This article explores:
– Where do we hold emotions?
– How do unbalanced and unprocessed emotions affect our physical health?
– How breathwork heals our mental, emotional, and physical bodies
– How healing ourselves, helps everyone
Although everyone is different, many people share the same association between what they feel and where they feel it.
Use the chart below to assess your emotions by matching all the letters.
Location of Emotion
a. Pelvic bowel
b. Lower abdomen
c. Upper abdomen
d. Chest
Balanced Emotion
a. Safety
b. Pride
c. Personal power
d. Love/ Happiness
Unbalanced Emotion
a. Fear/terror
b. Shame/guilt
c. Anxiety/Anger
d. Grief/Sadness
Ei. If we are feeling excessive fear, we will most likely feel it in and around our pelvic bowel. The near and associated gland, tissues, and organs are our kidneys, bladder, adrenals. The adrenal glands, which in times of fear release adrenaline and stress hormones, causing a fight-or-flight reaction in the body, which pumps out stimulating messengers that prepare the body for action.
Already we see how an emotion (fear) can influence the body, which will influence the mind, they are all one
If we have unprocessed fear, often times we will hold muscular tightness in several areas, such as around our hips, such as our psaos muscle, because it bridges our upper and lower body, and in relation to the fight or flight response is involved in running away or fighting. In regards to our diaphragm and breathing, we hold fear along a band underneath the ribcage.
You may think about it like this, emotions are energy, which is why it comes from the Latin ‘to set in motion’, if we do not express emotion, that energy (neuropeptides) is not released and becomes stored in the muscles (and other tissues) and organs preventing the natural flow of energy.
Thus, if we have unexpressed fear it can be held as tensions in the hip muscles, areas along the diaphragm preventing proper breathing, as well as blocked energy in the adrenals and the kidneys for which the adrenals sit upon affecting their proper functioning.
Further, a full proper breath should arise from our pelvic floor and move up through the stomach, chest, and even into our throat space, if we have unprocessed fear and unbalanced emotion holding in our pelvic space, or a blockage below our ribcage we will fail to breath properly using only partial lung capacity and preventing the natural breath cycle. When our breath pattern is not full it prevents the massaging of the organs which stimulates the glands, and in turn affecting the entire nervous system and our ability to fully feel all emotions.
Unprocessed fear will prevent us from moving forward with confidence, feeling grounded, and can cause dysregulation with our bodies stress system (the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis)
Conscious Connected Breathing can move people into these areas of holding, releasing the muscles, the blocked energy, and the emotion that was stored, and thus restoring the natural flow of energy through the body, allowing for a balanced expression of emotion to return and proper functioning of the organ and gland systems.
The picture I hope you can start to see me painting is that emotions, our body, and mind are not separate systems, when we influence and heal one, we heal all (a beautiful teaching there). This is why I chose to become a breathwork facilitator, for the breath has a remarkable ability to heal our mental, emotion, and physical systems. This is also why I chose to become a holistic alignment coach, holistic coaching takes all dimensions and relationships a person has in their life, from their diet and movement, to their relaxation time, family time, community involvement, and relationship with the planet. When we align ourselves in a good way with all systems of life, we heal ourselves and our planet
I thank all those who are showing up for themselves and moving in a good way. Message for me coaching and breathwork facilitation details.
– Zac Koop
zkcoaching.ca 