What exactly does it mean that unprocessed emotions get stored in the body?

[Federico del pueblo]

And what are the spiritual ramifications of this phenomenon? 

Is it known how and where these emotions get stored?

What has this got to do with the chakras? Like, does unprocessed emotion get stored as an energy in the chakras and then it can get liberated and converted into "good" energy?

Is this stored emotion what becomes the kundalini energy?

Or is this emotion/energy stuck in the nervous system?

I'm just trying to see the big picture of the relationship between emotions, the body, energy, spiritual development and so on, so please share what you know. Thanks ?

[LastThursday]

Emotions are called feelings for a reason, because they are felt in the body. I would argue that all emotions are manifested in some way in the body. The particular combinations of feeling you have in the body are labelled as "happiness", "jealousy", "panic attack", "calm" and so on.  In that sense emotions (labels) are not stored. But the sensations in the body are stored in the same way as knowing how to move your arm are stored (whatever that is). 

Emotions are closer to reflexes than to conscious movement in the body. A reflex is there to either protect you or to give you a message. It wouldn't make sense to say that "my reflexes need processing" and it's the same with emotions. What processing actually means is changing your body's response (emotional reflexes) to thoughts and situations that trigger certain emotions.  The body learns it's emotions through association: e.g. you get a tightness in your chest when talking to people, and call it anxiety; the pain is triggered by (associated to) people, but the association is learnt not innate. There was a first time that association was made. That means triggers can be unlearnt and the association stopped.

One way that the association is stopped (processed) is by using narrative techniques. You explore the narrative of the event that formed the association in the first place: e.g. you spoke to a person when you were a kid and they were aggressive towards you. And you re-contextualise the triggered emotion by doing this exploration. In this way you weaken the link between the stimulus (people) and the response (anxiety). With work you break the link totally. There are other ways.

For instance NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) breaks the links between stimulus and response (emotion), by disrupting the normal process of the trigger mechanism. It gets you to trigger the normal emotional response in the body (to something negative), but at the same time triggers a different (positive) response - the simultaneous responses interfere with each other, the upshot being that the body relearns it's reflex. There are some very powerful NLP techniques if done right. This is a non-narrative approach.

[Leo Gura]

All over the body you can find tension and contraction. You won't necessarily have a lot of it unless you have a lot of trauma.

[Thought Art]

@Federico del pueblo

From what I am researching it is many things all at once. You have to look at how stress and trauma works throughout the whole body. By beginning to develop a theoretical and experiential understanding you can make great growth in your health, consciousness and spiritual development. 
 

1. Our mind and body are connected. Stress and trauma is held in the organs, tissues and nervous system. 
2. In Chinese medicine and the Tao each organ plays a role in different types of emotions. The brain isn’t just in the skull but in the gut and body as well. It is worth while studying the 5 Elements, meridians, Qi theory, and the three treasures. There is increasing body of western science confirming this ancient understanding of the organs. 
3. We tend to tense up our bodies when we are stressed. We numb ourselves and avoid feeling emotional discomfort. We store up this negative energy in our tissues and energy centres. By doing exercises like body scan, and various types of Qigong and self massage you can begin to purge these toxic emotions. You can than cultivate healthy Qi, or life force energy, store in your Qi vessels, and circulate it through the body. When you purge these negative emotions and begin to charge up your bodies Qi battery you can begin to feel extreme juicy pleasure throughout the body. I have confirmed this through my practice. It feels incredible. Emotions are physiological. Not just held in the brain but happening with the whole body. 
4. I also recommend you study Polyvagal theory. 
 

Many negative emotional patterns need to be dealt with a “Top Down” approach by changing our state of consciousness through tripping, doing talk therapy, journaling, and rational emotive behavioural therapy type work. Then, we must also do “bottom up” by doing things like Qigong, ecstatic dance, body scan, Tao Yin, Krya yoga, etc…  work that helps us purge stress, regulate the energy body and nervous system. When we combine both bottom up and top down approaches we can develop greater emotional stability and inner juiciness.  

Edited January 25, 2023 by Thought Art

[LastThursday]

5 minutes ago, Thought Art said:

inner juiciness

I want that.

[Thought Art]

@LastThursday Yeah Baby! That’s what I teach my students 

[StarStruck]

If your young you can still let go of trauma, because your software (thoughts/emotions) become your hardware (your body). But if you are getting older (after 25), those patterns of trauma get hard wired into your body more and more. And it becomes you.

That is when you see a grumpy old male or female you will see how the person view of life ingrained into their face. So my advice is to work on your traumas while you are young before you become one of those grumpy fucks.

Working on your trauma, if you have any should be your top n1 priority.

Edited January 25, 2023 by StarStruck

[Thought Art]

@StarStruck Even older people can make great gain with Holden Qigong 

[StarStruck]

3 minutes ago, Thought Art said:

@StarStruck Even older people can make great gain with Holden Qigong 

Old people can also go to the gym and make gains. In fact they should go to the gym but that doesn't mean they will make the same gains of a 20 year old.

[Leo Gura]

There is a whole form of therapy called Richean Therapy that deals with emotions locked up in the body.

Book available about it on my book list.

Edited January 25, 2023 by Leo Gura

[WelcometoReality]

@Federico del pueblo Yep contractions in the body.. All that's needed to purify them is resting as awarenss but it can also be helpful to do yoga and stretching.

[Thought Art]

@StarStruck True. Start now. 

[Thought Art]

8 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

There is a whole form of therapy called Richean Therapy that deals with emotions locked up in the body.

Book available about it on my book list.

It’s Qigong basically from what I have seen. 

Edited January 25, 2023 by Thought Art

[Leo Gura]

12 minutes ago, Thought Art said:

It’s Qigong basically from what I have seen. 

Um, not at all.

You are thinking of something else.

[Thought Art]

@Leo Gura isn’t it like physical exercises and breathing and stuff?

I’m relistening to your description of the book. It’s essentially Qigong. Your definition of Qigong is just limited. He just isn’t teaching “Chinese medicine” but it’s still “Qigong”.

Qi- Life force Energy

Gong - to be skillful with 

Nick Loffree is Qigong teacher… his brand is Bio Energetic Health.

There are over 3000 types of Qigong. Reichian therapy sounds to be one of them. 

Edited January 25, 2023 by Thought Art

[Leo Gura]

@Thought Art Maybe, I am no expert on Qigong.

[Thought Art]

@Leo Gura It’s working with the mind body connection and bio energy. Just had Chinese roots, language and epistemology. Big part of my work is linking my understanding of western and Chinese science. 

[Federico del pueblo]

2 hours ago, LastThursday said:

Emotions are called feelings for a reason, because they are felt in the body. I would argue that all emotions are manifested in some way in the body. The particular combinations of feeling you have in the body are labelled as "happiness", "jealousy", "panic attack", "calm" and so on.  In that sense emotions (labels) are not stored. But the sensations in the body are stored in the same way as knowing how to move your arm are stored (whatever that is). 

Emotions are closer to reflexes than to conscious movement in the body. A reflex is there to either protect you or to give you a message. It wouldn't make sense to say that "my reflexes need processing" and it's the same with emotions. What processing actually means is changing your body's response (emotional reflexes) to thoughts and situations that trigger certain emotions.  The body learns it's emotions through association: e.g. you get a tightness in your chest when talking to people, and call it anxiety; the pain is triggered by (associated to) people, but the association is learnt not innate. There was a first time that association was made. That means triggers can be unlearnt and the association stopped.

One way that the association is stopped (processed) is by using narrative techniques. You explore the narrative of the event that formed the association in the first place: e.g. you spoke to a person when you were a kid and they were aggressive towards you. And you re-contextualise the triggered emotion by doing this exploration. In this way you weaken the link between the stimulus (people) and the response (anxiety). With work you break the link totally. There are other ways.

For instance NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) breaks the links between stimulus and response (emotion), by disrupting the normal process of the trigger mechanism. It gets you to trigger the normal emotional response in the body (to something negative), but at the same time triggers a different (positive) response - the simultaneous responses interfere with each other, the upshot being that the body relearns it's reflex. There are some very powerful NLP techniques if done right. This is a non-narrative approach.

Nice post.

I was aware of these relationships. Of course emotions are felt in the body because the body produces certain chemicals and changes its physiology. The thing you're describing is basically conditioning, like e.g. fear conditioning. That's what we know from Pavlov's dogs; neuroassociations or trigger-reaction-chains.

A  trauma could therefore be considered a specific type of conditioning. You build many types of associations of certain stimuli - that were present during the traumatic events - with specific emotions/physiology.

That what you describe in the last paragraph is called "melting anchors" isn't? 

It's clear that e.g. if someone has an anxiety disorder, then they have a neural network for that specific anxiety (or rather the specific associations) in their brain. So that's the brain, neural networks that get activated and then in turn activate hormonal glands like the adrenal glands in the body, which then produce stress hormones.

Anyway what I meant in my original post was still something different. There are theories in which for example trauma is "stored" in specific organs. It's kind of like if you could have a close look at the organ you'd see certain "traces" of the trauma (don't ask me what that means).

Like, as though you have a memory of the trauma "imprinted" in the organ or tissue. I think they say that the body can then respond to a trauma trigger even before the brain does or maybe even that the body simply activates the trauma by itself without any external trigger (and similar stuff). Out of habit so to speak.

I don't know a whole lot about this stuff which is why I made the post.

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Thought Art said:

@Leo Gura It’s working with the mind body connection and bio energy. Just had Chinese roots, language and epistemology. Big part of my work is linking my understanding of western and Chinese science. 

Well, I'll leave that to you, sensei.

Edited January 25, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Federico del pueblo]

@Thought Art Yeah, that's the kind of stuff I was thinking about.

2 hours ago, Thought Art said:

Stress and trauma is held in the organs, tissues and nervous system.

Do you know how we can even know that? It seems obvious that stress is regulated by the nervous system (sympathetic and parasympathetic NS), but what does it mean that the stress is held in the nervous system? Or are we again just talking about the neural connections in the brain?

Even harder to grasp is how stress is held in an organ or tissues. Unless this merely means that we have chemical reactions like production of neurotransmitters and hormones, but I think you mean something else right?

2 hours ago, Thought Art said:

3. We tend to tense up our bodies when we are stressed. We numb ourselves and avoid feeling emotional discomfort. We store up this negative energy in our tissues and energy centres. By doing exercises like body scan, and various types of Qigong and self massage you can begin to purge these toxic emotions. You can than cultivate healthy Qi, or life force energy, store in your Qi vessels, and circulate it through the body. When you purge these negative emotions and begin to charge up your bodies Qi battery you can begin to feel extreme juicy pleasure throughout the body.

Yeah, that's exactly the stuff I meant. First you have trauma or other conditioning. Then this gets stored in the body as energy, I assume it's some kind of unhelpful energy, but you can transform it into something better I guess. It would be extremely interesting to know what actually happens when we transform this energy (if that's what really happens at all). Like there are these accounts of people who do a chakra meditation and then energy from the lower centers get "liberated" and flow upwards in the brain, which can cause a spiritual experience. 

So I assume that this "bad", low frequency energy of the trauma that sits in the body must become something else.

Thanks for your post!