When you’re afraid, you tighten up. The contraction will start in your neck and then spread to the rest of you. You compress, make yourself smaller, less of a target, and go into some version of the fight-or-flight reflex.
When you’re afraid, it will be hard to reach out to others. Your touch will be less pleasant. Your verbal and emotional expression will be curtailed.
By contrast, when you love, you expand. You swell up and take your full space in the world. The neck frees up, the head releases forward and up to take a poised relationship to your spine.
Conversely, when you pull down and in on yourself, you’re going to have more access to the emotions of fear, hatred, sadness and depression. By contrast, when you expand into activity, you’ll have more access to the emotions of joy, love and tranquility.
Every emotion requires a particular alignment of the body. When you use your muscles in a certain way, certain emotions are readily at hand while others are out of touch.
It’s not that emotions, thoughts and muscles are connected but that they are all part of the same thing — you. Your brain is part of your body. What you think affects the degree of muscle tension. Your emotions, thoughts and muscles are constantly affecting each other.
You can take the path of love to expansion or you can expand into love. Or you can lose consciousness of yourself and slip into pulling down and into depression.
