Beyond Words: Unlocking the Power of Embodied Emotional Processing
How connecting with our emotions in the body can accelerate emotional healing and growth
Two men held me back, one on each arm.
I let myself feel all the anger that I’d been clutching onto and managing that day and pressed forward with all my might — knowing that I’d be lovingly and safely held.
I raged and roared with a primality that I don’t normally show — my eyes locked onto the eyes of a third man, a dear friend, who looked back with nothing but presence and love.
Within moments, my fury turned into a deep anguish. Tears streamed down my face as I sobbed, feeling the pain and hurt masked by the anger. Our childhood traumas had yet again gotten my wife and I into an argument earlier that day, over trifles, and every fight only seemed to detract from the deep love we shared and the beautiful body of work that we wanted to create together together in the world.
My brothers and friends in the men’s group embraced me, as I continued to cry, telling me that I was safe and loved in my anger.
In fewer than ten minutes, all the resentment that I’d carried in my body was gone.
No longer was I stewing in angry thoughts — thoughts that I couldn’t stop, that only fueled my anger more, and that kept pulling me away from being present.
I felt at peace and back to my normal self — ready to support the next man in his process.
No amount of talking or venting could’ve gotten me back to the peace I wanted. What I needed was a deep connection to and acceptance of the raw emotion underneath. And that’s exactly what the rage release practice in my men’s group did for me that day.
Talking About Emotions Versus Actually Feeling Them
In my men’s group, we create space and time to support each other on our most pressing life issues.
Unlike most groups, we take a very embodied approach toward our gatherings. Emotions resolve faster in the body, and so we work through our issues in very somatic ways.
Whenever someone shares an issue for group support, the question I ask myself is, “What emotion is being avoided, and how can we directly connect with and move the energy of the raw emotion?”
It’s a contrarian approach to how mainstream society processes emotions, where the primary mechanism is to talk about the narratives surrounding a given emotion.
We see this in conventional talk therapy. The first time I worked with a therapist was with my ex-wife for marriage counseling and relationship coaching. Talking was the primary modality we used.
I’m immensely grateful for my therapist’s support in the two years leading up to my divorce. But looking back with what I know today, I can also see how the progress we made in our sessions felt slow. At times, we’d spend months talking about our emotions and only chipping away at core issues.
Since then, I’ve trained in and experienced various modalities for working with emotions — ranging from working with the Emotional Health Institute, neuro-linguistic programming, ISTA and tantra, and Joe Hudson’s emotional inquiry work.
And what I’ve discovered is this:
The most effective way for moving through emotions is by directly connecting with the emotions in the body — not by talking about them.
We can often talk in circles about an emotion without actually feeling through the underlying physiological sensations associated with the emotion.
We can complain about things or make passive aggressive comments without directly connecting with the raw anger stewing underneath.
We can move frantically or talk endlessly about what we’re worried about, without actually slowing down enough to feel the fear sensations that might be in the body.
We can spiral in discouragement or hopelessness, without ever taking time to locate where the darkness or the numbness (or however we experience the emotion) shows up physiologically.
Talking about our emotions might be a step forward when compared with hiding them. But perhaps surprisingly, talking about an emotion can also be a way to avoid actually feeling our feelings — it’s safer and easier to talk about our emotions than to actually feel them.
Over the years, I’ve found that the most helpful question to explore when we’re in an emotional experience is: “Where do I feel this emotion in my body?”
Actually feeling an emotion means giving presence to the underlying physiological sensations — the tensions, the constrictions, the tenderness, etc. — that create the experience of the emotion. It means putting awareness on the sensations, inquiring them with curiosity, and sometimes even giving them voice.
When I connected with the tension I felt in my shoulders and the constriction I felt in my chest during the men’s group, it became clear that the anger wanted to be explosively expressed in a safe way. The constriction was me holding back. It was my resistance to fully feeling the anger and letting it move the natural way it wanted to flow.
Once I surrendered to fully feeling through and expressing the emotion, my trapped anger and resentment cleared within minutes.
The Shortest Way Out Is Through
When we’re stuck in an emotional experience — whether it’s anger or sadness or fear or something else — the emotion applies a filter to all our thoughts and experiences of the world. All our thoughts end up being colored with the anger or the sadness or the fear.
When we’re able to fully be present with the physiological experience of an emotion and feel it all the way through, how we experience the world transforms.
And if we commit to actually feeling our emotions, the same emotional transformations that can otherwise take weeks or months to shift can happen in minutes.
I remember days when I would feel angry and hold grudges for weeks — not knowing how long it would take for my anger to simmer to an end. Now, I know that if I can just move the anger by being with the sensations in my body and feeling it through all the way — like I did with my men’s group — the shift happens powerfully and quickly.
I remember days where I’d feel existential fear in my body — particularly during the pandemic or during financial panics — and I would feel incapable of being a productive human. When I could fully be present with and feel into the frazzled sensations over my skin or in my shoulders, the fear would move through and I’d be back to normal.
I’ve seen experiences where a friend had been feeling hopeless and dejected about his work. Within thirty minutes of guiding him into the epicenter of the sensations of his hopelessness, I saw a changed and energized man on the other side.
The shortest way out of an emotional experience is through.
And that means going straight through the epicenter of the emotional experience in the body.
Just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy.
It’s scary and intense to go straight into our emotions.
It’s vulnerable to show ourselves in the rawness of our grief, our anger, our pain, or even our joy.
And yet, the peace on the other side is worth it.
Thanks to Wes Melville, Ishan Shanavas, Vincent Tam, and Lindsey Johnson for reading early drafts of this post.
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Rawr: sexy 🦁