Not all passengers are thoughts. Some appear as physical sensations, such as tightness in your chest before a call or a feeling of dread without any words attached to it.

You cannot use a cartoon voice with a knot in your stomach.

This lesson introduces a different approach, and it may feel like the strangest exercise in the program. Instead of pushing the feeling away, you deliberately turn towards it and give it your attention.

This technique is called physicalising. It means noticing and describing the physical form that an emotion seems to take in your body.

Begin by choosing one feeling. Make sure it is moderately difficult.

The word moderately is an important part of the exercise. Choose a recent, manageable experience related to work, such as the tension from this morning’s meeting.

Do not choose your most painful memory or a deep, long-standing grief. Those experiences deserve support from a professional, not an exercise completed alone in an app.

Then sit somewhere quiet and follow these steps:

• Bring the situation briefly to mind. Notice where you feel the emotion in your body. It may be in your chest, throat, stomach, or shoulders. Take your time identifying its location.
• Imagine drawing a line around the sensation. Study it as though it were an object. What shape does it have? Does it feel heavy or light, still or moving, warm or cold? If it had a colour, what colour would it be?
• Now make a deliberate choice to stop fighting it. Allow the feeling to remain inside the outline exactly as it is. Breathe slowly and imagine creating space around it. You are not trying to make it smaller. You are making room for it.

Something unexpected may happen.

When you hold the feeling in this way, something that seemed enormous may begin to have edges. It has not disappeared, but it now has a size.

What felt like the whole of you may become more like a stone in your chest. The stone can remain there while you continue moving in your chosen direction.

There are two important things to remember.

First, if an emotion much stronger than the one you chose appears, stop the exercise. This may feel like a wave connected to an older or deeper experience. Open your eyes, notice your feet on the floor, and allow the moment to pass.

This does not mean the exercise has failed. It may indicate that this experience is too intense to explore alone. If it continues to return, consider discussing it with a therapist.

Second, remember the trap from Lesson 7. If you keep checking whether making room has caused the feeling to become smaller, the control agenda has returned through a new technique.

Making room is not a trick for reducing the emotion. It is a different way of responding to it.

The word for this approach is willingness. It means choosing to allow the feeling to come with you because the direction you have chosen matters.

Willingness does not mean wanting the feeling, approving of it, or giving up. It is the difference between spending your energy fighting the passenger and continuing to drive.

You now have one skill for each type of passenger: unhooking from thoughts and making room for feelings.

The next lesson explains why these two skills came first. Once you can respond differently to the passengers, you are ready to create a broader plan.