3. How to Make Contact with Emotion: The Allowing Practice

After we learn to regulate anxiety and recognise our defences, the next step is to make contact with the emotions beneath them. This is where genuine healing begins, not through analysis or control, but through direct experience.

Making contact with emotion means allowing a feeling to take presence in the body without resisting, changing, or explaining it. When emotion is felt as it truly is, like a wave that rises, peaks, and passes, the mind and body naturally calm. There is no longer any need for the feeling to store itself in tension or symptom. What we feel fully, we release.

The Moment of Contact

To make contact is to stop running and turn toward what you feel. You may notice warmth in the chest, a lump in the throat, or tears beginning to form. These are not signs of weakness, they are the body’s way of speaking truth. The key is to stay with the sensation rather than shifting into thought, to feel rather than think about feeling. This is the essence of the allowing practice: staying with the feeling as a bodily experience rather than an idea.

Why Resistance Keeps Feelings Alive

We suffer less from our emotions than from our resistance to them. When we tighten, analyse, or suppress, the feeling cannot complete its natural course. It becomes trapped, replaying as anxiety, tension, or fatigue. The allowing practice begins by noticing resistance itself, the urge to distract, explain, or act. Instead of fighting the resistance, include it: “I can feel my fear of this feeling too”. This gentle acceptance allows the energy to move through.

How to Practise the Allowing Practice

You can begin this practice any time you sense an emotional wave building. It can also help to start with a defence you recently recognised, perhaps one you noticed in yourself while reading the previous blog.
For example, maybe you saw how you tend to withdraw, overthink, look at your phone, or use humour when emotions rise. Begin right there, at the point where you usually turn away. This is often where the real feeling is waiting to be found.

1. Pause and Notice
   Stop for a moment and turn inward. Find the area in your body where the sensation or tension lives. Notice what happens inside as you stay with it, rather than moving into your familiar defence.

2. Name the Feeling
   Ask quietly, “What emotion might this be? Sadness, anger, fear, guilt, love?”
   If the answer feels unclear, you can ask yourself, “If someone else were in my position right now, what might they be feeling?”
   This question can open a doorway to awareness because it is often easier to recognise another person’s emotion before our own. Naming simply helps orient attention, it does not need to be perfect.

3. Stay with the Sensation
   Let the emotion take full presence in your body. Breathe into it. Resist the urge to fix, act, or moralise.

4. Ignore the Thoughts
   The mind will try to distract you by analysing, judging, or worrying. Let those thoughts drift by and keep returning your attention to the body.

5. Allow the Wave
   Feel the emotion rise and fall naturally. If you can, stay with it ten seconds longer than you normally would. This builds capacity and teaches the nervous system that feeling is safe.

6. Repeat with Patience
   Deeply held emotions may return many times before dissolving. Each round of staying present releases more of the stored energy and the safer you will feel with that emotion.

What Happens When You Stay

As resistance softens, the energy behind the emotion completes its course and quiets. Anger transforms into clarity and boundary. Sadness becomes tenderness. Fear gives way to calm alertness and direction. This is not forced change; it is a natural rebalancing that occurs when feeling is allowed to be felt. The nervous system learns that it can feel and still be safe. Anxiety lessens because there is no longer a need to defend against experience.

From Feeling to Freedom

With practice, you begin to notice a deeper shift. You are not the emotion itself, you are the one who observes it. The waves still come, but they no longer define you. This perspective does not mean detachment, it means freedom. You can allow whatever arises without fear or judgment. Over time, this awareness dissolves the old survival reflexes of the mind. What remains is a steady inner stillness, the quiet confidence that you can meet whatever life brings.

A Practice of Honesty and Truth

The allowing practice is simple but not easy. The mind will resist. You may forget, postpone, or want to do it halfway. Be patient. Each time you notice resistance and return to feeling, you are building emotional strength. Making contact with emotion is not about perfection. It is about truth. The goal is not to eliminate feeling but to live in harmony with it.

Closing Reflection

When you feel anxiety or tension, pause and ask, What is this feeling asking to be felt? Then let the wave come. Stay ten seconds longer. Let the mind’s commentary drift away and keep your attention with the body. With time, you will discover that every feeling, fully allowed, leads back to peace. That is the quiet power of making contact with emotion.

If You Would Like Support with this

If practising this feels difficult to do alone, therapy provides a safe and steady space to support the process. With professional guidance, you can uncover what lies beneath the surface and reconnect with your deeper emotional truth in a way that feels contained, respectful, and deeply healing. If you would like support in beginning this process, click here to contact me and you will be taken to my contact page.