Emotional balance opens up many possibilities for creating a good life. When we are in balance, we choose paths and actions that truly suit us and therefore feel meaningful and desirable. Life becomes coherent and feels right and true.

Dreamtime meditations help restore emotional balance.

However, living in emotional balance is by no means always guaranteed. Over the course of life, some emotions are encouraged while others are suppressed. As a result, we often deny important aspects of our personality.

Women Are Raised into Emotional Imbalance in Patriarchal Societies.

Especially woman, in many cultures, learn from an early age to suppress certain feelings. For example, it is often considered undesirable for a woman to become angry. Therefore, she may lack the assertiveness she needs. Equally common is the tendency of many women to help others while putting their own needs aside. Through this self-sacrifice, many naturally meaningful feelings, thoughts, and options for action are pushed aside and cast into the shadows. The shadow life of women was powerfully described by the Jungian psychoanalyst Verena Kast.

In fact, it is possible to change this imbalance at its roots. Affective neuroscience has investigated the fundamental emotional processes and identified seven primary affective systems.

These basic emotions are autonomously organized because they are rooted in the brainstem—a structure shared by all vertebrates. Therefore, they operate largely outside conscious awareness. Nevertheless, they generate moods and tendencies toward action. They provide a basis for the concepts of both instincts and archetypal experiences.

The seven primary processes are:

• SEEKING (searching, exploring)
• CARE (nurturing, caregiving)
• FEAR (fear)
• PANIC/GRIEF (panic, separation distress
• RAGE (Anger)
• LUST (desire)
• PLAY (play)

The SEEKING system is considered the most fundamental of all. It enables us to become active—both during the day and at night. To motivate us to engage with the essentials and contents of our lives, exploration is internally rewarded with feelings such as anticipation, interest, and enthusiasm. This exploration is directed both outward toward the world and inward toward self-reflection.

The individual expression of these seven affective systems is so distinctive that researchers speak of endophenotypes. Our inner experience is as unique as our outward appearance. From birth, every human being possesses a unique emotional structure—a living core of personality. This idea strongly resembles Carl Gustav Jung’s concept of the Self as the organizing center of personality. Antonio Damasio refers to this original level as the proto-self.

Let us consider some forms of imbalance: • People who are chronically depressed often show overactivity in the PANIC/GRIEF system. • Lack of motivation is frequently associated with an inhibited SEEKING system. • Excessive anxiety is linked to an overactive FEAR system. • People who are extremely responsible and nurturing often exhibit heightened activity in the CARE system.

These seven systems are located deep within the brainstem, well below the cerebral cortex. Together they are known as the Subcortical Midline Structures (SCMS). They are connected to the middle regions of the cerebral cortex, the Cortical Midline Structures (CMS). Together, these structures form the basis of the Default Mode Network (DMN)—our affective default settings.

Without the constant guidance of the cerebral cortex, the Default Mode Network becomes particularly active during states of rest: REM sleep, waking dreams, daydreaming, active imagination, and meditation. At birth, the DMN is already sufficiently developed for the newborn to begin engaging with the world beyond itself. The journey into consciousness begins.

Such possibilities have only returned to modern societies by indirect routes—through alternative healing practices, depth psychology, and neuroscience. Today, related therapeutic methods are being used successfully. One example emerging from affective neuroscience is Affective Balance Therapy (ABT).

My Dreamtime meditations also fulfill essential conditions of this work during the brain’s resting states. They reduce conscious attention and allow emotional renewal to occur. Women in particular who have spent long periods adapting themselves, suppressing difficult emotions, or neglecting their own needs may find a way to reconnect with their natural emotional resources through this process.

Being held within a safe and trusting meditative space, while difficult feelings are embraced with loving compassion, enables positive emotional development. What is essential is that this development occurs on an unconscious, largely nonverbal, and simultaneously symbolic level. Holding Meditation offers a very gentle way of bringing important unconscious contents into present awareness.

Thus, I ultimately experience psychology, shamanic wisdom, and biology not as opposites, but as a harmonious interplay expressed in a practical and helpful form of self-exploration and personal unfolding.

Unfold yourself and your sphere of influence through what you love.

There will be joy and selfconfidence in your life

My clients and fellow travelers in the Talking Circles and meditations have become calmer. Their emotions flow in greater harmony. Because we have learned to find new direction through our feelings with compassion, we no longer allow ourselves to be thrown off course by the moods and whims of others. We feel freer and choose our relationships more carefully. We begin to choose—and to become—the women we want to be.