Emotions Are Energy : The bodymind

connection and e-motion

Discover key neuroscience discoveries that offer new insights

into the truth about emotions and how to effectively express
them.
What are emotions?

Let’s start by exploring a basic understanding of emotions that will likely be dramatically
different than what you have believed up to this point. What we think of as emotion is the
experience of energy moving through the body. This is generally felt as sensations of contraction
such as tension or expansion such as calm. The Latin derivative for the word emotion, ‘emotere’,
literally means energy in motion.

Researcher Barbara Frederickson furthered this understanding by describing the upward and
downward spiral effect of emotion. An upward spiral correlates with expansion and feelings such
as joy and happiness. A downward spiral correlates with contraction and feelings such as
resentment and fear.¹

In itself, emotional energy is neutral. It is the feeling sensation and physiological reaction that
makes a specific emotion positive or negative. Feeling is what you label as anger, sadness, joy or
fear. It is then your interpretations or thoughts about emotional energy that give it meaning.
Emotion serves as the carrier waves for the entire spectrum of feelings. Understanding that
emotions are energy implies that they are fluid, moving resources meant to be felt and released
vs. suppressed and ignored. The latter is the true culprit of low emotional intelligence and stress
burnout.

Neuroscience of Emotion
Several key discoveries have significantly changed our understanding of the relationship
between the emotional brain and the analytical brain.


o Based on neural circuitry, our emotional brain responds faster to incoming
information or stimuli than our analytical brain does.²
o The emotional brain has more neural circuits connecting to the analytical brain
than the analytical brain has connecting to the emotional brain.³
o The emotional brain is connected to every area of the brain, whereas the analytical
brain is not.4
o On the basis of survival, the experience of stress and feelings of worry, fear, or
anger take priority over feelings of happiness and peace of mind. 5

Emotional Energy
As a result of these findings, the emotional brain is considered to have executive power in the
brain. It influences all decision making, thought processes, memories, and present experiences.
Your ability to understand, deal with, and effectively use your emotional energy is vital to your
happiness levels.

The sensations you feel in your body hold the key to unlocking limiting patterns, transforming
stress, and generating lasting happiness. Your body gives a constant stream of reliable
information about your experience in the form of sensation. It’s a library of who you are at the
deepest level, including all that has happened to you and all that you dream about. Understanding
your body sensations will transform your life.6
For many people, looking to their body sensations to transform challenging emotions and
increase emotional intelligence is the most important piece of the puzzle that leads to happiness.
This is especially true when you understand that sensory and emotional information is recorded
into memory first; thoughts and perceptions, second. This distinction provides clues for
increasing emotional intelligence while pointing out the limitations of purely thought-based
approaches.

The nature of chronic stress often results in a buildup of energy that gets suppressed in the body.
This is experienced as sensations of contraction. This unfolds organically once your internal
resources are engaged in a safe and supportive manner. It’s the resulting feelings of expansion
and renewed life force that make lasting happiness possible. From this secure, open, and present
place, you rewire your brain and solidify neural pathways of happiness.

The process of reconnecting with body sensations and emotions takes time and trust. This is
especially true given that ongoing stress disconnects you from your internal experience as a way
of protecting you from overwhelming sensations and emotions. Unwinding works best when you
allow yourself to be guided gently and slowly by your body’s natural rhythm for healing. It’s not
helpful to rush or force the healing process. It’s equally important that you feel present and safe.
Your innate drive for homeostasis is always present and heeds the call for healing when you
listen to your body’s messages.

Driven to Move E-Motion

The drive to move your emotional energy is present every moment because your nervous system
is in constant pursuit of homeostasis. It’s on a mission 24/7 regulating the balance of your
bodymind connection. This often includes your instinctual drive to be happy by releasing any
pent-up stress. You have an opportunity to move your emotional energy each time you
experience contraction, tension, or any other body sensations. They are the internal messages of
your bodymind wisdom that draw you toward balance and happiness.

Given the understanding that emotion is actually energy in motion it is important to distinguish
what it looks and feels like to increase your emotional awareness. Most people believe this looks
like using their thinking mind to analyze, think about and talk about how they feel. Although this
approach can bring initial awareness it is not effective in the long run. It is common from this
approach to hinder the process of expressing and managing emotions. In doing so, it keeps the
process of expression at the level of thought vs. actual feeling or energy movement. In order to
successfully express emotion you have to move your emotional energy by identifying the
sensations and releasing states of contraction.

BodyMind Emotion
It is common for athletes or professional performers to feel nervous before a big event. They
might have a surge of energy that includes shaking, heart racing, pacing, vibrating sensations,
and even nausea. These are all common experiences of body sensations correlating with emotion
releasing.

The process of expressing your emotional energy involves tuning into your body sensations. It is
powerful, dynamic and enlivening. If you sink your awareness into your sensations, they will
begin to reveal what is going on beneath the surface. These sensations may include tense, tingly,
light, heavy, soft, smooth, hot, cold, rumbling, or pressure just to name a few. They will
intelligently and organically guide you into releasing any unresolved stress and bring you into
greater homeostasis. As you move from contraction to expansion you will typically feel lighter,
calmer or relieved while opening the door to lasting happiness. When you allow yourself to ride
the emotional wave of these sensations you will regain homeostasis and gain benefits found in
the rest of your mind and body.

How it Works

Let’s take an inside look at body-mind emotional release to better understand the strategy for
expressing your emotions and becoming happier. When you get out of your analytical brain’s
reasons, rationalizations, and detailed story of what has happened, you now have access to
finding relief from your emotional world. Not until you stop perseverating on the details of what
happened and your feelings of righteous protection about it can you grow past your current state
of healing and access greater happiness. Sharing your story has power but only to a certain point.
Once you allow yourself to feel your emotions and feelings without talking about or justifying
why you feel the way you feel, you move to the next level.

When you bring mindful focus to the sensations of contraction with an open mind and air of
curiosity, you invite them to release. It’s powerful, dynamic, and enlivening. You allow your
body to feel the feelings it didn’t have the opportunity to release at the time of any event that
may have been challenging. It’s like an internal sigh of relief that comes over your entire body
and mind. Now from this place of internal trust and relief, you can use your analytical brain’s
good positive thinking to assist you in changing your belief system. This state of mind and body
makes lasting happiness a reality.

Bodymind Listening

At first, listening to and decoding the body’s messages may seem challenging. The messages can
be subtle, and you might doubt or question what you’re feeling. Do your best to clear away any
judgments and maintain an air of open curiosity. Then trust what comes to your mind. The body
offers very insightful, accurate, and practical guidance when you get out of the way and just
listen to it. Over time, you reinforce the clarity of the messages and release any static that
inhibits you from listening on a deeper level. Regular practice further allows you to witness
patterns in your body’s messages and their relationship to aspects of your health and your life.
This process always works best when you allow your body to lead you instead of trying to force
or hurry it along. This takes a degree of patience and trust. We are here to say that the time spent
doing this, however long, is generally far more rewarding than the time spent at the effect of
emotional suppression. The results are also far more lasting and powerful.

What to Expect: The Body Sensations Cycle

An important objective of moving and expressing your emotion is to meet your body with
compassion. Do your best not to analyze or evaluate the sensations you’re noticing, but simply
tune in, notice, and observe them. Through your presence and open-mindedness, you will notice
the sensations shift. As best as possible, allow the shifts to occur while being present and
observing them. The unwinding process includes a range of body sensations that will change,
intensify, and lessen. As previously noted, these sensations might involve trembling, shaking,
twitching, tension, nausea, and heaviness, and the urge to stomp your feet, move your legs,
pound your fists, or even yell. These are common experiences that mirror your natural resources
to fight or flee using your hands, feet, or voice. Over time, seconds to several minutes, these
sensations often shift throughout your body. For example, they might move from your stomach
to your throat and into your hands. Then they will begin to morph even further, lessening in
intensity and transforming into tingly, light, open, smooth, calm, relaxed, or a range of soothing
sensations.

Sensation Versus Thought

During this process, if a particular issue comes to mind, do your best to remain with the
sensation and stay out of your thoughts about the issue. Try not to analyze or evaluate why
you’re feeling what you’re feeling. At times, the messages you hear—such as tension or
discomfort—might lead you to take action to release or heal the issue. At other times, the
messages might serve as reminders or lead you to become aware of patterns you want to
strengthen or transform. Still other messages might not seem to make sense in the moment but
might lead, over time, to understanding an area of your life. The important thing to remember is
not to judge, but to listen. If it feels organic to express an emotion or verbalize something, then
do so. Part of the unraveling process involves reclaiming what was lost not only in your body but
also in your mind. You can reclaim your power by giving voice to what needs to be said or done.

The strength of your bodymind listening skills directly influences how well you’re able to use
this wisdom to create greater health and happiness. For example, many people are aware that a
tension headache frequently starts with stress, yet they notice the headache only once it’s in
physical form. Perceived stress leads to subtle signs of tension in the body, and over time this
can lead to the actual manifestation of a tension headache. Wouldn’t it be nice to notice (hear)
the messages being sent to adjust your posture, mood, or circumstances before the manifestation
of a headache? You have this ability. It requires only that you develop your bodymind listening
skills.
Mind Body Therapy
The awareness of emotion as energy has had a significant impact on approaches to healing
emotional wounds, stuck patterns, emotional reactivity, depression, anxiety and trauma. Mind
body approaches such as brainspotting, somatic therapy, EMDR, meditation and biofeedback
have become central to treatment and therapy.

Brainspotting & EMDR

Brainspotting and EMDR are advanced therapies for overcoming negative emotions, healing
traumatic experiences and rebalancing the nervous system. Brainspotting is based on the premise
that ‘where you look affects how you feel’. As an individual maintains an eye position while
focusing on a stressful experience, they connect to a spot in the brain (brainspot) that gives them
access to releasing and processing the challenging experience. Dual Attunement is a primary
tenant of Brainspotting in that the attunement of the therapist activates brain pathways associated
with safety, support and connection. EMDR follows a very specific protocol in which the
therapist guides the client through a series of repetitive steps. As part of this process, the client
focuses on a stressful or traumatic issue while experiencing bilateral stimulation. The client is
guided to repeatedly reexperience the issue while being guided through the steps in the process.
While Brainspotting involves a focused eye position, EMDR involves rapid bilateral movement
of the eyes, auditory or sensory system. To learn more about Brainspotting check out our
Brainspotting FAQ.

Somatic Therapy
One of the earliest healing approaches dedicated to releasing emotions at the level of the mind
body connection is called somatic therapy. It is a powerful form of therapy and healing that
allows the mind and body to work together to unwind pent up emotional stress, release trauma
and reclaim the life force. Given that somatic approaches access the deeper parts of the mind that
are sensed in the body (soma), it allows implicit memories that are waiting to be brought into
conscious awareness to be processed and moved on to explicit memory. In doing so, the
emotional and visceral trauma energy that is stored in these implicit memories is now freed up to
regulate, balance and vitalize the entire mind body system. It is powerful and transformational
healing at the deepest level. Elements of somatic therapy can be found in most mind body
approaches. In our practice we work with a combination of somatic therapy and Brainspotting to
support the movement of emotion and realignment of mind and body.

Meditation
Meditation is a foundational tool for emotional balance, nervous system regulation and overall
healing. Meditation allows you to access the emotional centers of the brain and rewire patterns of
reactivity, trauma and stress. We developed the Emotions Are Energy guided meditation to help
you move stuck emotional energy, release patterns of stress and trauma and strengthen your
mind-body connection. This is our go to meditation for keeping our emotions and nervous
system regulated. We have found when practiced regularly it leads to greater presence, inner
calm and energy.

Biofeedback
In addition to brainspotting, somatic therapy and meditation, we have found biofeedback to be a
time-tested powerful tool for regulating the nervous system and creating emotional wellbeing.
Biofeedback is a compelling tool that validates the power of the mind-body connection. In a
matter of minutes, you can create significant changes using your mind to shift your body or vice
versa.

Heart Rhythm Feedback

In our work, we use biofeedback to demonstrate the transition from the stress response to the
relaxation response. We have conducted thousands of biofeedback assessments and training
sessions, witnessing firsthand the significant and swift changes resulting from breathing. We
measure heart rate variability (HRV) because it’s a central measure of both physical and
psychological aspects of stress. HRV is defined as the beat-to-beat fluctuation in heart rate. The
variation between beats is influenced by complex connections between the peripheral nervous
systems, heart, brain, and multiple endocrine variables.

HRV is also a dynamic measure used to show emotional changes via heart rhythm patterns.
Happiness, joy, and peace create ordered heart rhythm patterns. Anger, resentment, stress, and
fear cause disordered heart rhythm patterns. Tiller and colleagues studied the impact of
emotional states on nervous system balance. Participants were divided into two groups and
instructed to focus on either feelings of appreciation or feelings of stress. The researchers
conducted the studies based on the understanding that the two branches of the autonomic nervous
system, the sympathetic and parasympathetic, work together to maintain homeostasis by
responding and adapting to changes, including emotional changes. The sympathetic nervous
system plays a primary role in the stress response, stimulating various organ systems to deal with
the present stressor. The parasympathetic nervous system has virtually an opposite effect on the
body, demonstrating a state of relaxation and an attempt to reestablish homeostasis. The study
found that feelings of stress were associated with sympathetic activity, as indicated by disordered
heart rhythm patterns. Conversely, feelings of appreciation were associated with parasympathetic
activity, as indicated by ordered heart rhythm patterns.

We have been using Heartmath biofeedback technology for the past 20 years. They are the leader
in HRV biofeedback with over 250 peer reviewed studies published on their technology and
methods. They offer an easy-to-use HRV biofeedback device called the Inner Balance Coherence
Sensor that works with your smart phone or computer. You can monitor your heart rhythm
patterns and witness how your emotions affect your nervous system. In a matter of minutes you
can observe changes in your nervous system as you apply breathing exercises, meditation,
somatic practices and other emotional regulation tools. It is invaluable to see firsthand what
happens when you move from stressed to more emotionally and mentally balanced. We use the
Inner Balance Coherence Sensor in our own meditations as well as recommend it to our clients.

Neurofeedback – Brain Wave Neurofeedback

Neurofeedback is the type of biofeedback that measures brain activity and specifically brain
waves. Brain waves are measured in hertz cycles per second. Slower frequencies can
demonstrate feeling more calm, relaxed and present as well as fatigued, distracted, inattentive,
depressed or insomnia. Higher frequencies may represent feeling more alert and engaged in
thought as well as anxious, hypervigilant or impulsive.

Four categories of brain waves are observed during neurofeedback;

 Beta (12-38 hertz) is associated with our more awake, focused and active brain state. It
allows for problem solving, organization, engagement, decision making, attention,
excitement, interest and complex thought processes. In excess it can represent anxiety,
hypervigilance, tension, stress, difficulty relaxing, insomnia and mania.
 Alpha (8-12 hertz) is found in times of deep thought, meditation, presence, calmness,
learning, alertness and flow.
 Theta (4-8 hertz) is involved with meditative, daydreaming and sleep states. When awake
theta can represent issues with executive functioning tasks such as focus, attention,
memory, and organization as found in ADD and ADHD.
 Delta (1-4 hertz) is found in the third and fourth cycle of REM sleep. When delta waves
are present during wakefulness, they may indicate issues with focus such as found in
ADD or ADHD. They may also represent brain injuries, sleep disturbances or other
learning challenges.
There is something fascinating about seeing your brain waves light up on a monitor while
observing changes that can occur with simple focus exercises. During a neurofeedback session
brain waves are measured and through the process of brain training exercises, games and
meditations the brain is trained into more optimal states of harmony, focus and balance.
Neurofeedback has been shown to improve many areas of mental health including anxiety,
depression, insomnia, ADD/ADHD and more.

When we were first trained in neurofeedback over 20 years ago the technology was highly
involved and only available through a trained practitioner. It included placing electrodes with gel
on various spots around the head. The electrodes had wires connecting them to the main
measuring device. Let’s just say gel in the hair and feeling confined by all of wires were not the
most enjoyable part of the process. The results however were often worth it. Advances in
technology have made the process of neurofeedback much simpler, efficient and accessible to
everyone.

We have been using Muse 2 Biofeedback for many years and find it to be easy to use, advanced
technology and highly effective. It involves wearing a headband (no gel, no wires) that pairs with
your smartphone or smart device. Muse has many options for brain training exercises,
meditations and improving your brain wave balance. They also have a specific device called
Muse S for sleep monitoring and sleep support including immersive sounds to help get to sleep
or fall back asleep if you’ve woken. We use Muse 2 as part of our meditation toolbox. We also
recommend it to our clients to help with meditation, focus, sleep, depression, and anxiety.