What is an Emotion?

These days people are more and more interested in emotional health. This is great! Mastering your emotional health will do amazing things for your overall health, happiness, and wellbeing. If you really want to master your emotions and be fully emotionally healthy though, it helps to understand what an emotion is in the first place. That way you will know what you are dealing with, and be able to identify more effective strategies and techniques to bring health and balance to your emotions.

Sometimes people have some misconceptions about what an emotion is. Sometimes they may think that an emotion is just something in your head. You can just choose to have it or not have it by thinking about it. That’s not an emotion though, that’s a thought! Other people think that emotions are just things that ‘happen’ to them. Like they have no control over them, they just rise up from somewhere unknown. Again that is not an accurate description of an emotion!

Emotions have both mental and physical components. They involve both our psychology and our physiology. They are a subjective interpretation of physiological responses to our environment, mediated by either our conscious or unconscious mind. I’ll give a few examples to explain.

If I walk to the edge of a cliff and look down, my body recognizes the danger or falling and gives me a blast of adrenaline to give me extra focus so I will avoid tripping over the edge. This adrenaline and the resulting physiological changes are a real phenomenon in my body. There is a squeeze in my lower back caused by the muscles contracting around my kidneys and adrenal glands to support them in the release of adrenaline. There is a rising of energy up my spine to my brain. It is likely that my pupils dilate. The nerves to my muscles become highly activated. If the stimulation is very strong I may even tremble. And there are more possible noticeable physical changes that may be observed depending on the specifics of the situation. But this by itself does not make an emotion. It is our interpretation of these physiological changes combined with the changes themselves that creates what we call an emotion. There is more than one direction that this can go in, because how I interpret the situation and the changes is subjective. If I am scared of heights, then I interpret the physical changes as fear. If I am trembling, I am trembling with fear. If I am someone into extreme sports such as base jumping, then I experience these same physiological responses as excitement. If they are strong enough that I tremble, then I am trembling with excitement.

Another example could be the burst of energy that we get when our body releases cortisol. Cortisol gets a bad rap! People often talk about cortisol being the ‘stress’ hormone, and that cortisol is ‘bad’. Cortisol is really really really good! If it wasn’t good, then our body wouldn’t produce it! Cortisol causes our liver to release glycogen into the bloodstream so that we can have a surge of energy to do something or to deal with a situation. This is also usually accompanied by increased activation of the muscles – again to help us deal with something. This is great, and so useful!

We can choose to interpret this release of cortisol and increased muscle activation as Anger – or as Passion and Enthusiasm! After all, we only become Angry about things that we care about. If we didn’t care, we would have no Anger – or is that actually Passion…? The physiological response is essentially the same, but how we accept and channel the energy that comes from it will be quite different depending on our interpretation. When we interpret this response as Anger, we are more likely to restrict or try to hold the energy in. This can lead to maintaining the level of cortisol for too long, which will tire our system out and cause blood sugar imbalance and persistent tension in our body. Then it becomes a problem!  If on the other hand we interpret the physiological response as Passion or Enthusiasm, we are much more likely to put that energy to use. We will let the effects of the hormone release work through our bodies, releasing the activated state, and we will be more likely to achieve positive things with our body and in our lives.

When we start to understand that emotions involve both our mind and our body, it puts us in a good position to start to take control of them. We recognize that our psychology – the way we think, has a big role to play in how we interpret and use the energy from our emotions. But we also recognize that the emotions have a real physical basis.  They are not just ‘in our head’ they exist in the intersection between our mind and body. So… to effectively deal with and gain mastery over our emotions, it would make sense to use practices that involve both the mind and body working together.  Just addressing one or the other is unlikely to be as effective as dealing with both together.

Hmmm… sounds to me like qigong could be useful for that. Qigong practices typically involve using the mind and body together, in harmony with our breath to move and gain skill with the energy in our bodies, and in fact there are several qigong practices that specifically work with the emotions. Not just by thinking about them, but by also gently stimulating and relaxing the body so that the energy from the emotions can be worked through and used for our benefit, then released.

One such practice are the Twelve Rivers qigong exercises which you will find in the Qigong Foundation Practices course. These movements massage the different organs and meridians in the body, and balance and release the postures which may have become deep habits from holding onto different emotions for too long. You can find these practices here.

Another useful practice is the Long White Cloud Qigong Five Element Sounds practice. In this practice we make use of sounds that are instinctually related to different emotions. Using these sounds we gently vibrate our organs and glands, to release tensions and congested energy that may be associated with blocked emotions. Activating these organs with vibration can also help to build up and strengthen physiological or emotional responses that are lacking as well. If you are curious about that, you can receive access to a free mini course on the Five Element Sounds and emotions by signing up to our mailing list in the link below.

I hope this has been a useful introduction to a wholistic view of working with emotions. Qigong can be one great tool in working in this area. Watch our newsletter for more insights into different aspects of qigong and how it applies to your life.

Yours in qi!

John Munro

Long White Cloud Qigong