How to act intelligently with our emotions – François Lorin

We aren’t talking about the survival emotions we experience when faced with real danger, such as fear, anger, or anxiety, but above all the emotions created, consciously or unconsciously, by thoughts of the past or the future. It’s a mistake to try to control or master such emotions, which indicate a useless, dangerous, and painful process of projections and memories, past conditioning and anxieties about the future. Listening attentively and without judgment allows us to avoid being swept away by these emotions and acting on them, for example, when we are angry.

Making peace with this unhealthy process prevents it from becoming even more strongly rooted and allows it to be dissolved after a while. This absence of refusal and resistance to whatever bothers us, whether it be emotions or the resulting physical sensations, is the key to health and physical and mental balance, what Patanjali calls ‘citta’.

Next, let’s talk about nourishing emotions, the vision of beauty, the sensation of the openness of heart and senses: let them permeate us completely, but let’s remain vigilant because they can reinforce the desire to repeat those experiences. This means that we shift from an attitude of welcoming and acceptance to one of appropriation and a desire to repeat what has touched us, further distancing us from the ability to welcome with trust and without resistance what life has decided to offer us. This reinforces the feeling of separation and the illusion of believing that, despite everything, we could act in order to obtain what we desire when life has decided otherwise.

Born in 1941, François Lorin started to practise yoga in 1960. He studied with TKV. Desikachar in Madras from 1966 to 1987 and followed J. Krishnamurti’s talks in India and Europe, from 1963 until the end of the 1980s. He translated all TKV. Desikachar’s talks in Zinal, and obtained a diploma from Richard Moss’s Mentor programme in 1999.  François is affiliated with the FIV (Fédération internationale Viniyoga). E-mail: [email protected]

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