Emotions and the body I

Look at your body... All this structure made up of bones, joints, ligaments, tendons, muscles and organs... And try to realize that your body is not simply physical. Many things have penetrated into your muscles, into your body structure, through repression. If you repress anger, the poison goes into your body; it goes to the muscles, it goes to the blood.

When you repress something, it stops being just a mental phenomenon and becomes a physical one as well – because you are actually a mind-body complex, psychosomatic. Therefore, anything forced on the body affects the mind and anything forced on the mind affects the body.
For example, when you get angry, what happens to the body? Whenever you get angry, some poisons are released into your blood. You have certain glands in your body and these glands release certain chemicals – and this is scientific, it has nothing to do with philosophy.

That's why, if you're in a rage, you can do things you wouldn't normally do. But when an animal gets angry, it just gets angry. He has no morals about it, he's been taught nothing about it; he just expresses all the anger. When you get angry, your anger is like that of any animal, but then there is society, morality, etiquette and a thousand other things.

What happens? You stifle anger. You have to show that you are not angry, you have to smile a fake smile. You force a smile and stifle your anger. And what about your body? The body is ready to fight – or fight or flee from danger, or fight it or flee from it. The body is ready to do something – anger is just the readiness to do something. The body was going to be violent, aggressive. If you could be violent and aggressive then the energy would be overflowing. But you can't – it's not convenient, so you stifle it.

So what happens to all those muscles that were ready to be aggressive? The energy is pushing your muscles to be aggressive and you are pushing back – there will be a conflict. In your muscles, in your blood, in the tissues of your body there will be a conflict. They are ready to express something and you pressure them not to express themselves. You are repressing your muscles. And that happens with all emotions, day after day, for years. So the body is all stunted. All nerves are atrophied; stop flowing. They've been poisoned and they're all tangled up.

Look at any animal and see the grace of its body. What happens to the human body? Why isn't it so graceful? What happened to you? You have done something to him. You have shattered it, and the spontaneity of your flow no longer exists. He was stagnant.

Everywhere in your body there is poison. In every muscle in your body there is repressed anger, repressed sexuality, repressed greed, jealousy, hatred. Everything is repressed there. The body is really sick.

Psychologists say that we create armor around the body and that armor is the problem because all the poison is trapped there. And you can feel it. Your body loses its grace, beauty, energy. You see... When you give someone a hand, there is no real touch, there is no life, your hands are dead. And his whole body was blocked, not just his hands. That's why you can hug someone, you can bring someone to your chest, but that doesn't mean you're bringing that person closer to your heart. If you have an armor around the heart, if you have an emotional block, then the person will remain as far away as before; no intimacy is possible.

But if you really bring the person close to you, with no armor, no wall between you and them, then your heart will melt into their heart. There will be a merger, a communion. When your body becomes receptive and there is no blockage, no poison around it, you will always be surrounded by a subtle feeling of joy. And the joy is just being yourself – being alive, absolutely vibrant, vital. You are happy when your body is flowing, when it is like the flow of a river...