This book is about emotion. The book is also about the body, in relation to emotion. Specifically, it is about how to build a greater capacity to tolerate emotion. Its aim is to scientifically establish that we can build a greater capacity for tolerating emotion—especially unpleasant emotion—by expanding the emotional experience to as much of the body as possible, and how that can improve not only emotional but also physical, energetic, cognitive, behavioral, relational, and even spiritual outcomes in all therapies.
This book also aims to offer concrete steps and tools for how one might go about “embodying emotion,” or building a greater capacity for tolerating emotion through expansion of its experience to as much of the body as possible, to improve a range of outcomes. The book is for professionals in all therapeutic modalities who are looking for ways to improve outcomes in whatever work they do, as well as for those looking for self-help tools for managing turbulent emotions in daily life.
People seek help when they are feeling sufficiently bad about something that they cannot deal with by themselves. There is an emotional difficulty in the core of almost every problem that clients present to their therapists. There are many effective ways to resolve an emotional difficulty: through changing how we think about a situation (cognition), changing how we deal with a situation through expression or action (behavior), changing the state of the brain and body physiology through medication, or numerous other means such as exercise, nutrition, meditation, essential oils, bodywork, and even electric shock. Or we can stay with the emotional experience in whatever form it appears, for as long as is necessary, until it transforms—a common practice on many spiritual paths.
People come to us, their therapists, for help with their suffering. Why not reduce or simply take away their suffering through one of the above methods, without taking people deeper into their suffering to build a greater capacity for tolerating it by expanding the emotional experience to as much of the body as possible? The answer lies in the latest findings in neuroscience, which establish that all of our three important psychological functions—cognition, emotion, and behavior—depend not only on the brain but also on the body and its connection to the environment; and that inhibiting the involvement of the body in emotion compromises our cognition as well as our behavior relative to the situation that has to do with the emotion. These findings, in combination with the central thesis of this book—that involving more of the body in emotional experience can create a greater capacity to tolerate the emotion and stay with it for a longer period of time—offer the possibility of improved outcomes in cognition and behavior, even in therapies that focus primarily on cognitive or behavioral methods.
Emotion is a summary assessment of a situation’s impact on a person’s well-being. The brain that has a longer time to process an emotion—because it is more regulated from being more expanded through the body—has a greater chance of generating more functional cognitions and behaviors in relation to the situation. If I can tolerate my rage in a relationship setting, what I think and do in the situation is likely to be more regulated and relational. So, even therapies that focus on facilitating cognitive and behavioral change to bring about symptom relief can improve their outcomes by incorporating the practice of embodying emotion.
All of the usual methods for working with emotion—especially the strategy of staying with the awareness of the emotional experience until transformation occurs—do enable people to develop some capacity for tolerating emotion. However, the extent to which these methods can develop a capacity for tolerating emotions is limited because they either do not work with the body or, if they do work with the body, their focus is not on expanding the emotional experience to as much of the body as possible. Of all the methods, the strategy of staying with an emotional experience until transformation occurs is most likely to increase affect tolerance.
However, the transformation a person is working toward might take longer or not happen at all if they do not know that an emotional experience, especially a difficult one, potentially involves the entirety of the brain and body physiology. In addition, people need to know that one needs to work with physiological defenses against emotions to expand the emotional experience to as much of the body as possible. This will increase the capacity to tolerate it for a longer period and to fully grasp the impact that a situation is having on our well-being. There is also the risk of retraumatization in passively staying with an emotion wherever it appears, as opposed to actively working with the body to regulate the emotional experience by expanding it, thus reducing the likelihood of retraumatization.
For all of the above reasons, embodying emotion—expanding the emotional experience to as much of the body as possible, to acquire a greater capacity to tolerate it—offers the potential for improving various outcomes in combination with all therapies and all of the usual methods for working with emotions, including medication.
For those who are not working in the helping professions, the book has also been written to serve as a self-help guide for understanding and working with emotional difficulties, large and small. For those who intend to use the book for self-help, even if you are a therapist, please make sure to seek professional help in case you find yourself in a difficult place. Please remember that as far as emotions are concerned, sooner or later we always need the support of others to resolve things, no matter who we are.
I would like to briefly share with you my personal and professional journeys that led me to develop the work of emotional embodiment, with a nod to those who helped me along the way. Then I will present a chapter-by-chapter overview of the book, followed by suggestions for strategies you can use to get the most out of this book.
In their insightful book Faces in a Cloud: Intersubjectivity in Personality Theory, intersubjective psychoanalysts Atwood and Stolorow make the case that the diverse psychological theories developed by psychologists Freud, Jung, and Reich were shaped by these thinkers’ personal histories, needs, and personalities.1 My Jungian analyst, Richard Auger, often observes that we teach what we need to learn. Looking back over my life and my choice of orientations in psychology, I find that my relationship with the work of emotional embodiment in Integral Somatic Psychology (ISP) is no exception. I developed ISP as a comprehensive psychological approach to the embodiment of all levels of the psyche, individual and collective, with emotional embodiment as its primary clinical strategy, to improve cognitive, emotional, and behavioral outcomes in all therapies.
I had a rough start in life. My mother and I nearly died during my birth. I got stuck in a birth canal too narrow for my head, with the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around my neck during a prolonged labor under the care of a very inexperienced midwife. It was a miracle that we both survived, as my paternal grandmother remembered it. The birth trauma brought me close to cerebral palsy; I learned this from the symptoms I experienced while processing the birth trauma in therapy and in a dream from that period. My mother and I became tightly bonded, I think in part because of this shared traumatic experience. The repeated and prolonged separations from my mother I experienced from between the age of ten months until I was five years old were probably all the more traumatic because of the birth trauma and the close bond between us. When you add the physical, verbal, and emotional abuse my father subjected me to, my history does add up to something! I once dreamed that I went into a room in a heavily guarded police station to find a filing cabinet full of folders containing descriptions of all the kinds of traumas I have experienced in my life.
I have always marveled at how people appear to choose professions that offer them the optimal setting and opportunity to not only be of service to others but also to heal themselves personally. I see this especially among therapists in their choice to become mental health professionals and in the therapeutic modalities they choose, both for training and for treatment. The same is true for me.
All the early traumas caused me to lose my connection to my emotions and my body, and I grew up as a brainy kid interested more in mathematics than music. Once when I went on a date with a girl who loved music, I proudly offered her a mathematical theory of music appreciation. I am sure you can imagine how that turned out! Therefore, it made sense that from the very beginning of my professional development in psychology, I was drawn to bodywork systems such as Postural Integration, yoga, and body psychotherapy systems such as Reichian Therapy, Bioenergetics, and Bodynamic Analysis. This is where I first learned about physiological defenses against emotions and other psychological experiences, and how to work with such defenses gently (and not so gently) to connect the head to the body and to access emotions to work with them, often cathartically or regressively.
Wilhelm Reich, a contemporary of Sigmund Freud, is considered to be the founder of the body psychotherapy tradition in the West. The system he developed is called Reichian Therapy. Body psychotherapy approaches such as Bioenergetic Analysis, with their origin in Reichian Therapy, are identified as neo-Reichian therapies. The field of body psychotherapy now consists of such neo-Reichian approaches as well as other modalities. In my opinion, Bodynamic Somatic Developmental Psychology, also known as Bodynamic Analysis, is the most sophisticated body psychotherapy system to date, with its empirically derived map of the psychological functions of the major voluntary muscles based on their psychomotor functions, and a complex character structure theory for seven stages of childhood development. This system is perhaps years ahead of its time, given how limited the orientation to the body still is in the larger field of psychology. I learned a great deal from teaching the Bodynamic Analysis psychology of muscles and character structure theory for a number of years. I cannot thank Lisbeth Marcher and her colleagues at the Bodynamic Institute enough for their contribution to my personal and professional development by offering me a detailed map of the emotional needs of the child in each state of its development.2
Many of the early traumas of my life involved so much stress and dysregulation in my body and brain that I suffered for a long time from symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as sensitivity to noise, poor sleep, and extreme reactivity in relationships, without realizing they could be symptoms of PTSD. Traumatic stress, especially from early childhood, often involves high levels of stress, dysregulation, and reactivity in the autonomic nervous system and the viscera governed by it, and in the central nervous system areas of the brain and the spinal cord.
It helped me a great deal to train in a body-oriented trauma training called Somatic Experiencing (SE), which focuses on resolving trauma through autonomic regulation, and then teaching the approach all over the world on behalf of its founder, Dr. Peter Levine. These experiences were beneficial not only in healing my traumatic stress symptoms but also in providing me with a laboratory to develop my emotional embodiment work. Dr. Levine, whose book Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma continues to be a bestseller in its category more than twenty years after its publication, is an exquisitely fine clinician with an incredible intelligence.3 He is a master at downregulating highly aroused autonomic nervous systems that are often the cause of symptoms of traumatic stress. I owe so much personally and professionally to this exceptional individual and am very grateful for meeting him so early in my career in psychology.
My training in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy from Dr. Michael Shea helped me to understand how to work directly with stress and dysregulation in the central nervous system areas of the brain and spinal cord in others as well as myself.4 The core areas of the brain and spinal cord are increasingly dysregulated with severe trauma, such as birth and early abandonment traumas, which I have in my own history. Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy also taught me how to work with the body in its depth at the quantum or subatomic level, which can become increasingly dysregulated when the intensity of trauma worsens. This approach also taught me how to reconnect the body to collective healing energies in its environment, a connection that can be compromised in trauma to a greater or lesser extent depending on the severity of the trauma.
I experienced much difficulty in accessing my emotions and regulating them, and in sensing my body, both as an academic in business before I became interested in formal training in psychology and during my subsequent education and training to become a licensed clinical psychologist. This motivated me to study the findings of research on emotions and their physiology in depth, especially in affective neuroscience and body psychotherapy paradigms, to find clues for how to access and work better with emotions and the body, both for my clients and myself.
Body psychotherapies such as Reichian Therapy, Bioenergetics, and Bodynamic Analysis work with body defenses primarily in the muscular nervous system to access and express emotions. Of late, the focus of body psychotherapy has expanded to include the role of the autonomic nervous system. Somatic Experiencing, for example, focuses more on working with defenses and dysregulation in the autonomic nervous system to access and regulate emotions. The approaches based on meditative practices from the East, such as mindfulness-based stress reduction, deal with emotions through mindfulness practice. The intersubjective and Kleinian psychoanalytic approaches and the analytical psychology of Jung work with emotions primarily through cognition. The cognitive behavioral approaches regulate emotions through cognition and behavior. And the fine work done by bodywork and energy work approaches regulates emotions by regulating the body or energy respectively. These are all either evidence-based or time-and-market-tested methods that are effective in helping clients with a variety of clinical problems. However, I found them lacking somehow, or time-consuming, or incomplete in their approach to working with emotions, at least for some of my clients—especially for myself!
More than one surprise emerged from my in-depth study of the physiology of emotions in affective neuroscience, especially in an area called embodied cognition. One of these surprises was recognizing that our understanding of the physiology of emotion and of the physiology of cognition has been going through paradigm shifts in the last twenty years, turning earlier findings on their heads. It was also surprising to see that so little of what we understand about the physiology of emotion and of cognition has been integrated into the practice of psychology, even in body psychotherapy systems. In addition, I noticed that most of the research on emotion is focused on a limited number of primary emotions, such as anger and sadness, and neglects the larger number of always-present emotions that I started to refer to as sensorimotor emotions—emotions such as just feeling good or bad about a situation one finds oneself in. Finally, the more recent findings in affective neuroscience in newer research paradigms of embodied and embedded cognition, and embodied and enactive emotion, provide substantial theoretical and empirical evidence for the effectiveness of emotional embodiment work in improving cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes across therapeutic modalities, which I had been finding empirically for some time.
No work stands solely on its own feet. It always stands on a pyramid of shoulders that reaches far below into the past. I have many to thank for my education about the interrelated physiology of emotion, cognition, and behavior. I will, however, limit my thanks to those close to the top of this pyramid of accumulated wisdom. I learned that the body as well as the brain are involved in emotion from neuroscientist Antonio Damasio (in whose lineage Bud Craig has been making outstanding contributions of late) and from neuroscientist and psychoneuroimmunologist Candace Pert.5,6,7
The work of a number of brilliant minds taught me that emotion, cognition, and behavior are functions of not only the brain but also the body and the environment; that cognition, emotion, and behavior are fundamentally inseparable in the physiology of the brain and the body; that embodying emotion can improve cognition and behavior; and that emotion is dynamic and predictive. Those brilliant minds belong to Eugene Gendlin8 from the University of Chicago, Marc Johnson9 at the University of Oregon, Lisa Feldman Barrett10 at Northeastern University, Sian Beilock at Barnard College,11 Giovanna Colombetti12 at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, Evan Thompson13 at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Paula Niedenthal14 at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Rebekka Hufendiek15 at the University of Basel in Switzerland.
Any effective work with emotion requires an understanding of the psychological defenses against intolerable or unacceptable emotions, as well as adequate outside support for emotional experiences. I was fortunate enough to learn how to work with psychological defenses against emotions and to support emotions in not just one but a number of psychological modalities: the humanistic psychology of Carl Rogers, the gestalt therapy of Fritz Perls, Heinz Kohut’s self psychology, Melanie Klein’s object relations, and the intersubjective psychoanalysis of Robert Stolorow.
I grew up in India and moved to the United States for higher education at the age of twenty-six. I grew up in a family in which dreams were seen as meaningful messages from the collective. In my culture, one’s quantum energy body is real, and an individual’s experience is deeply embedded in and shaped by the collective. Therefore, it was natural that I would be drawn to Jungian psychology from almost the beginning of my study of psychology because of its expansive view of the human psyche. It was also natural that I would eventually be drawn back to an Eastern psychology that proposes an even more expansive view of the psyche: Advaita Vedanta, a school of Hindu philosophy. In addition to incorporating all levels of the psyche from Jungian psychology, Advaita Vedanta theorizes that the individual is ultimately inseparable from and identical with the collective.
In order to work with emotions, which are the most difficult of our experiences, it makes sense that one needs to work with all levels of the psyche—physical, energetic, and collective—that bear upon them. Jungian psychology, Advaita Vedanta,16 yoga, Randolph Stone’s Polarity Therapy,17 and Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy18 gave me the necessary understanding and tools to begin to work with all levels of the psyche in relation to emotions. Developing a greater capacity for opposites in experience, or building affect tolerance, is emphasized in intersubjective psychoanalysis for psychological health, in Jungian psychology for individuation, and in Advaita Vedanta for enlightenment. Seeing the importance that these diverse systems placed on affect tolerance was an early inspiration in the development of emotional embodiment work as a core clinical strategy in the larger framework of ISP, my comprehensive approach to the psyche.
When I set out twenty years ago to develop the approach of embodying emotion—focused on developing a greater capacity to tolerate emotional experiences—as a therapeutic tool, I did not have the benefit of all the scientific evidence available today for why that makes sense. During that time, there has been a virtual revolution in our understanding of the role of the body in both emotion and cognition. When I began, I was inspired to develop this work on the basis of two simple ideas: that developing a capacity for tolerating emotion is a good thing, based on my study of intersubjective psychoanalysis, Jungian psychology, and Advaita Vedanta; and that the entire brain and body physiology could perhaps be used to make the experience of emotion more tolerable. I developed the second idea after learning from my initial study of the physiology of emotions (especially from neurologist Antonio Damasio and molecular scientist Candace Pert) that the bulk, if not the entirety, of brain and body physiology can be involved in the generation of emotional experiences. I also learned from several body psychotherapy approaches that various physiological defenses against intolerable experiences could form in both the brain and the body to reduce suffering.
From observing emotional experiences in myself and my clients, it became clear that an experience of an emotion such as fear could occur in different body locations in different people, and in different locations in the same person on different occasions: sometimes in the chest, other times in the legs, the belly, the head, or the brain. For example, when I once asked a client where she was experiencing her fear, she first reported it as an experience only in her brain. When I asked her to touch the back of her neck, where muscles can often form a defense against an experience from the head extending to the body (and vice versa), she was surprised to experience fear all over her body not much later.
These observations, in combination with my observation that my clients and I often struggled to resolve difficult emotions that showed up in only very few places in our brain and body physiology, led me to wonder if processing the energy of a difficult emotion in more places in the brain and body physiology—processing in a bigger container, so to speak—would somehow make it more bearable to stay with, process, and complete the emotions. As I would later explain to my clients, to motivate them to embody difficult emotional experiences: just as a bag can be carried more easily with two hands than with one, it is easier to tolerate an emotion when it is carried by more parts of the body.
Thus, emotional embodiment work has been critical to my professional and personal growth. I am extremely pleased by this confluence, which continues to evolve from new clinical experiences and emerging streams of knowledge. Emotional embodiment has certainly benefited me, my clients, and my students, and in turn their clients. In writing this book, I am so looking forward to sharing this work with as many people as possible—mental health professionals as well as laypeople—all over the world.
The book is organized in three sections: an overview of this field (part I, “Overview,” chapters 1–4), an exploration of the theories underlying it (part II, “Theory,” chapters 5–9), and details regarding the practice of embodying emotion (part III, “Practice: The Four Steps of Emotional Embodiment,” chapters 10–14).
Chapters 1–4 in part I offer a more substantive introduction to the work. They offer an introduction to the theory, the basic concepts, the practice of embodying emotion, and its benefits, with illustrative clinical examples in a variety of clinical contexts, and with clients with varying levels of affect tolerance or capacity for tolerating emotional experiences. Chapter 1 focuses on clients with high affect tolerance, with high levels of emotion and emotional intensity, wide and deep expansion of emotion in the body, and long cycles of emotional processing. Chapter 2 focuses on work with clients at the other end of the spectrum of affect tolerance, with low levels of emotion and emotional intensity, narrow and superficial expansion of emotion in the body, and short cycles of emotional processing. Chapter 3 presents clinical examples highlighting benefits that are possible through embodying emotion, such as improvements in cognitive, emotional, behavioral, physical, energetic, and spiritual outcomes. This chapter also presents a clinical example of emotional embodiment in long-term work and the possible limitations of the method. Chapter 4 focuses on clinical examples of emotional embodiment work in the treatment of severe traumas that involve considerable dysregulation of the brain and body physiology. I hope that after reading part I, readers will have a decent grasp of the approach so they can begin the practice of embodying emotions with themselves and others.
Part II, the theory section (chapters 5–9), presents the hard scientific evidence on which the practice of embodying emotion is based. Chapter 5 offers a detailed treatment of the physiology of emotion and establishes that the generation and experience of emotion can involve the entirety of one’s brain and body physiology. Chapter 6 presents emerging evidence on how cognition, emotion, and behavior are dependent not just on the brain but also on the body and the environment; how inseparable the three are as they arise in the physiology of the brain as well as the body; and the implications of these findings for the work of emotional embodiment. Chapter 7 presents a framework of seven physiological dynamics through which emotions are generated and defended against in the brain and body physiology—dynamics that can be observed and manipulated in embodying emotion. Chapter 8, on affect tolerance, develops the book’s central thesis—that expanding an emotional experience in the physiology can increase a person’s capacity to tolerate the experience—based on the findings presented in chapters 5, 6, and 7 and on a simple model of physiological regulation. Chapter 9 discusses different kinds of emotions, including always-present and often-overlooked sensorimotor emotions such as simply feeling good or bad, to create a bigger range of emotional experience to embody from the first session with a client.
Part III, consisting of chapters 10–14, is focused on the nuts and bolts of the practice of embodying emotion. Chapter 10, “The Situation,” discusses how to identify and process a situation so it can lead to an emotional response to work with. Chapter 11, “The Emotion,” offers different ways of working with psychological and innate defenses against emotions to access emotions, as well as ways to support emotional experiences in oneself and others. Chapter 12, “The Expansion,” looks at how to approach and work with physiological defenses against emotions, and ways to work with different parts of the brain and body physiology to expand an emotional experience in a regulated manner to as much of the body as possible. Chapter 13, “The Integration,” covers the optional step of integration. This chapter discusses how certain resources—such as physiological energetic improvements, collective energies, and cognitive and behavioral shifts that can be expected to arise automatically in the process of embodying emotion—can be used to make emotional experiences more stable, contained, and tolerable, and to expedite symptom resolution. Chapter 14, “Interpersonal Resonance,” presents evidence on how human beings have the innate capacity to exchange information directly with each other through short-range bioelectric and biomagnetic energies and long-range quantum energies. The chapter also discusses how to use interpersonal resonance to understand and support emotional states in others.
The last chapter, titled “Conclusion: The Future,” discusses an interesting topic for neurological research in relation to emotional embodiment and the possible new dimensions that the practice of embodying emotion could add, such as the subtle or quantum level as well as the collective level of the psyche, to further improve outcomes in all therapies.
For the reader who is short on time or has little patience with theory, I would recommend that you start with part I, skip part II, go straight to part III, and then return to part II to learn more about the theoretical underpinnings of the practice of embodying emotion. For everyone, I highly recommend that you start the practice of embodying emotion with yourself and others as soon as you start reading this book. We are generating emotions all the time, and difficult emotional experiences, big and small, are a daily occurrence. So what are you waiting for? If you are reluctant to start to expand an unpleasant emotional experience in your body, start with a pleasant experience as a trial run.
As a medium for communicating how to go about the practice of embodying emotion, a book containing words and pictures is limited at best. To overcome this limitation, we have set up free secure online access to videos of complete demonstration sessions of emotional embodiment work, as well as shorter illustrative videos of the steps involved in the practice of embodying emotion. To gain access to this free online resource, please visit www.integralsomaticpsychology.com, then click “Books,” then “Embodying Emotion,” and then “Resources” in successive dropdown menus, and register.