Mapping our emotions in the body

We often think of our emotions as a mental reaction, but actually, the truth is a lot more complicated.

Emotions are often felt in the body, or present with physical manifestations (symptoms or illnesses), and people's experiences of different emotions can be linked to specific changes in their bodily sensations.

In five experiments in a study published in the National Library of Medicine, researchers showed people different emotional words, stories, movies, or facial expressions, and asked them to color the parts of their body that they felt reacting to each stimulus.

In an analysis of the results from the experiments, positive emotions were grouped together, while negative emotions were separated into four distinct clusters:

• anger and fear,

• anxiety and shame,

• sadness and depression, and

• disgust, contempt, and envy.

Surprise was not included in any of these clusters, and the neutral emotional state remained distinct from all other emotions.

Various emotions were consistently associated with uniquely common patterns of bodily sensations, and these patterns were similar across people from Western European and East Asian cultures.

This suggests that emotions are represented in the body as culturally universal maps of bodily sensations, and that these sensations may play a key role in how we experience emotions consciously.

From this data, the researchers concluded that emotional feelings are associated with specific patterns of bodily sensations, and that these patterns may be at the heart of how we experience emotions.

It’s fascinating to see these shared experiences reflected visually, and it also helps us understand where we might be storing emotional baggage from unprocessed hardships and/or trauma within our bodies.

Learn more about the science behind emotional baggage here, and click here to try Somatic Activated Healing today for free and start dropping your baggage for good.