"Emotions and the Body "
Your body is not simply physical. In your muscles, in the structure of your body, many other things have entered through suppression. If you supress anger, the poision goes into the body. It goes into the muscles, it goes into the blood. If you suppress anything it is not only a mental phenomenon , it is also physical, because you are not really divided. You are not body "and" mind; you are bodymind, psychosomatic. You are both together. So whatever is done with the body affects the mind and whatever is done with the mind affects the body. Body and mind are two aspects of the same entity.
For instane, if you get angry, what happnes to the body? Whenever you get anry, certain poisons are released into the blood. Without those poisons you wil not get mad enough to be angry. You have particular glands in your body, and those glands release certain chemicals. Now, this scientific, it si not just a phylosophy. your blod becomes poisoned. That is why, when you are angry, you can do things that you cannot do ordinarily. Because you are angry, you can push a big rock, you cannot do it ordinaily. You cannot then believe afterward that you could have pushed this rock, or throw it, or lifted it. When you are back to normal again you will not be capable of lifting it because you are not the same. Certain chemicals were circulating in the blood; you were in a state of emergency; your total energy was brought to your action
But when an animal gets angry, he just gets angry. He has no morality about it, no teaching about it; he simply gets angry and the anger is released. When you get angry, you get angry in a way similar to any animal, but then there is society, morality, etiquette, and thousands of things. You have to push the anger down. You have to show that you are not angry, you have to smile a painted smile. You create a smile, and you push the anger down. What is happening to the body?. The body was ready to fight, either to fight or esvape from the danger, either to face it or fly from it. The body was ready to do something; anger is just a readiness to do something. The body was going to be violent, aggressive.
If you could be violent and aggressive, then the energy would be released. But you cannot be: it is not convenitnet, so you push it down. Then what happen to all those muscles that were ready to be aggressive?. They will become crippled. The energy pushes them to be aggressive, and you push them back down in order not to be aggressive. There will be a conflict. In your muscles, in your blood, in your body tissues there will be conflict. They are ready to express something and you are pushing them not to express. You are suppressing them. Then your body becomes crippled.
This happens with every emotion and it goes on day after day, for years. Then your body becomes crippled all over. All the nerves become crippled; they are not flowiong, they are not liquied, they are not alive. They have become dead, they have been poisoned, and they have become all tangled up. They are not natural.
Copyright © Osho. Emotional Wellness: Transforming Fear, Anger, and Jealousy into Creative Energy . Book excerpt. Page 63 of 65.
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