Discovering Emotions – Physically

It is exactly a year now that I am traveling! If I pick the one most important thing I learned during my trip, It would be the very topic of this post: “Discovering Emotions – physically”.

I have been studying and thinking about emotions and I am tempted to write about different theories and research. But after trying to write this blog multiple times, I realize I can best summarize my lessons learned by some of the day-to-day experiences I made during my travel.

Anger

It was nine months ago at a beautiful surf beach in Nicaragua. I attended a Yoga class embellished by a beautiful sunset over the pacific. During one of the exercises, my shoulder started to be in strong pain. Having a long story with chronic pain (see my earlier post about chronic pain), I did not only feel the physical pain but also a lot of emotions coming with it. Anger stirred up about being in pain – again! Anger to not be able to surf. Frustration against this helpless feeling of having no power to change the situation. Normally I go for a run to let off steam when I am angry. But this time I had to stop running very quickly, the pain was too strong to move. So I sat down on a couch – frustrated.

I then tried something. I brought my focus to the physical sensations in my body. I do not mean that I focused mainly on the pain, but on the sensations the anger and the frustration created in me – physically.

I was puzzled when I realized that these sensations in my body felt …. well … somehow pleasant! Focusing on my body, I felt this anger in the middle line of my chest, going from the solar plexus (in the front of the chest where the lower rips come together) upwards to my chest and neck. It was a prickling feeling, like if there would be a fire burning inside me throwing around sparks of heat. But all these sensations were not unpleasant. Instead they felt powerful and energized. The sensations of this “fire” felt more like strength than helplessness. My mood changed and instead of frustrated I felt ready to go and do everything needed to change my situation.

In retrospective, I started to learn two things in this moment. First, every negative emotion has its reason to be there. Labeling it “negative” is not always adequate. Sensing in my body, the frustration changed from “feeling like shit” to “be ready to go and change”. Probably the primary reason why I, as human being, experience anger is to create energy to change the situation I feel angry about. Second, I learned that I can experience emotions both in my mind and on a physical level in my body. Different emotions create different sensations and postures in my body. Maybe this sounds trivial, but for me it was big and I realized that these physical sensations do not always match the thoughts in my mind.

Here is another example:

Anxiety

Half a year later I was sitting 86 meter below ground in the metro driving through St.Petersburg in Russia. It was a normal day and I was
absorbed in thoughts. After the experience in Nicaragua I started a habit of randomly focusing on the physical sensation in my body – preferably in very different situations throughout a day. Doing it in the metro, I was surprised to find a sensation of constriction and tightness in my chest. I realized that somehow, something in me felt anxious. “What the fuck? Why the heck do I feel anxious?” was my first thought. At first, there was nothing obvious that could create this feeling of insecurity in me. Then I realized, that simply being in this metro (we do not have metros in Switzerland) in St. Petersburg, where I do not understand anyone and everybody looks a bit grim (Winter in Russia), made my body feel anxious. It was a very unknown and unfamiliar situation. In the end, I am a mammal and unfamiliar situations like this instinctively produce anxiety to be more alert. This realization was almost funny, because I felt like an animal researcher observing my own behavior. By becoming consciously aware of this anxiety it started to disappear and I felt my body relaxing and my mood improving.

Again this experience taught me a lot. Just two months before the experience in the metro I made the following statement: “I have not felt fear for a very long time”. Now, I started to realize that I feel anxious – almost all the time!! Just like in the metro. Or before meeting someone or doing a phone call. Or when I give a therapy session and something in me would prefer to stay alone than welcoming the person coming for a session. I started to discover this anxiety feeling in many normal day-to-day situations. And very often, by simply acknowledging and accepting this feeling, it went away and I became more relaxed and peaceful.

By now you get an idea of what I want to say with this post. But I start to get excited, so let me share another two, more personal, stories:

Jealousy

Again in Russia. My girlfriend, who lives in St. Petersburg, went to Europe for teaching dance during a weekend and as I had only a single-entry visa to Russia, I could not join. She stayed the weekend with a male friend of ours. During this weekend jealousy thoughts started to nag and bother me. Not because she did anything wrong but simply because… – well you know how it can be. If you ever had a jealousy attack you know how overwhelming it is and how unreasonable and sticky jealousy can be. It is nasty! As it started to bother me, I tried to bring my focus to the sensations the jealousy created in my body.

This time I could not feel anything. I did not find any sensation that I could associate with the jealousy going on in my thoughts. Instead, my body felt very relaxed, grounded and calm. In this moment I realized – not by thinking but by feeling – how unreasonable my jealous thoughts were. I accessed the deep trust I have towards my partner and that became stronger than the thoughts going crazy in my mind. It was very relaxing, and especially after sharing this experience with her, I could finally enjoy my own weekend without being constantly tackled by nasty jealousy thoughts.

Joy and happiness

I want to share this last story because it is more on emotions that we label as positive in contrast to anger, anxiety and jealousy. This story is about joy, happiness and connection. Again it’s a story from my relationship. My partner and I had some difficult days and talks and as so often after going through “difficult stuff”, some deep and beautiful days followed. On one of those days my girlfriend was at work and wrote me this message by WhatsApp:

“I have such a great feeling the last days. I want to fly, I want to jump, I want to dance!”

I was so happy to receive this message! I knew it was due to the process we were in together. But at the same time I realized that I do not really feel so joyful and happy as she wrote?! I asked myself “why?”, but could not really find any reason. Everything was great but still I felt very neutral inside. This happens sometimes to me, that my life is awesome but I do not really feel awesome. With all these experiences above about feeling emotions on a physical level, I decided to try to be more connected with the emotional sensations in my body during the next days – especially when spending time with her. It worked! And even better than I hoped for. By being more present with how I feel inside in my body, the moments and experiences of the following days deepened and left me filling more fulfilled and more connected – with myself, with her and also with life in general.

I’m fascinated by this discovery. That by focusing on the emotions on a physical level – in whatever situation – quite often changes, relaxes or deepens the way I feel in this situation. Focusing on the physical level of emotions instead of the thoughts created by the emotions makes me feel like… well, like “more actually living and being alive”. I started to talk about this with other people of which some had similar experiences trying it. For some people it seems very easy to access these emotional sensations in the body, while for others there is very little feeling of it – at least at first. If you have never done this, give it a try! And if you send me a message or write a comment, I always enjoy having conversations about this :-)!

Metro picture: fotostrasse.com/st-petersburg-metro
Jealousy picture: unk.com/blog/3-techniques-treating-jealousy