The Map Within

If we were to give our emotions a physicality, what would they feel like?

Is it a warmth in the chest? A lightness in the belly? Would the shoulders drop a full half inch? Is it an urge to move, to laugh, to hold communion with someone we appreciate?

Or maybe it’s just a breath. A moment, when nothing needs to be different than what it is right now.

Let’s take a second to drop into our emotional landscape.

On purpose.

Are our emotions things that happen in the mind, in the body, both?

Are they something we contemplate at all?

Are we the explainers of how we feel, trying to understand where emotions come from, and define what they mean?

How about the physical feeling of them? Does it move through us as sensations, shifts in breathing, changes in posture? Or does it feel more like an advance and retreat?

Let’s take a moment to recall joy.

A simple happening.

A conversation that left a smile long after it ended, the first glimpse of the ocean, or maybe that first hit of coffee in the morning.

Instead of replaying the story, bring up the experience itself.

And what if we began to map it?

Not to chart a course toward happiness, but to simply become more familiar with our terrain.

Where do we feel the joy we brought up?

Do we soften with it or release? Is it warm or cool? Is there movement, or stillness? Does the sensation arrive all at once, or does it expand through the body?

Can we give it a color? Can we bring up the simple outline of the body and sense where the emotion lives within the shape?

Can we do that without worrying about whether it makes sense to anyone else?

Then, can we do it again?

Can we expand beyond joy to curiosity, excitement, peace, anticipation, or whatever else we find ourselves experiencing?

Over time, a personal map might begin to emerge.

We might begin to recognize the contours of our own joy. Where it gathers. The direction or momentum with which it moves.

We may discover patterns we hadn’t noticed before. And to be clear, there may be no neat legend explaining every sensation.

No.

We’ll have to be still, to listen, and to begin to make sense of our own experience.

Not to solve it, but to become a little more curious about the relationship between what we feel and how we experience it.

So remember the loosening in the shoulders, friends. Honor the warmth in the chest. Notice the lightness that moves through the stomach.

And may we map the experience of this moment.

In this body.

As ourselves.