Why more than “Mental” it's “Emotional Health”?

“Your mind is in every cell of your body. Most psychologists treat the mind as disembodied, a phenomenon with little or no connection to the physical body. Conversely, physicians treat the body with no regard to the mind or the emotions. But the body and mind are not separate we cannot treat one without the other” ~ Dr Cadace Pert

The pathbreaking research of Dr Candace Pert suggest that when we feel certain emotions in our mind, our mind releases a chemical throughout our body called peptides. The peptides flood our body and hit every single cell in our body. This means the emotional memory is stored in many places in the body, not just or even primarily, in the brain. The emotion is the interface between mind and body. It is not only mind body but body mind. Today there are a lot of healing modalities, including Emotional Freedom Technique, Energy healing, Somatic, breathwork that works on releasing the stored painful emotional memory from the body which eventually is going to have a empowering impact on our mind or mental state. The term “Mental health” term somewhere constricts the overall picture to just thinking as it is just in the brain or everything contains in the mind. But our emotions are more than just in our minds so they are more than just a “mental issue.” There is a physical aspect of every emotion, there is a physical association. For instance, for anger, the physical association is mostly seen as tightness in our neck and shoulder. Similarly for every emotion there is a breathing pattern involves. Studies have shown that our thoughts can directly change our breath pattern and subsequently affect our physiology and disease processes. In fact, simply becoming aware of our breath has been shown to have a direct influence on anxiety, pain, and regulating our emotions. On the flip-side, we can learn to manipulate our breath consciously and use it as a tool to change our thoughts and emotions. When we slow down and deepen our breath, our whole body becomes relaxed. This may help us sit with and let go of difficult thoughts or emotions.