Emotions are typically perceived as psychological experiences, but the truth is emotions don’t just stay in your mind—they impact your body too. When emotions are unprocessed or repressed, they can manifest as tension, pain, or discomfort in your muscles, joints, and even organs.
Over time, unprocessed emotions can lead to chronic stress, anxiety, and physical discomfort. Understanding how emotions get trapped in the body, and how somatic exercises can help you to release them - through movement, breath, sound, touch - is key if you want to maintain a healthy and strong connection between your mind and body, and live with greater emotional freedom and wellbeing.
How Emotions Get Stuck in the Body
When we experience an intense emotion, whether it's fear, anger, sadness, or even joy, your body responds by activating the autonomic nervous system, particularly the sympathetic branch, which prepares you for fight or flight. Hormones like adrenaline and cortisol surge through the body, preparing muscles for action, increasing heart rate, and making breathing faster and shallower. This physiological response is helpful in dangerous situations, but when emotions aren’t processed or expressed, this energy remains stuck in the body.
Instead of releasing this build-up emotional energy, you might choose to suppress your emotions due to social norms, conditioning or your personal coping mechanisms. Over time, unprocessed emotions can become “frozen” in the body, manifesting as muscle tension, pain, digestive issues, or even chronic pain.
The somatic nervous system—which governs your voluntary movements and sensory feedback—is deeply intertwined with how you experience and store emotions. When emotions are left unprocessed, they influence muscle tension, body posture, and even how you move. Over time, the body becomes accustomed to holding onto these emotions, creating patterns of tension and restriction in the muscles and fascia.
Somatic Exercises for Emotional Release
To release these stuck emotions, your body must be given the chance to complete the emotional processing cycle. Somatic exercises are a body-centred approach that helps you reconnecting with your bodily sensations and emotions guiding you through the process of expression and release. It focuses on reconnecting the mind and body, using practices that engage your somatic nervous system like movement, breath, sound, and touch to facilitate emotional release. Let’s explore each of these practices in more detail.
Releasing Tension and Stored Emotions through MOVEMENT
Movement is one of the most effective ways to release stuck emotional energy. Physical activity, especially somatic movement or practices like yoga, tai chi, or dance, helps your body discharge the energy that was mobilised during an emotional response.
Somatic movement emphasises gentle, mindful movement that helps you to tune into your bodily sensations. It encourages you to notice where you might be holding tension or discomfort and to gently release it through slow, intentional movement. Practices like shaking or dancing can mimic the body’s natural response to stress, allowing emotions to flow out of the muscles and tissues.
Stretching and yoga help release physical tension, particularly in areas where emotions commonly get stuck, such as the hips, shoulders, and chest. As the body releases physical tension, emotional energy is also freed.
Movement not only discharges physical tension but also engages the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for calming and restoring your body. Check out this Yoga Stretch Video Playlist on YouTube to find the practice that works best for you!
Regulating your Nervous System through BREATH
Breath is the bridge between the mind and body, and it plays a critical role in emotional regulation. During emotional suppression, breathing often becomes shallow, limiting oxygen flow and increasing tension in the body. Conscious, deep breathing techniques can help regulate your nervous system and facilitate the release of stuck emotions.
Deep diaphragmatic breathing (or belly breathing) activates the vagus nerve, which promotes your body’s relaxation response. This shifts the nervous system from the fight-or-flight mode to the rest-and-digest state, where healing and emotional processing can occur.
Practices like pranayama (breath control in yoga) or box breathing (4 counts in, hold, 4 counts out, hold) create a rhythm that soothes the nervous system and calms the mind. This rhythmic breathing encourages emotional energy to flow, helping release the emotions held in the body.
Connected breath is a rhythmic breathing technique that helps release trapped emotions by creating a continuous flow of air through the body. This deep, uninterrupted breathing pattern stimulates the nervous system, relaxes muscle tension, and allows suppressed feelings to surface and be released.
Breathwork helps break the cycle of emotional repression by allowing the body to fully experience and process emotions in a safe and controlled manner.
Voicing your emotions through SOUND
Sound is another powerful way to release trapped emotions. Your voice can be a direct expression of emotions, especially those that are suppressed or unacknowledged.
Vocalising emotions through humming, chanting, or sighing can release tension in the throat, jaw, and chest, where emotions often get stuck. Sound stimulates the vagus nerve and helps the body release emotional energy through vibration.
Crying and laughter are natural emotional releases that help your body complete the stress cycle. Both crying and laughter discharge emotional energy, allowing the body to relax afterward.
Making sound allows emotions to be expressed outwardly, helping to relieve the pressure of suppressed feelings. Watch this video to know more about mantra meditation which includes a short practice to get you started.
Comforting and Grounding the Body through TOUCH
Touch can be profoundly healing for the release of emotions. Safe, supportive touch provides the body with a sense of grounding and security, which is essential for emotional processing.
Self-soothing touch, like placing a hand over the heart or on the belly, helps the body feel safe enough to release emotions. The act of gentle touch activates the parasympathetic nervous system, encouraging relaxation and emotional release.
Massage or bodywork can help release tension in specific areas where emotions are held, such as the neck, shoulders, and lower back. By physically manipulating these areas, massage therapists help clients release not only muscle tension but also the emotions stored in those tissues.
Touch creates a sense of connection, signalling to the body that it’s safe to let go of stored emotional energy. Try this 10min somatic practice for anxiety and stress relief combining touch and breath!
Completing the Emotional Processing Cycle
The key to releasing stuck emotions is to allow the body to complete the emotional processing cycle. This means fully experiencing the emotion, expressing it, and then releasing the energy which was generated to deal with it. Somatic practices help by reconnecting you with your body’s natural emotional regulation process, guiding emotional energy to flow freely.
When emotions are allowed to be processed and expressed, your body returns to a state of equilibrium. This not only relieves physical symptoms like tension and pain but also promotes emotional resilience, reducing the likelihood of future emotional suppression.
Conclusion
Unprocessed emotions can have a profound impact on both your physical and mental health, but they don’t have to remain stuck. Through somatic exercises for emotional release which involve movement, breath, sound, touch you can release the emotional energy that gets trapped in your body, allowing for your healing journey to unfold.
By incorporating somatic practices into your daily life, you can better process your emotions, maintain a healthy and strong connection between your mind and body, and live with greater emotional freedom and wellbeing.
Thanks for reading until the end!
If you're curious about Somatic Coaching and you're ready to take care of yourself and take aligned steps towards a specific goal which will help you become the person you want to be, then email me at info@consueloyoga.com to book your FREE Intro to Somatic Coaching Call with me.
Until the next time...
Be HUMAN, be YOU!
With gratitude,
Consuelo
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