The Feeling Session: How to Feel a Heavy Feeling All the Way Through

Everything we teach fits into two words: feel now.

That is the whole method. We are Rytis and Violeta, and for seven years we have led Feeling Sessions, in person and online. Today fifty to a hundred people join each session at the same time, lying down wherever they are with their eyes covered.

This page is the method itself, the same thing that happens in every one of our sessions, written down so you can do it alone tonight.

What a feeling really is

Here is something almost nobody is told. A feeling is not a thought. It is not a story about what happened. It is not “I am a failure” or “he doesn’t love me.”

A feeling is something physical. Pressure in the chest. A knot in the stomach. Heat rising into the face. A tightness in the throat. A hollow place under the ribs.

The story comes a moment later, from the mind. The mind feels the pressure and rushes to explain it, to find who caused it, to plan how to make it stop. And then you are no longer with the feeling. You are inside the story.

Someone bumps into you on the street and spills hot coffee down your arm. For one second there is only heat. No story yet. That second is the feeling. Then come the words: “How dare he.” The words are the mind. The heat was the feeling.

Why the same heaviness keeps coming back

When you cried as a small child, somebody who loved you could not bear the sound. So they gave you something to make it stop. A pacifier, later a cookie, a cartoon, a “big girls don’t cry.” Nobody meant harm. But the message was simple. This feeling is not allowed. Make it stop.

So you learned to make it stop. The phone, the fridge, the extra hour of work. Even the meditation app, if you are using it to make something go away.

The feelings did not go anywhere. They are still waiting, in your chest, in your throat, in your belly, in the jaw you clench when you sleep. That is why the partner changes, the boss changes, the city changes, and the feeling stays the same. It is not punishment. It is the body knocking on the same door until somebody answers.

Every feeling you refused to feel is a train waiting outside the station. That is the heaviness you carry. Not your past. Not your parents. Not your bad luck. Unfelt feelings, waiting for a track.

This is not your fault. Nobody ever showed you another way.

Why feeling it works, in our words

You can argue with a thought for twenty years. But a feeling in the body does not need to be understood. It needs to be felt.

When a feeling is allowed to move through the body, it does what everything in nature does. It rises, it changes, it moves. Sometimes it grows stronger before it softens. We can’t promise you how long it will take or what it will turn into. Every body is different.

Your attention is like the sun, and the heaviness in your body is like snow. Point the sun at the snow, and it starts to melt, little by little. Turn the sun away, toward your stories, and the snow just stands there, exactly as it was.

There is one sentence it took us years to see:

Either you think and you don’t feel, or you feel and you have no time to think. There is no middle.

When your attention is fully in the body, on the place that presses, the noisy voice in your head goes quiet by itself. Not because you defeated it. Because you stopped feeding it.

And here is the paradox at the center of it. People come to us because they don’t want to feel the pain in their chest anymore. We tell them: feel it. When you stop running, after a while you stop feeling it the way you did. Through feeling, not through running.

This is also why it is not positive thinking, and not one more thing to figure out. Understanding happens in the head. Letting go happens in the body.

Before you start

The form was born in a small village in Bali, where Rytis spent a long time alone. Every time he turned inward, the body wriggled: scratch, shift, move the eyes. So he lay down, covered his eyes, laid his hands palms toward the floor, and did not let his body move. Then he watched what rose.

You are not lying down to destroy the feeling as fast as possible. You are going on a date with it.

You need a place where nobody will need you for twenty minutes, and something to cover your eyes. Read the steps once. Then put your phone face down and do it.

The Feeling Session, step by step

Practice15 min

The Feeling Session

Find a place where nobody will need you for twenty minutes. Your bed is fine. The floor is better, with a blanket or a mat under you. Turn your phone face down, or put it in another room.
Lie down on your back. Let the floor carry you. Legs straight or slightly apart. Nothing to arrange, nothing to get right.
Cover your eyes. A scarf, a sleep mask, a folded T-shirt. In the dark, the outside world stops pulling at you, and your attention has only one place left to go: inside.
Put your arms by your sides, palms down. Palms down tells the body there is nothing to grab and nothing to hold on to. You are not reaching for anything.
Close your mouth and leave the breath alone. Don’t breathe deeply. Don’t count. Don’t use a technique. Whatever beats your heart can take care of your breathing too.
Now stop moving. Completely. No scratching, no adjusting, no shifting the leg. When the body is still, the feelings that movement usually covers begin to rise.
Ask one question: where is it heaviest in my body right now? Not yesterday. Not in general. Right now. Maybe it is the chest. Maybe the throat, the belly, the jaw, the space between the shoulder blades. Maybe it is a pressure, a burning, an ache, a buzzing, a hollowness. Take the strongest place you can find.
Put all of your attention there, and keep it there. You are not trying to change it. You are not waiting for it to leave. You are simply with it, the way you would sit with a friend who is crying.
Don’t follow the thoughts. They will come. Stories, memories, plans, opinions about this exercise. Let them pass like cars on a street. The moment you notice you are in a story, come back to the place in the body. No blame. Just come back.
Don’t run. When it gets stronger, and it may, this is the moment everything in you will want to move, to open your eyes, to get up and do something useful. Stay. If you can, stay one more minute.

How long, and how to finish

Start with ten or fifteen minutes. In our sessions we lie for around an hour, but you don’t need an hour to begin. Some days five minutes is plenty. You can stop at any time. Stopping is not failing. You can always come back tomorrow.

When you finish, don’t jump up. Take the cover off your eyes slowly. Feel the floor under you. Notice the room. Notice whatever is different, without needing it to be different.

And one more thing we say in every session: don’t make a decision while the feeling is still moving. Don’t send the message, don’t quit the job, don’t call the person. First the feeling, then the decision.

What you might notice

The first thing that comes is usually not peace. It is protest. The body itches. You may feel bored, irritated, sleepy. All of that is feeling too.

Then, often, something older starts to rise. A pressure that was there all along, under the noise. This is where most people run. And this is exactly where the session begins.

Here is what people tell us they notice when they stay. The pressure gets stronger, then it shifts. It moves from the chest to the throat. It turns hot, then cold. Tears come without any reason. You may notice some of these, or something else entirely. Every body is different, and every session is different.

And if you feel nothing at all? Then feel the nothing. Numbness is a feeling too. Find where it lives in your body and stay with it.

The short version, for a bad day

On a bad day, when the message has arrived or you wake at three in the morning and every part of you wants to run, you need only this.

Practice5 min

When it's hard: the way through

Stop. Whatever you are about to do, the message, the drink, the call, the decision, don’t do it yet. Nothing has to be decided in the middle of a wave.
Go from the head into the body. Not “why is this happening.” Not “what do I do.” Just: where is it in my body right now?
Find the heaviest place. The chest, the throat, the belly, the jaw. Take the strongest one.
Lie down if you can. Cover your eyes. Palms down. Body still. If you can’t lie down, sit, close your eyes, and do the same.
Give it all of your attention. Point the sun at the snow. Don’t push it away, and don’t wait for it to leave. Let it rise, let it be as big as it is.
Don’t run, for one more minute. When it peaks, and it may, stay a little longer than feels comfortable. This is the minute that changes things.
Stop whenever you need to. Small doses are fine. Open your eyes, feel your feet, look around the room, reach for a person.
Then act, from calm. When the wave has passed, look at the situation again. Very often, you will see a completely different next step.

The four traps

There are a few traps. We have fallen into every one of them ourselves.

Feeling it so that it goes away. This is the most common one. You lie down, find the heavy place, and secretly wait for it to leave so you can get back to normal. That is not feeling. That is a cleverer way of pushing. The feeling knows the difference. Feel it the way you would listen to someone you love, not the way you would wait for a bus.

Trying to relax. Relaxing is also a way of controlling. You don’t need to relax. If tension rises, let it rise and watch it.

Naming it. “This is my abandonment issue from when I was six.” The moment you name it, you are back in the mind. Don’t decide whether it is anger or grief. A sensation in the chest is enough. You don’t need to understand Wi-Fi to use it.

Breathing it away. Deep breathing can be a beautiful thing, and it can also become one more pacifier. In a session, the breath is left alone.

Is this therapy?

No. We are not therapists, and this is not therapy. We never tried to fix anyone who came to us. We did one thing, again and again. We helped people stop running from what they felt, for a few minutes at a time.

The Feeling Session is for self-reflection. It isn’t medical or psychological care, and it doesn’t replace it. If you are seeing a doctor or a therapist, keep going. The work here is with the feeling, alongside your doctor. You can read more on our disclaimer page.

It is also not meditation. There is nothing to empty, count or picture. And you don’t have to believe a word of this. Try it on your own body.

What if it’s too much?

You are always the one in charge. If something ever feels like too much, that is not a test to pass. It is a signal to slow down, open your eyes, and reach for a person.

When that happens: open your eyes. Sit up. Feel your feet on the floor. Look at five things in the room. Drink some water. Call someone who loves you.

If you have lived through something very heavy, a trauma, a loss that is still raw, go in small doses, a few minutes at a time.

A feeling that has been held down for years may rise before it settles. You can stay with it, or stop and come back another day. Both are fine. And if you cry, nothing is wrong. Tears are one of the ways a feeling moves through the body.

Who this is not for

If you are in danger right now. This is not the moment to lie down alone with it. Reach for a person, or for your local emergency services.
If you want a technique to make a feeling disappear. You can try, and you will probably notice that it works best when you stop trying to make it go away. Feel it to meet it, not to get rid of it.
If you are looking for a diagnosis or an explanation of your past. We don’t give either. A sensation in the body is enough.
If you are waiting for someone else to change first. Maybe they should. That is theirs. Your feeling is yours, and it is the one place where you have real power.

Taking it into your day

A session that stays on the mat changes very little. The real practice begins when you stand up.

When something hits you in the middle of the day, find the closest quiet place, even a bathroom. Close your eyes. Find where it presses. Stay with it for two minutes, changing nothing. Then go back to your day, and see what you do differently.

The people who change their lives with this are not the ones who lie down perfectly once a week. They are the ones who learn to come back to the body twenty times a day, for ten seconds at a time. In a shop queue. In the middle of an argument.

Where to go from here

Lie down. Cover your eyes. Palms down. Find the place that presses most. Give it all your attention, and don’t run. That is the whole teaching.

If those minutes moved something, even a little, there are two ways to go further with us.

The book is the whole way through, slower and deeper: why the heaviness keeps coming back, mothers and partners, guilt, fear, anger and grief, and a one-page practice to keep by your bed. You read it in an evening and come back to it for years.

If you would rather not do it alone, Lighter is seven evenings at home, lying down, eyes covered, with us guiding you through it, one heavy thing at a time.