Next, the primary color of sadness.

Cobalt, periwinkle, lavender, azure -- blue too has many, many more permutations of generic blueness. Likewise the emotion sadness can be expressed as grief, dejection, despair, disillusionment, hopelessness, tearfulness, feeling "down" or " blue", disappointment, feeling sorry, despondency, anguish, or melancholy.

Which of these emotional variations of sadness are you familiar with? Which most? In yourself and in others? Be curious and explore the emotion of sadness in yourself and in your own psycho-physical organism. Where do you experience sadness? What types of sadness appear in different parts of your body? What happens when you close your eyes and give these feeling states your full attention? Draw, write, dance, sculpt and in other ways find creative expression to expand you emotional literacy.

In this sensitive work on emotions always be compassionate with yourself, never be judgmental or critical of yourself. Your emotional patterns have a long history and even the most illogical and extreme emotional states make sense when you trace them back to their historical roots in early life. Early life is the time when these patterns originated because that is when you tried to make sense of your emotional experience -- yours and other's.

Next week, we look at the remaining two primary colors of emotion: fear and hurt.

BLOG entry #40