Humans experience an array of emotions each day, and every one of these emotions creates a different feeling within the body. After all, our body releases different chemicals when we experience various things that make us happy, or sad, or angry, and each chemical works to create a different environment within the body. For example, if your brain releases serotonin, dopamine, or oxytocin, you will feel good and happy. Conversely, if your body releases cortisol because you are stressed, you will have an entirely different feeling as the body kicks into survival mode.
What about when we are thinking negative thoughts all the time? Or how about when we are thinking positive thoughts? What about when we are not emotionally charged to either positive or negative thoughts? Let’s explore how these affect our body and life.
Positive vs. Negative
Is there duality in our world? Perhaps to a degree, but mostly we spend a lot of time defining and judging what is to be considered positive and what is to be considered negative, but in either instance, we’ve placed a value judgement on the experience that wasn’t inherently there. The brain is a very powerful tool and as we define what something is or should be, we begin to have that result play out in our world. Have you ever noticed, for example, that someone driving can get cut off and lose their temper, and suddenly they are in a bad mood, whereas someone else can get cut off while driving and simply apply the brake slightly and move on with their day as if nothing happened? It’s the same experience, yet one sees it as negative while the other doesn’t. So are things innately positive and negative? Or do we define things as positive and negative?
Cut the Perceptions as Much as Possible
After thinking about it for a moment, you might realize that there are in fact no positive or negative experiences other than what we define as such. Therefore our very perception of an experience or situation has the ultimate power to determine how we will feel when it’s happening and how our bodies will be affected. While we can always work to move beyond our definitions of each experience and into a state of mind/awareness/consciousness where we simply accept each experience for what it is and use it as a learning tool, we may not be there yet, and so it’s important to understand how certain emotions can affect our health.
“If someone wishes for good health, one must first ask oneself if he is ready to do away with the reasons for his illness. Only then is it possible to help him.”
Mind-Body Connection
The connection between your mind and body is powerful, and although it cannot be visually seen, the effects your mind can have on your physical body are profound. We can have an overall positive mental attitude and deal directly with our internal challenges and in turn create a healthy lifestyle, or we can have an overall negative attitude and avoid dealing with our internal issues — possibly even cloak those issues with affirmations and positivity without actually changing anything — and create an unhealthy lifestyle. Why is this?
Our emotions and experiences are essentially energy and they can be stored in the cellular memory of our bodies. Have you ever experienced something in your life that left an emotional mark or pain in a certain area of your body? Almost as if you can still feel something that may have happened to you? It is likely because in that area of your body you still hold energy released from that experience that has lingered in the body. I came across an interesting chart that explores what various emotions might affect in the body.
When you have pain, tightness, or injuries in certain areas, it’s often related to something emotionally you are feeling within yourself. At first glance it may not seem this way because we are usually very out of touch with ourselves and our emotions in this fast-paced world, but it’s often the truth. When I’ve had chronic pain in my back, knees, neck, or shoulders, it wasn’t exercise, physiotherapy, or any other physical treatment that healed it; it was when I dealt with the emotions behind it that it went away. I know this because I spent the time and money going to physiotherapy and even though I wanted and believed I would get better, something still wasn’t being addressed. The more I addressed the unconscious thought patterns and emotions throughout my body, the more things loosened up and the pain went away.
When you get sick or are feeling a lot of tightness and pain, oftentimes our body is asking us to observe ourselves and find peace once again within ourselves and our environment. It’s all a learning and growing process; we don’t have to judge or fear it.
You Have the Power
Davis Suzuki wrote in The Sacred Balance that “condensed molecules from breath exhaled from verbal expressions of anger, hatred, and jealousy, contain toxins. Accumulated over 1 hr, these toxins are enough to kill 80 guinea pigs!” Can you now imagine the harm you are doing to your body when you stay within negative emotions or unprocessed emotional experience throughout the body?
Remember, you have the power within you to get through anything life throws at you. Instead of labelling each experience you have as negative or positive, try to see things from a broader viewpoint. Ask yourself, how can this help me to see or learn something? Can I use this to shift my perception? To clear some emotion within myself? To recognize something about another and accept it? Whatever it may be, instead of simply reacting, slow things down and observe. You will find you have the tools to process emotions and illness quickly when you see them for what they are and explore why they came to be. If you believe you will get sick all the time, and believe you have pain because it’s all out of your control, you will continue to have it all in an uncontrollable manner. Only until you realize the control you have over much of what we attract within the body will you begin to master.
