Feelings
When I was a kid, I did the usual things - took naps, asked "why" questions, ate a lot of peanut butter.
But I also did something many kids never heard about: I practiced something called Inner Space.
Inner Space was a creative way of helping children recognize the world inside them, including their feelings.
I also had a mother who felt it was super important to teach kids about feelings.
She sat me down at 5 years old with a book that taught kids to identify and talk about both pleasant and unpleasant feelings.
Working with Feelings is a Trainable Skill
I know my Mom was on to something because the years have shown me that most things that have to do with the human mind or body come down to building skill through regular practice.
And just like you can't get better at weightlifting without being around some weights, it's awfully hard to get better at understanding and working with your feelings if you have never practiced it - or stop practicing it.
Mind-Body skills have specific techniques. And they are learnable.
But often - these skills are not well understood. And not regularly practiced.
For example, the skill of stretching is no more about pulling on your muscles than the skill of expert cooking is about hacking at an onion with a machete (there are actual techniques like: chopping, dicing, mincing and julienne).
When people learn to do a deadlift - a weightlifting movement where you pick up a bar loaded with weights from a "dead" stop on the floor - they find it helpful to approach the skill broken into doable pieces.
Just a few of the things they learn are:
The Deadlift
Skills in leaning a deadlift include. learning:
How to hinge properly at the hips
How to position the bar
Where and how to hold the bar
How much weight to use
And how to organize their bodies in relationship to increased load
Wow, it's amazing to think of all the steps involved in just learning how to get ahold of a bar laying on the floor, and pick it up.
Well, what if you want to get ahold of something that isn't even visible: feelings?
The inner space
Outer World and Inner World
My mother went into the field of social work, in part, because the family she came from didn't have tremendous experieince working with the internal world.
Her family had come to the United States from experiences of upheaval and had more on their minds than simply tuning into what they felt.
Yet, my mother sensed that some aspects of living and problem solving needed a greater understanding of the inner world, and she passed this outlook onto me.
But much of the world, like my mother's family of origin, isn't all that into feelings.
Great Performers Show Us What Is Possible
Arnold Schwarzenegger tells the story of the bodybuilders whose posters adorned the walls of his room growing up in Austria.
His parents didn't know about bodybuilding or understand his fascination - and even thought their son's hobby was a little weird.
But those early heroes helped Schwarzenegger build a bridge to a different life.
Whose poster do you put on your wall when you're interested in great feats of the inner emotional world?
Just like lifting weights, people have different levels of skill, knowledge, strength and ability when it comes to working with their inner worlds.
Just like some people need to start with 20 KG (an unloaded bar - about 45 lbs.) or less when learning a deadlift - maybe even just a piece of PVC pipe - and others can lift 500KG - over 1,000 lbs, and the strongest man on the planet, so please don't try this! - there is variation with peoples'
awareness,
comfort
facility
and skill
People can work with feelings from the lightest to the most intense.
People have different capacities for lifting weights and emotions.
And what is "heavy" very much depends on the person doing the lifting.
I see examples of this every week.
It's clear when you spend time in the physical and emotional gym, that when it comes to picking up heavy things, humans have different skills and capacities.
But imagine a world where people only ever saw examples of deadlifts of 20KG. That would mean:
The majority of adults lifting far too light for any meaningful change
The elimination of an entire sport (powerlifting)
The disappearance of a highly useful tool
Maybe fewer Arnold Schwarzeneggers
Similarly, when we only see examples of people who have limited comfort and ability with feelings, a complex and important piece of human ability to change, grow stronger and solve problems disappears.
Some people are Olympic athletes of the world of feelings.
They have capacity to feel and explore feelings and sensations at all levels of nuance and intensity, and can experience and express those feelings in ways that can be beautiful and impressive to behold.
And just as the intelligent and skillful use of a deadlift can build a stronger body, the skillful use of navigating inner space, under the right conditions, can create a person who is stronger on the inside.
But too often we do not see examples of this publicly.
We hear about feelings - but we do not see the skill modeled.
I can tell you for a fact that after years of doing handstands in public places that it teaches and inspires others without me ever having to say a word.
Like Arnold, we as humans, learn about what is possible - and perhaps outside of our experience - by what we see modeled around us.
So it may be that when we see people who are able to express and navigate strong emotions, in complex and skillful ways, they are actually doing the community a service.
They are the athletes of inner space.
Maybe we should have their posters on our walls.
Inner space
The case for inner skill
The Case for Inner Skill
Many people never realize navigating their inner emotional world is a learnable skill.
Just like weightlifting it requires good coaching, practice, structure, and exposure to seeing what’s possible.
People don't just roll out of bed one morning and perform record-breaking deadlifts.
People train for that.
But because the inner world is invisible and rarely modeled - especially with depth or intensity—we miss out on understanding a whole domain of human capacity - and an extremely valuable tool.
The result is a kind of societal underdevelopment in how to work with emotions and sensations.
People are left operating with underloaded bars and wondering why navigating feelings is so hard.
So, it's important to remember that:
Skillfully entering inner space to work with feelings is a real, rich, and trainable skill
Most people are underexposed to examples of what this process looks like, so they don’t know what’s possible.
When people do develop the skill, they can model a kind of strength and beauty that others can learn from—just by witnessing it.
Working with feelings can be a physical, cognitive, emotional, relational, and even spiritual, skill that is most often built through direct experience, feedback, and modeling.
Most people are missing the gym for it entirely.
Cue the workout montage.
And get ready for some new ideas.
Some might be a heavier lift!