Thoughts, without an emotion backing it up, actually have very little power.
Mental health is becoming a global pandemic. Perhaps it is time to change the way we view ‘Mental health’. Very few people actually suffer from ‘mental health’ issues, rather they are suffering from ‘Emotional Health issues’. If we start to view mental health, rather as ‘emotional health’, we might begin to see a dramatic shift in the healing that can take place.
Emotions are FELT experiences WITHIN the body and not in the brain. Current psychological and medical theorists place emotion in the brain, specifically in the amygdala and the hippocampus. Many alternative health practitioners recognise that emotions are felt in the body. This stems from observation through massage and body manipulations that do, on occasion elicit emotional responses. Somatic therapies are becoming more and more popular as more people are recognising that our emotions emerge from our bodies and often get trapped there.
Cognitive therapies versus trapped emotions
People seeking assistance to help themselves feel better emotionally, are often provided with ‘mental health support’, which quite often involves talking therapies, or therapies that involve using cognition. These therapies can be very helpful in releasing immediate distress, however they don’t help with actually releasing the trapped emotion that is the root cause of the distress. This is because the emotion causing the person distress is not found in the brain and can’t be manipulated or changed in the brain, no matter how hard we try. You simply can’t think an emotion away. It has to be released from within the body, where it is trapped or being felt. This is imperative for actual true healing to take place.
Once a trapped emotion is released, it is permanently dissipated and can’t come back to cause distress. This causes the mind to quieten as the thoughts are no longer influenced by the power of a trapped emotion. Another advantage is that once the emotion is released, a persons behaviour also changes as the emotion is no longer able to cause undesirable behaviour.
In SHEN ® Therapy we work to restore a state of balance and harmony by using our hands placed in very specific positions around the body to help release these trapped emotions. We recognise that by taking care of emotional health we are able to stabilise our mental health.
