Emotional Freedom

Last week I looked at how our muscular work. How our muscles as individual units either engage don't engage. How certain muscle fibers can disengage from our consciousness resulting in loss of physical mobility. This week I want to continue that thread but focus on the emotional impact of this phenomenon.

Our physical reality is a reflection of our emotional reality. Just by embodying certain postures we can become open to different emotional realities. For example, if we hunch our shoulders and pull our arms into our ribs while flexing our shoulders and making a fist we will likely be open to feeling anxiety. Now if we are conscious of this we can have this anxiety pass through us. We can recognize it as just a result of the fear pose we are holding. If we lose awareness of our posture though it becomes easy to pair our physically generated anxiety with whatever thoughts that are swimming through our brain.

Of courses, some of our thoughts should elicit anxiety. Sometimes there is danger we have to be mindful of. But often the amount of anxiety our body creates is not proportioned to how much anxiety that would be helpful We have to ask ourselves is our anxiety being used as a catalyst to create needed change or is it hammering us into paralysis?

As we lose physical mobility we lose the ability to move in expressive ways. Our extremities lose the freedom to move. Our core becomes congested making breathing more difficult than it needs to be. The further into this cycle we go the more we take on defensive postures. Postures we create when we feel threatened. While we may not be consciously trying to protect ourselves if we lose enough mobility naturally find our bodies in a state of defense.

Now as I mentioned in last week's post much of restricts our muscle mobility is not physical but mental and emotional. When our legs become physically restricted they send messages of trepidation with every shortened step. If we have stuck ribs we receiving messages of stress with every stressed breath.

In the mental realm, our bodies are savants when it comes to knowing what movements will not hurt them. They will freely move in ways that will not cause injury. Our bodies instinctively avoid motions that they suspect will cause self-harm. What bodies are not particularly good at is realizing that old injuries have healed and actually require exercise to reintegrate back into the whole. This process of correcting outdated thought physical safety our body has requires awareness and bit of will power, Sometimes during this process, there are painful emotions that are embedded in these physical dormant areas. While new movement can elicit potent emotional reactions they are short-lived and becomes one less thing to burden us as we travel through our lives. And by finding freedom in our bodies we can begin to find greater freedom and expression in the greater world.

Anthony Bruni