During my last blog, I wrote about trauma to the brain resulting from traumatic forces, whether it’s from a concussion, whiplash, or a compressive or stretching type of force to another part of your body leading to trauma in the brain and how osteopathic treatment can assist in the healing process. But what about the effect of emotional events on the body? The course I took in December talked about just that!

Emotion

Emotion – An exchange tool at the service of the individual. It participates in the construct of personality, psyche and the perception of reality. The emotional brain is responsible for so much: it represents our affect, contributes to our social interactions, how we are in relationships, how we respond when we feel threatened, our mood, our memories, how memories are triggered by certain smells, decision making and emotion just to name a few! Seems like it would be a good thing not to neglect in treatment Especially as research is now beginning to emerge that indicates work related, personal, and/or family related stressful life events can contribute to the development of chronic diseases, including anxiety and depression, Type 2 diabetes, cancer, coronary heart disease, circulatory disease, asthma and emphysema.

The emotional brain

The part of the brain that is involved with behaviours and emotional responses is the limbic system. The limbic system (see the picture below!) is made up of numerous structures including the hippocampus, the cingulate gyrus, the amygdala, the thalamus and the hypothalamus to name a few.

The amygdala is our ‘watchdog,’ it lets you know of any immediate threats or discomfort in addition to being involved in memory, learning, and emotions such as; pleasure, fear, anger and anxiety. The cingulate gyrus plays a role in our affect in social situations in additional to processing emotional experiences. The hippocampus is responsible for archiving our memories and is involved with emotional experiences. The thalamus is the orchestrator for lack of a better word, it receives and relays information and is the final decision making for both conscious and unconscious decisions.

The endocranium and emotion

Now, we’ve all undergone events in our life whether it’s a break up, a loss, feelings of grief, a feeling of rejection or any situation or event that has occurred where you haven’t been able to process it, chew it up and understand it enough to let it pass through you…or for lack of better terminology, to let it go…So what happens to that energy if we don’t let it go – it can become crystallized in the body. This crystallization of an event or events can occur on many different levels in the body, including both the tissues and fluids. This crystallization can form a pre-disposition of perception and contribute to changes in posture, lines of gravity, behaviours, patterns of behaviours and even impact numerous system states such as; our endocrine system, immune system, our vascular system and the digestive system

Still with me? You may not be aware of it in the moment that an event has left an imprint, and you may not pick up on it at all. Similar to a physical trauma, these emotional types of events can leave a shock imprint or even send you into an emotional freeze state. Similar to a physical shock imprint, it can cause an anchor in the body that you operate around which can cause adaptations in both your physical and emotional bodies.

How do these emotional spasms present?

So how can we identify these types of crystallizations? We may see it in a chronic state of health, whether it’s endocrine, nervous, vascular, or immunologic in nature. Chronic states of health such as anxiety and depression, Type 2 diabetes, cancer, coronary heart disease, circulatory disease, asthma and emphysema. The emotional spasms may present as a non-evolution of reaction or repetitive patterns or cycles (do you react the same one every time to the same situation?). It may present as difficulty living with your true affect or with difficulty with intimacy. Are you hypersensitive to certain situations? Or do you have trouble living in the present moment as you’re either stuck in the past or too worried about the future. These are certain patterns of behaviours that could lead us to believe there is an underlying anchor in the body contributing to your perception of the world.

Healing emotion with Osteopathy

Osteopathic treatment with the goal of gaining access to the endocranium starts with your physical structure, as that needs to be free and moving. The general clean up includes spinal mobilization, visceral manipulation and treating the cranial-sacral unit to ensure the brain and spinal cord are free to roll and glide. Once the physical structure is clear, including the dura which surrounds the brain and spinal cord, we are then able to work specifically on the endocranium. The gentle cranial techniques focus on removing strain patterns, restoring central alignment and restoring the fluid mechanics to ensure the central nervous system is working as optimally as possible. Or you can think of it along another train of thought; by working on a physical level, we help to center you in your body, which in turn helps to center you in your being, and helps you in your ability to reach resolutions and health. As always, one of our goals is to help individuals move back towards homeostasis (in addition to reducing pain, yes, both can happen at the same time!!).

Treating these areas of crystallization, people can respond in different ways. For some, by having the area palpated, may trigger a memory of the event that has occurred, for some, they may not notice until they’ve had a chance to integrate the changes over the coming couple of weeks. For some, they may not notice a change until they are in the specific situation which they would usually respond the same way and they respond in a different manner. It’s different from person to person!

Now, we’ve covered a lot in a short period of time…at the very least, we hope we’ve given you some food for thought! We understand that some of these thoughts will be new to you and will take some time to digest. It may trigger questions or it may resonate with you as something you’re currently experiencing. Whatever the case, please reach out if you wish to chat further. We are here for you, so do not hesitate get in touch if you need more information. I’ll leave you with a final quote, ‘emotions may seem to be conscious feelings, but they are, in fact, ‘inner motions.’