The Connection Between Your Body and Emotions
Your emotions are connected to body language, illness, and physiology.
Emotions & Body Language
Think of the most recent emotion that you felt intensely. It can be a positive emotion or a negative one. I will use myself as an example, my emotion was sadness.
Now think about what happened when you felt that emotion. For me, when I was sad I cried and lived in my head a lot.
Next, I want you to go back to the moment you felt your emotion and look at yourself from an outside perspective. Observe what you are doing and take specific note of the way your body looks. When I do this I see my body curling up tightly together, my hands gripping, and my shoulders scrunched up to my ears. What do you see?
If your emotion was also sadness you could have observed some of the same things I did. Or maybe your head was hanging low, your posture was slouched over, your moving slowly, or your eyes are droopy.
If your emotion was anger your body may have been tensed up, your face scrunched, your posture was straight, and your joints are stiff.
If you were happy your body could be moving lightly, your eyes light up, you may have a smile or slight curling of the corners of the mouth upwards, standing straighter, and have a little hop in your walk.
If you felt anxious your body might be pacing, you may be playing with your hair or jewelry or chewing on your fingernails. You may also get really tense by tightening your jaw, scrunching your shoulders, and tightening up other muscles in the body.
These are examples of the way your body may look depending on the different emotions you experience. Each emotion elicits a different response from the body even though you may not be aware of it.
Our emotions are shown in our body language. The way our body moves is a reflection of how we feel on the inside.
Therefore, if someone is depressed it will come through in their body language at some point. Usually the first way we notice how someone is feeling is by the way their body looks. Even if someone is a master at masking their emotions it can’t be concealed forever.
Stuck Emotions & the Body
Although emotions often leak their cues through body language, some people are actually really great at masking their emotions so their body language does not always show how they are feeling. As a result, their emotions get stuck in their body.
Emotions don’t belong in the body, they are meant to be felt, addressed, and worked through. So when they become stuck in the body your body reacts with a negative response.
Therefore, even when you mask everything on the outside your body will tell you exactly what is going on by reacting on the inside. Furthermore, the emotions that you ignore and try to mask in every way possible will show up in your body in other forms.
Some of those forms include tense and/or tight muscles, joint pain, neck or back pain, headaches, and in extreme forms illness.
The illness usually forms after years of pushed down and ignored emotions that have become stuck in the body. Specifically, negative emotions. Additionally, when you pair those ignored emotions with other methods of coping such as drinking or drugs, your body experiences an even more intense reaction. Usually seen when an injury or illness never goes away.
Therefore, when you get injured for the silliest or most random reasons (especially when it’s a reoccurring injury) those are also cues that you are not addressing something. The injury acts as a way to get your attention when you have been ignoring your emotions and problems for too long.
Of course, just one random injury may be just a “freak accident” but if you are also experiencing an emotional challenge it might be a good idea to look at the emotional side of things. Is the accident meant to wake you up?
Changing Your Physiology to Change Your Emotions
“Motion creates emotion” — Tony Robbins
If you want to release stuck emotions and get out of any patterns of behavior that elicit a specific negative emotion you have to change your physiology. You have to change the way your body moves in order to change your mental state and break those patterns.
Earlier I talked about how emotions reveal themselves in your body language. So think about what would happen if you were feeling anxious and you began to take deep conscious breaths into your belly. It may be really hard to focus or keep your mind from wandering but what would it do to your body?
It would most likely lower your heart rate and blood pressure, relax your muscles, and bring a sense of comfort to you.
Or, for another example, think about what would happen if you felt sad and you just started dancing or jumping up and down. This may feel very strange and it will probably take some time to get out of your head which wants to stay sad and into your body that is willing to change how it feels.
In both scenarios, the moment that you begin doing something different with the body that would normally be paired with a different emotion your mind will follow in its footsteps.
It does take practice because the first time you dance when you feel sad will probably just feel uncomfortable. However, the more you work on changing your physiology when you feel stuck in a negative emotion the more you change the pattern of behavior that resorts to anxiety or sadness in certain situations or when it is chronic.
“Great physiology, therefore, leads to great emotions, and that is one of the keys to getting unstuck. Foster a positive mental state and get unstuck by changing your physiology!” (Tony Robbins.com)
❤️🌻 Thank you for reading!
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