Where do you feel it?
10 Percent Happier is my meditation app of choice, at least for guided meditation and mindfulness instruction. Thanks to the instructors there I have become more and more aware of how and where I feel emotions, physically; prolonged stress manifests in many people’s shoulders or heads, for example.
In a similary way, I feel anger in my lower jaw. Anger is to be bitten off and swallowed, held back by the clamped teeth. I feel sadness in my upper cheeks, as though they are hamster-pouches that fill to aching with tears. The despairing slide down into depression hurts my chest like being caught in industrial machinery, bands steadily tightening, sharply cutting, and stealing my breath. Worry for myself makes my hands feel like they aren’t my own, tingly and fidgety. Worry for others hits right in the gut, a slow punch that goes on and on until all is well. Self-recrimination I feel in the face, my skin uncomfortable as though it doesn’t fit properly. Self-nihilistic moods are not painful at all, but feel instead like a cold collar about the neck and an unbearable lightness of being.
Where do you feel it? was originally published in eustonmouse on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.