You might have noticed that sometimes, after a massage, you feel inexplicably emotional. It is normal to feel sadness or irritability after deep tissue work, or even to experience some sort of catharsis. In another essay I explained how memory is stored in the body. Now I’m going to go a bit deeper and briefly illustrate how the body stores emotion and memory, how this can create problems for us, and how bodywork can assist in releasing it.

Feelings are experienced by the body physiologically as well as emotionally, hence the expressions ‘heartache’ and ‘gut feeling.’ The word ‘splenetic,’ which means ill-tempered, derives from the word spleen. The word ‘anxiety’ comes from a German word angst, meaning ‘narrow,’ in reference to the bronchial passages which are constricted due to shortness of breath, a reaction to anxiety. ‘Bilious’ means irritable, and refers to bile, which is produced by the liver. Language is replete with examples of body-based emotions for a very good reason, and that is that we often experience feelings in our bodies — especially if we take the opportunity to be mindful about what our bodies are feeling, rather than switch on the television, iPad, or radio and tune out.

The connection between the feelings and parts of the body in which they are felt is nothing new, but unfortunately not something regularly discussed with the average physician. The paradigm in which conventional medicine operates is not conducive to the mind-body connection (if not actively antagonistic towards it). In the more than two thousand year old tradition of ‘Traditional Chinese Medicine’ (TCM), the organs are associated with various feelings. In this ancient system, it is known that excess (and therefore stored or unexpressed) emotion can send the organ, and thus by extension, the entire body out of balance. Although TCM explains the role of the organs in terms of qi, or the flow of energy along meridians, it nonetheless describes symptoms and causations in terms very often confirmed by Western medicine; for example, both Western and TCM doctors know that anxiety and grief can contribute to the development of asthma and other bronchial conditions.

In TCM, emotions affect the following organs in the following manner:

• Grief and anxiety: lungs; bronchial problems including asthma, lowered immunity due to lowered oxygen distribution;
• Fear: kidneys, adrenals, lower back; urinary tract infections, lower back pain, slower circulation due to being ‘frozen with fear,’ adrenal burnout, lowered immunity;
• Anger: liver; muscular tensions, headaches, eyestrain, hemorrhoids, irregular menstruation;
• Mental obsession and excess (self-sacrificing) empathy: spleen; gastric disturbances, elevated blood pressure, weakened immunity, colds.

Fundamentally, when bodyworkers and other kinds of alternative practitioners make the statement: this [body part] is storing [this emotion], what they are referring to is how emotions have particular effects on particular body parts. The lungs alone do not contain memories of grief. Every cell of the body contains every single memory. However, the body does respond to an emotion in certain ways, which can all be interconnected throughout the body’s systems, e.g:

• In the vascular system (blood flow; e.g. holding one’s breath reduces the amount of oxygen going to the organs, which affects their functioning);
• Biochemically (hormones, for example, cortisol is produced under stress);
• Muscularly (fear can cause us to clench our abdominal wall and psoas; grief can cause us to hold our breath, which then affects the vascular system).

Here are some examples of how the body responds to events (this is not in the least bit exhaustive):

Physical trauma (includes surgery, childbirth, rape, attack, accidents): clenching of the abdominal muscles, increase in cortisol.

Fear: as above, but also the production of endorphins to help you ‘escape;’ endorphins are responsible for the phenomenon of a person suddenly gaining the strength to lift a car in order to free a child, for example.

Grief: muscular tension in the chest, shortness of breath (often from crying), causing narrowed bronchial pathways.

Perhaps the most interesting bit is that when the body responds to an event with a feeling and its physiological consequence, the neural networks are activated. The body’s response paves a neural pathway. You might say that the body records how the information of an event (such as a trauma) is experienced and expressed. So, the next time a similar event happens, the body responds in a similar manner. Unfortunately, it does not take the same high level of stimulus or trauma as in the original event in order for the body to recreate the response!

In ‘traumatic coupling,’ according to Peter Levine, who wrote the seminal book on trauma, Waking the Tiger:

“one stimulus is strongly linked to a particular response and together they override normal orienting behaviours. The stimulus engages a specific response. Without exception, we are virtually unable to experience any other outcome.”

Furthermore, strong stimulus can refer to any state of arousal, including excitement, fear, heightened tension, as well as sexual arousal! So an emotionally charged experience, even if not one of sexual abuse, can be linked to heightened arousal and cause a block in one’s sexual functioning or enjoyment.

It may be grief that contributed to your asthma, but if you go into a sexual context and reach high arousal, your body might remember the high stimulus that was triggered by grief, and respond with a barrage of muscular, vascular, and hormonal responses which manifest as a lack of erection! Seemingly unbelievable, but entirely true.

This is how something like a parent repeatedly shaming a child for touching her vulva can translate into a bodily response that links sexual touch to muscular reactions and constrictions which prevent orgasm. She might know intellectually, in her maturity and wisdom, that there is no reason to feel shame, and she might even think, “I don’t want to feel it.” But her body remembers. Her neural pathways remember.

And this is why bodywork is so especially helpful for sexual issues.

The ancient Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris nicely illustrates this concept. The goddess Isis is in a state of trauma after her beloved husband Osiris is torn limb from limb. His ravaged body parts are scattered across town. In her attempt to heal from her grief, Isis goes about town to gather back pieces of her husband, in each case performing magic to re-assemble him. Peter Levine refers to this myth often in his talks as an example of how a body ‘re-members’ to heal. He believes that it is the process of gathering together disparate pieces of memory to form a whole which is the essence of healing.

Healing is the metaphorical gathering of body parts, attended to with presence and love, one by one.

How does release happen? Levine describes the process as one which allows your body to complete a difficult experience. So often, our reaction to pain is to freeze, run from it, ignore it. By allowing our nervous systems to simply go through it, to just feel it (much as a good cry can release tension), we can lessen its impact. Afterwards, it is important to re-train those body parts not only NOT to hold tension, but to be relaxed and re-coupled to joy. Especially, in my line of work, erotic joy!

If I were to push deep into your psoas, and bring your mind back to how you feel there, what feelings come up, what physical pain you experience, you might have an emotional reaction. In allowing yourself to feel it, and to breathe through it, your body can start to let it go. If, then, you are touched or touch yourself for sheer sensory pleasure, a new association can be made.

This is what I do. www.AbandonYourInhibitions.com and www.sexualmastery4men.com