Feelings Are Meant to Move

 

Part 3 of 5…The emotional body, and how to let what's inside you travel

Think about the last time you cried and when you stopped you actually felt like you finished. Maybe it was in the car, or the shower, or at a funeral where someone sang the right hymn. Afterward you probably felt lighter, or a little wrung out, and maybe oddly clearer. Something had moved through you and kept going.

Now think about the last time you didn't let the tears finish. You swallowed the lump in your throat because there was a meeting at 10:00. You said "I'm fine" because the people around you needed you to be. You stayed busy, and the feeling went somewhere. It didn't leave, though…

The second body

I often talk about the four energy bodies that radiate out from each of us: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. The emotional body is the second layer, just beyond the physical one. It's where our feelings live and travel.

The word emotion comes from the Latin for "to move out." Feelings are energy in motion. They're built to rise, crest, and pass through us, the way weather crosses a valley. Anger, sorrow, fear, delight, and longing are all meant to arrive, be felt, and then…keep...going.

When we hold a feeling in place, we don't dissolve it. We just stop its motion. It settles into the body as a tight chest, a clenched jaw, shallow breathing, a heaviness behind the eyes, or a tiredness that sleep doesn't fix. It also tends to leak out sideways, as irritability with someone we love or tears over something small. Most of us have been told that's overreacting. Usually it's an old feeling finally getting its turn.

Why we get stuck

As a woman in the western world I learned early that that some feelings weren't welcome. Maybe you heard it too... "don't cry" or "be strong”... maybe you learned that your sadness made the adults around you uncomfortable, or that being the capable (the one who was able to hold emotions at bay) was how you earned your place. Those were reasonable ways to survive. They worked, and they kept us safe and connected.

Over a lifetime, though, unmoved feelings accumulate. This is part of why grief can be so heavy. It's rarely only the loss in front of us in present time. It's EVERY EARLIER LOSS we didn't have room for, now arriving all at once.

Moving without drowning

If you're someone who's held a lot in, the idea of letting it all out can feel frightening, and that makes sense. Many of us worry that if we start, we won't be able to stop. Here's the good news: feelings don't have to move all at once. They can move a little at a time.

1. Start with the body, not the story. Skip the question of why you feel this way. Ask where it lives. Is it a weight on your chest, heat in your face, a knot in your stomach? Describe it like a curious observer: tight, warm, heavy, fluttery. Naming the sensation gives you something to be with that isn't the whole narrative.

2. Name it simply. "This is sadness." "This is anger." "This is fear dressed up as busyness." Putting a word (or words) on a feeling often steadies it.

3. Keep one foot on the shore. Place your feet on the floor. Feel the chair holding you. Notice one thing in the room that is safe and ordinary. You can move toward the feeling for a minute, then back to the floor, then toward it again. This back-and-forth lets the feeling move without taking you under.

4. Let the breath do some of the work. Breath is the bridge between the body and the emotions. A long, slow exhale, longer than the inhale, tells your nervous system it can soften. Try a sigh. Let a sound come out if one wants to.

5. Give it somewhere to go. Feelings move through the body, so let the body help. Walk, stretch, shake out your hands, hum, rock, cry, or put a hand over the place that aches. Write for five minutes and then throw the page away if you need to.

6. Keep it short. Set a timer for two minutes or three minutes or five minutes. You can come back tomorrow. Small, repeated moments of movement usually do more than one big dramatic release.

You don't have to do it alone

Some feelings are too big, or too old, to move alone, and that isn't failure. It's what humans are built for. We heal in company: a friend who stays, a pastor or spiritual director, a counselor, a grief group, a hand held over the heart.

If the feelings ever feel overwhelming, or you're afraid for your safety, please reach out to a mental health professional or a crisis line right away. Moving feelings gently is a practice, and it isn't a replacement for care.

A gentle invitation

This week, notice where a feeling might be asking for a little room. You don't have to fix it or understand it. Just offer it a breath and a minute of your attention, and see whether it moves.

If you’re ready to talk, schedule a free conversation here or reply to this post, and we’ll find a gentle first step together.

What is one feeling you've been carrying that might be ready to move?

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Honored to walk with you,
Erin

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What the Physical Body Remembers

 

Part 2 of 5 - Last week I told you I’d started to feel translucent, a shadow you could see right through. What I didn’t say is where I felt it first.

It wasn’t in my thoughts. It was in my body: a tightness across my chest, a shallow pull on the inhale, shoulders that had crept up toward my ears making my neck ache and restricting me from moving my neck. My body knew something was wrong long before my words caught up.

That’s what bodies do. They remember.

The body keeps its own record

We tend to think of grief as something that happens in the mind or the heart. And that is true - but we don’t see it as readily there.  As I watch and learn about grief and loss I noticed early on the same thing again and again: grief moves into the body and makes itself at home.

Many people notice it in the same few places.

• The chest. Heaviness, tightness, a feeling of something pressing or hollow. Sometimes it’s the ache people mean when they say “heartbroken.” (I think this is where I learned about it first - that people can actually feel like they are having a heart attack)
• The throat. A lump, a catch, a swallowed word. This is often where the unsaid settles, including the things we couldn’t say at the funeral, in the meeting, or at the dinner table.
• The gut. Knots, nausea, a loss of appetite, or a churning that doesn’t have a clear cause.
• The shoulders and jaw. Bracing. Holding. The body’s way of staying on guard when the world no longer feels safe.

You might also feel it as exhaustion that sleep doesn’t touch, or a heaviness in the limbs, or a strange numbness, as if the volume on your own body has been turned down.

None of this means something is wrong with you. It means your body is doing exactly what bodies do when something we love can’t stay as it was. It is trying to protect you.  It is trying to put up buttresses to support you, where you have not been noticing you need it. 

Why the body holds on

When we can’t say the thing, can’t cry, can’t be fully ourselves, the feeling doesn’t disappear. It needs to go somewhere. And often it goes quiet and low, into muscle and breath.

One of the first things the body does when we are managing a feeling is change how we breathe. We hold it, shorten it, or tuck it into the upper chest. Over time, shallow breathing becomes the new normal, and we stop noticing. We also stop taking in as much of what nourishes us, including connection, comfort, and joy.

That is actually why I begin with the body in this series. Even though I am not a physical therapist, or masseuse or a trainer.  Before we can change the story of how we are moving in the world, we need to find out what the body has been carrying.

You can’t force a release

We don’t need to dig for the grief or pry it loose. A body that has been bracing for a long time doesn’t respond to force. It responds to safety, to gentleness, and to being noticed.

So the practice this week isn’t about fixing anything. It’s about listening.

A practice: Listening Hands

This takes about three to five minutes.

1. Find a position that feels supported. Sit, lie down, or lean back, whatever lets your body rest.
2. Take one natural breath, without changing anything.
3. Place one hand on your chest and one on your belly. Let them rest there, warm and unhurried.
4. Ask quietly, “What are you holding?” You don’t need an answer in words. Notice any sensation: tightness, warmth, heaviness, or nothing at all.
5. When you find the place that feels most held, rest your hand there. Breathe in slowly through your nose, sending the breath toward wherever your hand in resting.
6. Exhale slowly through your mouth, a little longer than the inhale, as if you’re offering that place some room.
7. Stay for five or six breaths. Then notice: did anything shift? even slightly?

If nothing comes up, that’s fine. Listening is the practice, and some days the body just needs to know you’re there.

If this practice feels uncomfortable or brings up more than you want to feel right now, open your eyes, feel your feet on the floor, and return to your natural breath. Stopping is also a way of caring for yourself.

This week

Pay attention to the moments when your body speaks up: a tight throat in a hard conversation, a clenched stomach before a visit, shoulders creeping up while you scroll.

You don’t have to do anything about it. Just say to yourself, Oh, there you are.

And if you’d like to share, I’d love to hear: where does your body hold your grief?

Breathing in, I listen. Breathing out, I let it be here.

If you’d like company on the way

Your body has been carrying a lot, and you don’t have to listen to it alone. Through EMBody Wisdom, I offer grief coaching, life and transition coaching, spiritual direction, and Healing Touch, all of which begin with the body and breath.

If you’re ready to talk, schedule a free conversation here or reply to this post, and we’ll find a gentle first step together.

When You Start to Disappear: A Body-First Beginning

Part 1 of 5 - I have always been someone who speaks her truth. Ask anyone who knows me. So I didn't notice it when that started to change - at first, the way you don't notice a window slowly fogging over.

Somewhere along the way, there were more and more conversations in my life that stopped giving me back to myself. I was talking, but I wasn't being met. I wasn't catching my own reflection in the faces and words of the people around me, the way we do when we're really connected. And without deciding to, I had also stopped taking in joy. I wasn't breathing it in. I wasn't letting it land.

It was as though a darkness had formed, thin as a film, over almost everything.  Like I was becoming translucent.  I had a harder time letting the words move past my lips, afraid that they would just drop in front of me.

It seems almost too much, but I think I want to call this what it is: grief. Nobody died. But something I love, a self that moves freely and connects and receives, couldn't stay as it was.

The grief nobody names

There are no casseroles for this kind of loss. No cards, no funeral, no one asking how you're holding up.  It is not no way as immediately life altering and I don’t want to compare it to the deep grief we feel with the loss of life. And yet... we grieve the person we can't be in a room, the dream that quietly ended, the role that stopped fitting, the friendship that thinned, the version of ourselves we put away to get through a hard season.

If that's you, I want to say this plainly: your grief counts. You don't need a death to qualify.

Where we've been

If you're new here, or just need a refresher, here's the ground we've covered together.

• Grief is love with nowhere to go.
• Breath is the one body function we can leave alone (it is automatic) and also steer and strengthen.
• The four bodies, physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, are the four places grief sits and the four doors through which healing can enter.

Why I'm starting with the body

For years I've sat with people in grief, I have had the honor to be present in it with others.  And as I have observed and learned through other avenues about what is “normal” is that grief shows up in the body before it shows up in the story. The tight chest. The held breath. The jaw that never unclenches. The shoulders that forgot how to drop.

When we can't be ourselves, or can't be received as ourselves, we often stop breathing fully. We manage how we appear. We take in less. And we start to disappear, one shallow breath at a time.

While that sounds dire - it is also the good news. The body is where we can be empowered to begin to find a little ease again. Not a fix, just a little room.

Where we're headed

Over the next several weeks, we'll walk through each of the four bodies together, with a simple practice every week. In late November we'll make room for joy and gratitude beside grief. Then, through Advent, we'll practice waiting in the dark, and on the longest night of the year, we'll sit with those for whom the holidays are heavy.

Come as you are. Dip in and out. You can't do this wrong.

A practice: Wiping the Window

This takes about two minutes.

1. Find a position that feels supported: sitting, lying down, or leaning against a wall.
2. Place one hand on your chest, where you hold yourself in.
3. Breathe in slowly through your nose, as if you're drawing in one small thing that nourishes you: a face you love, a sound, a patch of light.
4. Pause for a moment at the top.
5. Exhale slowly through your mouth, longer than the inhale, as if you're gently clearing a little of the fog.
6. Repeat three times. Then notice what changed, even slightly. Nothing needs to. Noticing is enough.

If any breathing practice feels uncomfortable, return to your natural breath, open your eyes, and notice the feel your feet on the floor and your hand on your chest. That's a perfectly good practice too.

This week

Notice what you're taking in, and what you've stopped taking in.

Then ask yourself: who or what could reflect me back to myself this week? You don't need a grand gesture. One conversation. One walk with a friend. One small moment of joy, actually let in.  You don’t even need to try to manufacture it - just be ready to notice when it happens.

And if you'd like to share, I'd love to hear: where in your body do you hold back the most?

Breathing in, I make room. Breathing out, I clear the glass.

If any of this sounds like you, if you’re feeling translucent, muted, or cut off from joy, you don’t have to work it out alone. I’d be honored to walk with you.

Through EMBody Wisdom, I offer grief coaching, life and transition coaching, spiritual direction, end-of-life coaching, and Healing Touch. Each begins in the same place this series does: with the body, the breath, and what’s true for you right now.

If you’re ready to talk, schedule a free conversation here or reply to this post, and we’ll find a gentle first step together.

The Breath Keeps Calling Me Back

 

For the past few weeks I've been writing about grief and about Healing Touch. Those two have been woven together in my work for a long time. This week I want to tell you where my attention is drifting, because it keeps drifting there, and I'm learning to listen when that happens.

It's breath.

Breathwork has been circling me for a while. It shows up in a conversation, a book, a moment in the middle of a hard day, and then I tuck it away in the back of my mind where I keep things I'll get to "someday." But it keeps coming back. At some point I had to admit that something that returns this often isn't peripheral. It's asking for a place at the table.

Part of why I'm able to say yes now is that I'm not training for anything at the moment. My running has quieted, and that has opened up space I didn't know I was missing. I don't think the timing is accidental. Sometimes Spirit makes room before we've even asked, and the invitation is simply to notice the opening and step into it.

So starting October 12, I'm beginning a six-week study of breathwork. I'm not pursuing a certification right now. I want to understand it more deeply: what is actually happening in the body, why certain patterns settle us and others stir us up, and how to offer it gently to others, including in grief groups where people are carrying so much and often don't know where to put it.

The part that connects to everything else, the thing I'm working on most, in my own life, is being present. This is not about "performing presence", but actually arriving in the room I'm in. My days are full, and it's easy to be in one conversation while my mind is already in the next one. What helps me is small and humble. Before I walk into a conversation, I take one slow breath, in for four, hold for two out for eight. Then I quietly name what I want to bring and what I need. Breathe, bring, need. That's it. It takes about fifteen seconds, and it changes how I show up.

I've come to think breath is the most available form of presence we have. It's already with us. We don't have to buy it, schedule it, or get it right. It's the one thing that's always happening in the present moment, which makes it a faithful doorway back to the body, and the body is where grief lives and where healing begins.

If you've been feeling scattered, braced, or far from yourself lately, try it right now. Breathe in for four. Hold for two. Let it out slowly for eight. Then notice what's here.

I'll share what I'm learning as I go. In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you: when do you most lose your presence, and what helps you come back?

Honored to walk with you,
Erin