Growing Emotional Intelligence Through Bodily Awareness
How is your ability to feel?
In my previous article on emotional intelligence, my challenge for each reader was to practice the art of feeling. I hope, for a brief moment, you were able to pause your busy life and experience an emotion or two in response to poetry.
However, I wonder how many felt uncertain about how to tune into their emotions so specifically. You may have thought, “I want to feel, and I want to experience my humanity, but I don’t know how! No one has taught me!” Well, that brings us here to today’s article.
According to the American Psychological Association, the first skill that makes up emotional intelligence is “to perceive and appraise emotions accurately.” In other words, emotional identification.
Emotional identification refers to a person’s ability to identify and name emotions. Knowing what you’re feeling is a key part of emotional intelligence. In order to regulate, express, or manage emotions, we first have to know what in the world we are even feeling! If you found yourself stumped reading the last article, I hear you! Though it can be challenging to master, let’s start the journey towards naming your emotions.
Body Awareness
To begin this journey, let’s start with some trivia. Did you know that emotions are felt in your body, as well as your mind? Many people are surprised to realize how closely linked our physical sensations are to our emotions—they are very intertwined! Increasing your ability to identify emotions actually starts with increasing your awareness of your body.
Picture in your mind a time when you felt angry. As you hold this memory in your mind, recall what that felt like. Did your face get hot? Were your fists clenched? Was your heart pounding out of your chest? How tight was your body? All of these physical sensations were actually your body letting you know you were feeling angry! By tuning into your physical sensations, you are tuning into your feelings. Information from the body provides clues for identifying which specific emotion you are experiencing.
What Is Mindfulness?
We can learn to increase body awareness by slowing down and being mindful. Mindfulness takes effort. It requires intentionally paying attention to internal and external happenings of life. With so many things vying for our attention in a day, it can be incredibly difficult to stop and notice the quieter things. Lots of us aren’t used to tuning into emotions. Often, we don’t notice our emotions until they are slamming into us like a tidal wave. Mindfulness creates more space to notice emotions before they reach tidal wave levels.
To increase your mindfulness, take a few minutes in the day to stop, pause, and check in with yourself. Close your eyes and turn your attention to each part of your body. Notice which areas feel tight or loose in particular. Take note of patterns and see how you can connect those feelings to what has happened today. By pursuing mindfulness, you’re choosing to reject life on autopilot and make time to hear how your body is experiencing the day.
Emotional Identification
The Feelings Wheel
Often, when we’re feeling big emotions, it seems like there are only two options: ignore the emotion or be overwhelmed by it. Regardless of which option you tend towards, both reveal the beliefs you hold about feeling and expressing emotions. If I can leave you with anything from this series, I want you to know there are more options.
Instead of ignoring a feeling or being overwhelmed by, option three is to name it. Call it out for what it is! If you’re not sure, start an internal dialogue and try on some possibilities. Am I lonely? Neglected? Demeaned? Validate that you’re feeling something and give it a name. In doing so, you’re opening the door to choose.
According to therapist and author Nancy McWilliams, “to transform into verbal expression something that first manifested as an inchoate body sensation or a feeling of impending dread or a behavioral compulsion is the route to understanding and mastery of the problem” (p. 20). Giving words to what you feel is the first step towards deciding a way forward. When we ignore our feelings or get overwhelmed, it’s very hard to make choices that honor all parts of ourselves.
Putting It Into Practice
Let’s take another minute to practice feeling by using the arts. Focus on trying to name what you feel—the first step towards building up emotional intelligence.
A helpful tool for identifying emotions is a feelings wheel. If you’re having trouble identifying what you’re feeling, start by picking from those middle seven emotions. From there, you can work your way out and try to find more specific emotions that might fit. You can also rule out which ones you’re not feeling!
I’ve chosen two paintings for today’s exercise. As before, view each painting not as an intellectual exercise to understand the meaning or break down the elements but to listen to the feelings and sensations they evoke in you. Write down or simply experience all that comes up. What sensations are in your body? What images or memories are coming to mind? Using the feelings wheel, try to pick one emotion. Tune into your body sensations and notice what you feel.
