankful for this week!
Agilease. Oh so thankful for Agilease! It’s a supplement that can help the body’s response to inflammation after exercise, and boy have I been using it! I took our new dog Hawk on a hike yesterday…I hiked almost 5 miles and climbed the equivalent of 77 floors! Not only that, but we’ve only had Hawk for a few weeks and he’s not quite leash trained yet…meaning he pulls super hard the whole time! Coming back down the steep summit I had to literally tell him to stop every few steps and heel for a few more until he started pulling so hard I was afraid he’d pull me face first down the gravel path! Needless to say when I woke up this morning my hands and forearms and upper body were as sore from him pulling as my lower half was from the climb!!! Agilease has made the day so much easier!
And a few weeks ago I decided I was ready to go for a run and go boxing in the same day…and that day I happened to be the only one to show up to boxing and got a private lesson…ouch?! I mean–awesome for my technique and form but again, I could hardly move the next morning! I was very very thankful for something natural like Agilease instead of popping something over the counter that always has side effects–whether you realize them or not.
So what is Agilease? It’s a supplement that promotes joint health by supporting healthy cartilage, joint flexibility and mobility, and the body’s healthy response to inflammation after exercise.*It contains Frankincense resin powder, UC-II collagen, Calcium fructoborate, and Wintergreen, Copaiba, Clove, Northern Lights Black Spruce essential oils. Yeah, it’s a powerhouse if you recognize any of those oils! It:
- Supports and protects joint and cartilage health*
- Beneficial for athletes and active individuals of all ages who want to support and protect their joints and cartilage*
- Perfect companion to an active lifestyle, promoting healthy joint function and supporting cartilage health*
- Supports the body’s response to acute inflammation in healthy individuals*
- Helps support healthy joint flexibility and mobility*
- Formulated with ingredients and essential oils for healthy joint support*
- Helps ease acute joint discomfort to improve quality of life*
I know people who take this on a daily basis and have a lot of success with it. For my family right now, we take it on an as-needed basis. When my husband has done a tough mountain bike course it sends him rummaging through our supplements looking for AgilEase! As my body is getting older–I’m 37 folks but also the healthiest I’ve ever been–I find my recovery time is a bit longer than it used to be. Combine that with learning new skills in boxing or pushing further mileage on runs, and I am very, very thankful for AgilEase!
Let’s talk a little more about identifying emotions.
One easy method is just to look at a list of emotions and see which ones resonate. We use a medical device in our family called the Zyto Scan. This uses galvanized skin response (or GSR) to basically ask your body a question and read the answer. It looks for oils or supplements that will bring your body into balance. I know, I was a total skeptic at first, but after a few scans I saw right away it couldn’t be just a chance it was pulling up exactly what I needed! Young Living has nearly 200 oils and it would pinpoint exactly what I needed! If there is anything I’ve learned in the last nine years it’s to trust the scan!
If you live in the Southern Oregon or Northern California area and are on my team, that gives you free scans–whoop whoop! Otherwise scans are $15–you can contact me through the cultivatingabundantlife.com if you’d like to set up a scan!
So back to emotions–when you combine a scan with Carolyn L. Mein’s book Releasing Emotional Patterns with Essential Oils, it can be mind-blowing. Often there are more than one emotion listed with each oil, and in that case I let the person being scanned read through the list…more often than not a specific emotion really jumps out at them as being true.
You can use that book in reverse as well. You can look up by emotion to see what oils you need to release that. Like we talked about in the last podcast, Purification can release anger, sandalwood is great at releasing Fear, lemon or orange help to release Sadness, and Joy is great for…you guessed it…JOY!
Another list I really like to use is that from the book How We Love and How We Love Our Kids– both by Milan & Kay Yerkovich. They have a list called “Soul Words,” that break feelings down into categories, and then give more descriptive words of those categories. Their categories are: happy, loving, high energy, amazed, anxious, confident, peaceful, afraid, traumatized, angry, low energy, alone, sad, betrayed, confused, and ashamed. For the entire list you can check out the show notes for a link to their website and download. I remember for a while we had this list up on our refrigerator so it was easy access for my oldest to browse through looking for the right word to describe how she was feeling! I think it might be time to do that again…
For younger kids they break down feelings into mad, sad, afraid, and happy–basically the four emotions we talked about in the last episode!
https://howwelove.com/freebies/
However complex or simple you decide to go, find the words that adequately describe the root of what you are feeling. Sometimes writing out words that resonate can help you decide the best description. Words are powerful, and so is giving a name to something.
We’re going to learn another way to use essential oils to release emotions today. This is called the Aroma Freedom Technique, or AFT, and it was developed by Dr. Benjamin Perkus.
Again–there’s no wrong way to oil! Please don’t get overly hung up in this or that method or if you forget a step. Just mindfully being aware of emotions and imagining yourself releasing them while smelling an essential oil is amazing! Again, if you missed how essential oils help your body actually release emotions, go back and listen to Episode 4!
Aroma Freedom Technique includes 12 steps, and I highly recommend purchasing this book so you have it as a reference as you work through these! I’m giving you a brief overview and Dr. Perkus includes a short chapter on each of these twelve steps and covers it in much more detail than I will here. Once you do it a few times you can work through them fairly quickly…just like when you’re learning anything give yourself time and be patient with yourself.
- Step one is setting your intention. This is more than just releasing emotions, it is to release emotions so that your intentions can be fulfilled. Dr. Perkus credits a friend with saying, “Before you can get what you want, you have to know what you want.” So, what do you want? What would you do if money was no object? What would you do if you knew you could not fail? What is your heart’s desire? What are the talents, gifts, and abilities that are unique to you? What does the world need that you can offer? You can have a set intention that you work on repeatedly, or you can have small intentions like things you want to accomplish in a day. And make this intention specific. So instead of–I want to feel peaceful today, maybe make it more specific to–I want to feel peaceful when my kids are losing their ever-loving-minds today. Anyone with me on this?!
I’m going to give some of the examples from the book, and notice that they’re written as if they’re already occurring.
I am in a loving and supportive relationship.
I do what I need to do (eat well, exercise, go to sleep at a decent hour) to support vibrant health.
I interact with my kids today with love and patience.
I have a job doing ______ and paying ______ per year, starting on ____(a specific date)
Your intentions need to be something you really want, something that is rational, something that excites you, and something that gets you in motion.
The recommended oils to use during this first step are Valor, Grounding, Clarity, or Inspiration blends. Put a few drops in your hands, rub together, cup your hands over your nose and inhale deeply. We call this the “scent tent” over your nose. Breathe in deeply until you feel your body beginning to relax.
- Say the intention out loud and notice the first negative thought that automatically comes up–the one that tells you why this can’t happen. You might hear a thought like “You’ve tried that before and it didn’t work!” Or maybe you have a memory or an image of a time you failed or were humiliated. Now it may happen that after listening for a minute you hear no objections–you are fully aligned with your intention! Buuuut I’m guessing if you’re like me you have a ton of excuses that will pop in your head! Often these negative thoughts are ones you’ve thought so often over the years that they are engraved in your mind like a river cutting deeper into the banks. Dr. Caroline Leaf talks a lot about taking these negative thoughts captive and detoxing your brain–I’ll leave that to you to explore but you can check out her books or her podcast “Cleaning Up The Mental Mess.”
http://podcast.drleaf.com/
- Identify how you feel when you think about the negative thoughts. Dr. Perkus writes, “This is the most important step in accessing and releasing the energy that has been holding you back. Many people fail by neglecting this step.”
If the message you hear is “You’ve tried and failed,” maybe you feel hopeless, ashamed, or sad. If it’s a memory where you were humiliated maybe you feel nervous that could be repeated. This is where that identifying emotions part comes in handy–work on narrowing that feeling down to a single word. At this point you need to make a choice. You can avoid the negative feelings through lots of different distraction methods—you have to go to the bathroom, you need a snack, your kids need to be checked on…or you can courageously allow yourself to feel the pain you’ve been carrying, identify where it is coming from, and reach resolution at the other end of this process.
- Notice where you feel this negative feeling in your body. Think about the feeling of grief, and that heaviness in your heart area. Or the tightening of your belly when you’re afraid. Or the tension in your shoulders when you’re angry. These aren’t pleasant feelings so it’s normal to avoid them…but just sit with it for a moment and let it pass through you like a wave.
- Drift to an earlier time, it could be recently or long ago, when you felt the same way. Find a “snapshot” of that time. This is called the feeling bridge. Our memories are linked by similarities, and your current feeling of anger is linked and built upon all of the other times you’ve been angry. Remember in the last podcast we talked about expressive emotions that happen in the moment and reactive emotions that are built on things from the past? This is that same concept. So think of an earlier snapshot of this same feeling.
- Smell Essential Oils. OOoooooh we’re getting to the good part! Close your eyes. Focus on the snapshot, the feeling, the negative thought, and the bodily sensation while smelling an essential oil. Dr. Perkus includes a specific blend called the Memory Release Mixture which is a blend of Stress Away, Frankincense, and Lavender, or you can use Release or Inner Child. Personally I think you can also use the essential oil associated with that emotion found in Carolyn L. Mein’s book Releasing Emotional Patterns with Essential Oils.
Doing this will allow the whole memory complex to shift. It’s important to do the prep first–if you need to edit a file on your computer you have to pull up the right file on your screen to edit it, right? When you smell the essential oil, it can feel like that negative emotion is washing away. Dr. Perkus says “Smelling the oil disrupts the memory complex itself. The oil stimulates a new feeling, which in a sense, displaces the previously identified feeling.”
- Notice the Changes. Allow whatever feelings that surface to just pass through you as you smell the oil. Ride the wave of emotion if it gets intense. See what happens to the image and how you feel in your body. If the feeling intensifies, keep smelling the oil and ride the wave. You may even find that this memory can trigger a different unpleasant memory–the healing process is like an ogre. And onions. They have layers that when you peel back one there might be another. If another new emotion emerges it’s healthy to talk about it or journal about it to explore and describe it. Find that spot in your body where you feel that new emotion emerge. You can smell the oil again and repeat the process–in this case try switching up an oil.
- Notice new beliefs starting to emerge. Find the “light” breaking through the memory. Do you get any new creative ideas? When a person is smelling an essential oil and focusing on a memory, usually that emotional charge decreases. Even in everyday uses, smelling Stress Away while in the car with crazy kids can lower that emotional charge, right? As the negative memory is fading a new belief may emerge. You may even look at the memory in a new way. I love this line he writes, “The story we tell about ourselves, how we weave the memories of our lives together into a coherent whole, is the very essence of our self-esteem and self-image.” As you process emotions you want to be actively looking for a positive belief to emerge. Let’s take blowing up at your kids in anger as an example. You may feel ashamed by your behavior. If you’re a mama who hasn’t blown up at some point then I doubt you are human! And even if we apologize and seek forgiveness from our kids, we still may be left with that feeling of shame. As we work to release that emotion, a new view of the situation may be that you accept what happened and can let go of it. You forgive yourself for the outburst. Learning from this experience, you may look at what led up to the blow up and how to mitigate those situations in the future. And you may be appreciative of the forgiveness of your kids, and know that despite the negative event your kids got to see you as an example of humility. That’s a lot of positive things that can come from one negative event!
- Revisiting Your Intention. Read your original intention and rate it on a scale of 0-10 based on how likely it seems that it will manifest. If the number is less than 7-8, you may return to step 2 and identify additional negative thoughts. The original goal of this was to manifest that intention, right? So repeat this process with your intention and listen to what you hear. If you need to go back and release another layer of negative emotion go ahead and do that, and check back with your intention. If it’s not a 7-8 the second or third time around you may know there need to be action steps towards achieving your intention, like applying to a school, hiring a virtual assistant, or filling out an application.
- Create a new affirmation that expresses the new, positive belief and attitude you wish to instill. Now you are feeling better about your intentions, you need to anchor this in a new reality. The purpose of repeating this affirmation is to program your subconscious mind. They give your mind direction, and so when we create them in a healthy and balanced state of mind they can help override when temporary feelings want to sway us differently. You also want your affirmation to focus on the positive–like “I respond with love and patience to my kids today,” rather than the negative like “I won’t yell at my kids today.” There is so much power in our words–go do an internet search for Hidden Messages in Water –a book by Masaro Emoto. You can see how saying different words–no matter the language!--creates different ice crystals! That’s a really fun rabbit hole to go down! But back to Aroma Freedom Technique!
- Anchoring your new reality. Smell the blends Believe or Transformation. Repeat the affirmation for two minutes, with a confidence, morning and night, while standing in a power posture. So research has shown that odor-conditioning can affect motivation.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11031-004-2389-x
Just like the smell of coffee can make you feel ready for the day, or popcorn makes you want to watch a movie, associating a smell with your affirmation will anchor it in your brain. So just like an emotion can have an affect on your body–we talked about shoulders tensing in frustration–it works in reverse as well. Standing in a power pose–open expansive poses like the stance of Peter Pan with feet spread, chest out, and hands on hips–can actually increase your testosterone and decrease your cortisol!
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20855902/
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9547823/13-027.pdf
Another pose is similar–feet planted wide, chest out, and arms out to the side. Standing in a post like this primes both your mind and body. Combine this with your affirmation and oil and you are setting yourself up for a very successful day! Say this affirmation with confidence for two minutes in the morning and evening, while smelling the oil and standing in your power pose. And don’t just do it for one day. If this is an intention you are serious about, repeat this programming your subconscious mind for several days in a row!
- Putting it all into action. Make a plan and take action daily! So all of this intention and clearing negative emotions and reprogramming your brain is AWESOME! …BUT…if you don’t actually take any action steps then what was the whole point? I mean, ok, other than you carrying around a toxic emotion load, but what about your intention?
Try sitting quietly with it for a few moments after you say your intention and see what creative ideas might come about for fulfilling your intention. Get your ideas down, then sort through and see which of those you can do today. Now is the time to put in the work. As you progress, if you notice more negative thoughts popping up, release those in the same manner that we just talked about.
And sometimes releasing negative emotions connected to a dream may help us realize we wanted something different.
This past year my girls began taking horseback riding lessons–something I had dreamed of as a kid! I even planned on taking lessons myself once they got going! We also did hours of mucking not only to offset the cost of lessons, but to show that if you want something you need to work for it. It had all the right components–exercise, horses, learning something new! They were so excited at first, and then…they sort of fizzled out. I didn’t want them to just quit at the first difficult lesson, so we hung in there for three months before realizing it just wasn’t for us. We like horses, but it’s not our main “thing.” What they did discover was Parkour, and every day they would ask how many days until their next Parkour class. Not once since we put away our paddock boots have they asked to go back to riding. Along the way I discovered boxing…and found I’d rather sweat it out punching a bag and getting smacked on the side of the head than clean the stall of a horse any day!
And that is it. Twelve steps that took a bit of time to explain, but when exercised in real life go quite quickly. Pick up a copy of The Aroma Freedom Technique so you can read a bit deeper as you grow!
Next week we’re going to explore a bit of epigenetics, quantum physics, and how to release emotions using the Emotion Code! And the weeks after that I’m so excited to be hosting my good friend Mica Kucera to talk about the Enneagram, Emotions, and essential oils! I just listened to a class she did recently pairing oils to the different enneagram numbers and how to release emotions with those, and it was SO GOOD I wanted more people to learn about this! If you’re not sure what the enneagram is or what your number is, you can go to Mica’s website– https://www.micakucera.com/
and take a free quiz!
https://quiz.tryinteract.com/#/5f91d6d50cf07b001419312c
This gal LOVES talking enneagram so if you’re confused or need help figuring out your number she says you can reach out to her–this is truly her passion and I’ve been so blessed to benefit from her knowledge!
Thanks for taking time out of your busy life to learn and grow with me. I feel honored to serve you in this way and I hope you grab an oil right now and take some deep inhales!
If you’re new to oils and don’t really know how to order them or use them, head to cultivatingabundantlife.com and browse through my free classes, or if you’re ready click that “Get Started” button in the upper right hand corner!
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Until next time, continue cultivating your abundant life! Bye!