Mindful Thoughts: Emotions pt1

This week we talk about emotions, what they are, how we use them, what they do to us and how Mindfulness can help us control

them.

We are all familiar with emotions such as fear, joy, envy, anger, and excitement. To some extent these emotions are automatic: The brain systems that carry them out operate without us being aware of it. At the same time, we experience feelings of which we are fully aware, so that we are capable of describing ourselves as scared or angry or grumpy, surprised or happy. 

All of our emotions have two components. 

The first begins unconsciously and manifests itself as an outward expression; for example, a bear crosses your path and you start

running, you burn your hand and pull away... subconscious spurred to action to survive.

The second is a subjective, internal expression, the feeling of emotion connected to the narrative in your mind, for example: I am scared, bears are scary, I never take this path again... conscious memorizing the state of mind because of this bear

To understand emotions today we gonna take a deeper look about the biology of emotions. Knowing where they are coming from

and what they actually are gives us a deeper understanding to also deal with them.

Emotion, in its most general definition, is a neural impulse that moves an organism to action, 

prompting automatic reactive behavior that has been adapted through evolution as a survival mechanism to meet a survival need, and we share those basic emotions with animals. Research in rats and mice show that just like us their behavior is steered by

emotion.

When you break it down simply: emotions are energy, energy in motion, e-motion. 

This energy pulses through your body constantly even when you are not aware of it. The limbic system is the area of the brain most heavily implicated in emotion, it includes the hypothalamus, thalamus, amygdala, and hippocampus. 

The processes of the limbic system control our physical and emotional responses to our environment and categorizes the experience as pleasant or unpleasant. Based on that the neuro-chemicals such as dopamine, noradrenaline, and serotonin increase or decrease resulting in changes in our body movement, gestures, and poses.

This is all complicated to explain in a short time so I want to direct you to this great learning youtube channel:

 

It goes without saying that our emotions need to be regulated. 

Aristoteles  argued that the proper regulation of the emotions was a defining feature of wisdom.

And this is where Mindfulness comes in.

More tomorrow!

Good link about the brain: https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/learning-strategies/