Tag Archives: emotion

A frozen rib cage interferes with freedom of expression. After all, even an exhale is an “expression” of air! In theater there is a saying, “The chest does not lie.” This statement infers that your true emotional state is reflected in the carriage of your chest. Unconsciously, we are both communicating as well as reading others’ emotions in sometimes subtle, but sometimes large shifts in the chest. For the last 200 years, science and medicine insisted that the organs in the torso are merely mechanical devices; pumps and bellows that keep the human machine running. The idea that emotional life is somehow connected to these physiological functions was ridiculed. And yet, we would talk about someone walking around with his chest “puffed up.” Or having a “gut feeling.” Neurotransmitters have been found in the stomach indicating that a “gut feeling” may be a kind of intelligence that informs the thinking brain.