It’s September 2020. I’m sitting at my laptop, one leg on my chair, and googling “How to process my emotions?”. For the past year, I’d been obsessed with an unrequited crush and had undergone rollercoaster after rollercoaster. I laid in pieces, and that evening I said, “Enough is enough. I can’t go on like this.”
That day marks my journey into embodied healing. It’s the beginning of a transformation that’s changed my entire life in ways I never thought possible.
I’ve waded through the muck, the swamp, the darkness. I let myself crack open. I’ve surrendered into the cold waters, sinking to the bottom without air, and my breath found me when I stopped resisting.
And since I’ve gone through all that and come out more alive than ever, it’s now my responsibility to guide others.
First, this isn’t a guide how to get rid of emotions.
You’re not alive to be numb.
You’re not alive to avoid sensations.
We can’t select our preferred emotions and choose to only feel them and never the others. That’s not how bodies are designed. Your capacity to experience the depth and nourishment of one emotion is directly tied to your capacity to experience all others.
When you can open into the deepest grief, you can feel the greatest joy.
And that’s not because those emotions are somehow opposites. Who decided that grief can’t feel pleasurable? Grief is deeply pleasurable and nourishing when you surrender to it, actually.
But humanity decided that certain emotions are “good” while others are “bad”. You want to feel some emotions (in moderation), but not others.
This worldview is fundamentally untrue. It turns people into victims of their own bodies. It hijacks the biological equilibrium and innate wisdom of our systems.
We’re collectively trained to rely on the mind for everything. Most people feel nothing below their necks, so when emotions stir up their numb tissues, they default to letting their minds take over.
Let’s say your beloved pet died. What’s going to happen is that you’ll relive all the happiness and struggles, the cuddles and the cuteness. Your mind will replay the most emotionally charged moments on loop. You’ll cry and reminisce about the past and think how unfair the world is, how terrible life is to have taken your pet away.
Another example: Your partner broke up with you. Instead of feeling the physical sensations of all the emotions coming up inside, your mind will demonise your partner. How dare they hurt you like this after everything you’ve done for them? They must’ve been a narcissist all along! Then you’ll vent to your family and friends about how evil your ex is, and they’ll collude and agree, thus validating your ego and distracting you even more from the grief inside your body.
The human mind creates countless stories to keep itself entertained and for the ego to keep protecting itself in the face of the chaotic and uncontrollable.
Wild animals don’t get traumatised like humans do.
When a deer gets chased by a wolf and escapes, its body shakes until the flight response is completed. This way, the energy that was necessary for survival doesn’t get stuck in the body. The accompanying hormones like adrenaline and cortisol run their course, the brain realizes its environment is now safe, and regulation sets in.
Wild animals don’t get traumatised because they lack the thinking parts of the human brain. They’re fully embodied from birth till death. The biological processes for handling stress work perfectly.
The thinking brain disrupts these processes.
Has your body ever wanted to cry in public, but you thought, “Oh no, all these people will think I’m weak!”, so you suppressed your tears?
Or maybe you really wanted to laugh at something, but didn’t, because you were in the middle of class?
Can you feel how much energy it takes to suppress those emotions? Trauma traps a lot more energy than that.
And that energy is still inside you, it still fires your neurological pathways, and it still causes stress hormones to be released. The arousal cycle didn’t get completed. It’s stuck.
We can’t think our way into a regulated nervous system. We have to access those parts of our brain which activated when the trauma happened. To do that, our thinking mind needs to get out of the way. We have to bring awareness into our bodies and physical sensations, which creates safety, and when our bodies feel safe, they can heal by releasing stuck energy.
Here’s a link to an example of a polar bear shaking to complete its flight response after tranquillisation.
Do you think that polar bear was ashamed or embarrassed for how its body shook on the ground, surrounded by a bunch of hairless, two-legged beings? Of course not.
Animal bodies don’t care about being judged for shaking when they’re releasing stress.
You’re an animal, so you’re also going to shake.
First steps:
Make sure you have privacy and won’t be disturbed during these practices. When you’re scared of someone walking in on or hearing you, it’ll keep your mind alert and prevent you from dropping into your body.
Keep your pets out of the room. They might get scared by your unfamiliar behaviour and we don’t want them to freak out.
Don’t go into these practices hungry, thirsty or exhausted. Be fed and well-rested. Prepare a glass of water to drink during and afterwards.
Always redirect your attention back to your body’s sensations. Your mind will distract you with fantasy and checking out. It’s inevitable. Notice it, then put your attention back on your physical reality.
If you have the impulse to touch, tap, stroke etc. a body part, then do it. This can add the necessary electricity for your body to release what’s stuck.
Music is a great tool to tap into certain emotional frequencies. You can also watch a sad movie to access grief, for example; if you’ve avoided grief for years or decades, this can be the entryway.
Alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs are numbing and dissociative. Be aware that being under their influence will hinder the full potential of these practices.
Set a timer. If you do get lost in thought, an alarm will bring you back to reality. You want enough time for your body to relax and be receptive, but not so much that you overwork it. I’d recommend 15 minutes for a total beginner.
Finding An Anchor
As we’ve seen in the polar bear example, the body knows how to process stress and trauma which is just unreleased energy.
In other words, your body isn’t interested in your saviorship, opinions, or directions.
It won’t take you further than it’s ready to go. It’ll open not according to your mind’s preferences, but to its own rules. Millions of years of evolution have wired the “How to” into your genes. Your task is get your mind’s distractions, judgments, and general noise out of the way.
But as a beginner, it can seem scary to lose the illusion of control. When you first permit sensations to be consciously felt, it can feel overwhelming to your mind and it wants to make the experience wrong and dangerous, effectively sabotaging your body’s innate healing again.
To keep the mind on board here, we find an anchor.
An anchor grounds us in reality and prevents the mind from creating a story about the sensations. Ideally, that anchor is a physical sensation that’s safe and familiar to you. Maybe your heartbeat, how your hair tickles your shoulders, the warmth of your genitals. You can also stroke and tap your skin, or look closely at your fingerprints.
When you’re in your room, not hungry or thirsty, but just feeling sensations, then your body registers safety. There’s no tiger about to eat you. You're okay.
Anger
Anger sits on top of other emotions, such as grief, fear and even joy. It’s a cover for the more vulnerable sensations, but no less important.
Young girls are trained by society and family to suppress their anger, so they become women who can’t set boundaries, never say “No” and accept mistreatment from others. In their minds, they want to speak up for themselves. But physically, the conditioning of being “a good person” lives on. The healthy fight response gets squashed by freezing and/or fawning.
So how can we reconnect with our anger?
Screaming Into Pillows
Six years ago, I literally couldn’t do this. My nervous system was too tight and my ego ruled my behaviour with an iron fist. The idea of myself being that loud felt impossible because being loud as a child meant being punished and humiliated. That inner child was still living in my adult body and didn’t know yet that it’s safe to express her anger.
Your inner child needs gentleness. You can’t override it. You have to negotiate with it to open just 1%.
Maybe your throat closes when you make to scream, but what about humming? Or yelling with your mouth closed?
Start small.
Once the initial resistance is overcome, you’ll find yourself making sounds you never knew needed to get out. There’s no time estimate here either. For me, it took about two years to shamelessly open my throat on the spot and scream.
Instead of a pillow, you can also take a blanket or scream into your hands as they cover your mouth. Since that imitates someone muffling you, it might bring up more sensation and lower your mental resistance, making it easer to scream.
Of course, you can also scream without a pillow or hands muffling you.
Punching Pillows
If your pillows aren’t well-cushioned, stack a bunch of them and add blankets if necessary to prevent hurting your fists. My disconnection from anger also showed up in weak, numb arms, and punching put new life into those muscles. If you feel stuckness in your arms, you can wrangle your pillow or take a small towel for that purpose instead.
Throwing and even ripping your pillows apart is also a great option.
Pushing Against The Wall
Stand with your palms against the wall and push. Really get your whole body involved here—your back, your shoulders, your legs, your abs.
The throat tends to open naturally here and you’ll want to let any noise flow out freely. If screaming into a pillow brought up a lot of resistance, this practice might override your mind the longer you push. Maybe you’ll want to yell things like, “Get out of my way!”, “Fuck off!”, “Leave me alone!” etc.
Stomping
Stomp your feet on the ground. Get your whole body involved in this like you’re really letting off steam. This can encourage your wounded inner children to be seen as well.
You might feel more comfortable doing this on a carpet or blankets. Alternatively, you could also stomp outside—on a meadow, in your garden, on the beach.
Throwing A Tantrum
This is so much fun when you let yourself have it. Get on the floor and flail your arms, kick your feet in the air, punch your fists on the floor, scream. If your nervous system is in habitual freeze, the resistance will be strong here.
Grief
This is an emotion I’ve always felt intensely and viscerally, regardless of how numb and dissociated I became during childhood and adolescence.
There’s multiple reasons for that, ranging from generational war trauma to events that happened to me in person. Consequently, grief was my entry point into my dysregulated nervous system, and I’m so grateful for the nourishment I’ve received from really going deep.
Crying
I cried every single day during my first year of this journey. I wasn’t worried about when or if it’d stop. I gave my body the time and safety it needed to flush out 23 years of shaming my tears.
Giving myself that much permission, that much space, singlehandedly healed many of the trust issues I had with my body. It also healed the painful tension I held in my throat whenever I cried.
Do take care not to let your mind take over here. A real, physical pocket of grief takes 90 seconds to release (give or take), so watch your thoughts. If they create imagery or fake conversations which artificially flood your body with grief, then your mind is actually trapping you in a self-made loop of stress.
These loops can last for years.
That’s why many people complain that their crying isn’t healing: they’re not releasing real physical grief. Their mind is just pumping their body for hormones.
Wailing
Another great practice to open a tight throat and voice. Get on your knees, open your arms out wide, and let out a long wail. Keeping your attention on your heart area can bring up a lot of grief fast.
Curling Up
The fetal position relates safety to our nervous system which is why grief naturally tends to rise to the surface here. Gently rocking yourself or hugging a pillow/plushy adds additional support.
Fear
The modern human’s understanding of fear is hardly comparable to what our physical fear responses were originally designed to protect us from. We’re not chased by bears, wolves or lions anymore, but by our own thoughts, worries, and preconceptions.
The cascade of hormones remains the same, but the reality of a threat to survival does not.
Preparing to speak at a business meeting might have your palms sweating in fear, but realistically there’s no danger to your life.
But since the body reacts as if there were a real danger, we have to meet our body where it is.
Shaking
I’ve been a shaker since before knowing the regulative purpose of this movement. In situations of high intensity and afterwards, my body couldn’t not shake. I’ve spent many hours awake in bed, trembling with no explanation and unable to make it stop.
In hindsight, it was a good sign that my mind couldn’t forcibly stop the shaking. It means my body’s instinctive healing processes were active and balancing my system. But my mind hated those moments.
That kind of shaking is involuntary. You can’t control when or how it happens. If it happens to you, allow it. TRE exercises can help you develop a felt-sense for that experience.
But you can also consciously shake to get used to the sensation. Hug yourself and rapidly clench and unclench the muscles in your arms, chest, belly, and legs.
Rocking Back And Forth
Curl yourself into a ball and gently move your body back and forth. This ‘hide and protect’ position is comforting and gets us in touch with our scared parts. Shaking might want to happen after a while.
Disgust
This is an underrated emotion. My system had a ton of disgust to process, and similar to anger, processing it leaves lots of room inside for joy. The range of sensation for disgust is very broad, so there's tons of internal exploration possible as well, if you open to it.
Women commonly feel a learnt disgust for their own bodies and sexuality (what their vulvas look like, their period blood, the natural digestive processes every human has). They're supposed to be "pure". Connecting with that disgust and letting it release is vital for every woman who's sick (literally) of hating her body.
The Ew!
Stick out your tongue, scrunch up your face as if you’ve seen something gross, and go “Yuck!” or “Ew!”. Simple.
Dry-Heaving
This can be intense, but super effective at releasing stuck energy.
I’ve healed my emetophobia (fear of vomiting) by exposing myself to those very sensations in a non-stomach flu, non-sickness related way.
To induce those convulsions, it can be enough to stick your tongue out as far as possible. If your gag reflex isn’t as sensitive, you can use a tongue scrubber.
If you feel nausea here or during another embodiment practice, and you actually have to puke, do so. Don’t hold back. This means your body is purging something. Remember, the vagus nerve gets activated in some of these practices more than in others. Nausea can happen as a direct consequence.
Sexual Energy
Most of us relate to our sexual energy through self-pleasure or sex, if at all.
In other words, very limited.
Sexual energy is life force energy. There’s no lasting transformation without it.
If you have shame, guilt, disgust or any type of blockage around your sexuality, you’ll sooner or later have to face that energetic pattern.
This doesn’t mean you have to currently be in a relationship. You don’t even have to have sex. You can be a virgin and connect to your sexual energy.
Your sexuality isn’t tied to any external situation—it’s your body’s life force and always available to be felt and enjoyed.
Humping Pillows
Stack a few pillows, lay yourself on top, and imitate a thrusting motion. Follow any impulse to growl, grunt, bite, or yell. Keep breathing deeply and allow all sensations to move through you, neither stifling out of shame nor pushing for more pleasure.
This practice is great because it’s removed from the usual expectations of climax and your preferred methods of touching yourself. Feeling your sexual energy without urging to dump it in an orgasm is vital to increase your nervous system’s range.
Clit Stroking Practice
This is the absolute best embodiment practice for women. Perri Chase has a whole module for this, called SXBMB™.
The practice is a guided meditation in which you stroke up and down, tap, or hold your clit whilst focusing on the sensations in your body and pussy.
Pleasure and climax are not the “goal”, but are allowed to happen.
However, sensations of discomfort are also allowed to happen.
The practice is about adding energy into the body, opening inner spots of tightness, and increasing your nervous system’s capacity to hold sensation without spilling (externalising it, for example by venting) or collapse (needing to dissociate, feeling victimised by it).
If you take anything away from this article, then this type of practice.
Of course, you’re welcome to try this by yourself first. Again, watch your mind. Don’t fantasise. If your mind runs off, gently put your attention back on your clit, for this is not a masturbation practice.
Additional practices:
Breathwork
This was my main practice the first year.
I joined an online group with weekly Zoom calls which was also my first exposure of sharing my process with others while learning from their experience.
If you have a local breathwork practitioner, I recommend booking an appointment. A teacher can hold you, read your body, and guide the experience. A full breathwork session isn’t a practice for a solo beginner. Without an established inner anchor, you could retraumatise your system if you encounter too intense sensations, or if you fall into a catatonic state.
What you can do is a 15 minute mini-version. Lay on your back, relax, and open your mouth for a continuous flow of inhales and exhales. This continuity adds more oxygen (read: energy) to your body than the usual shallow breaths, which enlivens neglected tissues and allows them to release stuck energy. This probably won’t happen within one session, or two, or three. If you’ve lived your entire life suppressing, ignoring and villainizing your body, it won’t open at the snap of your fingers just because you want it to.
I recommend covering yourself with a blanket because your extremities might get cold and tingly from the increase of oxygen.
Intuitive Dance
I dance every day. It’s my body’s favourite way of processing stuck emotions I didn’t even know were waiting under the surface to rise and release. Not to mention it feels good to let my body move however it wants—which, in itself, is a path to instant joy and pleasure.
At first, this will feel awkward. Your inner punisher will tell you that you look silly and stupid. It’s okay. Acknowledge your inner punisher and then dance anyway. Moving against that internal resistance will feel like moving a boulder. That’s because the ego struggles against every attempt of expanding your body and soul—to protect you from pain.
It takes tremendous courage to face your ego, so if you’re still reading, you’ve already chosen growth over your ego’s ideas of safety.
If you have shame around nudity and sex, dancing naked will touch on those spots, and putting a mirror in front of you even more so. I definitely recommend making a weekly practice out of this.
Yoga
The benefits of yoga are well-known, but not properly transmitted in the dozens of articles I've read.
I've been practicing yoga 5x a week for 6 years and started from a very disembodied, frozen state. So it took me a long time to untrain my performance-focused mind from pushing my body too far and even hurting myself.
What yoga really does is prepare your body for a receptive, open state of flow. Stretched and supple muscles, an increased heartrate, bloodflow, release of tension; all of that gets you out of your mind and into your body.
Digesting The Practice:
So you’ve shown up for yourself and invested time into building a healthier relationship with your body based on safety and permission to explore all emotions and sensations.
Great!
What now?
Now it’s time to digest your practice. This means taking care of any physical needs first. If you’re thirsty, drink water. If you’re hungry, eat something nutritious. If you’re tired, rest.
Next, you’ll let the experience land. You can journal about it, privately or publicly. You can share it with your therapist or healer. If you’re in a container of some kind with an embodiment teacher, you can bring your observations there.
If you’re one of my students, you’d share which sensations you felt and which impressions you had, and I’d offer my observations and suggestions on what to pay attention to, possibly adjusting you or giving you a practice assignment.
Again: the ego will want to feed on whatever experience you’ve had. As a beginner, you might judge yourself for having “lost control”. Your ego will be uncomfortable with your new wild side.
It’s part of the process. There’s no way to circumvent the ego and the inner punisher here. Acknowledge their attempt at protecting you by keeping you small, thank them for the efforts, and say, “You’re not needed here anymore. You can go.”
Remember, this is a process. As you practice more, your body will feel safer expressing itself freely, and your mind will shut up for longer, eventually.
I did practices like these by myself for a year before I felt ready to hire a somatic therapist, coaches and teachers to guide me deeper than I could go on my own. Everyone hits that spot at a different time. When you’re ready, you’ll know.
But this guide alone will change how you relate to your body and your essence forever.
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