03/11/2026
The biggest struggle with navigating emotions isn’t that emotions exist in the first place. It’s that we’ve been taught to fight them, resist them, or tell ourselves they shouldn’t be there.
Neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor explains that the chemical surge of an emotion in the body lasts about 90 seconds. Everything after that is the story we keep telling ourselves.
Let’s clear something up.
Sitting with your feelings does not require you to meditate in the forest for six hours, carve out an hour of journal time, or do a round of psilocybin.
It takes 90 fu***ng seconds.
When an emotion rises:
- Notice the emotion
- Pause instead of reacting
- Name the emotion and observe the sensation in your body
- Give it permission to be there while breathing and let the wave pass
Right now I’m navigating grief and it has been showing up often.
But I’m not sitting in grief for 90 minutes.
Most of the time I pause, name it, breathe with it, and let it move through.
Three minutes later, the wave passes. (I mean, sometimes I do wanna burn my life down to the ground, but that also passes quickly 🤪 … and I’m in the business of normalizing this feeling)
This is the work we do in Radiant Authenticity.
Learning how to be with what’s real without abandoning yourself in the process.
If you’ve never actually practiced letting an emotion move through you instead of fighting it, try it the next time one shows up.
