Leave no trace: How to release stored emotions

Did you know…

That your respiratory diaphragm helps you process emotion?

In Ancient Greece, the diaphragm was called phrenos, “the unity of all possibilities of human expression.”

On top of the many physical roles it plays, the diaphragm also serves as a half-way house for everything we experience.

Our emotions are meant to move through us as we move through life. 

When we experience an emotion, it heads to the diaphragm for processing. Once there, it does one of four things.

1. Goes Up and Out: This is expressed emotion. When we hear something funny we laugh, when we’re angry we yell, when we’re sad we cry. This is all healthy for the body: the emotion moves through us, does what it needs to do, and is gone.
2. Goes Down and Out: This happens when the emotion isn’t acute enough to need to be expressed. Instead, it can move safely through the body. The lessons from the experience can be assimilated and the waste is eliminated through the digestive system. This is also a healthy way to experience, integrate, and release emotion.
3. Gets Stored for later: This is where things start to get sticky. When too much is happening at once, and it’s not possible to process everything in the moment, the diaphragm will send the emotion into storage in your  body’s tissues to be dealt with later. Having anger in the shoulders or fear in the knees will eventually start to weaken the body.
4. Gets stuck: This is what happens when the diaphragm is SO overwhelmed with an overload of emotion that it doesn’t know what to do. In this case, the diaphragm will store the emotion in its own tissue. This is the worst possible scenario because the stored emotion then limits the diaphragm’s movement and makes it even harder for the diaphragm to do its job in the future.  A downward spiral!

It’s this last scenario that I’m going to focus on today.

I’m going to show you how to help your diaphragm release stored emotions so it can get rid of old stuff and get back to helping you process the things that come up in your life. This is a great one to do before diving into any of the other deep work on this site : )

Be sure to follow along to release stored emotions!

If you like this video, you’d probably also enjoy this more recent post on how to release grief from your body

Or this video that guides you through centering in your heart while having clear boundaries. 

And if you want to receive my newest tools and resources for balancing your body, mind and spirit, you can  sign up here for my (free) newsletter + get instant free access to a guided audio meditation to bring more calm and peace to any aspect of you desiring more ease. ❤️

If you have any questions or comments, please share them in the section below.  I love hearing from you : )