When was the last time you felt a strong emotion? The kind that completely took you down.
When I think about the visceral experience of emotion, I always think about how I feel when I get on stage. My heart pounds out of my chest, my breath is shallow, I get light tremors, and I get cold. So cold.
The emotional experience is different for everyone, but in general, we all have similarities. Our heart, gut, and lungs create most of the experience. It’s interesting because these are all parts of the body that are controlled by the subconscious mind. We can’t tell our heart rate to slow down, the tightness in our chest to lighten, or our stomach to unknot.
These physical emotional patterns are stored in our nervous system. They’re quickly accessible for times when our nervous system feels threatened. Thousands of years ago, a lion would come, our nervous system our activate us to run, and the threat would be gone. We could relax.
In our modern society, the threats remain. The stress from work isn’t just when we’re at work, we bring it home. We ruminate, and we spin in negative thought loops. Our body can’t get away from the stress, and as a response, our nervous system shifts.
This is the root of chronic pain and overeating.
Both are physical manifestations. Our body makes both attempts to direct us away from the emotional experience into a physical experience.
I know when I was a kid, I was taught not to feel.
“Don’t be a crybaby.”
“Don’t be so sensitive.”
“I’ll give you something to cry about.”
These well-intended messages taught me it wasn’t safe to feel. As soon as the emotion started, I felt the need to shift away from it. Food does that. It releases chemicals in your brain that make you feel better. Some people use alcohol, some people get pain. It’s all the same.
To be free, you have to learn to feel. You must learn to connect the physical and emotional in a new way. You have to learn to manage stress and reduce the threats to your system. You have to learn the art of taking care of yourself.
This is the healing I do with my clients. It starts here and builds. It’s transformational in every aspect of your life. You learn to let go of the physical while improving the emotional.
Emotional lightness comes first.
What emotion do you avoid? How does it feel in your body?