By Damien Rider
Whether you feel physical pain or emotional pain, both the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex are activated in the brain. The anterior insula makes you aware of your own body state (this is the part of our brain that allows us to become aware of our own heartbeat, control our breathing even though it will also happen automatically, etc.). In contrast, the anterior cingulate cortex helps our cognitive functions, such as empathy, decision-making, and impulse control.
Even though the process for physical and emotional pain is not exactly the same, both send similar signals to our brains and require us to pay attention and help heal them in order to move forward.
If you were on a run and fell or rolled your ankle, you’d stop for a minute to assess the potential injury and make sure you were ok before you proceed again. In the same sense, if you feel a potential emotional injury, it should be normalized to take a moment to assess your feelings and connect with your breath before you move forward again.
Being able to pause to connect to the breath and detach the mind can become the new normal. People utilizing these lessons are resilient, emotionally intelligent, and self-aware because they use these tools throughout their daily life. They’re also well-prepared and welcome challenges and obstacles because they use the elements and movement to simulate the heightened senses you get throughout the day when you run into different stressors.
