In yoga and somatic spaces, the body is often described as a place where emotional experience is not only felt, but also held. Phrases such as “releasing stored emotions (from the tissues such as muscles)” are commonly used, and they reflect an important insight: emotions are not purely mental; they are lived and expressed through the body. At the same time, these phrases are often understood literally, turning metaphor into firm belief. For instance, language around “stored emotions” in a specific place in the body can create the assumption that emotions are hidden in specific tissues rather than being processes that involve the whole organism. In this post, I will unpack some common misconceptions and offer a more neuroscientific and somatic perspective on emotional embodiment.
Embodied Emotions in Societal Context
Across cultures and throughout history, emotions have been described through bodily metaphors. We speak of “butterflies in the stomach” when anxious or in love, of a “heavy heart” when grieving, of being “choked up” when overwhelmed, or “weak in the knees” in moments of intense fear. These expressions have a physiological basis. The “butterflies in the stomach” sensation is a physiological response to stress or excitement, associated with activation of the fight-or-flight response, during which blood flow is redirected from the digestive system to the muscles. This, together with changes in gut motility and signalling along the gut–brain axis, can create the familiar fluttering or unsettled sensation in the abdomen. Grief is associated with changes in breathing patterns and vagal tone, often felt as heaviness or constriction in the chest, or a "heavy heart". The feeling of being “choked up” relates to increased muscle tone around the throat and larynx during emotional arousal. “Weak knees” can arise from rapid shifts in muscle activation and postural reflexes during a threat response, briefly reducing leg stability. These phrases describe how emotions are felt in the body, or how we embody certain emotions, and have been around long before yoga and somatic language around this became a thing. This societal context also shows that we experience emotions throughout the body. But does that mean they are stored in a specific place?
Are "Emotions Stored in the Hips"?
The phrase “you store emotions in your hips” has become common, often linked to the iliopsoas, which has been described as a “muscle of the soul”. It is likely that the popularity of this idea in yoga culture can be traced, at least in part, to Liz Koch’s The Psoas Book, where the psoas is described as deeply involved in survival responses and emotional experience. It is true that large, powerful muscles near the pelvis and viscera play a central role in threat-related responses such as bracing, withdrawal, and readiness to move. The iliopsoas is strongly involved in startle and protective patterns, so changes in emotional state are often accompanied by changes in tone in this region. However, our increasingly sedentary lives likely contribute to these changes as well. Prolonged sitting and limited movement tend to increase hip flexor tone, shortening and weakening these important muscles. When these tissues are then loaded or lengthened in practice, the contrast can feel intense, and often not because stored emotions are being released, but because long-held protective or habitual patterns are being challenged, something the nervous system needs time to adapt to.
There is something reassuring about the idea that emotions are stored in a particular place. It suggests that difficult experiences can be located, targeted, and released, rather than being complex, distributed processes involving memory, perception, relationship, and physiology. In that sense, the hips-as-storage narrative offers a sense of simplicity and control. The nervous system, however, does not organise experience in such a tidy way.
The Biology of Emotional Experience
Emotions arise as the nervous system interprets information from the senses and from within the body, continuously evaluating what is happening as safe, threatening, or relevant for survival and well-being. This appraisal, largely automatic and below conscious awareness, gives rise to patterns of neural and physiological activity that we experience as emotion.
Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett captures this relationship when she says that “the brain keeps the score, and the body the scorecard”, rewording the title of Bessel van der Kolk’s well-known book, The Body Keeps the Score. In this view, the brain continuously predicts and interprets sensory input, drawing on past experience to construct what we feel and how the body should respond. The body, in turn, reflects the consequences of these predictions through changes in muscle tone, breathing, heart rate, hormonal activity, and immune function. In this way, the brain is the storehouse, while the body is a living record of how the nervous system has adapted over time to life’s changes and challenges.
These patterns are expressed through coordinated changes across the whole organism. Heart rate, breathing, muscle tone, gut activity, hormonal signalling, and immune function all shift with emotional state. After an intense experience, the body usually returns towards baseline. However, when certain states or emotions, such as fear, worry, grief, or overwhelm, are repeated, longer-term physiological patterns can develop. Some people may notice persistent muscle tension in the hips, while others may notice it in the jaw, shoulders, neck, or lower back. Digestion often changes, sleep can become disrupted, blood pressure may rise, and hormonal rhythms can be affected. In the same way, sustained experiences of safety, connection, joy, or contentment are also reflected in the body, supporting regulation and recovery. Emotional life is always embodied, but it is embodied through the whole system, not in a single place.
Working With What the Body Reflects
If emotional experience is expressed through many systems, then approaches to releasing, regulation, and healing need to be equally specific. What supports the body depends on what has actually changed. If the dominant pattern is chronic muscle tension, gentle movement, stretching, strengthening, or manual therapy may be appropriate. If sleep is disturbed, work with circadian rhythms, light exposure, and the nervous system regulation may be more relevant than any local tissue work. Digestive symptoms may call for attention to breathing, vagal tone, eating patterns, and stress physiology. Hormonal or immune changes require yet another layer of support.
Somatic practices, including yoga, can be valuable in all of these contexts when they are matched to what the body is responding to. There is no single release point and no universal emotional storehouse. Different patterns require different forms of care.
Another important factor is time. Nervous system patterns that have developed gradually, often in response to prolonged stress or repeated emotional states, rarely shift through single interventions or dramatic releases. Regulation and change tend to occur through repeated experiences of safety, variability, and appropriate challenge, allowing the system to update its expectations over time.
Bottom line
Rather than asking where emotions are stored in the body, a more useful question is how the body is responding to them. Tension, softness, heat, trembling, numbness, expansion, or collapse can appear in different regions depending on the individual and the context. This variability reflects nervous system organisation and personal history, not emotional containers in specific muscles.
Emotions are embodied processes. They are patterns of activation that involve the whole person, continuously shaped by perception, physiology, relational context (interpersonal and intrapersonal), and the environment. They do not reside in the hips, the psoas, or any other single structure, but are expressed through the body as a living, integrated system.
