Do you notice your chest tighten when anxious? Or body feel numb when depressed? What about butterflies and tingly sensation when you feel love?
A study in 2014 mapped 14 emotions to the corresponding body parts activated. The emotional mapping in the human body, by Glerean and his colleagues, took a cross-sectional study that was cross cultural, cross gender, cross age, in Europe and Asia, of 700 people. They gave participants two silhouettes of the human body and next to it they put a word that reflected an emotion or a picture. They asked the participants to color in one silhouette where they felt an increased sensation in the body and in the other silhouette if they noticed there were parts of the body that decreased in sensation. Then they merged the maps to get heat maps of the body. They found that regardless of age, gender, culture we all tend to hold the same general emotions in the same general areas of the body.
Feelings are meant to be felt. When we repress or avoid feeling the emotions in the body, when we try to analyze our way to healing – we tell the body inadvertently that here in this moment is not safe and activate the stress response to get to safety, which shuts down pathways to heal. Emotions can get stuck in the body, caught in a chronic loop of noticing the emotion, resisting feeling the emotion, and creating stress around the emotion due to certain circumstances and the ways we were taught to deal with emotions. The body and mind are intricately connected. When we ignore or resist emotions, it may contribute to a dis-ease in the mindbody and weakness in our physical wellbeing.
Feelings are meant to be felt. When we repress or avoid feeling the emotions in the body, when we try to analyze our way to healing – we tell the body inadvertently that here in this moment is not safe and activate the stress response to get to safety, which shuts down pathways to heal. Emotions can get stuck in the body, caught in a chronic loop of noticing the emotion, resisting feeling the emotion, and creating stress around the emotion due to certain circumstances and the ways we were taught to deal with emotions. The body and mind are intricately connected. When we ignore or resist emotions, it may contribute to a dis-ease in the mindbody and weakness in our physical wellbeing.
Staying embodied and present through difficult emotions build resilience in the mindbody, allows the nervous system to process emotions and sensations, and nourishes feelings of empowerment.
The Practice: We heal through the body, somatically. The next time you feel an emotion practice diaphragmatic breathing. Breathe down into the belly, expand into the ribs, all the way to the chest and slowly exhale all the air out, repeat 3-10 times. If you are feeling heavy emotions, try this practice laying on your belly. This will activate the vagus nerve and signal the body to move into the relaxation response. Then stay present with the felt sensations, labeling without judgment how you feel. Write or draw how you feel, mapping the emotion in the body. Try the journal prompts below to work through difficult emotions.
