Ilchi Lee

Breathing out emotions
There is a popular saying: the heart that truly loves never forgets. But what about the heart that gets broken?

According to researcher Elizabeth Kensinger, of Boston College, our bad memories are even stronger than our good ones. The reason for this is that bad memories excite activity in the emotion-processing regions of the brain. The brain then connects the increased activity to the direct emotion, creating a strong memory. Memories that are not a result of a specific event, such as birthdays and anniversaries, do not form as strong a reaction.

However, according to Ilchi Lee, originator of the Brain Education System Training (BEST) and author of Principles of Brain Management and the forthcoming In Full Bloom: A Brain Education Guide to Successful Aging, “negative emotions literally shrink the overall mass of the brain and interfere with memory and learning.”

In addition, Lee suggests that our negative emotions from our past often distort our present. So as much as negative memories want to edge their way into your consciousness, it’s important that we work hard not to let them. The following technique, breathing out emotions, can help.

From Ilchi Lee (Excerpted from Principles of Brain Management)

If you find yourself dwelling within a particular emotion, try using breath to let go of the emotion and to deliberately replace it with another more positive emotion. Begin with belly breathing, and relax your body with each breath. Visualize the emotion as part of the tension in your body. You may see it as a dark cloud within you. As you breathe in, imagine that a bright light is piercing through that darkness, the way sunlight cuts through a dark cloud. As you exhale, toxic vapors from the clouds are expelled from your body. Smile gently with each exhalation, allowing the light to overcome the darkness.

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