Brain Education for Brain Mastery Step Three: Brain Refreshing

On your way to Brain Mastery, you will inevitably encounter thoughts and emotions that are keeping you from being who you truly want to be. While Brain Versatilizing helped you be more flexible in your outlook, the third Brain Education step, Brain Refreshing, helps you manage your emotions.

Everyone has emotions. They enrich our lives and inform our intuition. However, we can get so caught up in our emotions that they become our master. Brain Refreshing enables you to take control of your brain back from your emotions.

Many people can’t help their emotional response to a situation because of the emotional layers and temperament that they’ve built up unconsciously throughout their lives. They react to a situation immediately without choice or awareness.

In Brain Refreshing, you peel away those layers, releasing emotional pain and trauma as you go and revealing your emotional habits. You look at what preconceptions and attitudes trigger negative emotions and switch them for ones that produce positive emotions. You also learn techniques for calming your emotions when you feel yourself becoming upset, anxious, or angry.

These techniques give your mind some separation from your emotions, allowing you the space and time to choose a response to the situation that is in alignment with your values and overall goals. By practicing this over time, you become aware of how emotions only have as much power over you as you give them, and you develop your emotional intelligence and more empowering emotional habits. In a sense, Brain Refreshing is synonymous with energy refreshing. It involves keeping your energy circulating with awareness of what comes up in your emotions, mind, and body by constantly releasing and transforming your emotional energy. By keeping your energy flowing, your emotions circulate through you without attaching themselves. You feel them, but they don’t become baggage. They are the ephemeral phenomena of a moment rather than powerful information that defines who you are.

In summary, Brain Refreshing includes:

1. Being aware of your emotions and moods.
2. Letting go of troubling, harmful emotions.
3. Developing the ability to change long-term temperament patterns.

Be Mindful of Your Mood

Continually pay attention to your thoughts, emotions, and mood. To do this, you need to remain in the moment. In each moment, how are you reacting to different situations and what are the preconceptions, thoughts and attitudes behind those reactions? How could you have reacted differently to produce the result you wanted? The more you watch, the more you will notice your inner workings in detail and depth, allowing you to see what emotional choices you are making and how to make different ones.

Let the Air Out

When you feel as if you’re going to pop, release some of your stress, tension, and emotional energy with simple exercises such as laughing, walking, and breathing. Do these with your attention fixed on your lower energy center in the middle of your abdomen below your navel, and you’ll soon feel refreshed and comfortable, even happy and hopeful.

The following exercises will also help you let go of troubling emotions that threaten to bring you down, or worse, spiral into doubt and despair. Practicing laughing, walking, breathing and any of these exercises regularly, without an immediate crisis, will also allow you to keep your outlook positive and raise your threshold for stress and anxiety.

Head Tapping
Tap your head and face with your fingertips to release tension from these areas, especially when you feel “hot-headed.” Make sure you tap all over your head, especially your temples and crown.

On your face, target places that are holding tension, such as the jaw, cheekbones, and around the eye sockets. If you are feeling particularly stressed or emotional, you can expand your tapping to the rest of your body, especially your chest and abdomen. For tapping the rest of your body, use your palms and/or fists for greater impact.

Toe Tapping
This exercise is great for releasing emotional tension from the body, bringing energy away from your head to your lower body. Also, it is a great cure for insomnia, when your head is full of worries.

1. Lie on your back with your feet and legs together.
2. Place your palms on your lower abdomen.
3. Flex your ankles and keep your heels close together.
4. Tap your big toes together, then open your feet so that your little toes tap the floor.
5. Repeat as rapidly as you can.
6. Start with 100 repetitions and increase the number after more practice.

Brain Breathing
This exercise is helpful for replacing negative emotions with bright, positive ones.

1. Sit in a comfortable position and place your hands on your knees, with your eyes closed.
2. Relax your body and mind by taking several deep breaths.
3. Feel a stream of energy move from the top of your head, down to your chest and then to your lower abdomen.
4. Concentrate on the top of your head.
5. As you breathe in through your nose, imagine a stream of energy entering through the top of your head, circling around your head, and clearing your brain of negative emotional energy.
6. Breathe out through your mouth with a soft whooshing sound. Imagine stagnant, negative energy being expelled from your body with your breath.
7. Breathe in and out slowly as you imagine bright light entering and darkness moving out.
8. When you feel refreshed and positive, breathe in and out 3 times and open your eyes.
9. Rub your hands together until warm and gently massage your head and face.

Make Happy Emotional Habits

Bring Brain Refreshing into your daily life, even when you cannot meditate and breathe, to develop a habit of positivity and confidence. Soon you’ll be better able to maintain a happy mood without much effort.

• Recall and relive your happiest memories when you feel as if life never goes well for you.
• Go out of your way to lend a hand or say something nice to someone without being asked.
• Look for beauty around you by looking with a sense of wonder and gratitude.
• Talk with people every day to make supportive connections.
• Live in the moment, at least once a day, using all your senses.
• Count your blessings and think of at least ten things for which you are truly grateful.

As regular practice of Brain Refreshing techniques clears away negative emotional memories and non-useful information, you will gain mastery over your emotions and realize that happiness can be created anytime and anywhere through action. The whole process will empower you to channel new energies to your brain and enjoy the new clarity and joy life brings you. Your mind becomes free to pursue its higher purposes—love, compassion, creativity, health, discovery, and healing.