Insights from Kriya Yoga: How to Rise Above Harmful Emotions

In today’s chaotic world, it’s easy to get swept up in an emotional roller coaster. Just a few minutes of watching the news can leave us feeling overwhelmed with sadness, anxiety, and confusion. These emotions make it hard to concentrate on our work or stay connected with those around us. Over time, this constant undercurrent of distress can take a serious toll on both our mental and physical health

When trying to cope with difficult emotions, many people attempt to counterbalance them with positive ones. For example, if you're feeling sad, you might watch funny videos; if you're feeling depressed, you might go shopping or take a bike ride. While that may provide temporary relief, it doesn’t address the root cause of the problem. What is that root cause? 

Emotion = Energy in Motion

To understand this concept more deeply, consider emotions as 'energy in motion.' According to yogic teachings, the movement of energy in our spine is intricately connected to our emotional state.

When you receive good news – let’s say, a promotion at work – your spine straightens, your chin is slightly uplifted, you smile more easily, your gaze is hopeful as if welcoming new adventures, and you inhale deeply, bathing in the joy of the moment. You might say, “I’m feeling like I’m on top of the world,” or “I’m on cloud nine,” or quite simply, “I’m feeling uplifted.”

Now think about the opposite case. What happens when you receive bad news? Your spine stoops, you look down, it’s hard to get you to smile, and there’s a tendency to sigh. You might even say, “I’m feeling down,” or “I’m in the dumps,” or quite simply, “I’m feeling low.”

All these are outward indications of what is happening within. According to yogic teachings, the movement of energy in your spine causes you to react to life’s events. When the energy moves up, you experience positive emotions. When it moves down, you experience negative emotions. 

Everyone seeks happiness and tries to avoid pain. In doing so, people often settle for fleeting moments of excitement, which inevitably give way to their opposite emotional states. For example, you might seek out the company of friends to escape loneliness, only to feel greater emptiness once you're alone again. Therefore, to attain lasting happiness, we need to rise above all emotions, positive and negative. 

Emotion Vs Feeling

“But wait, wouldn’t that make me a stoic, unfeeling person?” The answer is no! Because feeling is different from emotion. 

Emotions arise when the feelings are agitated. Consider this: when you quietly enjoy a beautiful sunset, you feel a deep sense of calm and joy. But if you start clicking countless photos to share on Instagram, and calling your mom to show her the view, the experience becomes more frantic than fulfilling, thus reducing the depth of your enjoyment.

You can think of feeling as the calm sea and emotions as the waves on the surface. When the surface of the sea is free from ripples and waves, you perceive things clearly, and your enjoyment of life is greater. The more you are caught up in the waves, the more you will experience their constant rise and fall, leaving you exhausted like a piece of cloth squeezed, tossed, tumbled, and left out to dry. 

If we are to rise above emotions, we need to learn how to still those waves on the surface of the sea. Now, you might ask, “What causes these waves of emotions to arise in the first place?” 

The yogic teachings say that emotions arise primarily out of desires. Let’s take another example. Imagine a man enjoying a beautiful sunrise on the beach, reveling in the scenery God has painted in the sky. After walking on the beach for a few minutes, he thinks, “Ah, I wish I had a nice camera to capture this moment.” Then he thinks, “But I can’t really afford one, can I? Perhaps I can put it on my credit card and then take an extra job to pay it off. Yes, that could work!” 

Eventually, he buys the camera, but soon, he’s wondering if he needs a better lens, a cleaning kit, or more accessories. I probably don’t need to spell out the rest—you can see the pattern. Each fulfilled desire only gives rise to more. What began as a moment of pure appreciation quickly became a chain of desires. And the sunrise? It’s now just a faded memory, overshadowed by his pursuit of new camera gear.

“Desires,” Paramhansa Yogananda used to say, “are ever fed but never satisfied.” Unfulfilled desires lead to anger, irritation, depression, stress, anxiety, and constant worry over whether our desires will ever be fulfilled. They keep us living in a future that forever slips away like desert sand. 

The root cause of our harmful emotions is desiring things to be different from how they are. If we learn to accept things as they are, we can be even-minded and cheerful all the time. 

Introspect (a little will suffice!) and you’ll see how many times in a day you wish for things to be different. “I wish I could sleep more today.” “Why does the traffic have to be so bad every day. I wish I could live in the mountains away from all this!” “Why is the President not changing his international policy for our country’s benefit?” 

circumstances

While practicing acceptance is essential, there’s another powerful way to rise above emotions. 

Earlier, I mentioned how emotions are tied to the upward and downward movement of energy in our spine, which in turn affects our breath, posture, and mental state.

To arrive at a state of emotional equilibrium, where the waves of emotions subside completely, we need to neutralize the upward and downward flow of energy in the spine. Thus, you will no longer be thrust helplessly between positive and negative emotions. 

The ancient technique of Kriya Yoga is par excellence for achieving that end. It gives you direct control over the energy in your spine and brings you to a state of inner balance and harmony. 

Most people have little control over how they react to life. They believe their reactions should naturally follow their circumstances. But yogic teachings say the opposite. As Yogananda once said, 'Circumstances are neutral. It’s your reaction to them that makes them positive or negative.'

As you learn to control your energy using a powerful tool like Kriya Yoga, you can react positively to even the most negative outer circumstances. For instance, you might find the power in yourself to respond kindly when insulted, or work with greater energy when faced with a challenge. Eventually, with regular practice, you can rise above all reactions. 

Even a little progress in this direction will start freeing you from attachments and desires, for it is only our reactions to the world that give rise to them in the first place. Through the practice of Kriya Yoga, we can become masters of our energy rather than puppets of life’s circumstances. We find then that our enjoyment of life does not depend on external events, and we learn to find happiness in the only place we’ll ever get it – within ourselves.