Imaging Technology Finally Reveals How Emotions Manifest in Your
Body
January 30, 2014
Story at-a-glance
Every feeling you have affects some part of your body,
and stress can wreak havoc on your physical health. Just
because we don’t have the technology to visualize the
mind-body connection doesn’t mean it’s not real
In a recent experiment to map emotions, researchers
asked volunteers to think about one of 14 predetermined
emotions, and then paint the areas of a blank silhouette
that felt stimulated by that particular emotion
The experiment shows that emotions do tend to be felt in
your body in ways that are generally consistent from one
person to the next, irrespective of your age, sex, or
nationality
Previous studies have linked stress to lowered immune
system function, increased blood pressure and
cholesterol levels, and altered brain chemistry, blood
sugar levels, and hormonal balance
By Dr. Mercola
I’ve often said that you cannot divorce your health from your
emotions. Every feeling you have affects some part of your body,
and stress can wreak havoc on your physical health—especially if
you’re not exercising or eating right, as both of these can help
keep stress in check in the first place.
Still, even if you’re doing everything “right,” your
emotions—both chronic and acute—can wield great power over your
body.
The classic definition of stress is “any real or imagined
threat, and your body’s response to it.” Your body’s natural
stress response can have a significant impact on your immune
function, brain chemistry, blood sugar levels, hormonal balance,
and much more.
In recent years, there’s been an upwelling of mind-body
therapies that take this interrelatedness between your emotions
and physical health into account.1
The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is, I believe, among the
most effective.
Many in the primarily left-brained field of science are still
reluctant to embrace the mind-body paradigm however, and one of
the factors holding them back is the fact that you cannot
see or measure emotions inside your body. But just
because we don’t have the technology to visualize the mind-body
connection doesn’t mean it’s not real!
Mapping How Emotions Manifest in Your Body
The image below is a step in the direction of being able to
visualize how your emotions manifest inside your body.
Researchers in Finland asked 700 volunteers from Finland,
Sweden, and Taiwan to think about one of 14 predetermined
emotions, and then paint the areas of a blank silhouette that
felt stimulated by that particular emotion.
Using a second blank silhouette, they were asked to paint in
the areas that felt “deactivated” during that emotion. To help
them generate the appropriate emotion, they could read a short
story or view a video. (If you want to try this experiment
yourself, you can do so
here.
The online test is also available in Russian, French, and
Italian.)
The experiment shows that emotions do tend to be felt in your
body in ways that are generally consistent from one person to
the next, irrespective of your age, sex, or nationality. As
reported by the featured article in The Atlantic:2
“The mapping exercise produced what you might expect:
an angry hot-head... a depressed figurine that was literally
blue (meaning they felt little sensation in their limbs).
Almost all of the emotions generated changes in the
head area, suggesting smiling, frowning, or skin temperature
changes, while feelings like joy and anger saw upticks in
the limbs—perhaps because you’re ready to hug, or punch,
your interlocutor. Meanwhile, ‘sensations in the digestive
system and around the throat region were mainly found in
disgust,’ the authors wrote.
It's worth noting that the bodily sensations weren't
blood flow, heat, or anything else that could be measured
objectively—they were based solely on physical twinges
subjects said they experienced...
[T]he results likely reveal subjective perceptions
about the impact of our mental states on the body, a
combination of muscle and visceral reactions and nervous
system responses that we can’t easily differentiate.”
Body map showing
areas where subjects reported feeling various emotions. (Credit:
Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences3)
The Mind-Body Connection
It’s interesting to note that certain emotions are known to
be associated with pain in certain regions of your body, even
though science cannot give an explanation for why. For example,
those suffering from depression will often experience chest
pains, even when there’s nothing physically wrong with their
heart.
Extreme grief (or any other extremely stressful event) can
also have a devastating impact—not for nothing is the saying
that someone “died from a
broken heart.” In the days after losing a loved one, your
risk of suffering a heart attack shoots up by 21 times!
While the mechanics of these mind-body links are still being
unraveled, what is known is that your brain, and consequently,
your thoughts and emotions, do play a role in your experience of
physical pain, and can play a significant role in the
development of chronic disease.
For example, previous studies have linked stress to
lowered immune system function, increased blood pressure and
cholesterol levels, and altered brain chemistry, blood sugar
levels, and hormonal balance. It has also been found to increase
the rate at which tumors grow.4
One of the reasons for this has to do with the way the
biological stress response promotes inflammation in your body.
When you're stressed, your body releases stress hormones like
cortisol, which prepare your body to fight or flee the stressful
event. Your heart rate increases, your lungs take in more
oxygen, your blood flow increases, and parts of your immune
system become temporarily suppressed, which reduces your
inflammatory response to pathogens and other foreign invaders.
When stress becomes chronic, your immune system becomes
increasingly desensitized to cortisol, and since inflammation is
partly regulated by this hormone, this decreased sensitivity
heightens the inflammatory response and allows inflammation
to run rampant. While it’s not possible to eliminate stress
entirely, you can help your body to compensate for the
bioelectrical short-circuiting caused by emotional stress.
EFT Can Be Used to Counter Effects of Negative Emotions
I’m a big fan of energy psychology and one of the most
popular forms is Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT),
which is a type of psychological acupressure. While it makes use
of the same energy meridians known in traditional acupuncture,
EFT does not involve needles. Instead, gentle tapping with your
fingertips is used to transfer kinetic energy onto specific
meridians on your head and chest while you think about your
specific problem -- whether it is a traumatic event, an
addiction, pain, anxiety, etc. -- and voice positive
affirmations.
This combination of tapping the energy meridians and voicing
positive affirmation works to clear the "short-circuit"—the
emotional block—from your body's bioenergy system, thus
restoring your mind and body's balance, which is essential for
optimal health and the healing of physical disease.
Clinical trials have shown that EFT is able to rapidly reduce
the emotional impact of memories and incidents that trigger
emotional distress. Once the distress is reduced or removed,
your body can often rebalance itself, and accelerate healing. In
the videos below, EFT practitioner Julie Schiffman shows how to
tap for stress and anger.
Total Video Length: 24:53
Stress Takes a Heavy Toll on Your Gut
According to the authors in the featured study, “disgust” was
the emotion that was most strongly felt in the gut. Fear,
anxiety, and shame also generated a felt impact in this area.
All four of these emotions are generally felt by those
experiencing depression, and I’m not surprised to see a strong
connection between these emotions and the gut.
In recent years, the connection between your gut health and
your mood and behavior has become increasingly clear—so much so
that some scientists are starting to consider probiotics
(beneficial bacteria) as a potential
alternative to antidepressant medications. For instance, the
probiotic known as Bifidobacterium longum NCC3001 has
been shown to normalize anxiety-like behavior in mice.5
Research published in 20116
also demonstrated that probiotics can have a direct effect on
brain chemistry, thereby improving feelings of anxiety or
depression. There's also a wealth of evidence showing intestinal
involvement in a variety of neurological diseases.
In a very real sense, you have two brains, one
inside your skull and one in your gut, and the greatest
concentration of serotonin, which is involved in mood control,
depression, and suppressing aggression, is actually found
within your intestines, not your brain. The implications
are particularly significant in our current era of rampant
depression and emotional “malaise.”
There’s compelling evidence suggesting that improving your
gut health is a very important component, if not the key, to
successfully addressing depression, anxiety, and other mood
disorders. One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to do
this is to add traditionally fermented or cultured foods to your
daily diet. To learn more about your gut-brain connection, and
how probiotics may help you improve your mental health, please
review my previous article, “Are
Probiotics the New Prozac?”
Make Stress Management Part of Your Lifestyle
Besides EFT and tending to your gut, there are many other
stress-management strategies. The following are, I believe,
among the most important basics:
Exercise. Studies have shown that
during
exercise, tranquilizing chemicals (endorphins) are
released in your brain. Exercise is a natural way to bring
your body pleasurable relaxation and rejuvenation, and has
been shown to help protect against the physical effects of
daily stress
Restorative sleep. You can have the
best diet and exercise program possible but if you aren't
sleeping well, your mental health can suffer and it is
difficult to make healing progress. You can find
33 tips to help improve your sleep habits here.
Schedule time to eat at a leisurely pace,
and make sure to maintain optimal gut health by regularly
consuming
fermented foods, such as fermented vegetables, or taking
a high-quality probiotic supplement
Optimize your
vitamin D levels.
Low levels of vitamin D in your blood have been correlated
with increased risk for
depression, so optimizing your vitamin D levels may help
by providing you with a stronger foundation for both
physical and mental health
Syncing Your Body and Mind
As stated in the beginning, just because we don’t yet have
the technology to visually observe how the emotions affect the
body doesn’t mean that the mind-body connection isn’t real. It
is. You just have to observe the effects of your
emotions to “see” how they might play a role in your health.
After worrying about something for a period of time, do you then
get a headache? Does the idea of going into a meeting set off a
stomach ache?
Another way to familiarize yourself with the connection
between your body and mind is to feel which parts of
your body are stimulated or shut down when you’re experiencing
any particular emotion, as was done in the featured study.
One thing is clear, your emotions matter, and they cannot be
ignored in the big scheme of your overall health. So please,
take your emotional health seriously. Sleep, exercise, eating
properly, and addressing your stress are all part and parcel of
a healthy lifestyle. If you’re struggling with difficult
emotions, I really recommend giving EFT a try. There are also
many other energy psychology tools out there that may offer
similar benefits. The key is to find what works for you, and do
it consistently to keep your equilibrium.