Messages From the Embodied Mind

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Man carrying heavy burden

Amy said she felt “weighed down” by guilt. Jerry reported that a string of personal losses left him “empty” inside. Beset by anxiety, Christine claimed she was “shaking” at her core. In describing his depression, Andy said he experienced relentless “heartache.”

Without realizing it, each of these individuals was exhibiting what psychologists refer to as “embodied cognition.” That’s an opaque term for how we experience the interplay between emotions and states of mind through physical sensations. This term—embodied cognition —is more than a descriptive label. A recent study demonstrates that we feel emotions in much the same manner as these kinds of kinesthetic descriptions (empty, shaking, weighted down, etc.) seem to imply. For example, for many, guilt is experienced in the body as an actual sensation of weight, as the phrase “weighed down” suggests.

In the research, subjects recalled unethical acts they had engaged in (lying, cheating, stealing, etc.) that left them feeling guilty. After doing so, their subjective experience of weight actually increased. They literally felt heavier. To validate these findings, subjects were also asked to complete certain tasks requiring physical exertion. Again, if doing so while wracked with guilt, the experience of being “weighed down” made their efforts more arduous. This is not mind over matter. It is mind within matter.

Physical Pathways

Embodied cognition has real applications for dealing with challenging emotional states. Usually, we try to change our feelings or attitudes by employing psychological approaches—how we think about them, our determination of their causes, and the intellectual meanings we assign to various emotions. These approaches are useful to a point, but when taxing feelings don’t respond to cognitively focused methods, physical sensations offer another pathway for exerting transformational influence.

For example, guilt can be addressed through ritualistic actions that first increase and then diminish the physical sensation of weight that accompanies it. At my suggestion, one man I worked with selected several rocks that each symbolized past transgressions that left him burdened with shame, despite having apologized to those he offended. The heavier the rock, the more guilt and remorse he felt about the misdeed it represented. 

“I’d guess they were about five pounds altogether. I carried them around with me for about a week in an old camera case,” he explained.

Then, when he felt ready to let go of his guilt and move on, over a period of weeks, he ritually put down each rock, taking care to remember what it represented and selecting locations that conveyed personal meaning for him. This gradual unburdening eased his “weighed down” experience, both literally and emotionally. This same general process can be applied to a variety of emotions, from the vacuum of sadness to the inner rattling of fear to the ache of depression and grief, among others. 

As another example, a female client experienced her persistent anxiety as, in her words, “my whole insides shaking.” I encouraged her to align her outsides with her insides through something called dance movement therapy. She did so and also added Zumba and a bouncing routine on a small trampoline. This helped her discharge her nervous energy rather than letting it rattle around willy-nilly inside her. 

While these methods may seem weird to the concrete thinkers among you, this embodied approach “speaks” in the language of the subconscious mind, that aspect of one’s psyche that understands in symbols, images and sensations, rather than words or concepts. So, when our feelings become strongly embodied and converse with us through our bodies, we can communicate back by using the same conduit—the physical self.

After all, we don’t refer to emotions as “feelings” for nothing.

For more, visit philipchard.com.