Emotion is a Physical Event
A Soft Place to Land
Nervous system-focused care for overloaded humans
Issue 06 · Emotion is a Physical Event· Week 6 of 52
Welcome. I'm so glad you're here!
I had a client once who moved away a few years ago now, who came in for her fourth or fifth session and said, completely out of nowhere, "I think I've been angry for twenty years and I didn't know it." She wasn't crying. She wasn't upset. She said it with a kind of quiet wonder, like she'd found something she'd been looking for in a drawer she hadn't opened in decades.
That's the kind of thing that happens when the body starts to speak and someone is finally ready to listen. This week we're going to talk about emotion — specifically about what it does in the body when it doesn't have anywhere to go.
-Jenny
THIS WEEK'S TOPIC
Emotion is a physical event
We tend to think of emotions as things that happen in our minds or in our hearts— experiences that are somehow separate from the body, filed under "psychological" rather than "physical." As it turns out, this is not how emotions actually work.
Every emotion you experience is, at its root, a physiological event.
Fear is adrenaline and a racing heart.
Grief is the weight in the chest, the heaviness in the limbs, the exhaustion that has nothing to do with exertion.
Anger is heat and tension and the clenching of muscles prepared to act.
Joy is expansion, lightness, a different quality of breath.
Can you recall experiencing these physical sensations when certain emotions popped up?
During this next week- when you feel any sort of big emotion pop up whether “good” or “bad” and just notice how your body is responding to it. Emotional reactions to events are the first domino to go over.
Emotions are not in your head. They are perceived by your mind and translated into meaning by your limbic system buried deep in the cerebrum of your brain beneath the cerebral cortex, but they are not in your head. They are in your body — your heart, your gut, your muscles, your fascia, your WHOLE nervous system. The word "emotion" contains motion — it is designed to move through you. When it does, when it's felt and expressed and allowed to complete its natural arc, the body returns to the balance it has been searching for.
When emotion is not allowed to move — when it's suppressed, dismissed, swallowed, or simply never named — it doesn't disappear.
It parks, it stagnates. It pools itself within you.
In your tissue, in your posture, in the chronic patterns your body adopts to manage what it's holding.
I see this in bodies every single day. The tension in the hips that softens when someone finally cries about something they've been holding for a year. The shoulder that's been locked for months that releases in a session where something emotional surfaces. The client who leaves the table lighter than they came in, not because I did anything dramatic, but because their body finally had permission to let something go.
I want to be careful here: I am not saying your emotions caused your physical problems, in any kind of blame-adjacent way. I am saying that the body keeps an honest record, and that record sometimes shows up as pain, tension, or dysfunction in ways that purely physical treatment may not fully address alone because trapped, undealt with emotions settled there. There’s a great book about it: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk M.D.
Understanding this changes the question from "how do I fix this pain?" to "what has my body been holding, and how do I help it release?" Those are 2 very different questions, and they lead to 2 very different kinds of healing.
THIS WEEK'S REFLECTION
Where do your emotions live in your body? This is Embodiment. This is Somatics.
This is one of my favorite practices to do with clients — it's simple but often surprisingly revealing. And often resisted. But in the privacy of your own screentime, I’m going to ask you anyway, and maybe in your solitude you will feel comfortable enough to be brave and look within.
Think of an emotion you experience regularly — it could be stress, anxiety, frustration, sadness, overwhelm. Now, without analyzing it, scan your body and notice:
1. Where do you feel this emotion physically? Be specific — jaw, chest, throat, belly, lower back?
2. What does it feel like — tight, heavy, hot, constricted, numb?
3. How long has this area of your body been a place where that emotion tends to live?
This is not about solving anything this week. It's about building the map. The more specifically you can locate your emotional experience in your body, the more you can begin to work with it — in our sessions, and in your daily life.
CLIENT STORY
My Own Personal Story with Pain….Part 2
Last week I shared a bit about my hobbling. My chronic back pain where imaging tests reveal nothing but perfection in my physical makeup but doesn’t explain the discomfort that persists.
When I first began my embodiment or somatic experience several years ago- I leaned into the question: What is my pain trying to tell me? Other questions were- what does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it represent? What does your body need in this moment or long term.
All whackadoo questions right? You come in for a massage and all of a sudden you are being asked questions about what kind of personality your pain has. Get me out of here!
I promise you- it’s way more relevant than you know.
Not because it holds 100% of the answers and will set you free, but because it sends you on the path to facing your own self.
The boundaries you haven’t been placing or upholding.
The values you haven’t been living.
The words that you have been choking on that really need to be said.
The areas in your life that you have been living out of alignment so everything just feels wrong.
These questions, one by one, help you face the fear of the answers you have been avoiding. The avoidance has nothing to do with the answers themselves but whether or not you will do anything about them.
My pain, while it had been global to my whole pelvic area and especially my hips- started with this one spot that feels like I have a knife sliced into my left SI joint. Right where you might have a little dimple on your lower back.
When I visualized it- it looked like a spiral. I chuckled to myself and joked that it was like a sphincter.
Nothing gets in. Nothing gets out.
It’s tight and controlled.
It’s holding.
Withholding.
What was I holding onto? Why?
I was trying to hold onto control.
Life felt like it was spiraling at the time and I was losing control and I believed I had to be the one to keep it all managed.
At the time, I was newly divorced. A single mom for the first time.
Uncertain of the terrain I found myself in and I felt unsupported in the ways that mattered most.
In somatoemotional and embodiment bodywork the lower back represents support- or the lack thereof. It’s where your emotional identity lives: what you believe you are allowed to feel. This part of your story can be written by events in your life that were beyond your control and yet dictated your sense of worth.
The pelvic area represents your survival center and I was in full fledged survival mode.
My specific pain points correlate with emotional pattern messages seen in bodywork such as:
I don’t deserve to be happy.
Dealing with the complexity of jealousy or envy in some capacity. I’m not worthy of connecting to my highest self. And mother wounds. And boy I have those in spades.
In the 3 years leading up to this pain, in the throws of mothering young children and a crumbling marriage, I didn’t have an outlet to process much. Not even my mother’s cancer and her passing… never mind all the incomplete conversations and healing I would no longer be able to have with her.
Giving space to acknowledge the emotions that tied to my pain, helped me release layers of pain I wouldn’t have otherwise. Often when you see something… you can’t unsee it.
But the pain persisted.
A sprained ankle, a pretty significant anterior pelvic tilt and allll the muscular dysfunction that comes with that- keeps pain right where it is.
And the message this time was to remember to let go. To loosen my grip. To trust that there was care for me. That my body maintains its wisdom.
What was it asking for this time?
Space.
Decompression.
Comfort.
Softness.
So, in addition to PT, getting my walks in despite the hobble, taking time each day to sit in prayerful meditative silence- I started hanging. I grip a bar in my barn and let my spine hang- and leaning into trust when I let my pelvis go and feel my sacrum elongate- that I won’t fall apart.
And I didn’t. I stayed together. My top half stayed connected to my bottom half and all of a sudden, for just a moment, I felt this deep inner part of me say: “That’s it”
Now my mind is looking for evidence everywhere to prove to that part that I won’t fall apart. Reinforcing that message that taking space, elongating my self, won’t cause the world to fall apart- I won’t fall apart.
And low and behold- I’m not fixed, but my mind and my body are in agreement that I am not broken.
I’m hobbling less.
I have a full stride.
I’m not bracing myself for impact.
I just hang. For 60 seconds a day.
If you'd like to share your story for an upcoming newsletter, I'd love to hear from you. Reply to this email.
A FINAL THOUGHT FROM ME
If something in this week's topic connected you with a long-held pattern in your body, that's not a coincidence. That's your system recognizing something true. I'd love to support you in exploring what might be underneath it.
If this week's topic is resonating with something you've been feeling but haven't had words for, I'd love to have a conversation.
I’m hosting a drop in workshop for how beginning embodiment practices can benefit your life. If you would like to drop in, I have sessions scheduled throughout the summer and you can check it out here:
Learn more or book a free clarity call at jennyodell.me or if you would rather, connect with me via voice note onVOXER or simply reply to this email to share what’s been landing.
Sincerely and with Gratitude,
Jenny O'Dell
