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What are the strongest
emotions and how can they effect the body?
Answer #1
There are many emotions if
you consider variations like indignant, outraged, lonely, worried,
embarrassed, offended. But most schools of thought regarding emotions
will tell you there are only a few basic ones
Mad Sad, Scared, Glad. That
interprets into anger, sadness, fear, and joy, though I and some
others add shame or guilt to this. Those two to me are a composite of
anger and sadness with a dash of fear. Some people would add sexual
feelings as an emotion, but for sake of simplicity lets stick to the
basic four—mad, sad, glad, scared or anger, sadness, joy and
fear. These you could say are the strongest since most all others are
some version or combination of these, they just have different
thoughts associated with them. PET—Positron-Emission Tomography
clearly shows the hormonal effect of emotions on the body. PET
creates a color picture of the brain showing various concentrations
of different hormones associated with different emotions. For example
if angry a part of the brain lights up with norepinephrine, hopeless
or sad will light up dopamine. These hormones also happen to suppress
immune function. These hormones are released into the system with the
emotions mentioned just as endorphins are released with joy and love.
There was a study done with
college students a while back. They had them watch the movie Attilla
the Hun. There saliva was checked for antibody levels. It went down
while watching this. When they watched a movie about Mother Theresa,
the levels went up. So that would suggest, emotions like fear or
anger would suppress immune function and love or joy would increase it.
Answer #2
There is a less scientific
answer to this question. I refer to the internal aspect of ourselves,
which holds the feelings and emotions as well as knows what is good
for us, as the "inner being." This aspect of human beings,
is both wise and immature. In psychological terms, one aspect of it
could be referred to as the inner child, another part might be the
inner critic-or judgmental aspect and still another aspect might be
tapped into our higher mind, which some people might call
"soul." It is a bit hard to speak in general terms because
there are a number of differing theory’s about how it all
exactly works. But suffice it to say, there is an internal aspect of
ourselves that seems to know more about what is going on with us than
we often pay attention to in our everyday waking state. This inner
being communicates to our more conscious self in two general ways:
1)through the subtle senses, which includes the intuition and 2)
through the body. Body messages can be gentle, or strong and painful,
depending on our ability to listen. After years of paying very little
attention, lines of communication diminish. As a result, the inner
being either gives up and shuts down, which we experience as
depression and fatigue, or it is forced to scream at us so we will
pay attention, which it usually does through strong body messages.
For example, when the inner being wants to tell us something such as,
"I want a break; I
want to play," if we refuse to listen and the desire is strong
enough, the inner being may cause us to get sick or have an accident
forcing us to stop working. Or if we feel fed up and sick.
to our stomachs of how
someone is treating us, we may contract a stomach ache or intestinal
pain. As we become adept at listening to and honoring our inner
messages, the inner being can communicate in more gentle and subtle ways.
Are there specific
ailments that are exacerbated by emotions?
I believe that most any
ailment can or will have an emotional core to it. This is not to say
that hereditary or environmental factors don’t contribute to a
condition or can be the total cause in some cases. But I am saying
that in many cases the emotional history and patterns of behavior
over a life time, will play very strongly into a person’s
condition. So to name specific ailments, I will not do because it
could be any. But understand again that I am not saying it is the
emotion itself that causes it but usually the lack of expression or
feeling of a certain emotion at a key time in life. The person will
then repeatedly experience similar yet different events that will re
trigger those unfelt or unexpressed emotions. Or if they were
expressed, there usually was a tremendous amount of judgement about
the experience or the emotion associated, that then leaves a feeling
of shame, without the person even realizing they are carrying around
this shame. So though they may be getting repeatedly angry about
little everyday things, and this will be causing negative effects on
the body, equal in impact on the body is what is not getting expressed.
Conversely, can positive
emotions like love and joy help heal the body?
Answer 1
Love and joy undoubtedly
have positive effects on the body. Bernie Siegle writes about his
miraculous healing through laughter in "Anatomy of an
Illness." And there are many other books about how people were
healed with this change in attitude. Also there are the countless
stories of people who have made miraculous recoveries where they
would have died or stayed in a comma due to the strong love displayed
by family members, friends or even less familiar church members. So
love as a healing agent is a given. But the question is how can we
get ourselves into a state of love and joy. With many painful
experiences under our belt or an extremely challenging current life,
it is not always so quick and easy as just intending yourself into a
state of love and joy so that you will be healed. Getting to that
place is a process and can take some work. (Which is what the book
Express Yourself is all about). Oh sure we can have a few good laughs
with friends, but to truly come to a place of love and joy is a
deeper process, especially since much of how we have been raised
doesn’t necessarily support true joy. I often say we are living
in a soul starved culture and it is the starving of our soul that
makes us ill. With this we lose our true sense of joy and connection
to essence of life itself.
Answer 2
It is not just emotions
like love and joy that will heal the body. Even anger can be healing,
if the person has not expressed their anger, or deep sobs of sadness,
over the loss of something never grieved. Whether it be the loss of a
loved one that was not fully grieved, (because our culture supports
quickly getting back to life as usual) or the lack of a happy
childhood, these things need to be grieved, they need to be felt. As
I said before, when emotions are allowed to freely flow (and I
don’t mean used as attack or defense), but the true emotion is
allowed to be felt and expressed, especially when it had been held
back or closed off with out the person even realizing it, this free
flow of any emotion raises the vibratory level of the person, which
greatly increases their health. I am referring here to any emotion
that needs to be felt, that has been held back—anger, sadness
even joy. We sometimes hold back our joyfulness for fear being too
much—but that is another story.
"Emotions" continued  |
