Emotions Archives - Embodied Living

We need men! On Sunday 12 November, I’m offering men the opportunity to learn how to listen to the wisdom of their bodies, change unhelpful, emotional states or patterns in their behaviour.

Workshop

I will be running a free personal development workshop (What the Body Knows) which will help delegates understand what their bodies have to teach them, how to let go of the past and live a more fulfilling and happy future.

Men can harness more of their masculinity and power in ways that serve them to find more pleasure and satisfaction in life.

As a registered clinical psychotherapist and certified yoga teacher, I’ll help men and women raise an insight and self-awareness in a safe and balanced group.

The full day will feature a combination of theory and exercises drawn from body psychotherapy and yoga. These simple yet powerful practices have proven helpful for many symptoms and patterns including anger issues, persistent headaches, addictive behaviour, anxiety, worry, tension or sleeplessness.

We hold onto feelings and past experiences in our bodies and it’s only by truly understanding what our bodies have to teach us, that we can never really let go.

Pesso Boyden based psychotherapy (PBSP) is a way of enabling you to experience the full intelligence of your body mind, come to terms with your past and make changes in your life for the future.

The workshop is also available to women who feel at a turning point, either in a professional life, partnering, parenting or simply wanting something new in their future, at a cost of £15.

The workshop will run on Sunday 12 November from 10:30am to 3:00pm at St Albans House, St Albans Road Stafford. If you’d like to get involved or find out more about the workshop, please contact me on 074111 78380 or email sue@embodiedliving.co.uk.

We know intuitively that emotional suffering can be experienced as physical pain. Nevertheless, it is difficult for a person to understand how emotional distress plays a role in the experience of physical pain, and if it does, what to do about it.

How we feel pain and emotions

The words “to feel” are used to describe both physical and emotional phenomena. Our nervous system feels physical sensations of temperature, pain and pressure, as well as the emotional sensations of pleasure, fear and grief.

However, what often happens is that we have a feeling in the body (physical sensation). And then, sometime later, the cognitive mind translates that into emotional sensations (emotional feelings).

Psychosomatic unity

Our Western minds will try to fastidiously separate the physical and the emotional. However leading edge neuroscientists are finding the concept of “psychosomatic unity” abides. This means that psychological and physiological processes form one unit. What we feel in our bodies affects our emotions and perceptions (our consciousness). So the objective experience of sensations (of pain) can not be accurately assessed without integrating information about the subjective experience (emotion associated with that pain).

Dealing with the emotions associated with pain

Therefore for us to feel well, we must deal with both the pain as well as the emotions associated with it. For example, a 35-year-old woman had low back pain. She had suffered a severe horseback riding accident at 19 while attending college. Her low back area was sensitive and jumpy, making it difficult to practice yoga; she would become upset and tearful when she tried to do yoga.

We looked at the emotional issues and blocked energy surrounding the accident. And then we attempted to connect the tension in her low back with her memories of the circumstances at the time of the accident.

Additional trauma involved in pain

During the accident she broke her back and nearly died. Importantly, an additionally traumatic and emotional part of the incident was that her parents never came to see her while she was recovering in the hospital.

During therapy she had worked through the emotions connected with the injury, and could then focus on the physical healing of her body. This emotional aspect had never been fully addressed. Thereafter, when her low back muscle and ligament injuries were worked on, her body could accept the treatment and her condition improved significantly.