E12 How To Master Emotional Intelligence
May 2024
102 minutes
E12 How To Master Emotional Intelligence
May 2024
102 minutes
Stream on:
Emotions are the information systems of the body. When we ignore them, we risk not noticing what we need physically, socially, and mentally to survive and adapt. When we befriend and accept our emotions, we open up a magnificent vista of intelligence. To master Emotional Intelligence is to understand what we are experiencing and how to process them. In this episode, we look at what are emotions? how do we process emotions? and what is the utility of our primary emotions?
is a global, leadership-strategy consulting company. 3Peak creates the roadmap that aligns behaviours, relationships and Functional Human-Systems™ to achieve your business strategy.
Co-Founder holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, and did extensive research in Consciousness, Trauma and Physical, Emotional & Mental Health in various Institutes and Research Centers around Europe.
Co-Founder is one of the most sought after therapists in the world, mastering diverse modalities and opening wellness centers in Istanbul, Santiago, New York and Berlin. Her approaches bridges transpersonal psychology, meditation, bioenergetics, family- and business-constellations and more.
Co-Founder has extensive experience advising Fortune 50 and FTSE 100 C-Suite Executives in leadership, strategy, team dynamics, and organizational change. Before coaching, Mino worked in finance, management consulting, and mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
Mino Vlachos: Hello and welcome to the 3Peak master leadership experience. My name is Mino Vlachos and I'm joined by doctor Mazen Harb and Krisana Locke. We are the co founders of 3Peak coaching and solutions where master leaders build healthy systems. Our company provides coaching and workshops to executive leaders and leadership and well being workshops to employees. Today's topic is all about emotions. And this is a topic that I'm very excited to go into and one I've been looking forward to for some time. And so we're going to go all about emotions. What are emotions? How do they support us? What are they? And going through even some specific emotions and how they might support us in life. To begin, I'm going to do an exercise that is very familiar to the three of us at least, and I invite the listener to also join along with us. We're going to start with a bit of an emotional check in. And so I'm going to ask each one of us to explain what's happening on the physical, on the emotional and the mental and with the emotional, I'd like to hear as well how you know where in the body you feel those emotions. Today I'm going to begin with Mister Mazen. Yes. And I'd like to hear where you're at physically, emotionally and mentally.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Now I understand why before the podcast I said, let us check in on each other and there was no response from both of you because that was surprise.
Krisana Locke: It's a surprise for me too. So.
Dr. Mazen Harb: How I feel physically is sleepy. Can it be physically, I'm sleepy physically. That's what I feel physically, emotionally relaxed and mentally like sharp. Since I'm on a podcast now, so I don't have much thoughts, I'm very present. So presence with my. With my focus.
Mino Vlachos: Where in your body do you notice the emotions that you're sensing?
Dr. Mazen Harb: More? My forehead, my throat and my legs.
Mino Vlachos: Thank you. Krisana, where are you physically? Emotionally and mentally?
Krisana Locke: Just let me move inside to check on my physical sensations. So the sensations I notice in my body, my eyes are dry, the eyeballs feel dry, and my hands are very relaxed, loose. And I can notice that I have heat on my feet. The soles of my feet that's in contact with the flow, they're my physical sensations that I'm noticing right now. I'm also swallowing. And how do I feel emotionally? Well, I have a smile on my face because I'm not sharing this guided structure. So I'm smiling because I have time to check into me. So I feel a nice sweetness and happiness inside of me, and I can feel it in my face, and I feel emotionally content right now. And what thoughts do I have at this moment? I'm not really thinking of anything because I'm quite present to just going from my physical sensations to this pleasant sensation of feeling, my emotional sensation. And there's not much space of thinking, just also open, clear.
Mino Vlachos: And where in the body do you notice the contentment?
Krisana Locke: I notice it because I can notice because I'm smiling a little bit. So my face, and also I can feel my sitting bones. There's almost like an expansion. There's like an opening in my sitting bones, and something dropping down into my body, like, something drops more. This is the sense of contentment and being received, being listened to.
Mino Vlachos: And for myself. If I check in where I'm at on a physical level, I notice that my feet are quite cold. Um, I notice, uh, tension kind of going up the back of the spine, especially as we get to the neck, because I'm kind of focused on looking all around for the podcast. So it feels good to kind of elongate a bit. Um, I feel tension a bit in my arms. So that's where I'm at physically. Emotionally, there's a few different things present. I feel like sadness is probably the predominant emotion. I feel it mostly in my chest, like a kind of a sagging down, and I feel it in my face. I also have some, like, happiness. I'm really enjoying being here with you two and sharing this space. So there's some lightness and some pockets of just. I feel it again. More in the belly is more the openness and a little bit sometimes in the chest. So it's a mixture of both. And then mentally, I feel like there's actually nothing going on, like, to almost a disturbing degree, because I'm hosting this podcast, but it's very blank today. There's not many thoughts, there's not many clouds on the weather forecast today. So that's where I'm at physically, emotionally, and mentally. And so the exercise we did today is one that we do. One, we do it with each other. So we'll check in with each other to see where each person's at. I know Maza and Krisana have done versions of this many times in their work with tantric, energetics, and personal development, where I learned how to do this. It's something that we bring to our clients in three peak coaching and solutions. It's one of the most potent ways to really understand where a person's at and when there's conflicts in a room. If we do this exercise, it can open up vast opportunities for conflict resolution. But that's not what we're talking about today. Today we're focusing on emotions. I just wanted to say that this simple structure is very powerful. So I invite everyone to try it out in their lives and at work. All right, so we're gonna talk about emotions, and I'm gonna begin by asking Krisana, what are emotions?
Krisana Locke: So, emotions are physiological and psychological, let me just say states that involve feelings, thoughts and body responses. So this is what emotions are. So you put the e with motion, and it's something that's in motion. And also you also have expressive behavior, and you also have cognitive interpretation with emotions of an experience. And also emotions can create motivation. So this is emotions. That's what emotions are. Feelings.
Mino Vlachos: If I can ask you, because I have a little bit of a tip off, because I know that you've been releasing some videos, very nice videos on YouTube and other platforms. What is the difference between emotions and feelings?
Krisana Locke: So, emotions, we have survival emotions, we have emotions that are geared to support us, to detect if we're in danger, if we need to fight, flee or freeze. So they're wired for a response to help us to respond. Emotions are angry, fear, and also another primary emotion is sadness. So these support us to know our states inside of ourselves. But generally we get locked into negative states with negative. They're not negative in the sense they're primary emotions where they indicate something. And the emotion of anger is a response to express something on a bodily sense or also to defend ourselves or to protect us. And on a fear, emotion is like something has happened that we retract back and that we want to get away from. So generally, when we were more using our bodies and we were not in such, our society today, they helped us to accomplish things, to move away from things, to express through the body what's happening. But these days, we sit on our emotional states and we don't give capacity for an expression to be expressed in a healthy way. So these all get locked up inside of ourselves and get very repressed inside. So we sit on a volcano of emotions that are repressed, or emotions that are just over the top are spilling over. So we end up having maladaptive ways to cope with coping mechanisms. We either shut down and freeze, or we go on the opposite, where we're too emotionally active and we cannot. We can't contain our emotions. But emotions are not negative or bad, or it's just checking in when how to be able to have coping mechanisms so you can come into balance. So emotions. That's emotions. Feelings are when we have states of joy, you know, when we feel something that touches us. So feelings are deeper when we're in intimate moments. And then when the heart opens, when the heart is touched, so feelings, or also feelings, when something touches us and it brings tears, tears of joy, tears of sadness, but it's a different feeling. I hope I've kind of conveyed it in a way so people can understand.
Mino Vlachos: Thank you, Mazen. I'd like to hear your angle on the same question. Yes. What are emotions?
Dr. Mazen Harb: The first answer that comes, it's the mean that our. The way that our subconscious mind and unconscious mind communicates to the body brain system in order to adjust to the outer environment and to the inner environment, to the stimuli. So without emotions, we won't be in touch with what's happening within us and outside of us. So emotions are really telling us what's happening. I'll give three basic motivational drive. So emotion, which one of them is hunger, fear, and then sexual drive. So again, like I chose those three on purpose, is to show you, is whenever I have the sensation and the emotions of hunger, it's something communicating to us to do something. So we go and then do something to relax. That sensation, that emotion, that feeling, fear, the same thing. How can we get out of it? And then sexual desire, what to do with it when it arises? And actually, this is how species evolve. Without those three basic motivational drive, species cannot. If they don't, if they do not respond to the emotion of sexuality, of sexual emotions they want, they won't be able to reproduce and procreate. And then if they don't respond to fear, then they won't be able to avoid fear and then do what's adequate. And if I don't respond to the motion of hunger, then actually they will starve to death. Those three will make them die. So that's why all species that now exist on this planet has inside of them a basic response to hunger, fear and sexual drive. So emotions are signals, indicators what's happening. This is the first angle I would like to answer to this question.
Mino Vlachos: Thank you. And so I'll just share a little bit of how I conceptualize emotions. Part of this is whatever research I've read, and part of this is really my own anecdotal experience from everything I've learned, particularly in working with the two of you, to understand my own emotions, because for most of my life, I did not understand my own emotions and struggled immensely because of it, the way I've come to conceptualize my own emotions is that there is physical sensations that happen in my body. So, for instance, I can all of a sudden find myself clenching my fists. I have a really tight back. I start to, like, gnash my jaw and my teeth together. I start to furrow my brow, and then the mind can come in and say, if I link all of these together, including the elevated heart rate and this kind of response I'm having, I can label this anger. And so the emotion, for me personally, the way I relate to it, is a really cool, easy way to bucket a bunch of physiological responses that are happening and hormonal responses happening all at once. And so by creating this category called anger for me, I can almost lump together all of these cool things happening in my body into almost a very simple word that captures this magnitude of things happening that changes the state of my body. It's the same for a different emotion, where if I'm feeling like I just described sadness at the beginning of this episode, there's something happening within my body that's changing my state. There's all these physical things that are shifting within me, and then I can really cool. I think it's very cool. Label it sadness, and it encompasses the majority of the things happening in my body at once. And these responses I'm having to me, I also link it to motivation. So the physicality of my body, something is happening because I'm responding to my environment in some way or something within me, I'm responding to something. And so whats also cool is, again, weve known this, meditators have known this, written about this, but science is catching up. Theres a cool paper that came out last year that showed that emotions can be triggered by the mind. So we see something with the mind, we think something, and then the body goes into a response. But the body can actually go into a response without the mind being active or the mind thinking as well. So the body can influence the mind. It goes both up, down, and it goes top down and down, up. And so it's a beautiful system that works with each other. Mazen, I know you already started to speak about this, but I'd like to get even more into it. Why are emotions important?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Really? The first answer would be for survival. For survival. That's what emotions are. Without emotions, actually, we really cannot, cannot face the physical reality we live in. And that's why when you look at any, any species actually, but a lot ours as well, like, because here you see multitude of expressions of emotion in the human, the human body system, it goes to a bigger lens of our perception compared to animals, even though they have. Animals do have all those emotions as well, but they express it in their own way, and we don't necessarily understand all their ways. So emotion is what brings us together. Emotions, it was when needed, emotion, it's what separate, like where break us apart when also needed. So what's threatening, what's appealing, what's dangerous, what's indispensable, how we would know that only by looking at it, we wouldn't know. How do I know that? The thing I really needed, my body needs it. So the body needs instruction, needs signals to know if that's good for the body or not good for the body. I want to say, imagine the body doesn't have eyes. So what? It will have emotions. So we are, we have a system. We have the eyes that tell. Tells us, we have the ears, all the senses, the touch that indicates something might be happening. But then we have the body that goes and then take it in, process it, and then directly say, one moment, something in the air is not right, and sometimes the body is faster than us. We have to catch up to understand what's happening. So emotion is really the, it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's amazing tool to know where we are in a specific time and space in a specific moment.
Mino Vlachos: Yeah. Before going to the next question, I actually feel called to share a story. So when, when I first met Krisana and we did a one week workshop in Florida, we were doing a lot of exercises into opening up into physicality, emotions, sensations and beyond. And we were on this ranch in Florida. So we were in the, in the middle of nowhere, really, in the nature. And, um, and, and there was one road that kind of led out of this ranch. And there was a lot coming up for me and a lot I was processing. And so, um, one night, it was like middle of the night, I really needed to take a walk, I felt. And it was a pitch blackout. There was no moon, no stars. It was cloudy. I don't know. It was just. It was dark. And so I was walking down this road for a while and contemplating, and then I turned around and I was walking back. And at some point I was watching as I was walking in the pitch black, and I was completely not tuned into anything, but, like, I was, you know, reflecting and processing a lot that had come up through the meditations we were doing. And at some point, I was walking something in my body like I jumped. I jumped. I jumped like 2 meters back, two yards back. Like one of the biggest jumps I've done in my life out of nowhere. And I was very surprised and startled and I was like, why did I just jump? Like, I didn't even know why in the middle of the darkness. So I pulled my phone out and put the flashlight on and there was a black snake in the road. And it was. And it was started to dance and twirl and, like, whatever, spitting and making sound. And I watched it for like five minutes. And then at some point I was like, all right, I gotta go. I need to go to sleep because we're doing meditation in the morning. But it stuck with me because it was one of the first times in my life where I was, like, devoid of any thought whatsoever. My body felt fear and reacted strongly and moved me without me understanding why. I had no idea why. I've had experiences like this since, where the body can sense things and feel an emotion and motivate me to move minutes, like, minutes before I can even catch up with my thinking or even understand why it happened. So the body is quite remarkable. Even like a couple weekends ago, we went on a hike with my dog and my dog stepped on a snake. Didn't have any, but I saw the snake from, like, it was, it was a small, like, garter snake, so it was a very nice, whatever, non threatening snake. But I saw this snake as a human from, I don't know, it's some detection system. I felt this thing from like a mile away. The dog, though, is, like, clueless. Just like, went and stepped on it. And I just reflected again, like, there's something in the human body that's so, like, built into us. Like, I don't know, for me at least, like, I can sense these snakes, I guess, from like a mile away. But I marvel at the human body. And so, yes, I really have to.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Say animals as well, actually even more in tune. It happened that your beautiful dog, she's always at home, so she should have noticed. But that's an exception because animals are even way, way more attuned to the outer world.
Krisana Locke: I also grew up in Australia, so there's a part of me quite instinctive. We used to play a lot outside because we had a huge nature garden. And it was just very often my mother or father would holler, be careful where you play because there's some funnel web spider holes. So just be careful of that area. Watch out down the back there's a snake. So we were aware, but so there's a different instinct. When instinctive sense, when you grow up with a lot of nature, like it's there, but be aware. So, yeah, with 22 poisonous snakes of the world in Australia, you respect nature, but you're not afraid of it. It's a different sensing instinct that you're wired to.
Mino Vlachos: So in my experience, before I started opening up to my own emotions, when I was very shut down, I had no experiences like this. Since starting to open up to my emotions, things like this constantly are happening where I'm more in tune with my environment. My question for Krisana is, I've worked with people who they tell me I don't have emotions, I'm a perfectly logical being, I'm perfectly rational. This emotion stuff is beneath me. I do not have emotions. Can you tell me a little bit about what that individual, what's going on with them, is that true? Do they not have emotions?
Krisana Locke: Well, it could be many factors, but it's a bit like living in the head, living in the mental and totally cut off, feeling the heart, or feeling what is happening inside the heart and the body. And maybe it's a safe place for them to be logically in the head all the time. But then life becomes quite narrow, because a person may miss out on the longings of a true deep intimacy with someone, or even intimacy with nature, because it's. It's held up into keeping logic intact. Also, people who have had trauma, it's not safe, or they probably, sometimes the body becomes numbed and you go into disassociation to protect yourself. So it's safer to stay in the mental field and not to be able to access huge amount of energy that's locked in the system where there's rage or there's deep pain and there deep sadness. So, you know, and there's factors, but generally it's. Some people have forgotten the body, have forgotten the heart. It's safe to stay in the ivory intellectual tower, but it would be very lonely because. Yeah, missing love, missing tenderness, missing the heart, you know, being touched by life.
Mino Vlachos: Mazen, of your many things, one of which is you have training as a neuroscientist, a biologist, is this possible to not have emotions as a human being?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Only when you're in the coffin. That's the only place any living being that have energy going through to walking, moving, has to have emotions. The only way not to have emotions is to be a machine, like a robotic machine. Yeah. So, no, it's not possible, it's. It cannot be. So whenever someone say, I do not have emotion. It just means just actually as simple as that. Even when you hear yourself saying that, that mean I am not connected to my body, I'm not connected to my feelings, because for the simple reason, I'm probably overwhelmed by those emotions. So I learned it's that I'm, you know, I'm afraid of those emotions. So I got trained to disconnect from that part. And whenever any emotion comes, I directly suppress it. And honestly, I understand why. Because we, we don't have a sis, you know, we're not, we grow up in societies where it's not yet common sense to teach kids what to do when the emotions, when the emotion arises. But since we do not have a full understanding of the body, ourselves, each person, then we think something is wrong with us, we keep it a secret, we feel ashamed of it, and then we are really afraid when it comes because we don't know what to do. And then we start training ourselves to hide it, suppress it, and consider it strong. And negative emotion is bad, and positive emotion is good. And this is where we split within ourselves. And that's. That's a story. What happens is you have a tremendous amount of energy. It's a physiological response, it's a hormonal response, it's a psychological response. When you hold that emotion, that response, it's again, like it's, it's obviously, it's energy in movement, because the blood, the hormones, everything is in movement. And you say, I don't want to feel it, and you cut it. The energy has to go somewhere else, and it will go to the mind because it cannot disappear and say, ah, but if I. And this is where most people who overthink overthinking is not connected to the body. The moment, the way to get out of overthinking is not to find a way to think out of it, is really to feel yourself, feel those emotions, and allow to feel the senses. And just by doing that, it will relaxes. Overthinking is an adaptation that happens to us whenever there are sensations and emotions. Like, what should we do? And then the mind comes online. How should I solve it? But the mind cannot solve it most of the time can solve it sometime, but then at certain point, the person need to feel the sensation, need to feel this emotion in order to get the message right. So the emotion comes because there is a message to be delivered about the outside world, the inside word. That's why we have sensations and emotions. So that's why we are disconnected from the message, from our environment, and then, as Kristana said, we will be sitting in the ivory tower in our mind and trying, probing, trying to see, questioning, doing probabilities if what's happening is true or not. And then this is where we go into morality to find something good, bad, and then have life based on only thinking and thoughts and overthinking.
Krisana Locke: But also, like to add, also constant daydreaming is also part of dreaming about the mind, about my life and what I'm going to do. And it's a lot of energy in the mind, the head, and it's to come and live life through the body, you know, and also emotions. We have expressive emotions, and then we have inward, softer feelings, you know, and emotions. So this, we're upholsating alive being, you know, we're not static, ah, something why we get expressive or something, you know, there's an inward. When we're touched or when we look at a child, when it sees its mother or father opens its arms up, it's really, it's an express to be hugged, to be held.
Mino Vlachos: So I'm going to share a little bit about my early life before I met the two of you, because really, that was a marker in time that changed my life. When I was young again, I talk a lot about how I was not equipped, didn't understand how to feel my emotions. So I spent a lot of my youth feeling very numb and disconnected. I remember as a kid when we go on car rides with my family, I would almost. I would. The things I would daydream is I would imagine my family dying and it would allow me to cry. And it was like, as if I could almost then, like, touch something and feel something. But I didn't understand this until much later. So now as an adult, I can reflect on what I was doing. But that was like a pattern I developed is like I was so icy on the inside and so numb that actually imagining people I love dying in a weird way supported me and brought me some kind of connection with my body as I moved into adulthood. And I really had a lot of overwhelming fear and, like, anger I wasn't able to touch at all. I experienced a lot of episodes of depression, so I was unable to get up and do things for my life. One of the most important job interviews of my life, which really was an important thing that supported me because I ended up going, but I was so depressed and afraid to go that I was ten minutes late to the interview. And thankfully they still considered me and gave me a job. But I remember it was really painful for me to get up and to go do that. During that time, I started to abuse alcohol. So I was drinking, like, from the morning to the night, which is something that I almost never talk about. But there was, like, a two year period where I was really, like, abusing alcohol. And thankfully, I stopped at some point because it wasn't supporting me. There are other things I've done in my life, like eating, like, a lot of overeating, and to the point where I'm in physical pain. I can't. I can't get up because I've eaten so much, and I can cry because I'm in so much pain from how much I've eaten. So these are some things, because I didn't. I didn't understand that I might have been that kind of person that was like, I don't know. I don't know about this whole emotions business. I'm a logical guy. I'm a rational guy. I'm an analytical thinker. And I noticed in my life that I was having a lot of episodes and crises. And the people around me, like the coworkers I had that were saying, I don't feel emotions, and. And we could, you know, bond in that they were having a lot of health episodes. I know one person I know started having stress induced seizures at work. It was collapsing at work and seizing and had to go to the hospital. So there's a lot of things that I experienced. And then when I met the two of you and I started to get in touch with my body, get in touch with my emotions, I found such a different way of living for the first time in my life. And it took, you know, years of practice and a lot of things to move through. I started to experience my emotions and to understand them, to process them, to go into the past and process the past. And all of a sudden, without any trying, without any doing, all those maladaptive mechanisms, they stopped. It's not active, like, so now if I want to have a drink of alcohol, I can. And, you know, once every few months, I can and enjoy it. But I'm not trying not to drink alcohol. It's not like I'm sober. Like, I have. Like, I don't really need to have that identity increasing with food. Like, I can enjoy my food. And I'm slowly starting to learn how to eat in a balanced way where I feel satiated. And I can also enjoy some stupid thing, like, right? Like, and not judge it, but also find how to resource my body. I almost never experienced any form of depression or depression like symptoms for years now, which is something I had for almost 25 years of my life. I almost never experienced any form of anxiety, which I experienced for 25 plus years of my life. And it was because you started to teach me how to process my emotions. So one, thank you both for giving me all the tools that enabled me to. I always say you helped me, save me from myself. You gave me the tools so I could save myself from myself. And so thank you from the bottom of my heart. This is why I think this work is so vital and important in a moment in time where mental health and emotional health is deteriorating around the world, or I don't know if it's deteriorating, maybe we're just more aware that it's low to begin with. And so really the question I have is to move to a more constructive place, which is, and I'll begin with Krisana, how do we process emotions?
Krisana Locke: So the way we process emotions is, I'll have to give an example. We'll make it easier if something makes triggers me and I go into a response in my body of anger, you know, I feel something heat up, like I have a reaction. I'm aware now that because I grew up in a family where very expressive on the emotions, very like, you know, you express yourself, you know. And so I realized I'm more on the to be more expressive. And then I had to learn that how to start to understand than many years ago to feel when I'm feeling heat in my body, to feel when I'm. Something triggered me, something made me angry. So instead of acting out and throwing that on the situation or on the person, because it's my own state inside, I learned to note, become aware, oh, I feel angry. And how do I know I'm angry? I can feel it in my body. Body, you know, there's something that comes up in your spine. You feel like the jaw, as you said, and you feel a heat. So the way to not repress it or not to act out on it, I just acknowledge it that it's there and I process it through my body without repressing it. I will go and give myself space, because it's an. It wants to express. So I will go for a walk or I'll give space that it's creative. So I'm just trying to give an indication of how to know what you're feeling. So anger happens in the belly, the expression, but it comes up to above, at the chest. It happens to this part of the upper body into the arms and the hands and the jaw. And it's an expression that wants to express out. It's also healthy aggression, you know, when we want to, okay, I'm done. I need to stop hanging around and, like, just thinking, I need to get this in movement. So this is a healthy aggression, you know, we give it a movement, an action. So, but for people who are too explosive with emotion, it means they can't, they haven't had the capacity or the mirroring to cope, have coping mechanisms to keep their emotions from flooding over. So in that case, to do sports, to do things that give some way to express your body in a healthy way. So this is just one example of acknowledging feeling an anger response in the body and how to deal with it without going into then the other person is the problem, the issue. But when you notice anger is happening in your body, you can track it through the body and through the feeling.
Mino Vlachos: Mazen, you're a master alchemist. How do we transform and process our emotions then?
Dr. Mazen Harb: I'll give the one equation in a very simple way, because Krisana explained that perfectly. The equation is by feeling them. Actually, if we don't feel our sensations, if we do not feel our emotions, we repress them, we disconnect from them. So that's it, actually, by feeling them. So feeling as. It's a verb, actually, I feel. So whenever emotion arises, is really allow ourselves not to escape them. And actually, because fear of feeling the emotion is the motivator of us not going and feeling them. Feeling is the most healthiest thing that you can ever do. To transmute, to transform, to transcend through the body. Because the moment you start feeling, the body start processing, the body opens up, start processing this emotion through the cells, the tissues, the organs. And then what happens? It goes into a peak. You feel it. So imagine you're holding on sadness, and you're like, for years or for whatever, for a day. And then you say you feel, you sit somewhere where you feel safe, or with someone that you feel safe, and you allow, you acknowledge you own that sensation, feelings, and that emotion. And then the moment you start feeling it, yes, it will go into a higher peak, which is crying might come up, like you will feel into even more intense sadness, but that won't last long. What lasts long is when we stop this emotion. This is what will last long, and our fear of that emotion. So the emotions start to be perceived as huge. At the beginning, it was probably small sadness. So if we tackle it, if we feel our emotions early on, we will see reality more as is and not as magnified. So the body has all the technology to process any emotion once we feel safe and then once we allow it, just so open to feelings and then it's like a climax, it goes up and then once the cry happens, relaxation, contentment comes to the surface.
Mino Vlachos: So can I ask each of you a question? Because the younger version of me hears you but still feels like an alien. Like still feels like. I don't, I don't understand what you mean by feeling. So mazen, what, what does that mean to feel an emotion? What does it mean to digest an emotion.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Is to connect to it, to own it, to see what happens to it with when it's there. What happens to you when it's there. To see your habits, the patterns that come out. I'm gonna give a sensation. The hunger. Imagine if you're blind to the hunger sensation actually you will die. But other than that, so the sensation, the sensation of hunger bring that emotion and that craving actually it's, see emotions are needed to know that the body needs nutrients. So if we do not feel this hunger we won't know when we're hungry. And then we try. It's very difficult to do that because without food we die immediately. We die after whatever months or two. It can last long, but anyhow so thirst is the same thing. So from sensations to emotions so emotions start arising. So we really listen to it and then allow ourselves to process it to go with what is needed in a healthy way. So this is more of a very basic understanding that. Krisana I would have a more.
Krisana Locke: Practical, I just wanted to add that emotion is easy to feel because it's a more, so you can, you can understand it. But fear is a more withdrawn, it's a more with inward it's subtle, it's like you move inside you, you so there's, you know, you, there's a shakiness in the body. There's sometimes when it's so much you cut off from feeling it so you may feel numb or you foggy. So these are indications. Oh maybe I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm feeling fear and I just have to acknowledge it, give myself time. You can't push it out like allow yourself to get in touch with that. Like it's okay. And by doing this, a fear response, you will tremble, you will shake but you will process it and discharge it through the body. So to an expressive response, outward is totally different too. And more inward with fear. So I just wanted to add those to the last part about emotions. How you can tell you can sense, and you being more in touch and crying is washing. It's a relaxation, you know, it's a washing over. And so that's also, like, something then can relax. Hunger. I think today in our modern society, I don't think people know the sense of real, true hunger in, you know, modern. In Germany or America or Australia, Italy, or this place. What we do now is not to feel. We stuff ourselves with food or we drown ourselves with alcohol because there's lots of pain. So there are indications, you know, we're having a good time all the time. Excessive. I gotta have a good time. I don't want to feel what I actually need to feel. So when we did this week in this retreat, there was a lot of active meditations and bioenergetics to get alive, to breathe, to get expressive. But then there was moments where to go into something softer and to be still so you could settle. And then a lot of beautiful people touched the innermost, where they cried, the longings, the depths, the tears. And I don't want to feel those, but time to actually. Just to let go and feel myself. And I did not say this is going to happen, but this is what happened. And it was such a safe place to get in touch with the longings and the feelings. So emotions and feelings are, we know we're alive still. We're not in the coffin, as Mazen said.
Mino Vlachos: And so there's sometimes, again, I've done this many times in my life, and I know other folks can do this, is we think we're processing the emotion, but we're telling a story.
Krisana Locke: Exactly. Yeah.
Mino Vlachos: So, Krisana, can you tell me the difference between processing emotions and storytelling?
Krisana Locke: Mmm. Processing and emotion and storytelling. Well, people like to. Okay. People will like to tell each other what they did today. You know, oh, I went and I went shopping, or I met this person, and they try to tell a story about their experience through the day, but they may have not even stopped to feel like, what was my experience when I met people? How did I feel emotionally in different situations? So if someone comes to work with me, they'll tell me a state, what's happening to them, or an issue or a situation, or they'd like to understand something, they will express it to me, and then I will say, and how does that feel work? What are you noticing? As we did before? Do you feel any emotion or what's happening in your body? Because even whatever story you tell, your body is listening and it's creating emotional states because it's hearing what you're saying. So if you tell a story that you've been traumatized and you've dealt with it, and when you're young and you had a car accident and you got out and you saved everybody, but all is fine today, if you tell that story and you haven't processed that and the overwhelming, the nervous system, your body will still think, oh my God, we're back again into this story of in an accident. Oh, we have to prepare ourselves. We have to work with a lot of fight flight. So the stories we tell ourselves and others may not be what we're really in touch with or what we want to share or feel. So it's really good to bring oneself to what are they feeling? What they honestly want to share that what's important, to connect with people or to share. So people tell stories, but people don't really share what's really happening for themselves.
Mino Vlachos: Yes. Mazen. I want to hear kind of your own take on the same question. So I know you've worked, coached, supported, counseled. I don't know. You've worked with a lot of people. And I've seen you also with our clients in workshops that you've done. Sometimes people come with a story of what's happening to them. And sometimes people are processing an emotion. What's the difference, in your opinion?
Dr. Mazen Harb: When we are afraid and we tell a story for sure, and then that means when you tell a story without connecting to the body, it's because we feel safer telling it instead of feeling it. Actually, it's an indicator that those person or those people didn't have the chance opportunity to feel safe in the body, but also to feel safe for someone else. So the first thing I'll do is to create a safe environment and then guide them through that. What they're doing is very normal. And then this, they really. And I stop and I ask them actually, but that, okay, you're telling me the story, but that what that made you feel. And if the person I don't remember, I don't feel anything. That means really we need to work with them to really feel safe more and more and come back probably later on when they're ready to allow themselves to feel safe enough. So in order to feel that emotion, because you have to know the moment we feel an emotion. This is where self healing happens. Nobody do healing for you. It's your body that does self healing to itself. You use others to create a safe environment around, so you able to feel your emotion and then you go into processing, hence healing. So this is very important to understand that it's you who does the healing. It's you. It's the body has all the body, and the brain has all the. All the capability, all the technology, the inner technology to do the healing. And any healer practitioners, their job is to open that space. The more. The more safe it is, the more you can drop into yourself and then trust the body. And once you trust the body, the processing happen, and then the healing starts to happen.
Krisana Locke: You can see children, like when children tell a story, or they're trying to. They're trying to express something. And sometimes they come home from school and they tell a story of what happened at school. I often with friends, I ask them, and how does that make you feel in your body? And then it helps them to get in contact with their feelings. Mazen's beautiful nephew, when we were visiting Portugal, we were playing a game, and then he wanted to play a game the next day, and he said, can we play the game again? And he held his stomach or his belly. I said, how does it make you feel? And he goes, like butterflies. But he was so excited to play this game. And, you know, and he said, yeah, it makes this, like a happy, happy space. And so children are so in touch with emotional responses and feelings from the body. And so it's. It's really a way to. To connect oneself to themselves and with others. But you cannot do it robotically. You cannot make it a systematic way. It's. It's. We can never make something so controlled that we're perfect. If, like, now I know my fear, my body, my emotions, my. My thoughts, this is what we can know in ourselves. But there's so many fluxes of being in an environment, different environments there. And as we had talked in another podcast about adaptation, they really helped us also to adapt. So it's pulsation, it's expanding and contracting in states and resting and flow.
Mino Vlachos: And Krisana, one of the tools that I loved learning from the both of you, and you also trained us to be facilitators in, is active meditations. And one of the things, the most supportive thing I've done in my entire life, and one of the things about the active meditations is they've given me a space, a container, to express some of these emotions, to feel and express these emotions. For instance, there's certain structures where I can feel and express my anger and really allow it to kind of be vocalized and moved physically. And somehow I feel there's a difference between that and me going and just throwing a tantrum. Right. And just losing my shit and throwing stuff and screaming at people. So can you tell me what's the difference between why would a process like an active meditation be a supportive, healthy mechanism for expressing anger? And why might me, whatever, screaming at someone on the street and breaking stuff in my apartment not be a way for me to process my emotions?
Krisana Locke: Okay, so there's a few things I got to break down in that. That meditation has five stages. It's called osho dynamic meditation. And the first stage is breathing, but it's deep, active, vigorous breathing. So when you breathe in and out through the nose, you start to activate bioenergetically, the breathing is connected to the physicality and it starts to more oxygen in the body, more alive you feel. And then what happens is from the muscular, from the breathing, from every cell starts to get ignited. And also whatever you're holding back in the muscular of the muscles, they also get activated. So something builds up inside. The next stage is to express through the body. So if someone has held a lot of emotions and kept them repressed. The second stage, ten minutes, breathing deep, fast, active, chaotic. After ten minutes, you're building up energetically, bioenergetically, a space. The next stage is ten minutes expressed through the body, whatever wants to be expressed. Laughing, crying, singing, shouting, move the body not to think what I should do. So if someone gets in contact deeply and breathes, there may be a natural, spontaneous expression to have a space to let go, to use your voice, to kick, to move, to shake, so your body starts becoming alive. The third stage after that is we're not addressing emotional energy anymore. We move into going deeper to hit life energy. So we jump up and down with the sound, which is the deepest sound. So this is really centering, grounding ourselves. These are the active stages to prepare the body. And then we come in to stop. We physically stop. We stand, there's no movement. We just witness. We observe what is happening inside of us in the body. We just witness. For 15 minutes, all your energy is so vital and alive, you just witness. And then after 15 minutes, witnessing, you move into flow and dance. So this is a scientific process, from activation to expression, to grounding to an alive silence, into celebrating your energy. So it's a bioenergetic equation to come back into relaxation, aware, an aware, relaxed state where you're open, you're grounded, you can respond, you can have awareness, and you are available to life. So you cannot go and go. You cannot go into a meditation and say, I want to work on my anger. You cannot work on your anger, but you have to get in contact with the body, and maybe you can loosen up to let your expression move out. Another expression that may come up is I feel a lot of the fear that I haven't wanted to deal with. I tremble instead of freezing. I need to move my body. I need to run on the spot. I need to move this energy. So these active meditations or working with the body gives a sense of liberating the energy in the body. So we can then move into deeper spaces of silence and witnessing, because we're not sitting on a lot of repressed emotions.
Mino Vlachos: And why is that a better mechanism than me just losing my shit and screaming at someone, throwing shit around my apartment? I mean, outside of the financial costs of breaking things, what is the. Why do a meditation like this?
Krisana Locke: Well, that can be just a disconnected catharsis. It's just gone into. It's a motor, blah, blah, blah. Like it's. It's not connected to feelings, it's not connected to the body. So you can express, and you can express. It may be healthy to express, but it may ignite more trauma sometimes because you've overdone it. But mazen can continue.
Mino Vlachos: Yeah.
Dr. Mazen Harb: So the feeling of suppressed anger when it's not dealt in a safe environment and allowed us to react on it, only it goes into fight, into destruction, into killing, into all of that. But that doesn't mean since awareness is not there, since it's. We're not in a safe environment, it does not mean we released it. Remember that whenever you releasing your shit around at your home, you're angry at something. And actually, if there is no awareness and if you do not feel safe, that does not mean you have less anger. Actually, you'll have more anger. And you know what? You'll have even more shame and more guilt. Maybe because you broke your television that cost €5000 and more sadness. And you know what? You'll be even more angry. You have to know, when the anger is released in an unhealthy way, it produces more anger.
Krisana Locke: True.
Dr. Mazen Harb: When anger is released in a conscious way, why, that means we are in a safe environment and it's directed and it's contained. It will allow it to be released. It will allow it to. How do you say it? Like deflated bits by bits by bits by bits. And then it doesn't produce more anger, it produce more relaxation.
Krisana Locke: And by the way, this meditation, active meditation. Osho, dynamic meditation I mentioned the second stage is done in a safe space, but you do not interfere with other people. It's expressive space for yourself with your eyes closed.
Mino Vlachos: Yes. I'd like to share just two things about my own experience with Osho. Dynamic meditation, because it was such a transformative tool and process for me, and continues to be, is there's a second stage where I was able to physically allow the emotions to pour out of me and to, for the first time in life, have a safe space. I always was very afraid of my anger, like my said, being afraid of the emotion, right? So I was afraid of my anger. I didn't express my anger, I didn't leverage my anger, and so I repressed it. And so this is the first place in my entire life where I felt the safety to actually be angry, to yell, to have that. But the one of the most important things, even more so than that, is the shift between stages. So going from yelling and screaming and whatever, having a catharsis, to jumping. Every time I've done that meditation, my biggest lesson in life has come from the transition, knowing that it's time to stop and to move to something else. And every time the music changes, because it's to music, and you go into the third stage of jumping every single time that music changes. I learned something about myself in that one moment, in that 1 second, because I learn how to have an emotion, to feel it, and then how to carry on with my business, because there's something else I need to attend to. I cannot get stuck in this emotion. I need to go somewhere beyond it. So that, again, because we all have emotions, we all feel them. For me, as with many people, I can get overwhelmed by emotions. But there are moments in my life where it's like. It's like the meditation, the music changes, and I need to get up and attend to something else in a healthy way. And then I would also like to speak about the fourth stage, as Krisana mentioned, where you stop and you're in silence and you feel. And for me, there's this amazing moment, happens almost every time, where the only way I can describe it, it feels like I'm washing myself from the inside, like I'm washing my insides. And I remember during our facilitation, training, myself and the group I was in, we were going through training with you two, and we were learning to do it. And we had the opportunity to practice facilitating in workshops. I remember each one of us, even if we say the exact same words, for some reason, people pick up on different things. If you're even giving the exact same instructions. And I remember I said it almost, I think, verbatim, the written instructions. And someone came up afterwards and. And said, wow. The way you explained it, I didn't realize that the meditation, the silence was the like was. Was so important. I thought the whole point of this was just the catharsis, which is wild. It was wild to me because I was like, well, then why would we do the other stuff if that's. If that's the case? But just that it's all for me, it was all a moment to get to that point where I could wash myself from the inside out.
Krisana Locke: Yes.
Mino Vlachos: And then joy emerged.
Krisana Locke: Yes. Because the fourth stage of silence was to witness. So the first stage is breathing. Second stage is expression through the body and the grounding. The third stage and the fourth stage is stop stillness, witnessing what's happening inside. Become the witness. That's the meditation. And then into celebration. So it's a. It's a beautiful blueprint to. To take into your life so you understand yourself better. As you said, just even shifting the stages from emotional expression now. Okay, it's over. It's changed after ten minutes going into another state, as you said, for your life.
Mino Vlachos: So, Mazen, you have something you'd like to share with us?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yes. Just when you said about the moving, I really liked it when you said when moved from stage to another. And that actually something important to really mention. I think it's kind of mentioned, but really to put words on it. The issue is we identify with our emotions. That's why that what happened to you and what happened to each one of us, we identify with the feeling of anger, of sadness, of pain, and then we keep it as a secret or we go and share everyone, but we start to make an identity out of it. And the thing is we start to see the world through that lens. And then when we start to learn that actually we have a multitude of emotions during the whole day and to stop identifying who we are, what we are with every emotion that arise. This is where relaxation, this is where freedom, inner freedom start to happen. And harmony. It's not. It doesn't mean we have to go beyond emotion. No. It means how to go through emotions and not freaking out for every time. Fear when the emotion arises and understand that this is really a natural thing of the body and then one, the emotion is there not to identify this and say, I am that. That's. I really wanted to add that.
Krisana Locke: I.
Mino Vlachos: Believe it was a Vincent van Gogh had a quote. It's in our book that we release with three peak coaching and solutions that emotions are the little captains of our life. And I really enjoy it. Emotions are the little captains of our life and so on that I want to speak about some of those little captains of our life. And in theory, we could do this as a kind of more quick segment, or if we need to elaborate, of course we can. But I'd like to go through some of the, let's call them primary emotions. And I'm going to ask each one of you to tell me a little bit of what is the benefit of this emotion? Like, how can it support us? And then is there an unhealthy version of this emotion? Where can it be a negative? And so I'm going to go. I'm going to kind of alternate between you, and if you feel very passionate that you want to both comment on one emotion, go for it. But I think we can also each take one.
Dr. Mazen Harb: I like it. It's like a game. I'm ready.
Mino Vlachos: Yeah, exactly. So we've talked about it a lot already. So, Krisana, what is the benefit of anger, and what are the ways that anger can be unhealthy?
Krisana Locke: The benefit of anger. When you are aware of witnessing anger and in your body, it's also a great driver to create boundaries. I've had enough. When it becomes toxic is when you are spewing it, just vomiting it all over everyone and you out of control and you don't have any, you're not in touch. It was self control. You're just reacting on, and then all your past reactions come up and some poor person gets the brunt of it. That's boundaries. Yes.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Nice.
Mino Vlachos: Mazen. What is the benefits of sadness and what are the ways that it could be unhealthy?
Dr. Mazen Harb: I was stuck still on anger. I was like, I got excited with the game. I'm like, yes. Saying no, saying it's enough. I need to release it for anger because, you know, you gave her an expressive one and you gave me a more internal one. I'm like, so I want to release it. Expressive. To say no, that is enough. That is enough. Yeah. Boundaries, as Krisana said.
Krisana Locke: Yeah. I just want to add, like, some people go to therapy and someone says, you need to learn to say no. So they say, okay, I should. But you have to be able to get into the expressive state and of expressive self first to explore before, you know, I know will come. So it's a whole expressive body expression. I needed to add that.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yes. So thank you.
Mino Vlachos: Like I said, if we get passionate about an emotion, feel free.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Let us hang out a bit in anger before moving to sadness. You have two types of people in this world. The ones who are over expressing anger and the one who are suppressing anger. You don't have a third. You do not have a third. The issue is the one who are inwardly expressing anger. They complain about those ones who are outwardly expressing anger as aggressive, unhealthy masculine or unhealthy feminine, or all of those things. But actually the anger need to come out either internally or outwardly. The ones who express, which is I belong to as a. From a young child, inwardly anger, we start using something called passive aggressive. We start to cultivate the mind to be very good in words and to know how to like a good snake. Pss. So either expressive anger, and then it's all seen and blamed by the whole word, but actually it has its counterpart, passive aggressiveness. It has not the same effect, but actually it's the same energy going in different direction. And both are enhancing for the body and then for the system we're living in. And for some reason, we most of the time match up in partners. Even with your parents, there's a mix of all. You have one parent that is very expressive, angry. I cannot control their anger. And you have someone who's very passive aggressive, very angry inside, but show a really nice face. But yeah, very use other ways and techniques to manipulate the situation to release that anger in a way or another, because we have to release that anger. So both are unhealthy.
Mino Vlachos: Are we ready to move to sadness?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah, maybe. Yeah, we go.
Mino Vlachos: Okay, so what are the benefits of sadness? And where can it become a hindrance, an unhealthy expression of sadness? And I would like to begin with Mazda.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yes, for sure you would like to begin with me. If we do not feel our sadness, how can we feel our joy? How can we connect to our heart? The sadness is that layer in front of the heart. And when we decide not to feel it, we don't have any more access to feel the heart, the joy, the happiness. So the more we suppress sadness, the farther we become from joy and inner happiness. And to be in touch with our heart, so we might create an armoring, a protection.
Mino Vlachos: I don't want to feel sad.
Dr. Mazen Harb: I'm strong, but I'm happy. I'm like, it's very difficult to be happy while have tons of sadness. Because to be happy and joyous, you have to feel the heart. And you know, what's the gate of the heart and who's the guardian. It is sadness. Sadness, it's there to really makes us, make us really feel it. That moment as a kid, that moment as a teenager, something happened. That emotion of sadness. There is no nothing to intellectualize here. Sadness, there's. You perceived that, your body perceived that sand. There's nothing to discuss about here. Again, over intellectualization, intellectualization of emotions. It's a way, it's escapism, avoiding of that emotion. So I'm not gonna say why we feel sad. Sadness is there because this is most of life. It's one of the primary emotion. We feel sadness. The more we feel sadness, the more we have. We go to the other polarity of joy and happiness. The less we allow ourselves to feel sadness, the more we will be cut out of joy and happiness. But because the body brain system has a way to go through it. So when we don't feel sadness or we don't feel our heart, we still need to feel something positive, right? The only way is to go through abusing, pleasurable moment. Substances, substances moment, you know, being over in things, then we can go through the route of pleasure, but not joy. So pleasure, like seeking pleasure, but never being satisfied. Hence, most of our addiction comes from a place of pain and sadness. And then we go running behind that feeling to feel complete. But we cannot feel complete without going through the gate of the heart, which is sadness. And then the tears comes, the eye smells, and then we're in touch again to our hearts, with our hearts.
Mino Vlachos: Krisana, can I move to the next one?
Krisana Locke: Yes.
Mino Vlachos: Okay. I'm also alternating some of these on purpose to not go with like a. All negative, all positive, but I would like to next go to disgust. So, can you tell us what is the healthy mechanism of disgust? Why do we feel disgust and what are the ways that it could be unhealthy?
Krisana Locke: Okay, healthy mechanism is like, it's repelling. It's like, oh, you know, you repel. Like, disgust is, you know, it's to do with smell, and it's. That disgusts me. And aversion, I don't. I want to throw up, but disgust, I feel disgusted. That's. He's disgusting. That's. Disgusting is a secondary emotion of. Actually, it's on anger. It's like something you've taken in or you want to throw out. So when I feel, when I, when someone says I feel disgusting, I don't like myself, it's really. Yeah, there's, there's emotions that need to move to be expressed. So disgust is supportive in an environment, but it's also how you deal with something. You took something in that you didn't want to blah. You know.
Mino Vlachos: Thank you. So, Mazen. The next one is happiness. Happiness, yay. What is. Yay. That's it. What is the benefit of happiness? Right? The whole society is, you should be happy. You should be happy. It's like the big metric we use is like, happiness is the greatest thing in the world. So what is the benefit of happiness? And what are some unhealthy expressions or hindrances with happiness?
Dr. Mazen Harb: The benefit of happiness is an emotion, primary emotion as well, indicating that what we're doing is the right thing in the now, actually, that's it. If in that moment we have a memory and we start to have identification with that situation, that substance, that human this, and we transported and we think our happiness has to do with that substance or this person or this event, we start to create conditioning attachment, unhealthy attachment. We go and ask for that person. Let us go back into that feeling. We go to that substance. Let us again feel happy. Happiness is an emotion. So like any other emotion, it's fleeting. Why? Because the body cannot. The nervous system cannot maintain a high emotion for a long time. So it brings the emotion, but cannot maintain it. Either we process it or you suppress it. But then. So that's the main reason. So happiness is an indication that something is right. The moment we do not attach to it, we start to be free from the downhill. The downhill. And that it's. It's not that. Oh, but happiness is gone. That's not the problem. The downhill is we so much are afraid that happiness will go, that we really make it go. Then everybody, all our life, we're running behind the feeling of happiness. And then we think it's something outside. And then the moment it's outside, like, I hope, I hope, I hope everything stay the same. By when everyone uses the. I hope everything stays same. They're using the emotion of fear, and they do not know that emotion of fear. It's that emotion that brings down happiness. And it's not that happiness is that. Ah, it's gone again. See? So we are responsible of our own happiness, at least our inner happiness. And then we are the ones also who really cannot maintain it. It's too much to be maintained because we have so much attachment and we wanted to stay here forever. By wanting to stay forever, it goes away. That's the nature of it.
Mino Vlachos: You've actually picked our next emotion right out of the hat. We're now going to be talking about fear. Yeah. So this is one where I feel like each of you will probably have your own lens. So I'll ask each of you, Krisana, what is the benefit of fear? And where does fear become potentially maladaptive or unhealthy?
Krisana Locke: The benefit of fear, the emotion fear, it's giving you sensing, like, be a, watch out. Something in my. It's an antenna, you know, something I have to. I'm detecting, you know, so this is a survival emotion. How do I respond? So fear is in that sense, you know, you. You know, you become alert about things. Fear, the fear. When we experience fear and we don't want to feel fear, it's not a nice space to be in because it can actually cripple us, actually. Like, we freeze, we shut down, we disassociate. So the fear response is there to run away from something. So if you have a. A bear coming, you're surprised, you know, you don't choose which emotion I'm going to. Come on. It's the automatic part of the nervous system down here. It says in an instant, you know, it probably starts to try an attack. In another situation, if a lion came and it looks smaller, and then you don't think, well, will I fight or will I freeze or will I run? You might start running because I flee. And then in another situation that if you were going to be unfortunately attacked, the fear response comes over. You ran and you couldn't get away. And before you're attacked, you are flooded with a hormone. So you disassociate and you don't feel. So you may survive, you may not. You'll be numbed down. These are all survival responses built into us. But when we're crippled, when we don't allow ourselves to just feel fear and let it discharge through the body, you see it in animals. When they've gone through something, you'll see them shaking. They're discharging a lot of nervous energy in the body. So befriending when you know you're feeling fear, befriending it and supporting yourself, you know, finding a safety for yourself, comfort so you can discharge it, you can be supported.
Mino Vlachos: So I'll use personal example and then turn to mazen. For instance, I talked earlier about my body reacting to the snake and jumping way back. But there was a lot of times in my life where there was no snake, bear, lion, there was nothing. It was me in my room alone. And I couldn't get off the couch because I was so overwhelmed by fear. Mahazen, what is the utility of fear and what is the maladaptive side of fear?
Dr. Mazen Harb: So, as Krisana said, I'll use it I will explain it in my own words. Fear is one of the most indispensable emotion to survive. It's that primal, primitive emotion that tells us to get out from here. Because if we stay here, we will be eaten, we will die, the storm will come. So we are very tuned to fear as a survival threat. Okay, so without it, survival would have been kind of impossible. That's on one hand. But we live in a society now. We're not in caves, and we're not attacked by the jungle tigers and animals, and we don't have to over defend ourselves, at least most of the western world. And so yes, fierce is useful to a certain degree. Honestly, less than ten to 5%. But then we use it in everything. So that's the only emotion that took over and dominated this civilization since the last 12,000 years. Fear. Like when you allow fear to win, that means you are exactly in a survival threat. And you have to understand biologically what happens when you are in a survival threat. That means you really cannot think properly, because when you're in a survival threat, you're using all the energy. That's why you sometimes so exhausted and tired. When you feel constant the energy of fear, you use it in a very maladaptive place, and then it consumes your energy, it drains you, it drains your life force. And then actually there is not a real threat. We constantly using fear. Whenever we have a letter box from the whatever, the tax office letter and the letterbox in the tax office, whenever someone calls us, whenever we have to do a task, whenever we wake up in the morning and something happens. And even when constant, we're thinking, ah, but what all those? What happens if? What happens if? So we're constantly on survival. So our creative way, our things of doing things is based on a survival threat where the threat is not there. So I would say we are in society is dominated by fear. The moment where society start to evolve and start to be aware, bringing awareness that fear is dominating our minds. And the moment when we face it, we start facing. That's the best way to do with fear, by the way, we face our fear, because you know what? The moment we face our fears, we're gonna realize most of it was unreal. And whenever, when we start doing that, funny enough, when we face it, that means we feel it, we allow the body to process it. And then reality comes. We start to see reality as it is. The societies, the families, the relating start to have more space for acceptance, for love, for calmness, for seeing reality as it is. And then you know what for when problem happens, threat happens, we will be more prepared to deal with it because we're not constantly exhausted. So the theory of I need to be afraid. So I'm prepared to adapt to everything dangerous, so I protect myself. I'm like, no, the opposite. The moment we face fear, and then we are more in this abundant space and we have this creative energy, we wait until an issue happens. And when we tackle an issue, not from fear, but from a point of view, let me face it, this is where we can solve solutions at work or at home and in our lives.
Mino Vlachos: Thank you. And so, mazen, my follow up to you is, what is love?
Dr. Mazen Harb: What is love, baby?
Mino Vlachos: Don't hurt me. Don't hurt me no more.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Exactly. Love doesn't hurt. Uh oh, that's a big statement. Love doesn't hurt. What is love, really? You're asking it at the end of the podcast. Okay, I will go to the everybody understand love from their own lens of reality, from their perception. I will start with the basic one that is more close to love. Not the emotion, but love itself. When we call it love of the universe, love of God, love of ourselves, it's nothing more than unconditional acceptance. For me, that's love. Unconditional acceptance of me, unconditional acceptance to what happening. And then I will deal with it. Then you have the emotion of love. Ah, that's complicated. All those. Yeah, it's a mix of emotions. Like, again, I'll give example. Couples, a couple meet, they feel, they say at the beginning, we're fully in love, and then with time, love subsides. And there was no love. And then we. Yeah, and then we stopped, we separated, we divorced. They're confusing two things. The first one is like this cocktail of emotions of meeting, the excitement, the feeling, the game, the play, the sexuality, that suspense that we discover each other. It was a multitude of emotions. Love was not the main thing. And interestingly enough, after that phase, it goes into more accepting one another, learning about one another. This is where love starts to happen. So sorry. This is where love starts to happen. And even later on in age, when they stay together like we've been 20 years, but we don't love each other a lot. Like, you cannot one day love someone and then unlove. This is so difficult. You cannot unlove someone. That doesn't happen. The heart doesn't know. There is no wiring that it can program. I'm gonna unlove it. We can decide to have distance because it's healthy for us. But love, once love is there, love would always be there. But sometimes you have to go separate ways. So the differentiation between the multitude of emotion, of each excitement and novelty, this is really, again, as I called it, it's the sexual drive, it's the sexual energy, it's the need to belonging. It's a primal motivation to come together as a species and then to procreate. And then love, real love, real love comes after.
Mino Vlachos: And then I'm going to turn to Krisana for something else that might be in that cocktail. Tell us about healthy guilt and unhealthy guilt.
Krisana Locke: Oh, I didn't expect that one. So I was gonna elaborate on the dimension of love then.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Go ahead, please elaborate.
Krisana Locke: Just, it could be a whole podcast on, on that, because we bring consciousness in that. But yeah, there's three states of love. There's a biological love. It's attachment love, it's bonding love when we're born, to survive, we have to bond. So we have to attach. So this is the first one. It's a bonding then, as Mazen said, it's the romantic love, where it's the hormones and the highs and it's beautiful. It's the same hormonal release when we were attachment when we're born. And then our first love is like when we're 1415, or whenever that happens, the same hormones are released. So it's a reminder. So it's romantic. And the third love is more of a conscious love rising above. So it's the dimension of love. So unconditional love, or the dimension love, where it's a dimension, so couples or people relating, it's like rising in love, conscious love, and understanding how to be conscious in that, and falling in love and falling out of love is romantic love. When people say, well, I fell in love, and now I'm not in love anymore, so I move on. And this is the point when actually, that's when the relating really starts. So I just wanted to add those things. As Marzen had said, the art of love, the art of a conscious love, it's a journey where your, the other person, you mirror each other to discover more depths and more heights. That's what I want to say on love.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yes, but the whole podcast would be missed if we didn't hear those words. Thank you for the definition. You really gave the proper understanding and definition.
Mino Vlachos: Thank you very much.
Krisana Locke: It's a very big part of my life. It's not work, but it's really beautiful to be unconscious love. Now, back to what you asked me, guilt and healthy guilt. Okay, so I'm just going to give an example, really basic example, caveman times to survive. We lived in caves, we moved around. And so there were certain things when we were bonded as a group that we did that kept the group together. So if we lived in a cave, if someone shitted in the cave, that's not good. So you feel guilty because there's certain agreements, there's certain codes of. You do that outside, so you feel bad because you didn't do something. That's a healthy bonding, what the group has decided to survive. So it's. It keeps the group together. It's guilt keeps you bonded. I just gave a really practical caveman explanation, and then how it. It's the two to be together, to bond to a group, to belong. And if you leave, you know, you feel, oh, I feel guilty. A healthy guilt is when you realize you're bonded in a group or you bonded in your family. There is a. Is a bonded love. You belong to your family. But perhaps you have, you have a personal growth where you want to move into something, but you feel guilty to do this because your family won't like you. But it's for the. It's a healthy guild, it's for your personal growth, then you will do it, but you feel guilty. For example, for men growing up with their mother, there's the attachment bond, but there is a stage where a man to leave the mother, to leave the. The biological mother is to separate and move into the field with the father. And there's often a great feeling of guilt, like, oh, my mother, she's going to be upset, or what will she feel? So you don't move away because you feel that you will make you feel guilty, and your mother will put a lot of guilt on you. But it's healthy for both. It's healthy for evolution of growth, of a spiritual growth, and it's also healthy for the mother because she learns to also tolerate her feelings. The have to allow the son, allow him to grow and find his life with another partner of any choice. It's a very basic relating, bonding guilt and healthy guilt.
Mino Vlachos: I'm a greek man.
Krisana Locke: Yeah, that's why I said it.
Mino Vlachos: The story of my life. Me and my italian brothers and my mediterranean brothers. Guilt is the story of our life. So it's. I would tell my earlier self to go listen to the earlier part of the podcast about how to process emotions. Cause you're gonna need it, buddy. So today we've covered a remarkable ground. Like, we've talked about what emotions are we even started with a little check in to show how we choose to process emotions, which we do in our work. We do it in our company. Three p coaching and solutions. We do it with our corporate clients. It's something that is accessible and open to us. So we talked about how to process emotions, ways that we bypass processing emotions. And then we went into the primary emotions, some of them, and how they can support us, how they can give us information and signals about our body and our life and what we need to shift and adjust. And now I'm going to slowly bring us to a conclusion, and we're going to each share a little bit of our concluding thoughts on this magnificent journey through introduction to emotions. I really feel strongly that a part two is needed about like, because there's so much more to talk about with different emotions. There's more than just primary for me also talking about how it applies to work. And there's a lot of stories I'd like to share about how I tried to apply these lessons into the corporate world when I was, when I was an employee in corporate and how, yeah, I was mixed with. I was met with mixed reactions. So I would like to open that can at a later date. But for now, I'm going to go through and just kind of ask each person to share a little bit about their last thoughts. So I'll begin with Krisana. What would you like to leave us with for this podcast episode?
Krisana Locke: Wow. I have a blank because I felt like I was really satisfied with. I love the topic of emotions and expression and feelings and love. We make mistakes. We make mistakes in life. Don't beat yourself up. Yeah. Learning. We are emotional, free wheeling beings, and it's okay to get in contact with our emotions, to understand our emotions, to find ways to support us if we need to express our emotions, or we need to come in contact with emotions so that we can move deeper into feelings and have more intimacy with ourselves, intimacy with others, and also being able to be more clear where we what's in our personal life, in an emotional life, with family and friends, and where in our work life and in our business life, corporate life, how that's a different way. We can also be in contact with our emotions, but how not to be overly emotionally absorbed when we're at work, where we can be more grounded and clear, to be present and complete task and to have a direction in our work. That's what I'm going to leave with.
Mino Vlachos: Thank you. Mazen. Closing thoughts?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah. To know that we are not our emotions, we are not our thoughts. To know that at work, at university, at school, we have to slowly start to learn how to be with emotions because. Because it will follow us everywhere. All our struggles that happens at school, at university, at work, at home, has to do with how our capability to deal with emotions. Understanding ourselves, learn about ourselves, and then very importantly, how to let go about labeling. There's bad emotion and good emotion. Because when we know that the labeling itself is what keep us in that loop, there is positive emotion and there is negative emotion in each one is indicating something for us, so we can respond. So to get out of reaction and go toward an adequate response, to start to allow positive feeling and to know very well that when we don't allow negative feelings, that mean also we don't allow positive feelings because we don't know what to do with it. And the last one is, help your kids. Whenever they come to you, they have lots of emotions, they're sad or something. Help them to express. Kids have the ability, all what they need from you is to create a safe space for them. If you see them sad over two, three days, going to school, ask them. Listen to your kids. Just be present. This is all what they need. Allow your kids to express all the myriads of emotions, and they will learn from you. And don't show them that some emotions need to be avoided, some not. Emotions are our way to understand what's happening around us. The more we befriended, the more we live in inner harmony, inner love, inner respect. And then actually, we live in a beautiful society where we really tend and take care of each other. But it cannot be done while bypassing emotions. That's the way through.
Mino Vlachos: And so I conclude with, again, I will recap it using my own personal story. I experienced a lot of numbness and disconnection in my life. I struggled immensely. I struggled a lot because of the things I was doing to myself. And what I was avoiding is that there's actually, in the spaceship called human, there's these beautiful sensory instruments, and they're blinking lights. And you can have these instruments provide you information about what's working, what's not working. And when I started to tune into emotions for the first time and take care of myself, I could actually fly the spaceship for the first time instead of just drifting through space. I realized that everything in my life that I wanted, I could get there through a straight line, or it could be very squiggly line that never gets anywhere. The difference between the straight line and the squiggly line was, am I organized and am I regulated? If I can organize myself and regulate myself, I can get the things I want in my life. If I'm dysregulated, overwhelmed and disorganized, I'm spending all my life going up and down, up and down, left and right, instead of actually getting the things I want in life. So my invitation to my younger self, and to anyone listening, is focus on those two things. Learn to regulate the body, the system, the emotions, and over time, how to organize it. And from there, everything is really possible. And so with that, I thank you all for listening. And we'll see you again next time. Bye.