Below is a heat map that shows where we feel our emotions on our body. Happiness is felt all over your body. No surprise here. Hanging out with my family makes me feel happy and loved. Take a look below and see where emotions affect you. Then the next time you feel an emotion, remember what it is doing to your body.
P.S.–I follow a great blogger Seth Godin. Below is one of his blogs on sharing and is exactly why I started sharing my thoughts.
You are what you share
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/
I have a friend who can always be counted on to have a great book recommendation handy. Another who can not only tell you the best available movie currently in theatres, but confidently stand behind his recommendations.
And some people are eager to share a link to an article or idea that’s worth reading.
Most people, though, hesitate. “What if the other person doesn’t like it…”
The fear of being judged is palpable, and the digital trail we leave behind makes it feel more real and more permanent. We live in an ever-changing culture, and that culture is changed precisely by the ideas we engage with and the ones we choose to share.
Sharing an idea you care about is a generous way to change your world for the better.
The culture we will live in next month is a direct result of what people like us share today. The things we share and don’t share determine what happens next.
As we move away from the top-down regime of promoted movies, well-shelved books and all sorts of hype, the recommendation from person to person is now the most powerful way we have to change things.
It takes guts to say, “I read this and you should too.” The guts to care enough about our culture (and your friends) to move it forward and to stand for something.
We’ll judge you most on whether you care enough to change things.
Heatmaps Reveal Where Humans Feel Certain Emotions On The Body
by Arjun Walia.
http://www.collective-evolution.com/
February 26, 2014
It’s well known that attitudes, emotions and feelings affect our body in a variety of ways. For example, feelings of hopelessness affect the body’s hormone system and change the chemical flows within our brains. Different emotional states act as triggers that impact our biology in a variety of ways. Brain activity changes during different emotional states. The list goes on and on.
A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science demonstrates that different emotional states trigger different physical sensations on the body. Emotions such as anger, impacted the body in a different area compared to the emotion of fear, disgust, happiness, love, depression, and more. Each individual emotion had it’s own unique part of the body that correlated with it.
The study was conducted at Aalto University by a team of bio-medical engineers. 700 volunteers from Finland, Sweden and Taiwan participated in the study.
“Emotions are often felt in the body, and somatosensory feedback has been proposed to trigger conscious emotional experiences. Here we reveal maps of bodily sensations associated with different emotions using a unique topographical self-report method. In five experiments, participants were shown two silhouettes of bodies alongside emotional words, stories, movies, or facial expressions. They were asked to color the bodily regions whose activity they felt increasing or decreasing while viewing each stimulus. Different emotions were consistently associated with statically separable bodily sensation maps across experiments. These maps were concordant across West European and East Asian samples.” (1)
Regardless of race, gender, different emotional states correlated with the same part of the body with the majority of participants. Usually when you have a group as large as 700 people, your going to get pretty reliable and conclusive results.
“Emotions adjust not only our mental, but our bodily states. This way they prepare us to react swiftly to the dangers, but also to the opportunities such as pleasurable social interactions present in the environment.”Lauri Nummenmaa, assistant professor in an Aalto University press release.
This study is yet another important reminder of how emotions can impact the body. Do you pay attention to the ways in which emotions affect your body, health, and others around you? Finding your inner peace is a great way to improve your health.
How can we let go of emotions that don’t serve us? Let’s take anger for example. Imagine that you are carrying a tank of gasoline, and whatever it is in your external world that upsets you, is the match. These can be concepts, thoughts, people, etc. All you have to do is empty and let go of the tank of gasoline, and the matches can’t start a blaze. You are always in control of your emotions, your reactions are always your choice. It starts with looking at yourself from an external perspective. Nobody else is to blame for your different emotional states but yourself, although it might not always seem that way.
Did you know that your heart emits electromagnetic fields that change according to your emotions? That the human heart’s magnetic field can be measured up to several feet away from the body? That positive emotions create physiological benefits in your body? That you can boost your immune system by conjuring positive emotions? That negative emotions can create a nervous system chaos, but positive emotions do the opposite? For more information on this, check out the tremendous work that scientists and researchers are doing at The Instutue of Hearthmath.
Sources:
(1) http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/12/26/1321664111
http://memolition.com/2014/01/04/where-humans-feel-certain-emotions/