Feel to Heal

“E-motions are energy in motion. If they are not expressed, the energy is repressed. As energy it has to go somewhere. Emotional energy moves us as does all energy…To deny emotion is to deny the ground and vital energy of our life.” –John Bradshaw

Every organ, tissue, bone, and system in the body is vulnerable to emotional discord. The nervous system, an elaborate network of cells, nerves and neurons facilitates communication between our brain and the rest of our body. It’s a direct link between the emotional body and the physical body. Your nervous system takes cues from your emotions and determines the status of your world. Based on your emotions, the nervous system will tell your body how to respond. For instance, oftentimes when individuals are nervous, they may experience a racing heart, loose stools, excessive sweat. When joy or love is felt, pain is decreased, muscles are less tense, blood pressure decreases. Your body responds according to your perception and emotions. 

From an energetic perspective, ancient teachings including Traditional Chinese Medicine understood how trapped emotional energies can cause blockages or imbalances in your personal energy field resulting in physical symptoms and energetic blocks in life. 

According to Louise Hay and other spiritual leaders such as Evette Rose, author of the book “Metaphysical Anatomy” your body is talking to you through physical symptoms. Physical symptoms are merely tangible evidence of what is going on in your subconscious mind and how you are really feeling deep within you. Symptoms are the language of the body and are a gift for you to unwrap so you can heal and transmute the energetic expression of the emotion. Every symptom and every dis-ease can be connected to circumstances in your present life, your ancestry, conception, womb, birth trauma, childhood or adult life.

When we experience a situation that evokes a negative emotion and we don’t allow that energy to be released from the body, it remains inside. Just as all energy wants to move, emotional energy will be in motion expressing itself to be noticed. This is where the physical symptoms show up in hopes for us to recognize and release it.

Areas of the Body and Their Emotional Connection

• Feet: feeling tied down or unsteady
• Ankles: guilt or inflexibility
• Lower Leg: unable to keep up
• Knee: unable to move forward
• Upper Leg: feeling powerless
• Hip: feeling burdened or unable to carry a load
• Hand: unable to let go or to hold on
• Wrist: overworked or under appreciated
• Torso: unable to overcome or carrying someone else’s weight
• Upper Spine: feeling unloved, unsupported, or withholding love
• Mid Spine: feeling stuck in the past or guilt
• Lower Spine: financial stress or fear of money
• Lower Arm: unable to keep up
• Elbow: unable to push back
• Upper Arm: unable to hold on or hold back
• Breast: separation or loss
• Shoulder: unable to get out of the way or burdened
• Neck: unable to understand, critical, or stubborn
• Jaw: unable to swallow a situation
• Teeth: unable to bite back
• Nose: something is offensive
• Ear: out of balance or things you don’t want to hear
• Eye: loss of love, impatience, or desiring attention
• Head: shy or emotionally indifferent 

We have to feel to heal. When we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to release emotional energy and because this energy doesn’t simply disappear, it often manifests itself in mental health challenges and/or physical symptoms. However, when we allow ourselves to deeply experience our feelings and then release them, we give our bodies the ability to be free from the stress of holding onto all of that energy. With less physical and emotional stress in the body, the less chance there is of developing emotional or physical symptoms. 

How do you dissolve stuck emotions?

• Feel current emotions and let them move through you by crying, journaling, screaming into a pillow, running, biking
• Journaling: Let all of your emotions out in a journal, completely unfiltered. Burn the pages if you feel you need an extra release.
• Relax tense muscles by stretching, doing Yoga, getting a massage, myofascial release therapy. Muscles and connective tissue hold a lot of energy in them. Releasing the muscles will help release trapped emotions.
• Trauma Release Exercise is designed to release your psoas muscle, which is the muscle that connects your upper body to your lower body and stores repressed emotions.
• Breathwork uses simple controlled breath patterns to take people into a deep state of consciousness that provides a fast-track to emotional healing. It works by oxygenating the body to increase blood flow and bypassing the conscious mind. It’s a quick way to move stuck energy in the body and tap into a deeply intuitive state.
• Art therapy allows what sometimes can’t be expressed in words to flow through in a designated medium.
• Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT, works by tapping on acupressure meridians to release emotional energetic blocks.
• Energy work such as Emotion Code, Reiki, Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, Hypnotherapy are all modalities that support the movement and release of emotions.

Everything is energy and everything is connected including the physical body and the emotional body. Whatever we don’t express in life – we will repress until it gets expressed in the form of dis-ease, dysfunction or an undesirable behavior. Understanding this dynamic and combining emotional healing with physical healing is a powerful combination that will elevate your ability to heal and increase your chances of staying well.

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