Emotions are an integral part of our human experience, and understanding them is key to our emotional and physical well-being. As intricate energy patterns holding unique vibrations, they have a profound impact on our thoughts, bodies, and relationships. When they become trapped due to suppression or blocking, we experience disharmony, pain, and even illness. Unreleased emotions also create negative thinking and behavior patterns, reinforcing similar experiences.
In this blog post, we’ll explore the reasons behind trapped emotions, their impact on our physical and emotional well-being, and most importantly, how to release them effectively. Techniques provided by great teachers of our time, including Dr. Deepak Chopra, Michael Singer, and Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor will also be discussed.
What are Emotions?
Emotions are “conscious mental reactions (such as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feelings usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body”. (American Psychological Association (1), adapted from Merriam-Webster)
In his book The Emotion Code (2), Dr. Bradley Nelson described them as vibrations of pure energy with their own unique vibrational frequencies.
In Charge and the Energy Body (3), Dr. Anodea Judith describes emotions as “an experience of charge moving through the body…As feelings meet increasing charge of the body, they become emotions.” (3).
In the book Becoming Supernatural, Dr. Joe Dispenza characterizes emotions as the chemical endproduct of past experiences. As we encounter experiences in our environment, clusters of neurons form networks. When these freeze into a pattern, the brain makes a chemical (an emotion) that is then sent out through the body (4).
In contrast, Michael Singer (5) says that all emotions are very sensitive vibrations generated by the heart and that they are like etheric clouds, or waves forming over you, flushing your energy bodies/auras. They do not take up defined form as the objects of thoughts can.
“Emotions are simply the sensation of experiencing a change in your energy.”
Michael Singer, in Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament (5)
Eileen Day McKusick, in Electric Body, Electric Health (6), also describes emotions as (electromagnetic) waves passing through us when we allow them to naturally flow. When we block them, they freeze inside our bodies and get stuck in our biomagnetic fields.
“Emotions are stored in and around the body as magnetic fields and also as corresponding molecules that have hidden themselves in various places in the body.”
Eileen Day McKusick, in Electric Body, Electric Health (6)
Based on the above, we can conclude that emotions are the results of our thoughts and feelings about our interactions with our environment and they are charged vibrational particles of energy that are produced in our bodies and naturally come and go (unless we choose to hold onto them).
What is the Natural Lifecyle of an Emotion?
When our body generates an emotional vibration, we feel the emotions and any thoughts and physical sensations that are associated with it. Then (ideally) we process the emotion, let it go, and move on. (2)
At any moment in time, there are only 3 things going on in the brain:
Source: Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor (7)
- The capacity to think thoughts
- The capacity to feel emotions
- A physiological response to what we are thinking and what we are feeling
In a healthy state, emotions come and go; that is, they are processed and released. But unfortunately for many people, emotions get trapped inside the body.
Why Do Emotions Get Stuck in the Body?
Emotions get trapped in the body when the normal lifecycle of an emotion is not allowed to run to completion. That is, after the thought is thought and the emotion takes form and travels through the body, it is not processed and released, making the person feeling the emotion unable to move on from it.
This can take place for a number of reasons, but it is usually due to the blocking or suppression of feelings. Learning to neglect our feelings could be conditioned from a young age, or they can be coping mechanisms that were learned over time.
We can also resist feeling painful emotions like anger, fear, grief, shame, sadness, pain, and hurt because we are afraid of how they will make us feel, and we may block or suppress them by numbing or distracting ourselves.
Our individual vices are as unique as we are, but some of the most popular general ways to avoid feeling emotions is distraction through food, staring at screens, dysfunctional relationships, shopping, and repetitive negative thoughts (which lead to the same emotions running through our bodies on loop, causing an addiction to those feelings and seeking more scenarios that will help us to feel those feelings again).
What Happens When Emotions Get Stuck in the Body?
Trapped emotions cause the body to be in disharmony, leading to pain and illness. Stored negative emotions can increase muscle tension, lower immune function, make the body more susceptible to injury, and also accelerate the aging process (2).
For example, trapped emotions can create muscular imbalances that lead to joint malfunction and eventual deterioration of the joint and arthritis (2).
Blocked emotions and their associative energies can also wreak havoc on our cells’ healthy expression of genes. As Dr. Joe Dispenza explains in Evolve Your Brain (8), the resulting internal chemistry from an emotion can either signal a gene to turn on or off. Genes can be down-regulated or up-regulated by emotions, and if they are down-regulated, they can stop the healthy production of the necessary proteins required by our bodies to work in balance and keep us healthy and alive (8).
Dr. Anodea Judith suggests that when emotions are not expressed, we block their charges, which diminish our life force and create issues in our bodies (3).
How Do You Know if You Have Unreleased Emotions in Your Body?
When you’re in a disease state, whether it is of a physical, mental, or spiritual, nature, blocked energy is the root cause. In fact, dis-ease is your body’s way of telling you that you need to release some emotion.
According to Dr. Nelson (2), every body has trapped emotions, because we all experiences difficulties in life. if you have physical pain in your body, 90% of the time it is your subconscious telling you that you have trapped emotions that need to be processed (2). If you are suffering from an illness, trapped emotions are likely involved to some degree (2).
Why Release Trapped Emotions?
As discussed earlier, long-term chronic buildup of emotions in the body leads to disease. But there is an even more urgent matter, and that is the devastating immediate effect they can have on our mood, behaviour and relationships.
According to Dr. Nelson (2), when you free yourself of trapped emotions, you’ll feel more secure, motivated, and liberated enough to create the life you always wanted. You will also experience less pain and suffering.
Michael Singer (5) believes that storing disturbing experiences inside of us is the root cause of all anxiety, tension, and psychological disturbances and that it must be fixed at the root or you’ll always struggle to feel comfortable inside.
Ultimately, unprocessed emotions create distortions in the body’s energy field, leading to emotional and physical suffering for ourselves and others.
Trapped Emotions Manifest More of the Same Types of Experiences
Every thought we think produces a chemical response in the brain. Over time, as we think the same types of thoughts, strong neural networks are formed between them, making it easier and easier for them to activate, creating more of the same types of chemicals in our bodies. Over time, our bodies get used to this mix of chemicals coursing through our bloodstream and we become addicted to them. We will continually seek out experiences that continue to fire those same thoughts and produce the same level of chemicals inside our bodies (8).
“We will do nearly everything we can, both consciously and subconsciously, based on how we feel, to restore our familiar chemical balance.”
Dr. Joe Dispenza in Evolve Your Brain (8)
When trapped emotions get lodged inside the body, they affect the tissues in that locality, and those tissues start to resonate at the same vibration as the trapped emotion. When this happens, it becomes much easier for you to experience the negative emotion in the future, as part of you is already resonating at that frequency (2).
The Best Way Out Is Always Through
They best way to release emotions from your body is to allow yourself to feel them. And then move on. This is called processing (2). Processing allows the body to return to a zero set point. It is crucial in moments when we feel triggered to take a pause and notice the feelings in our body as well as to remember the thoughts that triggered them.
You can observe yourself when you’re experiencing something that makes you feel uncomfortable. You can observe yourself feeling that discomfort, and you can use this time to pull up the thoughts that you’re thinking. Instead of engaging, step back and watch yourself as a third person.
The 90 Second Rule Can Change Your Life
After thinking a thought that causes us to have an emotion, there is a physiological response that takes place. Under healthy circumstances, the emotion courses through the body and then dissipates. This process (from feeling a thought to the physiological response leaving your body) takes places in less than 90 seconds (“The 90-Second Rule”), according to brain scientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor.
For example, you think a though that makes you feel angry, and noradrenaline flushes through your body. This means that ninety seconds from the moment you think a thought and feel the emotions in your body, you can return to neutral, because that is how long it takes for the chemicals from your brain to flood your body via your bloodstream before flushing out of you. In less than one and a half minutes, the chemical associated with the emotion will completely dissipate from your body.
So why do many of us keep feeling the physiological effects of our emotions in our bodies long after one and a half minutes? The answer is quite simple – we do not allow ourselves to observe the response in our bodies, and often, we are addicted to the feelings of the emotions, and we either consciously or subconsciously keep re-activating and and engaging with the same thought loops.
When you pause to observe yourself the moment you feel a surge of energy in your body, instead of engaging in the fear, anxiety, anger or whatever other negative emotion you are feeling, pay attention to how you’re feeling, where you’re feeling it, and what thoughts triggered this release of energy into your body. If you stop for 90 seconds, you can quickly handle the emotion and move on.
As Dr. JB Taylor suggests, the simple act of switching your attention to your watch will help you switch from having the experience to observing yourself having the experience. Doing this for less than 90 seconds will have you feeling better!
“Look at the second hand on a watch. As soon as you look at it, you’re now observing yourself having this physiological response instead of engaging with it. It will take less than 90 seconds, and you will feel better. Of course, you can always go back to thinking those thoughts that restimulate the loop. There’s probably a thought somewhere in your brain of somebody who did you wrong 20 years ago. Every time you think of that person it still starts that circuit. When things are getting hot and you’re getting hot-headed, look at your watch. It takes 90 seconds to dissipate that anger response.”
JB Taylor as cited by Bryan Robinson in The 90-Second Rule That Builds Self-Control (9)
Dr. Taylor suggests that bringing your mind back to the present moment and taking a 90 second time out can help you self-soothe while you consider what’s going on in your body because you’re using your higher thinking brain. Every time you become aware of a feeling, and you consciously choose not to engage, and instead to observe it, you train your brain to respond differently. Because of neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to prune old neural connections and make new new ones), you can create new stronger circuitry that will allow you to spend less time feeling the way you used to feel.
Replace Negative Thoughts with Positive Thoughts
Once you have released your negative emotions, you can take it even a step further and make a conscious effort to reach for better feeling thoughts. The quickest and easiest way to do this is to see the positive side to a situation.
Practice Positive Thinking with the 90 Second Rule
For example, you are walking in the park and enjoy the peaceful sounds of nature when you hear someone yelling at the top of their lungs to call their dog back, disturbing you (and everything else around you). You may naturally feel angry and put your headphones on to block out the yelling. And you may choose to continue to stew in that anger for a long time, dwelling on how this person has disrupted your peace! Or you can notice the change in energy inside your body, observe it for 90 seconds, and allow the feeling to pass. You will notice that feel better than you did 90 seconds ago, allowing you to shift to a more positive perspective. You may suddenly remember, now that you have your headphones on, that this is a great opportunity to do a guided meditation. Or maybe your headphones switched on and continued where you left off on a podcast episode or audiobook that you were really looking forward to continuing. The practice of switching to better-feeling thoughts will help you to develop a more positive mind and life.
Shift Focus through Meditation
Meditation is a great way to practice becoming more aware. It maybe be difficult to do at first, but stick with it. Meditating for just 13 minutes a day for 8 weeks has been shown to decrease negative mood state and enhance attention, working memory, and recognition memory, as well as decrease state anxiety (10). But if you don’t have 13 minutes of time all at once or find it difficult to sit idle for that long, do it for just 90 seconds. Practicing taking 90 seconds to focus what you feel in and around your body will allow you to process emotions even faster later. Like a muscle, it will get stronger the more you practice the pause. You must allow time to sit with it it and you will find it eventually dissipates and releases from your body.
Once you have mastered the art of focus, draw your attention and your awareness to your body. Where do you feel the emotions? What do they feel like there? Breathe while you imagine them dissipating from that space in your body. Do this as often as you need.
Try Witness Consciousness
Thoughts and emotions will always come up, and witness consciousness is a ways of relaxing and releasing by first noticing what the mind is doing. By becoming aware of the thoughts created by your mind, you simply witness while not trying to ease yourself of any discomforts that come up for you.
The more you are the watcher in your life, the harder it will be for you to avoid your feelings, and the easier and faster you’ll be able to find them, feel them, and let them go.
As Michael Singer suggests in Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament (5), you can simply relax and choose not to engage with disturbed energies. From the seat of awareness, way back inside, you can relax your muscles (and most importantly, your heart):
“Even if the heart itself won’t relax, the area around your heart will. You have willpower in there, use it. Here’s what you do with your will: relax and release. First relax through your initial resistance, then release the disturbed energy that comes up. When you do this, you are actually providing space for the release of the samskaras* causing the disturbance. You are giving them more room to release because you’re not struggling with the thoughts and emotions they are creating. Eventually there is no struggle, as you have created distance between the seat of Self and the noisy mind. To be free, you need distance between those two—subject and object.”
Michael Singer in Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament (5)
When you find yourself allowing your mind to wander, or returning to your repertoire of tricks and techniques to distract yourself, take a pause and notice it. Be the awareness behind the body/mind and be kind to yourself in that moment. Try not to judge and just watch. The more you practice this practice, the faster you will catch yourself doing it. Pausing allows you to make space for the feelings and when you open up in this way, they pass right on through you.
*samskaras are unprocessed emotions
Deepak Chopra’s Techniques to Discharge Sticky Emotions
The following techniques are taken from the book Total Meditation: Practices in Living the Awakened Life by Dr. Deepak Chopra (11). As he explains, sticky emotions can’t go away on their own and need our help to discharge them.
“TECHNIQUE #1: If you feel an uncomfortable emotion that persists, center yourself and take slow, deep breaths until you feel the emotional charge start to lessen.
TECHNIQUE #2: If you recognize an emotion that has been around a long time, notice its return, then say: “This is how it once was. I am not in the same place now. Go away.”
TECHNIQUE #3: With a particularly stubborn emotion, sit quietly with eyes closed and let yourself feel the emotion—do this lightly, not sinking deeply. Take a deep breath and exhale slowly, releasing the emotional energy from your body. It might help to see your breath as a white light carrying the toxic feeling out of you.
TECHNIQUE #4: If you feel no specific emotion, but rather a general mood of being down, blue, or out of sorts, sit quietly with your attention placed in the region of your heart. Visualize a small white light there, and let it expand. Observe the white light as it expands to fill your whole chest. Now expand it up into your throat, then your head, and up out of the crown of your head.
Take a few minutes to carry this technique through until it feels complete. Now return to your heart and expand the white light again until it fills your chest. Now see it expand downward, filling your abdomen, extending down to your legs, and finally out through the soles of your feet into the earth.”
Dr. Deepak Chopra, in Total Meditation: Practices in Living the Awakened Life (11)
You can apply these techniques separately or together. It may take a while before you feel better as your entire emotional system must adapt to the release. However, as Dr. Chopra reassures, the intention to remove an emotion from the body is a powerful one, and the message is sent to every single cell in your body and every part of your awareness. Also, it is part of the natural lifecycle of an emotion to want to discharge. You have the power and the choice to hold on to them or to let them go (11).
Journal About It
Writing can help us to relax and release emotions, as the physical act of writing on paper is a release of energy that can help us to feel better. Writing has always helped me to organize my thoughts, feelings and emotions for later processing and release.
Crystals to Help You Release Trapped Emotions
Source: Philip Permutt, in The Modern Guide to Crystal Healing (12).
- Brazilianite – for gentle release of trapped emotions and energy
- Green Moss Agate
- Diopside
- Arsenopyrite
FAQs
What causes emotions to become trapped in the body?
Emotions can become trapped due to suppression or not allowing their natural lifecycle to complete, often resulting from learned behaviors to avoid discomfort.
How can trapped emotions affect our health?
Trapped emotions can lead to disharmony, pain, illness, and create negative thinking and behavior patterns.
What are some signs of trapped emotions in the body?
Physical pain, illness, or a general state of dis-ease may indicate the presence of trapped emotions.
Why is it important to release trapped emotions?
Releasing trapped emotions is crucial for improving mood, behavior, relationships, and overall health.
What techniques can help release trapped emotions?
Techniques include feeling the emotions to process them, the 90-second rule for emotion processing, positive thinking, meditation, and witness consciousness.
Can meditation help with emotional release?
Yes, meditation can enhance awareness and facilitate the process of emotional release.
References
(1) American Psychological Association. Emotions. Retrieved Jun 8 2023 from https://www.apa.org/topics/emotions.
(2) Nelson, Bradley. The Emotion Code. St. Martin’s Publishing Group, Jun 2022.
(3) Judith, Anodea. Charge and the Energy Body. Hay House, Mar 2018.
(4) Dispenza, Joe. Becoming Supernatural. Hay House, Oct 2017.
(5) Singer, Michael A. Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament. New Harbinger Publications, Jun 2022.
(6) McKusick, Eileen Day. Electric Body, Electric Health. St. Martin’s Publishing Group, Jun 2022.
(7) Taylor, JB, and Hay House. The 90-Second Reset. Retrieved Jun 8 2023 from https://www.discover.hayhouse.com/boltetaylor-90secondreset-video/.
(8) Dispenza, Joe. Evolve Your Brain. Health Communications Inc, Jan 2015.
(9) Robinson, Bryan E. The 90-Second Rule That Builds Self-Control. April 26, 2020. Accessed June 8, 2023. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-right-mindset/202004/the-90-second-rule-builds-self-control
(10) Basso JC, McHale A, Ende V, Oberlin DJ, Suzuki WA. Brief, daily meditation enhances attention, memory, mood, and emotional regulation in non-experienced meditators. Behav Brain Res. 2019;356:208-220. doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2018.08.023
(11) Chopra, Deepak. Total Meditation: Practices in Living the Awakened Life. Harmony/Rodale, Sep 2020.
(12) Permutt, Philip. The Modern Guide to Crystal Healing. Ryland Peters & Small, Dec 2020.