Mindfulness and Yoga in Schools A Guide for Teachers and Practitioners

CHAPTER 12: YogA PRACTiCE To CulTiVATE THE SElf off THE mAT • 277

EmBodYing And REgulATing fEElingS

Yoga practice provides opportunities to experience your feelings as embodied ( Cook-Cottone
et al., 2013). Understanding what is happening in your body and how it affects your behav-
ior are critical to self-regulation and active engagement. Our emotions matter. It is believed
that our emotions evolved to help us survive (Jennings, 2015). Emotions coordinate behav-
ior and physiological states during survival, salient events, and pleasurable interactions
(Jennings, 2015; Nummenmaa, Glerean, Hari, & Hietanen, 2014). Rooted in survival, our
emotions are intricately linked to everything we do. Emotions are wired to keep us safe and
connected. Our sense of right and wrong, intrinsic reward for learning and getting things
right, and happiness when we feel connected to the others in our lives, all stem from the
deep influences of our emotional selves. In this way, school is also inherently emotional as it
involves learning and relationships, two key human survival processes.
Mindfulness and yoga skills can help our students manage emotions. We now understand
that the process of feeling emotions is intricate, is rooted in the body, and involves key regions
across and within the brain (Cook-Cottone, 2015). In a functional MRI study of emotions,
Oosterwijk et al. (2012) reported that body cues are a critical component of emotional mental
life. Nummenmaa et al. (2014) agree. Emotions are felt in the body. Further, somatosensory
feedback may trigger conscious emotional experiences. In order to map the location of emo-
tions in the body, Nummenmaa et al. (2014) used a unique topographical self-report method.
In a set of five experiments, participants (n = 701) were shown two silhouettes of bodies along-
side emotional words, stories, movies, or facial expressions. Nummenmaa et al. (2014) asked
participants to color the bodily regions where they felt activity increasing or decreasing while
viewing each stimulus. After analysis, the researchers found that different emotions were con-
sistently associated with statistically discernable bodily sensation maps (see Figure 12.3, which

Anxiety

Anger Fear Disgust Happiness Sadness Surprise Neutral

Love Depression Contempt PrideShame Envy 15

10

–1 0

–15

5

0

–5

figuRE 12.3 Topographical map of emotions in the body. (See inside back

cover for a color version of this figure.)

Source: Nummenmaa et al., 2014.