Joe offers a simple experiment: try to stop feeling completely. What happens? Muscles constrict. The jaw clamps down (“chomping down on an emotion”), the chest caves in, the belly tightens. This is the physical mechanism of emotional suppression — emotions live in the body, and muscular constriction is how we block them.
Deep breathing reverses this process by relaxing the muscles that hold emotions at bay. Loosening the jaw, opening the chest, softening the belly immediately makes sensations more alive and feelable. It’s not a complex technique — “it’s just as easy as that.”
“Here’s a cool experiment: stop feeling completely — stop all feeling from your body. What you’ll notice is that your muscles are constricting. Our emotions are in our muscles, in our body, and breathing opens those muscles up.”
Joe also references research on microexpressions showing that you can read a person’s unfelt emotions from how they hold their musculature — the body reveals what the mind has suppressed. In emotional work, people’s faces visibly change as muscular holdings release. The body is both the prison and the key: constriction blocks feeling, and breathing unlocks it.
Related Concepts
- Breath regulates the nervous system
- Body awareness is just attention
- Emotions are always present
- Unfelt emotions create physical stress through muscle tension