Muscle and Emotions

We probably all know a little about body language. Different postures express different emotions. We use body language to communicate different thoughts. It does so itself even when we are not realising or controlling what we do with out bodies.

Dancing is about using the body to communicate thoughts and emotions. The process of dance creation or improvisation uncovers the language that is already IN the body, without us thinking too much about it consciously.

Yes, the language is IN the body.

It means that our body stores emotions and memories inside of it, and express it in a certain way in our movements. Like, when a depressed person is hunched, a stressed person's body is tense, even when he's walking, talking, or drinking a cup of coffee.

Sometimes, it is not even about an emotion that is present. It could be from the past - a physical injury, a grievous loss or hurtful actions or words from another person.

All our experiences, as you know, is recorded by our subconscious, and our subconscious memories has physical locations within our body. (There was a book written on it that I just found out about.)

So working on our body, I find, is not as effective as working on my mind.

Yes, our body can learn new movement habits that when developed over the course of 30-60 days, will become automatic. It is important to start with practicing good movement habits through repetitive conditioning. However, there are times when the body seems very stubborn or is fighting against this conditioning. This is where some inner work needs to be done.

When there is a stubbornly bad posture, stubbornly tense muscle, or even dorman muscles, it is very likely that the body is holding in a memory or emotion that is getting in the way of release. Although habits can be trained, I believe that in these cases, overriding it with new habits simply hide its real issue, pushing it further back into the subconscious, where it will manifest itself in some other unhealthy ways.

To address these issues, the first think one can do is to identify the specific muscle group and emotion that is related to this movement habit.

Muscle/emotion/memory

Identifying either one will work as a starting point. The key is to be as specific as possible, and I feel it is best to be confrontational with yourself. To be honest about the real emotion or memory that is hiding inside.

Once you are able to identify either one of these 3 aspects, you can hold it in your mind, and then release it, and go back to replacing it with a new conditioning.

The challenge

The challenge is usually to find out the accurate source of the stuckness. With that, I use clues such as emotional keywords, organ that this certain body part is related to, meaning of chakra - all these are fairly related.

I will be exploring further in this topic in future articles, about identifying stuck muscle groups and releasing them.

Until then, regards...