The English language uses many expressions involving the body that when taken literally, indicate attitudes regarding certain feeling states in the body. The colloquial term “holding one’s head up high” denotes a body posture that facilitates a person’s management of his or her composure. Focusing on holding taught our neck and maintaining a head held up against surrendering and softening to feelings allows disconnection with emotions the lower body is experiencing.

This would be especially helpful if one were struggling against feeling grief or sadness, offering a defense against surrendering to emotions held in the body’s core, wanting to be expressed through the natural pathway up the torso, throat and out through the breath. Disconnecting from our tears prevents the vulnerable states we fear but also requires the unexpressed emotional energy that naturally upwells from within our bodies to recycle and return to its source, getting warehoused and stored within the body’s tissues and musculature until such time that another opportunity for self-expression presents itself.

“Keeping your chin up” is another way of staying rigidly composed and insulated from letting down into whatever feelings might rush out of someone’s throat if it were relaxed and not stiff as happens when the chin is held upward. This posture is often used by someone fighting back emotion for a tight throat prevents these energies rising up from finding release through the throat and mouth.

“Keeping a stiff upper lip” offers the same defense as when we soften and relax the muscles around our mouth, our inner feelings show. A “poker face” is one held firm and rigid without allowing the muscles to reveal their emotional content.

It is nearly impossible to “let down” into grief or sadness with a tense chin or with neck muscles stiffly holding the head upwards. Tight shoulder muscles also betray their function as we believe in Bioenergetics that the person is “shouldering their responsibilities.” Denoting a person most likely carrying unneeded tension in their neck and shoulders due to unprocessed stress and psychological burdens.

These are only a few examples of the myriad ways our language belies the emotional process of the body and what mannerisms we take on in order to prevent our bodies from feeling emotions. Our body’s way of communicating with us is through feelings, emotions and sensations, all movements from within the body’s core wanting to reflect to us what the mind holds in its awareness. When a body is not able to process the energetic components to an experience, that energy is stored in the body as well as the unconscious mind. As the brain cleans house in attempt to balance the body/mind, the unconscious energies held in the brain and correspondingly in the muscular tissues of the body emerge to be recognized and subsequently released.

Bioenergetics offers such a process of healing and integration as it is a relational somatic (body) form of psychotherapy. The theory of Bioenergetics is that what occurs in the mind also manifests in the body. Our individual self, our awareness, inhabits the body and so any form of trauma whether developmental or shock trauma, loss, grief and the stress of daily living are all registered in both the mind and the body. We are designed to process whatever experience remains unexplored within us and therefore the unconscious becomes conscious in a process of learning from our experiences, allowing self-expression and exploring the automatic patterns and behaviors that we repeat in our lives.

This natural flow of energy from within us without is process ofas the body’s felt-sense awareness is the focus of the mind, an integration process ensues leading to an increase in our capacity for pleasure and well being.

Life in any body requires a certain amount of awareness and in fact the more attention someone pays to their body, the better that body usually feels. A body with chronic stress, muscular contractions and physical diseases, from a Bioenergetic viewpoint is asking for more attention from the person living within it. A body needs to move and when encouraged to do so in normally uncharacteristic (non-automatic) ways, a shift occurs in the energy of that body, releasing what was previously trapped and creating a pleasant sensation as what was blocked is now released.

Negative emotions like sadness, fear, shock and disgust are often considered unsightly and something to avoid or control. Our language demonstrates this belief as we use common expressions to encourage one another to suppress or ignore these so-called negative emotions. Sadly, our natural state, that of being filled with love, joy and self-satisfaction are then sacrificed in service of our emotions.

Acting out one’s emotions is equally as damaging as holding them in, or “acting them in.” Outbursts of anger, hurting and judging others are frequent examples of acting out our emotions. For example, being “outraged” is another way of saying the person was “outing their rage.”

Learning how to be aware of one’s emotions and expressing them in the context of relationship with self and other is available through Bioenergetics therapy. The therapeutic alliance offers a safe and contained environment that facilitates Self-exploration, healing from our experiences and learning new tools for dealing with life circumstances. Emotional self-regulation allows us to experience increased aliveness, joy and peace of mind which are our natural heritage when emotions do not cloud or distort our experiences. Learning how to mind one’s body and using self-awareness for self-regulation facilitate pleasure in life moment by moment.

© Copyright 2001 by Tarra Judson Stariell, MFT, CBT