To read the first piece of this two-part blog series on breaking down the complexity of emotions and the human brain, click here.
Let’s now look at the seat of our unconscious mind – the reptilian brain.
Here is where the mind and body work together. It’s automatic, it’s a habit, it’s a memory and it is an unconscious program. Just like when you drive your car, you don’t have to think about it. It has become who we are. Once our body and mind are in coherence, we are now in a state of being.
The body is the mind and your emotions are your unconscious mind. Therefore, it is fair to say that your unconscious mind is your body.
This is vital information because your body is going to seek how to recreate that emotion over and over again because that’s your identity. It’s the reason why it looks for more of that emotion as evidence that it exists.
Your body is addicted to your repeating emotions
Allow this to play out.
Pay attention.
As you are sitting here reading this article, you could be experiencing a rush of heat up your spine, sweaty palms and then a knot in your stomach. You may be resisting what you are reading and you ‘label’ that feeling as frustration.
The moment you label it – it becomes an emotion (energy in motion). In reality, it’s only a bodily sensation. The body is looking to go to the past because it believes it is in the past.
The unconscious mind cannot tell the difference between what is real or what is imagined.
So, what do we do?
Rather than stopping it, allow your body to experience the emotion and settle it down into the ‘present’ moment. Over time, with repetition, the body starts to trust the ‘present’ moment … letting go of the past.
Then, like anything new, it starts to resist. It worries about the anticipated future. Once again, all you have to do is settle it down into the ‘present’ moment because that’s where true transformation takes place.
Every time you do that, you are telling your body that it is no longer the mind. You are telling it that you are the mind, and you are breaking free from the old program.
Your will is getting greater than the program
Our old friend Albert Einstein says that the only source of knowledge is experience. If we know experience is the body in motion (emotion), why the hell are we trying to get in the way of the flow?
Mind you, I am not saying to let your emotions roll out for an Oscar. What I am saying is allow yourself to feel.
When you lower the volume of your emotion, it will start to dissipate. Ultimately, when you break your addiction to your emotions, the side effects are emotions of higher vibrations. You will experience joy, gratitude, freedom and love.
I know what you are processing now. Is Catherine saying that we are not allowed to grieve? Of course not, when a person loses a loved one, grieving is natural. It’s a biological process, it’s neuro-pruning, it’s a death of circuitry.
Once we have experienced that, we have a greater understanding of loss and change.
However, our emotions keep us trapped in our past, and so many individuals strive for freedom in some way, shape or form. They long for freedom to have an opinion, freedom to have a voice, freedom to be themselves.
Why not be free like a child? Why not allow ourselves to feel the emotions?
Instead of repressing them; why not let them go and then get on with it.
A memory without emotional charge is called wisdom
Our soul can’t go to the future, and it can’t create the future with the lens of the past.
Our body is influencing our emotions. Think about it.
How many of us live a life of guilt, shame or unworthiness?
Most of us do in some weird and wonderful way, but it keeps us in that vibration. Consequently, our brain will find more evidence to say, ‘see, I told you so…’
As we understand it now, our body keeps a physical memory of all of our experiences. We have lots of memories stored in our brain that we can recount at any given moment.
We are so well trained. We are the expert. We can recall names, faces and even where an event took place, what it smelled like, what we experienced, etc.
That is our memorised emotion in action.
However, these memories eventually fade or change as time passes and we mature. Still, even when the memory begins to fade from our brain, it lives on in our body … in the form of physical sensations and behaviour patterns.
The body doesn’t forget.
There is so much evidence now that reveals how anger, anxiety and depression can trigger inflammation linked to heart disease. Furthermore, research shows that emotional distress can speed up cellular aging.
Clearly, emotions can have an impact on our health.
The events of our lives leave physiological imprints on our bodies, especially when we experience trauma or situations of extreme stress that cause our body to fight, flee or freeze in order to cope.
The body doesn’t have words to express itself, so it responds with physical sensations.
90% of our energy is used to suppress our emotions from our past
You hear it all of the time. Stress is the number one killer. Stress keeps us sick and it creates disease.
So, are the experts telling us that emotions keep us sick and that 80% of health is stress related? Maybe.
Unexpressed emotions stay trapped in our nervous system, and that stress responds to thought alone. Therefore, suppressed emotions show up in our physical body.
This is what we call emotional baggage. Does that mean our thoughts alone can make us sick? Oh, dear…
If you have a look at the functionality of our brain, it downloads emotions first. Nevertheless, keep in mind that every emotion has a different frequency.
For example, let’s take the vibration of self-sabotage, fear, low self-worth. Although invisible, these emotional energies are heavy in feelings, and they are a dense vibration.
The opposite of the spectrum is love, joy, creativity and the feeling of belonging. They are a higher vibration, a little like your head up in a cloud. They are lighter and more heightened in feelings.
Once you become the observer of your body in action, it will become very clear to you what your emotional patterns are. They may show up in relationships with money, individuals or self.
It could be as simple as a headache. You focus on your pain and you take painkillers. What about asking yourself, ‘what thoughts are creating my headache right now?’
Letting go of trapped emotions
If 90% of our pain is trapped emotions and if we can peel back those layers to really expose what emotion is trapped in our body, we can then create true transformation.
That’s what happens when we release trapped emotions. We are detoxing our body from the addiction to our emotions that keeps us in this infinite loop.
Keep in mind, it’s not going to happen overnight. But it will happen.
Remember. We create our own reality. Always check in with your reality from time to time. Is there evidence of it? Is it a program or pattern of the past that no longer serves you?
Make this your motto:
I can.
And I will.
