THE ENERGY OF EMOTIONS – 1
WHAT ARE EMOTIONS?
EMOTIONS ARE ENERGY
We know that emotions are energy from the way we experience them – moving like a wave through our bodies.
And from the fact that we can feel the emotions someone else is having even without touching them and with our eyes closed.
THE ENERGY OF EMOTIONS – 2
EMOTIONAL ENERGY AND COSMIC ENERGY
If emotions are energy, what kind of energy are they?
The same kind that flows through the circuits in your computer, moves planets, stars and galaxies around the skies, holds atoms together and is released when they are split apart.
Electromagnetism
Gravitation
Strong (Nuclear) Force
Weak Force
When we experience an emotion we are feeling the force of one of these energies in our bodies. Nature is always efficient. She uses what she has on hand.
Julie Motz's theory of an emotional universe
THE ENERGIES OF PERCEPTION
EXCITEMENT allows us to perceive what is SAFE.
FEAR allows us to perceive what is DANGEROUS.
If we “get rid of” our fear (that is to say deny it or suppress it) we cannot know when we are in danger. We do this by closing down certain receptors on the surface of our cells – the same ones that receive messages about excitement. So we can’t feel true excitement either.
When parents deny or force children to deny their fear or their excitement they make the children dependent on them for knowing when they are safe and when they are in danger. In later life these children often confuse the two and get hurt.
DESIRE AND ANGER:
THE ENERGIES OF PERFORMANCE
After you perceive you act.
In SAFETY your DESIRE gives you the energy to pursue what you want.
In DANGER your ANGER gives you the energy to act to protect yourself:
To: STAND, FIGHT, RUN or HIDE
Parents who control or forbid a child’s anger make it impossible for that child to defend himself effectively so he must always depend upon them for protection.
Anger represents authority. Only those in charge are allowed to have it.
(“Black Power” meant that we were finally able to acknowledge and listen to the anger of African Americans.)
When they control, criticize, judge or deny his desires he learns to feel “bad” whenever he wants something.
Both control of desire and suppression of anger result in making it very difficult for an individual to know clearly what he wants and to pursue it.
THE ENERGIES OF COMPREHENSION
After we act in response to new information we understand – we know both ourselves and the world around us in a new, more complex way.
When we know that we are SAFE, that we have won or gained what we pursued with our desire, we feel SATISFACTION (RELIEF).
When we know that we are hurt, still in DANGER from our enemies, that we have lost, we feel PAIN.
You might say that satisfaction is the knowledge of being loved, and pain is the knowledge of not being loved.
Parents who deny a child’s pain keep the child from connecting deeply to herself. She has to constantly rely on others to tell her who she is. The same thing happens when a parent denies what the child knows to be true.
LOVE AND NEED:
THE ENERGIES OF CONNECTION
After our satisfaction, or our pain, brings us back to the knowledge of ourselves and our position in the universe we reach out, we CONNECT.
When we are SAFE we reach out to share ourselves and our new understanding of who we are with LOVE.
When we are in DANGER we reach out to seek help with the feeling of NEED.
When a parent denies a child’s need, the parent cripples the child’s ability to connect with others and be in a relationship. When a parent rejects a child’s love (by denying the parent’s own need – the need for connection), the child also becomes afraid to reach out to others and share who she is.
People in general marry not just their gender opposites but their emotional and defensive opposites as well, as if seeking to complete themselves.
Perceivers, who stand, marry Comprehenders, who run.
Performers, who fight, marry Connectors, who hide.
All the fascination and frustration your mate holds for you comes from this simple energetic opposition or complementarity, depending on how you choose to look at it.
The “chemistry” involved comes from the fact that each emotion and each emotional defense energizes a different tissue and a different fluid in the body. You’re attracted to people who radiate energy from the places where you are energetically the weakest.
EMOTIONAL SHOCK – WHEN THE DEFENSES ARE OVERRUN
Sometimes neither our vulnerable anger nor our emotional defense can protect us and we go into shock. We seem to “leave” our bodies but actually, we are shifting our anger, the force of our action, into a tissue where the energy is incoherent. This is a way of resting until things feel safe again and is a technique first used in the womb to preserve precious oxygen.
WORKING OUT IN THE EMOTIONAL GYM - 1
DEVELOPING EMOTIONAL INTEGRITY
There is no difference between truth and health and it is our emotions that tell us what is true in the world and what is not.
The challenge is to feel them clearly and allow ourselves to understand what we feel.
The Emotional Workout involves first of all being aware of whenever you are NOT feeling good, either emotionally or physically.
Then, locating the place in your body where the bad feeling is concentrated you work to feel the energy underneath it and the emotional shock, the emotional defense or the pure emotion that is being held there.
With breathing and movement into and from that place you can bring your emotional state into clarity and see what information it has for you.
WORKING OUT IN THE EMOTIONAL GYM – 2
THE WEIGHT OF OLD EMOTIONS
Sometimes to become clear about what you are feeling and why you need to travel back in time to an incident or a situation that has been re-awakened by current events.
If you ask the part of your body that feels the distress or discomfort most keenly, “How old are you?” it may take you back there.
From that place, you can investigate what you were feeling at the time and the meaning of that feeling. Once you have experienced that completely the meaning of the current emotional issue will become clear.
CONTENT COPYRIGHT 2016. JULIE MOTZ. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
You can see that the feelings we generally think of as “bad” – fear, anger, pain and need – are all the feelings that give us the energy to deal with danger. It’s as if we have come to associate the situation with the feeling. We want to get rid of the danger – we don’t want to get rid of the emotions that tell us we are in danger and enable us to respond accordingly.
In truth these feelings do not feel as good to the body as their counterparts – excitement, desire, satisfaction and love. Otherwise there would be no physiological goad to move us from danger to safety. But FEELING them does not feel nearly so bad as NOT feeling them, which forces our bodies to lie and damages our health.
EMOTIONAL ENERGY AND EMOTIONAL TYPES
It should be clear that all of us need all eight of our emotions in order to survive.
However each of us is more comfortable with certain emotions than with others and similarly each of us is an expert at the activity those emotions support and energy. If you think about it you will discover which of the four basic human activities – Perception, Action, Comprehension (knowing) or Connection you are most comfortable with – which you do most easily (NOT which you consider the most important).
I call those people for whom Perception is easiest (and the feelings of EXCITEMENT and FEAR most accessible) PERCEIVERS.
People who find Action easiest (and are clearest about their feelings of DESIRE and ANGER) PERFORMERS.
Those for whom Understanding, Knowing (and the feelings of SATISFACTION and PAIN) seem second nature are the COMPREHENDERS.
People who find Connection easy (and most often show feelings of LOVE or NEED in their eyes) I call CONNECTORS.
EMOTIONAL DEFENSES
Ideally when we are in danger we should be able to use the energy of our anger to stand, fight, run, or hide, choosing whichever defense is appropriate to the occasion.
When the danger feel emotional rather than physical sometimes even getting angry feels too vulnerable and we choose an emotional defense that corresponds to one of those four physical actions.
EMOTIONAL DEFENSES AND EMOTIONAL TYPES
Ideally, each of us should be able to choose whatever emotional as well as whatever physical defense suits each situation best. In truth we have habitual defenses that we use over and over again – and this is determined by our emotional type. It’s as if each of us is a specialist in one fundamental human activity and one way of defending ourselves.
WHY DO WE HAVE EMOTIONS?
What is energy? Physicists define energy as “that which does work.”
What kind of work do your emotions do?
All the fundamental work of being human – perhaps even of life itself.
Emotions give us the energy to:
PERCEIVE (take in information)
PERFORM (respond to information)
COMPREHEND (understand the relationship of new information to old)
CONNECT (share information)
THOUGHT AND FEELING
There is no thought without feeling and feeling, indeed, precedes thinking. It would have been more accurate for Descartes to have written, “I feel, therefore I am.”
You may not be aware of what you are feeling when you are thinking about something – or even solving a mathematical equation – but without the energy of emotion it is impossible to think.
Obsessive thinking hides feelings.
EMOTIONS COME IN PAIRS
We have two closely related (chemically and energetically) emotions for each fundamental human activity. One allows us to respond in safety and the other in danger.
EXCITEMENT and FEAR – the energies of PERCEPTION
DESIRE and ANGER – the energies of PERFORMANCE
SATISFACTION and PAIN – the energies of COMPREHENSION
LOVE and NEED– the energies of CONNECTION