On a full moon like today, things can get pretty intense. It’s statistically proven that there are more accidents and births when the moon is full, and a lot of people feel their own emotional squeeze on days like today. Amen.

Even without full moons, our emotions can have the tendency to wash us over, blinding our sight, clogging our minds and freezing our hearts. This week I picked up some interesting and practical insights on how to work with intense and paralyzing emotions (that Buddhist call Kleshas, read an interesting article in the Buddhaharma to learn more).

I picked this up from none other than His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who I had the chance to visit this week in Amsterdam. As you may know, he is a very practical guy, with an almost scientifical emphasis on logic and reason. As he pointed out so clearly, focusing your strong emotion, say anger, on one point, be it a person, situation or whatever, is not very logic and true. There always is a great variety of causes and different storylines and plots that led up to the event that causes you to be in the grip of anger, jealousy or heartbreak. It does not stand on its own, as the strong emotion implies. If we take a step back and investigate all these aspects that trigger the volcanic emotional outburst, we get a more real and truthful view on our current state of mind. We gain insight on ourselves and hey, best yet, the emotion will release its chocking grip on us.

Now this doesn’t imply repressing or denying the vividness of the emotional experience. Buddhists sometimes get stereotyped as striving to be un-emotional. Yet on the contrary; the idea is to experience our emotions completely; to explore them, see what it is made up of, all the stuff on the bottom and the sides, really investigate them. Oddly enough, when we kindly investigate our most intense emotions, they tend to reduce in intensity and the open us up rather than close us down.

When we are out of the ‘freak out zone’ of our emotional experience, we can then work with whatever is present. But investigate first. See what is really going on behind all the intensity. Let your emotional focus be wide, or as my yoga teacher Nikki said this week during class; ‘let there be space in your heart and freedom in your mind.’ Now that’s a good one on a full moon.