Research indicates that being mindful may help you be less reactive emotionally, and get more satisfaction out of your interactions with others at home, work, and in your social life. Mindfulness may begin as the simple act of putting down your phone when you’re around family and friends. Focus on being truly present and involved on what’s going on around you right now.

One easy mindfulness exercise is to sit near a window and watch outside. Follow the traffic with your eyes. Watch people walking their dogs. Watch how the tree or bush in your front yard moves with the breeze. Watch the birds. In whatever you choose to observe, be detailed about it. Really focus and appreciate what’s happening. The key is to be in the moment and not be distracted by the past or future. It’s all about now. Then, as you go about your day, mentally focus on the task at hand instead of thinking about past or upcoming events and worries.

From an emotional standpoint, practicing mindfulness could be almost as simple. When your feelings start bubbling up, stop and think about what you’re feeling right now, and why. Recognize it and let yourself feel it, but then consider how you’re about to react. Is it rational? Does your reaction seem balanced with what you’re reacting to?

Emotional healing and mindfulness go hand in hand. If you know what you’re feeling and why, you should be better equipped to process those feelings and keep your reactions under control.

When you’re tired, you can’t function at your best physically, mentally or emotionally. You might also react more severely to things and people. If you’ve ever noticed this, scientists can back you up. A 2018 study found that sleep problems may actually make people more prone to negative thinking. And when you’re tired, you might also be more likely to feel stressed and anxious.

Both work and play are important for emotional healing. We all need the personal satisfaction that comes from a job well done, not to mention the boost of confidence. But no matter how much you love your job, you also need to temporarily leave it behind and have fun on a regular basis. Don’t let your professional pursuits rule your life or make you give up the other things you love. Career burnout is real, and can be damaging to emotional health and relationships. When the work day is done, close the laptop and go do something you enjoy.

Loneliness may make emotional healing more difficult. When you’re sad, sometimes you just want to curl up on the couch with your friends Netflix and Ben & Jerry’s. We all need alone time and need to be comfortable with just ourselves. Perhaps spending some time alone can help us recognize and process our feelings. However, if you’re on your own consistently, you could be more prone to feeling negative, sad, or stressed out. You may feel like wallowing in your negativity.

Don’t take alone time to an extreme. Maintain your emotional connection  — beyond social media. Say hi to people in the grocery store, have dinner with friends, and talk to coworkers around the water cooler. Even when personal, physical gatherings aren’t possible, pick up the phone or use video calls to connect and have meaningful conversations.

Keeping sadness, anger or worry bottled up can prevent emotional healing. Find someone to talk to when you need to vent or sort out your feelings. If you’re mindful of how you express them, letting your feelings out — such as in an honest but tactful conversation — can go a long way to helping you bounce back.

Energy healing practices like The Emotion Code® can help you resolve negative energies from the past. We embrace the idea that everything is energy, including emotions. Left unprocessed, the energy of negative emotions may literally become trapped inside you. We call them Trapped Emotions, and they are literal, physical energies that may become lodged in any part of the body. We believe these could lead to emotional and physical distress, discomfort, anxiousness, sadness, and more.

For example, if you have the energy of guilt trapped somewhere in your body from a bad experience, you may be more likely to feel guilt over other experiences which may not ordinarily cause you to feel that way. This is because part of you is literally feeling guilty all the time. Not only that, but that physical energy and its lower vibration could throw off the normal flow of energy in your body, and lead to discomfort or other unwanted symptoms.

Practicing The Emotion Code can help rid your body of these energies that could get in the way of physical and emotional healing. In a few simple steps, you could remove those energies for good. Using muscle testing to access your subconscious mind, you can begin identifying trapped emotional energies (you might call them “old wounds” or “emotional baggage”) that could result from turmoil or bad experiences, and work to release them. You can do this on your own or with the help of a certified Emotion Code Practitioner — in person or from half a world away.