Emotions and Energy

Emotions are not abstract ideas. They are hardwired biological responses refined through evolution to keep you alive, connected, and growing.

In neuroscience, emotions are described as biopsychosocial responses—meaning they affect your body, mind, and your social interactions. When your brain perceives a meaningful event, it signals your endocrine and nervous systems to prepare your body for action.

Let’s say someone cuts you off in traffic. Before you can even think, your amygdala processes it as a potential threat. Your hypothalamus sends a message to your adrenal glands, which release cortisol and adrenaline. Your heart rate increases. Your breath shortens. Your body gets ready to react.

This chain reaction happens in milliseconds. It’s not about being “too emotional”—it’s your body being incredibly efficient.

Emotion is the bridge between perception and action.
It’s how your nervous system decides what to do next.

Emotions Are Energy in Motion

Every emotion has a frequency. This isn't just metaphor—it’s physics.

At a cellular level, your body is constantly moving energy through electrical impulses, chemical messengers, and vibrational patterns. Your heart, brain, and nervous system all emit measurable energy fields. According to research from the HeartMath Institute, your heart’s electromagnetic field is about 60 times stronger than your brain’s—and it responds instantly to emotional changes.

When you feel joy, your heart rhythm becomes smooth and coherent. When you feel anger or fear, it becomes jagged and chaotic. Your body literally changes its energetic signature depending on what you’re feeling.

That’s why we say emotions are energy in motion. When they’re allowed to flow, they pass. When blocked or suppressed, they stagnate.

How Long Emotions Are Meant to Last

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist who experienced a stroke in her left hemisphere, discovered something powerful:

It takes just 90 seconds for an emotion to rise and fall in the body.

That’s the natural lifespan of an emotional response—if it’s not interrupted or fed by your thoughts. What makes emotions last longer is the story you attach to them.

For example:

The body is built for emotional waves, not emotional whirlpools. When you learn to feel and ride the wave, you regulate. When you suppress or overthink it, you dysregulate.

Your Body Is the First Responder

Before your mind understands what’s happening, your body already knows.

That’s because of interoception—your brain’s ability to sense internal body signals like your heartbeat, hunger, temperature, or gut tension. Interoception is what lets you feel emotions physically, often before you can name them.

Think of your body as your emotional radar.
It gives you real-time data before your brain catches up.

Common body signals of emotion:

These aren't random—they’re your body’s built-in somatic language. Learning this language is emotional intelligence.

Emotions Aren’t the Enemy

Let’s clear this up: Emotions are not dangerous. Avoiding them is.

Our culture often tells us:

But emotions that are ignored become stored, especially in the fascia and nervous system. Over time, this can lead to:

Instead of resisting emotions, what if you trusted them? What if they were God’s way of helping you understand yourself, set boundaries, and move forward?

Emotions Are...

Reflection prompts for the week:

You don’t just have emotions. You move them—through your breath, your body, your being.

What Does It Mean That Emotions Are Energy?

Let’s start with the basics:
Energy is the capacity to do work. In science, energy shows up in different forms: electrical, kinetic, thermal, vibrational.

Now apply that to emotion: when you’re angry, you feel hot, charged, and ready to move. When you’re sad, you may feel heavy and still. When you’re joyful, your body feels light and vibrant.

That’s not coincidence. It’s energy in motion—the literal meaning behind “e-motion.” Emotions are chemical, electrical, and somatic shifts designed to activate your system into doing something.

According to Dr. Candace Pert, neuroscientist and author of Molecules of Emotion, emotions are biochemical messengers. She discovered that neuropeptides (which carry emotion-related information) travel through your bloodstream and nervous system and bind to receptors throughout the entire body—not just your brain.

“The body and the mind are not separate, and we cannot treat them separately. Emotions are the bridge.”

Emotions Have Frequency: The Vibrational Truth

Modern physics shows us that everything in the universe vibrates—including you. Your cells, tissues, and organs all have a natural frequency. When you experience emotion, it affects your body’s vibrational field.

Different emotional states change your heart’s electromagnetic field in real-time:

These fields extend up to 3 feet outside your body and can be detected by those around you. That’s why someone’s “vibe” can shift a room. Emotions are not only felt—they’re transmitted.

Dr. David Hawkins in his book Power vs. Force quantified emotions by frequency:

Higher-frequency emotions are more life-giving, coherent, and healing. Lower-frequency emotions aren’t “bad”—they just need movement and resolution.

How Energy Becomes “Stuck”

If emotions are meant to move, what happens when they don’t?

When you suppress an emotion—like ignoring grief, stuffing down rage, or numbing anxiety—it doesn’t disappear. The energy still exists. But instead of flowing outward, it gets stored inward—in muscles, fascia, and neural pathways.

This is where somatic psychology meets quantum theory:

Over time, these stuck energies become:

You Can Move Energy Physically and Somatically

Because emotions are energy, they need movement to complete their cycle. This isn’t just metaphor. It’s cellular.

Every time you breathe deeply, stretch, cry, shake, dance, sigh, or even laugh, your body helps discharge emotional energy. Trauma expert Dr. Peter Levine observed this in animals—after a stress response, they instinctively shake to release tension and return to calm. Humans, however, often suppress this instinct.

Somatic practices help you return to that innate intelligence:

“You don’t need to think your way out of stuck emotions. You need to move your way through them.”

God’s Design: Energy and Emotion Are Part of the Healing Plan

From a spiritual view, God made you as both physical and energetic. You were designed with a nervous system that holds trauma, but also one that releases it. Emotions were given to you as signals, not shame.

Scripture even echoes this idea of emotional motion:

“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” – Psalm 30:5
“A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” – Proverbs 17:22

When your energy is aligned—body, brain, and spirit—you can hear God more clearly, access truth more easily, and move through life with peace rather than pressure.

What You Need to Know

Practice Prompt: Somatic Energy Scan

Close your eyes.
Breathe in for 4… out for 6…

Ask:

Let your body respond. No pressure to fix. Just feel.