 Bondage. The state of being a slave. Do you ever feel like you're enslaved by your own emotions? Feel stuck? Feel trapped? Well, in this video, I'm going to teach you how to overcome that. So stay tuned and find out how we do this. What's up, everybody? This is Chris from the We Wired Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. Emotional bondage is something that I can really relate to. I always felt like I was a slave to my own emotions. Whenever I felt something that I didn't want to feel, I just needed to escape. And my escape came through food, as you can see, but mainly drugs and alcohol. For some people, it might be relationships or other toxic behaviors. For some people, it's isolating. A bunch of things that are pretty much not going to solve the problem. So the solution to this is a practice called mindfulness. Mindfulness is a form of meditation, but it's very informal. So real quick, let's explain how the brain works. The brain is constantly in one of two different states. Attraction or aversion. Attraction means we want more. So say you have a piece of delicious cake. That's attraction. You want more of it. Or somebody comes up to you and says how beautiful you look today. That's attraction. You want more of it. Your brain fires off dopamine. You want more of that. Then there's a state of aversion. Aversion is when something negative happens, typically an emotion. But a lot of times this emotion sits underneath the surface. And when we get into that state of aversion, we are trying to push it away. Our brain is mentally trying to push that feeling away. Which is what usually leads to us doing some sort of toxic behavior that is not going to help the situation. If you watched my last video, which I'll link again up here by Russell Brand, you'll find out a little bit more about that. But we're going to start off by doing a quick little experiment. So do me a favor. Wherever you're watching this right now, it doesn't have to be sitting down or standing up or laying down. It could be whatever feels comfortable for you. I just want you to sit and get relaxed real quick. Take a few deep breaths and just gently close your eyes. Alright. Now just get a sense of what your body feels like. And I'm going to read a list of words. And just notice what happens in your mind, in your body as I read these words. Ready? Here we go. Sadness. Fear. Restlessness. Awkwardness. Embarrassment. Helplessness. Misery. Anxiety. Depression. Grief. Jealousy. Anger. Alright. Go ahead and open your eyes. If you're like 99.9% of the people on this planet, you noticed a little bit of that push just by me reading those words. Now why is that? It's because your brain was probably bringing up situations or it was bringing up different memories or different feelings and emotions. And that is what I'm trying to get you to hone in on, that sense of aversion. Now, what mindfulness does for us is it teaches us how to turn towards that state of aversion. It is completely counter-intuitive but it's something we can actually train our brain to do. And let me tell you something. This is literally the most empowering thing that you can ever do in your entire life. You have my word on it. For me, the analogy that I use, it's like walking straight up to a grizzly bear and just slapping it right in the face. Like, it's taking something that we're typically so afraid of, these feelings that we don't want to feel and we keep working towards turning towards it. Now, I'm not going to lie to you. This takes time. It takes practice. But you can do this through very simple mindfulness meditation practices. And I will link another video that I did about my three favorite free mindfulness apps. But I'm going to give you another mindfulness app. This video is not sponsored at all. It's just an app that I came across and I absolutely love. And it's called Boudify. This app is $5. I personally hate paying for apps. And I think I've been spoiled because so many apps are free. But this app is called Boudify. And basically, what you're seeing here, this is the Boudify app. The reason I love it so much is because as you can see, there's so many different variations of mindfulness practices. A lot of them are going to sleep. You can't sleep. Maybe you're taking a break at work or maybe you're just waiting in line. Now, for these specific situations when you're dealing with difficult emotions, so there's one that's for feeling stressed. But my favorite one is the difficult emotions one. So my absolute favorite meditation in here is this one. And it's called Infinity. As you can see, all the meditations have different timeframes. Infinity is only seven minutes. Now, when I found this specific meditation, it was so empowering. What happens is during this meditation, I'll just kind of give you a sneak peek of it. What it does is it has you sit and recognize this emotion. And you sit and you just kind of recognize what it feels like in your body. And you just keep letting it expand and expand and expand and expand. And by giving this emotion the permission to just expand throughout your body, that's what starts giving you the freedom from this emotional bondage. And it's absolutely amazing. As I do this meditation, I almost envision it just spreading throughout my body like this energy. And once it reaches my fingertips and to the top of my head and all the way down to my toes, I let it expand even further. And as you continue to let your emotions simply run their course, what you will do is you will see that they no longer have power over you. Now think about that for a second. Think about how amazing that sounds. Just the next time you're stressed or angry or worried or scared or anxious or depressed and just letting it just flow through your body. Think about how great that would be rather than trying to find something to distract yourself with or numb yourself with or trying to find some random person to go hook up with to get rid of that feeling. Think about learning how to just sit with that feeling. Now, I'll let you know this. It takes practice. It takes time. Imagine if I just came up to you and I put a piano right in your face. Side note, I'm assuming you don't know how to play the piano. But imagine if I just put a piano right in your face and I said, go ahead and practice it. You just went, oh, guess I can't play the piano. That doesn't make sense. Same thing with meditation. It takes practice. It takes time. But I guarantee that you will see over the next couple of weeks by simply practicing this, you will begin to see changes with your relationship and your emotions. It will become something that you can turn to anytime, anywhere. It's absolutely amazing. I'll do some more videos on mindfulness. So if you like this video, give it a thumbs up. If you have any questions, leave it down below. And here's a question of the day for you. Have you practiced meditation before? If so, what are the challenges that you came across? I personally have a meditation teacher now and he helps me out with the different roadblocks that I run into. I've been doing meditation for about two years now. But anyways, it is my go-to when it comes to my depression and my anxiety. So please, if you're new here, if you like this video, if you like what I'm doing here, hit that little round subscribe button right below me. And over to the left, click or tap, there's a ton of other mental health videos on this channel to help you out. So thanks again for watching and I'll see you next time.