Feeling down, overwhelmed or stressed out leads to some pretty intense emotional storms. I just came out of one myself recently and dang it was a big one. Nobody really loves feeling these “negative” emotions, yet they are part of our emotional repertoire, our emotional vocabulary. And they are important to feel and process. They become a problem when they get stuck, basically an emotional clog. You want to know the quickest way to get out of an emotional funk?
Move Your Body
Yes it’s quite simple. When you move your body, your physiology changes. This means that your body chemistry shifts. If you’re feeling down, depressed, overwhelmed or stressed the f*ck out, make a big move with your body.
This could be getting up from your desk and jumping up and down for 30 seconds, punching an imaginary speed bag as fast as you can, or get some shimmies going throughout your entire body.
Change your physiology, change your emotional funk
I have done this many times in emotional spirals. You know the ones that you just can’t seem to get out of. You might be so sad, down and depressed. Or you might be pissed off and have an anger you just can’t shake. You might wake up in a bad mood and say something like “today is going to be a shitty day.” This is when you can change your emotions so quickly by changing your physiology.
Ways to change your physiology:
- taking a cold shower
- jumping up and down
- screaming and yelling into a pillow
- shaking your entire body
It doesn’t take long to change your attitude by changing what is happening in your body.
Now I want to be clear, this is not about pushing down emotions or trying to deflect from them. I’m talking about the times that you just feel like you can’t get out of the funk and you need a moment of reprieve.
Getting into your body can do wonders. You might still feel the emotion come back but I guarantee that it will shift your emotional state.
Mind & Body Connection
This is mind/body connection at its best. Your mind has the tendency to attach to an emotion sometimes rather than allowing the emotion to move through as the cloud that it is. When this happens, you can tag your body into the mix by changing your physiology. This will get you out of your mind, it will disconnect the attachment your mind has on that emotion and free you from being stuck in an emotional spiral.
Remember, you want to stay aware at the gate of you mind. You will know the difference between an organic movement of an emotion and an emotional spiral the mind is creating.
INNER REFLECTION QUESTIONS
- What is one body move you commit to doing when you need to change your physiology?
Let me know how it in the comment box below.
I love hearing from you.
As always, stay curious my friend.