Emotional detachment

Emotions are the most difficult to detach from. Being physically and mentally earthed and centred helps us to be emotionally centred, but it doesn't cause it. Being out of balance emotionally can be the root cause of mental or physical unbalance.
A person who is emotionally stable is one who can feel great joy or deep sorrow, who can laugh and cry, who can empathise with others and yet be clear about their own feelings, who can experience pleasure and pain and know the difference - and do all these things when they are appropriate in the moment.
Recognition of what we really feel is the first step. Feelings can be contradictory, and the confusion this creates can make us ungrounded. It’s perfectly possible to feel a number of emotions all at the same time, sorting these out, understanding and acknowledging the conflicts and confusions will help in handling the emotions.
We can swing in and out of groundedness all the time. Only recently, I found myself being constantly angry for a week or so, which is quite out of character ... arguing in my head with drivers on the road, behaving abhorrently as a driver myself, unfocused in my direction in life. It was an off the cuff remark from my daughter, (who's very good at that sort of thing), that made me realise that I was ungrounded. I had drifted into a miasma, a misty, vague, cloudy existence without direction. In this situation, and at any time, it is tremendously helpful to look at feelings about any situation. "What is it that I really want to be doing right now?" Direct this question to as simple a time frame as right this minute ... answers may be: "I want to have a break"; "go in the garden"; "put some music on"; "be somewhere else"; etc.). Or a longer time frame can be looked at such as "where am I going with this / my life" - to which, of course the answers are as big as the imagination, (which is huge!).
When the present need is known grounding is much more easily accomplished. Armed with this self knowledge we can then begin to recognise why emotions have been aroused and how to deal with it. The aim is to accept the way things are at the moment.
Meditation helps wonderfully in calming the waters, but there are other things we can do – including some specific meditation-like centring techniques. With this help in calming and clearing we can also get more out of meditating!

Sources of emotions
Emotions basically come from two sources – our present situation (often coloured by the past), and past experience that we are re-living. Changing an emotional habit is difficult. Anger or fear, for example, can be like a drug addiction, both of these cause us to release adrenaline, on which we can become hooked. One thing that helps is to practise, practise and practise earthing and centring until we are so good at them we can use them even under great stress.
Abdominal breathing is relaxing. It is very difficult to maintain a state of anxiety when we are breathing down into the diaphragm. Interestingly breathing into the upper chest alone is not only a result of anxiety, it also causes us to feel anxiety. So the habit of upper chest breathing causes us to feel continual anxiety, and we look for things to be anxious about. We can always find a hook to hang our anxiety on. Breathing in the lower abdomen tends to relax us, makes us sleepy, and induces serenity.
Breath that involves both chest and abdomen is helpful in inducing a state of relaxed alertness.

Wave Breath

• Sitting solidly rooted as though to the centre of the earth. Relax. Close your eyes.
• Begin by simply observing your breath in your nostrils. Notice the inhalation and the exhalation, feeling the difference in temperature, pressure, moisture, and duration. Notice any difference between the left and right nostrils. Do not try to control the breath in any way – just observe it.
• After five minutes or so of this (exact time is not important), imagine that you are inhaling through your navel, the breath rising up to the throat, and falling again to exhale through your navel. Imagine this with each breath, but do not make any effort to control the breath itself. Duration and depth may be quite variable, but do not make any effort to even them out. In fact you need pay no attention at all to these aspects of your breath.
• Allow yourself to imagine your breath rising and falling in through the navel, up to the throat, down and out though the navel. Imagine your breath being like the waves on the shore, flowing in and up, down and out to sea – in the navel and up to the throat, down to the navel and out, as gently and peacefully as the waves rolling in, flowing out.

This exercise usually results in the breath effortlessly becoming deeper, smoother, and quieter. This gradual change takes place in its own time. It is not forced, but occurs in natural response to the image in our minds. Because the breath flows in both the abdomen and the chest, we are encouraged by our bodies to be in a state of relaxed alertness. The important thing in the exercise is to hold the attention upon the imaginary movement of the breath without making any conscious effort to change the depth or duration or movement of each breath.

This exercise can be downloaded.