Embrace stress with self-compassion

Stress is a popular topic because it affects a large number of people. It consists of the automatic and natural response of our body to situations that are threatening or challenging. In general, there is a tendency to believe that stress is a consequence of circumstances external to us, but in reality, it is born within us, depending on how we evaluate events or our abilities to cope with them. When stress is prolonged or intensified over time, our health, our performance, and even our relationships can be affected (Campayo & Demarzo, 2019).

One of the most effective ways to self-consciously dissolve stress comes through our ability to accept its presence, and being able to embrace our anxiety with compassion and heart intelligence. Paul Gilbert defines compassion as the deep awareness of the suffering of oneself and other beings, along with the desire to help avoid it. (Anchondo, Ramos, & Recondo, 2012). From this concept, we find self-compassion and its effects on stress management. Self-compassion implies affection, kindness, and understanding towards oneself, when suffering from a stressful situation, instead of criticizing, blaming, or denying one's pain. It consists of treating ourselves as we would treat a defenseless child or a very dear friend. The opposite would be destructive and guilty self-criticism (Campayo & Demarzo, 2015).

In general, it is more difficult for the vast majority of Westerners to give affection to oneself than to give it to others. The gesture of embracing our stress kindly, and projecting self-compassion, in a contractive situation, is usually very difficult for our dual mind to accept. For some people, this practice is practically impossible. Some, because they experience it as a weakness or a risk of becoming indolent. Others, because they do not consider themselves worthy of receiving affection from others (frequently, because they did not receive it unconditionally in childhood). If this practice is very complicated for us, an effective trick is to start the practice of compassion towards friends and, when we are giving affection to people we love, we can include ourselves in the image, and give ourselves affection as well.

Kindly embrace your stress through a compassionate gesture on your body to ease its symptoms. The compassion practice that we propose to dissolve stress seeks to regulate stress by activating the system of satisfaction, calm, and security. In self-compassion there are certain types of gestures, related to hugging and contact, that release oxytocin, that is, they reassure us.

The main triggers of self-compassion linked to stress are three:

• Gentle body contact

• Vocalization in a soft tone

• Feeling of warmth on a physical level

We invite you to start the compassionate gesture that can be very useful to calm us down in times of stress, or simply to feel better at any time, or scenery of our personal and/or professional life (Campayo & Demarzo, 2019).

• Put one or two hands on the heart or central chest area

• Put one hand on the heart or central chest area, and one on the abdomen

• Hug yourself and caress your arms

• Hug yourself, and caress your back

• Put both hands crossed on the lower abdomen

• Cross your arms, and caress without actually hugging

• Pat yourself on the shoulder, with one hand or the other, or with both

• Caressing your legs at different levels: thighs, calves

• Gently cradle the face with both hands open

• Caressing the back of the hands, rubbing hands; touching the fingertips of both hands

• Caressing your cheek

• Caressing the hair on your head

• Caressing your forehead

• The secret of 0 stress: impermanence and untrue

Any mental or emotional phenomenon, or any stressful phenomenon, if we do not enhance it (thinking about it, rejecting it, or fighting against it) and we simply observe it dispassionately, as an external phenomenon that belongs to another person, will disappear. This is the great secret of emotional management aimed at dissolving stress in our being. Any thought or emotion that causes us stress or anxiety, regardless of its content and no matter how terrible it may seem at the moment, ends up spontaneously disappearing in a short time. Of course, it is going to have intense moments of influence, but it has an internal process and its deep rhythm (Campayo & Demarzo, 2019).

It has been proven that there is an internal cycle of emotional tides. The cycle usually extends to a very specific time like the tides in the sea. Specifically, every 45-90 minutes it has been researched that there is a change in the cognitive and emotional tide, and in the same way there is a change in the frequency in the processes that generate stress. That is to say that, in mental processes, any thought that we may have on the imaginary screen of our being is absolutely impermanent. It has no identity and anchor to stay in time. The important thing is not to enhance it with our attachment, or our internal and anxious struggle. Curiously, the more we try to fight an emotion, a feeling in our body, or a thought, the greater their permanence in our being. We are somehow altering the nature and life cycle of every thought. Every 45-90 minutes there is a cycle change in the cognitive and emotional tide (Vargas, 2019).

But the important thing is that when we perceive the sudden unfolding of an intense tide in front of us, we do not try to generate ruminant thoughts about its appearance, nor resist, nor fight against it. It is a way of accepting the present moment with a clear mind and observing it in the most dispassionate way possible. We invite you to perceive it as if it were an external phenomenon that belongs to someone else because, in the end, stress will disappear.

Therefore, why is it necessary to change this cognitive phenomenon for a more positive one? Why do we want to know how that particular thought originates? Why do we have to struggle with that stressful thought or emotion trying to rationalize its dissolution? Why fight against that emotion or feeling that I have settled in a part of my body?

Our goal and proposal are to wait for them to disappear without being trapped by them. Besides, another characteristic of the nature of our mind is that thoughts or cognitive phenomena are not true, and of course, stressful processes are not either.

Untrue: Stressful cognitive and emotional phenomena are untrue. What we think is not the external reality, it is not what happens. If we think that we are "useless" it does not mean that we are. If we think that the world is "horrible" or that we are incapable of "public speaking", or that someone is "evil", it does not mean that it is so, since many other people see it differently. If we can separate reality from our thoughts, we will not act on the misinformation that our scattered mind tells us.

Enlighten your being

When you feel stressed, you have a much better chance of focusing on what is wrong. This is how our brain works under the influence of stress: it looks for threats and generally overvalues ​​them. Bring to mind the last time you saw someone stressed: did they stay calm if something went wrong, or did they exaggerate the negative, making a mountain out of a molehill? Our brain in stressful episodes loves to perform hyperboles and exaggerations of the perception of reality. The discursive and narrative mind appears, deepening and expanding the difficulties like a gigantic magnifying glass (Kabat-Zinn, 2007).

Our intention on this stress healing path must consist of incorporating a wise, positive attitude of self-care and self-discovery that illuminates our entire being. For this, an intention of light in all that we are, in our essence, is important. Deep acceptance of our whole being, and of course of our stress. It is possible that you are going through a phase in your life with many significant difficulties, and that you cannot even think of anything positive. But I encourage you to try to make an effort with full acceptance to put the spotlight, and your inner gaze, on your positive things. Put your attention on all the good things you have.

Illuminate your benefits. Looking for the good things in your life is to creatively illuminate each of your steps, reminding you like a mantra of the infinity of good things that you have around your life (Vargas, 2014). Probably, if you are going through a time of great stress, it is possible that you wear conditioning sunglasses that do not allow you to clearly discern reality nor the sense of the anxiety situation that you are experiencing. We enter a phase of cyclical negative thoughts that are constantly feeding themselves (rumination). Our proposal in this process is to set the intention to see things in a different color and not believe at all what our mind tells us at all times. A way of perceiving life with transpersonal intelligence and deep awareness (Vargas, 2019).

Placing the intention in our benefits and all our positive things is a sacred and emotional passport that allows us to enter our program with a creative attitude and high energy. A way of becoming aware of where we are, and of our essence as beings (Stahl & Golstein, 2010).

For this I invite you to answer honestly at this time, and realistically, the following questions:

How are you in your best moments?

How are you when you feel relaxed?

What are you grateful for right now?

What makes you happy, now or in the past?

What excites you?

What is going well in your life right now?

What do you enjoy now or in the past?

The awareness of our benefits is a way of realizing the light that our being has and our infinite display of perennial potentials. By becoming aware of, and even verbalizing, or writing them, we achieve a process of anchoring, recognition, and materialization in all our infinite benefits.

The 4 pillars of your temple: feet, back, hands, and face

Traditionally, the body has been denied in the West, which has given greater prominence to the mind. The mind has been considered as the place where intellectual life, imaginative and narrative life takes place. And, of course, the entire stress-dissolving process has been thought to focus exclusively on the mind. And for that reason, in the West, it has always been thought that the body is simply a vehicle or complementary support directed by the mind (Campayo & Demarzo, 2019).

Eastern culture has always maintained a different position, considering the connection with the body as important as the mind for the balance of the individual. Current research supports the hypothesis of the enormous importance of the body in our psyche, and in our way of integrating, remembering, and being able to deal healthily with stress and anxiety.

Interoceptive perceptions (awareness of bodily sensations) are shown to modify our thoughts and emotions in an important way and vice versa. Some studies show that, if the habitual posture is modified, simply by putting a pencil in the mouth and introducing a smile, one finds experiences and the narration more amusing (for example, reading a funny story) than if this modification had not been made.

The body, our posture, and breathing, therefore, are shaped as an essential variable when it comes to emotion and the perception of thoughts that generate stress. From the perspective of mindfulness, which consists of being attentive to the present moment, the body and breathing are key because they are always in the present. Therefore, they are the preferred anchor points. Stressful thoughts and emotions will not be helpful as anchor points because they are found more frequently in the past and future than in the absolute present moment.

For all this, directing attention and connection to our body resets the mind, allows it to get out of the ruminative loops, and stressful thought processes stop. Usually what we do is lose ourselves in the continuous stressful thoughts associated with emotions, which generates more emotions in an endless cycle (Wallace, 2006).

Diverting the focus of our attention to our body and the bodily sensations of stress-laden emotion allows us to deactivate the associated negative thoughts, and soften the core bodily symptoms of stress in the emotions. A wise process of integral growth through the body (Campayo & Demarzo, 2019).

• Feet: first pillar of your temple. When you are standing, become aware of the posture. Feel the rooting of your body to the earth. Become aware of the firm contact of the base of your feet on the ground and the anchoring that it supposes. When you are sitting, notice how your feet are fully connected to the earth. It is a channel of connection with our essence. Feel how open and relaxed they are, which will induce a corresponding psychological sensation.

• Back: the second pillar of your temple. Your back should remain straight but in a comfortable position. The back determines our emotional level. Imagine that an invisible thread pulls from the crown and leaves it wide and open. It is the pentagram of emotions, so try to spread them generously to hear all the nuances.

• Hands: third pillar of your temple. They mustn't be tense. Let them rest comfortably on the legs to avoid discomfort on the shoulders. The tension of the hands is considered an indicator of mental tension and a space for the manifestation of stress.

• Face: fourth pillar of your temple. There must be no tension in the face as is usual. Relax the forehead, eyelids, and lips, as well as the area where the tongue rests on the palate. All these are areas of frequent tension in times of stress.

Planet 9 "to do" and planet 0 "to be"

We currently consider that there are two basic ways the human mind works. Two operating systems, which have a direct impact on our relationship with stress and anxiety. Mode "to do" and mode "to be", which are characteristic, but not absolutely specific, of Western and Eastern thought, respectively. They are based on totally different premises (Campayo & Demarzo, 2019).

• Planet 9 “to do”. Western thinking in doing mode, planet 9, will be based on the belief that happiness is outside of us. We feel that there is something to achieve: money, power, social or family relationships, recognized work position, success in a project, and we think in a direct, causal, and simple way, that when we have it, we will be happy. The story of all those who reside on planet 9 in the "doing" way, is the continuous search for goals/objects that we think can make us happy: a university career, a prestigious job, a partner, children, possessions, travel, esteemed social position, ... The problem is that when we get any of these elements, even something as longed for as the lottery jackpot, studies confirm that, within 6 to 12 months, individuals return to the level of happiness before the object was achieved. The bottom line is that we are involved in an endless process of seeking happiness, but we never stably achieve it. Of course, this continuous and insatiable pursuit of goals is one of the main causes of the enormous stress to which we are subjected to in today's life. Planet 9 "to do" is associated with the vision of the "biographical self", because the goals we set for ourselves are associated with the labels or descriptions of ourselves that we have developed throughout life and with which we identify. The label of 9 as a metaphorical way of representing the idealization of the “to do way” (Vargas, 2019).

• Planet 0 "to be". Eastern thought starts from the basis that happiness is not outside of us, but within. There is nothing to pursue, nothing to obtain. Just remember through the cardiac intelligence of our planet “to be” Everything is in the present, which is the only important thing, since past and future do not exist. The way to achieve this state of mind is through the acceptance approach, which is considered the main quality that develops with mindfulness (Shamash, 2015). Acceptance is a concept that generally repels Westerners because they mistake it for resignation, a characteristic associated with our Judeo-Christian tradition. But resignation occurs conceptually in the future. It would consist of refusing to act in the future because it will be useless. On the contrary, acceptance always occurs in the present. From planet 0 "to be" we fully accept stress, but we do not resign ourselves. It is based on the idea that what is happening in the present moment, since we cannot change it, we must take it, and accept it as it comes by surrendering to it without avoiding it, fighting it, or denying it. On planet 0 "to be", we propose to immerse ourselves unconditionally in what the present brings. Accepting the present does not mean that we like what happens, but that we accept that we cannot change it. Become fully aware, from which planet are you living each moment, and from which planet are you interpreting the stressful processes you are experiencing (Vargas, 2019).

Experiential sailboat of your breath

If your mind is chattering uncontrollably, and your feelings spin like a simmering soup, know that you are not alone. In our hectic and demanding modern society, constantly active, constant stimulation, decisions, and challenges provoke thoughts and emotions. And when we're in that anxious situation, we have a much better chance of reacting automatically (and uselessly) to life's stressors.

An excellent way to manage your thoughts is to use your breathing. Resorting to mindful breathing to cope with stress may seem too simple, but I invite you to try it before activating any judgment. The calming effect is produced by using your breathing to anchor yourself in the present moment. And the more you use your breathing to return to the present, the simpler, and more transformative and effective the method will be.

Take a moment to think about an anchor: its role is to prevent the ship from going adrift. That your sailboat connects with the earth. The anchor is always ready on the ship, and every time the ship sails, the anchor goes with it. When the sailboat has to stop, someone drops the anchor into the water. The anchor is your breathing, and it is always on the boat ready to land when you need it (Vargas, 2019).

In the same way, wherever you go, your breathing always goes with you and your potentials unfold with its conscious presence. Luckily, you can't escape your breathing or leave it at home when you go out for the day. Breathing is always with you in all your experiences, night and day. What you can forget is to pay attention from time to time to the sensation of breathing. But whenever you want to take an experiential pause, you can focus your attention on breathing as an anchor to return you to the here and now of your sailboat, and your being.

Breathing is a fascinating facet of the human being, one of those unique functions of our ship, which can be automatic but also, in part, controlled and deliberate. The heartbeat, for example, is different. The heart beats day and night without stopping, but you cannot make it stop beating for even a few seconds; on the other hand, you can stop breathing. You also can't stop digestion or your immune system. We invite you in times of stress to put your full attention on breathing. A way to connect with the most authentic anchor of your ship and your being. Observe your breathing very attentively when you speak, and observe your breathing very attentively when you listen. Breathing is automatic and at the same time under control. There are very few body functions that are so automated that you can also control.

Almost all relaxation techniques make use of deep breathing. The reason is that breathing is closely linked with the body system responsible for relaxation. Feelings of relaxation almost always arise when you breathe slowly and deeply. Mindfulness about breathing is slightly different. During attentive breathing, it is not necessary to control the rate or the depth of breathing. It is simply about paying attention to breathing as it is, without judgment. Experience in great moments of stress holding your breath by the hand, through your attention, with curious attention, affection, and presence. Observe and experiment with your inner gaze what happens.

The gratitude frame: whispers to your emotions

Surprisingly, the psychological research carried out around this phenomenon have concluded that, in reality, the level of satisfaction with one's life does not depend so much on the circumstances we live in, nor on personality, or character. There is a more determining factor in our feeling of well-being that we often forget: gratitude.

It is proven that being grateful has many advantages, the most important of all is that: grateful people are happier. Specially practical in stressful processes. We know that the so-called "reality", and how we interpret it, are two very different things. What “happens” is not what we perceive, since we see all the experiences of our life through particular “glasses” that interpret reality from “their way of seeing”. First, let's acknowledge that all of us wear these "reality-viewing glasses," and then let´s assume that these glasses generally function in a somewhat limited way (Doria, 2017).

Let's be honest:

• Don't we tend to underestimate everything we can appreciate in our lives?

• Don't we have a strange facility to put our attention on what is inconvenient for us?

This trend is reflected even in the media, which constantly falls upon tragedies, problems, and catastrophes, almost completely ignoring the beautiful aspects of life that we can appreciate.

To begin to recognize the abundance of gratifying aspects that exist in our life, we have to realize and recognize ourselves in a very common automatism in us: “Not knowing how to receive”. We do not know how to take everything that life offers us for free, we do not believe we deserve to receive what is given to us “just because”, without having to fight with blood, sweat, and tears for it.

We focus on everything that we dislike, that could be “better” or different, which leads us to a sea of meaningless complaints, to feeling sad and discouraged. Stress scenarios are an absolute example of this process. By expressing and feeling gratitude, we remove the toxic program of complaints from our minds. A program that induces us to feel like victims of the stressful circumstances that we live, thus placing all our power in “the outside”, without taking responsibility for ourselves and our well-being. Every time we feel and express internally or externally: “thank you”, we are creating new neural networks that are maintained over time, weakening those related to victimhood, discouragement, and complaint (Doria, 2017).

Have you stopped to observe the little details that life offers you "for free" throughout each day?: The gentle touch of the morning breeze, the gratifying smell of a flower, the sunlight, that dinner with your friends, the smile that someone suddenly gives you... if we pay attention, we can discover at every moment a multitude of details that really make us feel completely alive and awake, details that we can be thankful for. We have many things, and we do not realize how grateful we can be for them. Have you stopped to observe how grateful you can feel for having a roof under which to shelter yourself every day, enough money so that all your basic needs are covered, the dishes of food that you enjoy every day? Do you appreciate that kind greeting from your colleague at work, that unexpected hug, the interest of someone who asks you how you are doing, or someone who gives you an accomplice smile? Do you realize how grateful you can bet that there are people in your life you can trust? Do you appreciate the mechanism of breathing in your body that sustains moment by moment, the oxygen that you breathe every moment, the gift of being alive here and now?

Even in times of great stress such as, with the experience of COVID-19, if we observe well, every moment of life can be a moment of gratitude. No matter how many problems we have, if we are vigilant, it is impossible not to find something to be thankful for. To appreciate all the good that is in our lives, we have to be truly "present" at every moment, in this way we will connect with the constant abundance and generosity of the life we live.

The first of them is that during this day you maintain sustained attention to give thanks, either internally or externally, for every day-to-day detail that you can receive with appreciation. Stressful processes will probably not allow you to experience it. Pay attention moment by moment to everything that happens that you can really recognize and value (Doria, 2017). If you are attentive to the infinity of things for which you can give thanks in more and more moments and to more and more people, little by little you will begin to feel worthy of receiving the good and beautiful in life, you will contact the deep feeling that in truth, life is easier and kinder than you have sometimes thought. As you feel appreciation and gratitude more and more frequently, everything you reject and complain about will have less force; it will be transformed by the vision that your new and more comprehensive “world view glasses” will offer you.

The second practice in this Stress Coaching 0.0 program that we propose, is a powerful exercise that, in a short time, leads to major neurological and reprogramming changes for your mind.

The idea is that every night, before going to bed, you go through the “movie of your day” in detail in your mind. Recreate every moment that you have lived in your day since you woke up in the morning, focusing your attention on everything that has happened that you can appreciate. Get a notebook and every time you find a gesture, a detail, an event, a person for whom you can be grateful (Vargas, 2019).

Whisper to your emotions with kindness and affection, connecting with the frequency of gratitude. Experiment with treating yourself through a kind and loving treatment. In a state of calm and connection with you, you can experience what happens if you call yourself internally, as an internal whisper, by your name with a harsh, brusque, and contemptuous tone and you can observe what happens. See what happens in your body if you call yourself abruptly and in a disparaging way. As if you were addressing yourself.

Now experience hearing your name in a soft, loving way. It is a way of saying internally through a subtle and delicate whisper. You can experience what happens in your body. When we whisper our name to ourselves, we can see our frequency and vibrational state change. Highly recommended to do in stress processes.

Big conscious overhead camera

Mindfulness could be defined as the process of developing the observer, that is, of developing metacognition. A large overhead camera, in a large format of silence, that visualizes the entire narrative from a healthy perspective. It is the technique of splitting the mind so that a part of it, the observer, becomes aware of the objects of the mind, without identifying with them. In the initial phases, the observer and the overhead camera are very weak and the objects very powerful, so it tends to identify with them easily, especially in moments of anxiety. As the months go on, the observer becomes stronger and the mental objects are diluted (Doria, 2017).

With the strengthening of the great overhead camera, or the witness observer, three phenomena of the mind will occur that allow us to connect with a higher transformative understanding:

• There are fewer and fewer stressful thoughts. By not identifying with them, they lack gasoline, they lose strength. When a thought appears (for example: “I will not be able to face this challenge that they have assigned me”), a cluster of concatenated thoughts is not generated (for example: “surely my boss will realize that I am not the right person to face this challenge", or "I am not able to face everything that has been assigned to me", "I am going to disappoint the people who have trusted me"…

• There are more and more gaps between anxious thoughts. As there are fewer thoughts, it is easier to see that there are gaps between thoughts, something impossible to make conscious before practicing meditation. In contemplative traditions, the practitioner is insisted on looking for the gaps between thoughts, because of the true nature of the mind. Space between stressful phenomena.

• We believe less and less the thoughts of alteration. We are aware that they are only mental phenomena, that they are not real, that we have not generated them voluntarily, and that if we do not pay attention to them, they will disappear from the mind in a few seconds.

The endless story of our mind

You already know that a fundamental aspect of the nature of stress is that thoughts, which you believe to be absolutely true, suddenly assault you and recreate themselves in your mind continuously. If your thoughts suggest that everything is going well and that you are in control, your stress levels are kept in check. On the other hand, if your thoughts are obsessed with the negative, and they make you feel that you have lost control, your stress levels increase, and the internal dialogue becomes almost endless on the screen of your mind (Vargas, 2018).

In general, thoughts in your head take the form of little stories and wishes: The speech of the mind: cognitive storytelling. Since man is a man, stories are passed from generation to generation and connect with the human soul. Literature is full of stories, from the fables of Aesop to the plays of Shakespeare. Historians conjure up images of ancient cultures by telling stories around a bonfire, in an environment to share and nurture. Imagine that the brain is a storytelling machine. We call it cognitive storytelling. It is a kind of story factory that has no end. From the moment you get up in the morning, you begin to explain the story of your life. In the second immediately after waking up, you are present and nothing else, without your story. Have you ever noticed it? But then all of a sudden, your personal story invades your consciousness, usually without you realizing it. Your brain reminds you of who you are, where you live, and what you have to do. It is an automatic process. It is an unfinished production of stories every moment.

Become aware of the nature of the discursive thoughts of the mind. Attention to discern the rumination of the mind´s film in front of the stable presence of your screen. You continuously tell yourself stories about all kinds of people, situations, events, and difficulties. You begin to draw on the canvas of your mind, and continually draw narrative pictures. If you become aware that you are telling yourself a story about a certain stressful situation, you will be able to weigh whether the story you are telling is really true (Vargas, 2019).

Your identity is built in two ways: with stories built over time, or through your experiences with direct experience. If I asked you who you are, you would tell me your name. If I asked you again, you would tell me your story: where were you born, where you work, what you do in your free time, etc. But you can also feel who you are without your story. And for this, you have to connect with your senses. It is a way to connect with your essence.

The storyteller-brain is a network that is activated by default, which includes its activity in the part of the brain responsible for memory. When you make a queue at a mall, your mind wanders, fantasizes, and worries. However, that network is also easily activated when you go for a walk in the park. Instead of seeing the beauty around you, you get stuck in your little world of inner worries and stories. It's the never-ending story you tell yourself about your own life, the lives of the people you know, and our interactions. There is nothing wrong with the narrative-based part of your brain. But nobody wants to limit their life to their personal narrative since it is very easy to get lost in negative thoughts and emotions if we do not pay attention to the present moment. In stressful situations, if we lose ourselves in the internal argument of the endless story of each narrative in our mind, the possibilities for increasing anxiety levels considerably increase (Kabat-Zinn, 2007).

There is growing scientific evidence that the more time we spend lost in the stories that our mind tells, the more prone we are to stress and anxiety. The way to deactivate the identification with the narration of the endless story of our mind is through the activation of our attention on direct experience and on our senses. A way to discern the endless narrative from the present moment. That activation of direct experience is a state of mindfulness. You live in the present moment. It is the operation of the "to be mode". When you walk through the park, you perceive the aroma of the trees, the color of the flowers, and the sensations of your body. Especially in times of stress, we suggest that you activate the direct experience over the activation of the brain that tells the endless story of your mind.

Lego of emotions Build the emotions in your body

Feelings are the conscious experience of the state of the body. Not only do they correspond to facts, but they can also originate in brain representations (thoughts and images), that is, feelings that are different from those that would normally correspond to what is happening and therefore we can decide which feelings to choose.

Emotions are specific and reactive reactions, rooted in the body, of short duration, automatic, and manifest with different intensity. Unlike the mood, which is fed back with the internal dialogue of our mind. All emotions are tremendously useful. It is the magic of the simplicity of the emotions. In fact, there are neither positive nor negative emotions. Emotions are expansive and contractive, but all contain a deep message about our being, which is important that we listen mindfully to discover and decipher their content. From this perspective, the relationship with our emotions should be one of openness and celebration because the arrival of each of them, including stressful ones, has a demonstrated and transcendent function and self-discovery (Saki & Santorelli, 2016).

All emotions are deeply useful and appear to be understood at a higher level of consciousness. The canvas of emotions is not in the mind, it is in the body. All emotion is always manifested in the body, and that is its way of existing. Stressful emotions arise through our thoughts but eventually reach their compositional fullness through production and settlement in the body. It is the habitat of emotions. When we are watching a scary movie and we feel an emotion of fear, that emotion always goes to the body. That emotion goes to an area of the body where it feels comfortable and becomes strong. Our body is like a hostel, and emotions freely find a room and a place to settle, and of course a morphology (Vargas, 2019).

The healthy way to manage stressful emotions that settle in our body is not to fight against them. I cannot deny the presence of an anxiety emotion because my mind decides it, or as a command. In fact, the more we fight for an emotion to leave the center of our being, the bigger and stronger the emotion becomes in our hostel. It's like fighting a wave, I can't fight it, I have to look it in the eye, accept it, and try to surf it with fluidity. Looking at emotion in the eye is the first step to start the dissolution of stressful emotions that settle in our body (Vargas, 2019).

Stressful emotions, like imaginary lego pieces, have shape, texture, weight, smell, temperature, depth, morphology, and color. Experiment with them as the first step to deep acceptance. Like lego pieces, the formalization and manifestation of emotions allow experiential experimentation of the feelings in our body. When we become aware of the shape of the pieces of an emotion, we are loving its presence, and it is a way of bowing to it, allowing its deep identity and its morphology in our body (Vargas, 2019).

The main objective of the narrative recreation of the form of emotions is to increase awareness about the emotion to work, through bodily sensations. If we materialize our emotions and focus our attention on the bodily sensations that they generate in our body, there is an irremediable decrease in internal dialogue, which is the main cause of stress. There is an increased awareness of bodily processes, such as breathing, posture, movement, or hearing sounds. Sounds appear geolocated. What we see and experience appears with a three-dimensionality and a special shine. An example of this is perceiving an emotion such as fear with a gray color, in the shape of a very heavy anchor, with a cold temperature, and with a rough texture.