"What are you feeling right now?"

This is a question I frequently ask in my sessions with my clients. With clients who are new to Inner Bonding, often the answer I hear is "I don't know."

Not knowing what you feel is a sign of not being open and not being present in your body. It means that you spend most of your time in your left-brain, in the peanut shaped part of your left-brain called the Amygdala, which is the seat of the wounded self. It means that not only are you not present to your feelings, you are also not present to the moment. It means you lack emotional mindfulness.

Since Step 1 of Inner Bonding is emotional mindfulness and wanting responsibility for your feelings, you cannot move through the next steps without learning to be present in your body.

It Wasn’t Easy For Me To Learn to Stay Present in my Body

When I first started to do Inner Bonding, staying present to my own feelings with a desire to take responsibility for them was a huge challenge. I would feel my feelings, but then instantly react to them in some external way, trying to control a person or situation so that I would not have to feel what I was feeling. I would react so quickly that I hardly knew I was having a feeling!

Before Inner Bonding, I had no idea that I was causing my painful wounded feelings, or that I could learn from them. Even with the years and years of therapy that I had, I had never learned to do this. I had learned about my past in great detail, and I had learned some communication skills, but I had not learned to trust my feelings - my inner guidance - or to connect with my higher guidance. I didn't know that I was responsible for my feelings or for taking loving care of myself. When I look back, I wonder, "What was all that therapy about?"

Even years of meditation did not teach me to stay present in my body when I was not meditating. Nor to take responsibility for my feelings.

When I started to practice Inner Bonding, I needed many reminders to check in with my feelings - to be present in my body and present to the moment. I used gadgets, rubber bands, sticky notes, and alarms to remind me to breathe into my body and get present to myself. It took a long time to change my focus from my mind to my body, and to change my focus from the past and future to the present moment. It took years to create emotional mindfulness, and even now, it still requires practice. But it is so worth it!

Before Inner Bonding, I was not really living. I had never experienced true joy. I felt alone much of the time but had no idea that I was the cause of the aloneness.

To Feel Alive and Full, Your Inner Child Needs you to be Emotionally Mindful

To not feel alone and empty, anxious, or depressed, angry and resentful, your inner child needs you to be emotionally mindful and present in each moment with a compassionate intent to learn about your thoughts and actions that create your wounded feelings. Your inner child needs you to be consciously connected with the love and truth of spirit instead of stuck focused in your mind, thinking and daydreaming - and to be bringing that love deep within in the form of wanting full responsibility for your feelings of pain and joy. Your inner child needs to feel the flow of love that comes from spirit when you are open, rather than to feel cut off from love, which is the result of staying in your programmed ego mind.

When your deepest desire is to be the loving human being that you came to the planet to be, then you will be highly motivated to learn to be emotionally mindful.

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."