Paige Leighton - Trauma Informed Somatic Coach

Join us!

I talk a lot about somatic movement practices and their importance in increasing resilience, processing emotions, and releasing stress.

If you’d like to give it a try, my beautiful friend Olga is hosting a live practice over google meet. I’d love it if you could join us this Saturday April 11th - 7pm CET, 1pm EST, 10am PST.

centered in chaos centered in chaos A live monthly somatic ritual to come into embodied presence, naturally release stress, move your body, and reclaim your self-authority – to remember who the fu you really…

The magic of learning how to feel, move through, and metabolize difficult emotions is the freedom you earn on the other side.

How to feel the feelings: Part 5

The Emotions Wheel

Let’s expand our emotional vocabulary. There are nuances in emotions, dividing them further into different categories. Over time, as you begin to sense into each emotion more quickly, you’ll start to notice there are slightly different sensations and circumstances. Having a larger vocabulary helps you to identify the emotion you may be feeling. This may lead to understanding the circumstances behind them and what kind of response is needed, if any. The emotions wheel below splits larger emotions into more specific emotions.

How to feel the feelings: Part 4

Emotion Body Map

We’ve made progress with sensing into the body, locating physical sensations, and adding descriptive words to them. Next let’s move forward to adding names to emotions. Remember, emotions are a collection of physical sensations present in the body.

In 2013, a paper was published outlining where in the body most people felt each emotion. This study is enormously helpful for those who struggle to name their emotions. In the diagram below, emotions in the body are shown as warm colors for increased activation and cool colors for decreased activation. If you can match the general location of the experienced sensations to the diagram, you might be experiencing that emotion.

Check in with yourself and ask if this emotion makes sense or does it feel true? One important thing to note is that these diagrams are not a one size fits all. For example, I feel more shame more in my stomach, which presents like nausea (disgust), more than is highlighted in the diagram. I experience embarrassment in a similar manner to the diagram for shame. Over time and practice, you’ll get to know yourself a little better and be able to express what you're going through.