- How do you feel when you listen to this music?
- Is there one or more feelings?
- Do you feel any sensations in your body (tingling, warmth, tickles, pressure, shaky, certain taste in your mouth, smell…).
- What is the strongest emotion you have?
- Where do you feel it in your body the most?
- Does it move or does it stay still?
- Are there any other emotions?
- With what colour do you associate each emotion?
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Emotional effect on human body
SELF-KNOWLEDGE, HUMAN EMOTIONS AND PSYCHOLOGY
Emotional effect on human body
MATERIALS: Floor mats, speakers for music, hammer paper, pens, post its in different colours, printed chart of emotionsGuide App
TIME: 1 hour, 1:45 with additional activates
GROUP SIZE: 20 students
OBJECTIVES:
- Identify and define one’s emotions and feelings in order to understand their differences as well as their correlation in everyday life
- Encourage development of self-knowledge and self-expression skills through emotional literacy
METHODOLOGY: Holistic approach; Group work
CROSS-CURRICULAR: Psychology and Biology
AUTHOR: Petit Philosophy
STEP BY STEP IMPLEMENTATION
Announce to students that they will have a relaxing beginning to the class with music.
If it is possible, move the tables and chairs in the classroom so that students can spread the mats on the floor and lie down. If not, ask them to sit comfortably in their chairs.
Start with a short breathing exercise.
Ask students to close their eyes, take a deep breath in their stomach, and slowly exhale.
Speak in a soothing voice and ask them that with each breath they relax their legs, hips, stomach, shoulders, hands, and then their neck and head.
Once the students are relaxed, turn on the music (presented link is just a recommendation, you can choose music you find appropriate for this exercise).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4kHxtiuML0
While they listen to music, continue to guide them with your voice, giving them enough time after each question to process what you have asked them. Students don’t verbally respond to these questions; they serve as guidance for becoming aware of their reactions to the music:
Once the music is finished, give students a minute or two to stretch, take two more deep breaths to slowly “wake up”. They can remain seated on the floor or in their chairs.
The next step is to draw a human shape on the hammer paper. Take out coloured post it’s and ask students to write their emotions, feelings/sensations they had – matching the colour of the post it with their feelings and emotions.
To help them with emotional vocabulary, show them the following spectrum of emotions that was created by psychologist Robert Plutchik. Explain to the students that Pultchik has identified eight basic emotions: joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger, and anticipation. Each of these emotions has corresponding levels of intensity, with the basic emotion falling in the middle of the intensity scale.
Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions
Ask students to stick the post-it’s in a human shape, drawing on the places they feel emotions and sensations.
Keep the hammer paper in the centre of the circle and start a group discussion.
Questions for group discussion:
- Do you see similar emotions and sensations in the post- its?
- Are they placed in different parts of the body?
- Is there a difference between emotion and sensation (feeling)?
- Do we experience the same sensations for certain emotion?
- How does your body react to emotions that you have listed in real life situations?
- Do you recognize those emotions in everyday life?
- Do you get headaches when you are angry?
- Do you feel tingles when you are excited?
- Do you take fast and shallow breaths when you are scared, or is your breathing slow and deep in scary situations?
- Do you have an appetite when you are experiencing strong emotions? (Give an example).
- How does your body react when you are in love, and how does it react when you are sad?
- (Explain the sensations for both examples).
- Does your heart pound and your palms sweat when you feel stress?
- How does your body react when you are happy?
- Do man and woman experience the same emotions?
- Do they express them in the same way? (Give an example on how one can express the emotions)
- Does the society you line in encourage you to express the emotions? (Explain)
- In your community, are emotions seen as weakness? Why?
- Are you sometimes ashamed of your emotions?
- In your surrounding are there any stereotypes, for example, that boys must be strong and must not cry, and that girls are sensitive beings that need to be protected (or sometimes hysterical because they are “too emotional”)?
- Why are emotions seen that way in most societies?
In the discussion, let students express themselves freely. If needed, explain to them the difference between emotions and feelings. Also explore how society treats expression of emotions between girls and boys and why?
Perceptions of sensations in our bodies are referred to as feelings. Our bodies go through a variety of processes that might produce sensations. What we consider to be feelings are our perceptions of those sensations.
Emotions are a special category of mental phenomena. We can define emotions as responses to experiences that have particular significance for us.
Emotional reactions to significant events involve changes in the body’s physiology and cognition. Along with our bodies, these changes also affect the way we think and see the world. All of which encourage certain physiological responses in our bodies.
To conclude, feelings are one aspect of emotion (among others), and they are constant. Non-emotional feelings are possible, and they typically serve as constant readouts of our interior states. Emotions are specific reactions to certain events that include feelings.
Write on the blackboard difference between emotions and feelings for better understanding
Emotions
FEELINGS
Specific reactions to certain events
Include cognitive and psychological changes
Help prime our bodies to act in certain way
Automatic and unconscious
Perception of sensation in our body
Not necessarily related to emotion (feeling hot or cold)
Continuous readouts of our internal states
One component of emotion
Similarities
Specific reactions to certain events
Include cognitive and psychological changes
Help prime our bodies to act in certain way
Automatic and unconscious
DIFFERENCES
Perception of sensation in our body
Not necessarily related to emotion (feeling hot or cold)
Continuous readouts of our internal states
One component of emotion
After a discussion, give the students “homework”. Keep track of their physical reactions to certain emotions and feelings in the next two days. They can do that once or two times a day in the same way they have “scanned” their feelings during the musical exercise. That is to take a deep breath, relax, and imagine they are scanning their body with each breath (from head to toe, one part at a time).
Ask them to write down if they have realized anything interesting or just to write down which emotions and feelings they have scanned during the homework exercise in different situations.
Additional activities!
Following activities require independent research by students. To combine Psychology and Biology (or Biochemistry if it is a vocational school) and to deeper explore the body’s connection to emotions, give students a list of hormones and feelings (separately).
Below is a list of hormones that serve as an example. You can adjust it by adding or removing hormones from the list (depending on students’ knowledge of hormones, their capacity for learning, and your biology lesson plan and curriculum).
Divide students into smaller groups (up to 4-5 students) and assign each group two hormones. Each group needs to research which hormones affect and/or awaken certain feelings. They can research through books, encyclopaedias, articles, the internet, etc.
Each hormone is necessary in our body, but if our level of hormones goes higher or lower than an optimal rate, it can produce certain feelings and sensations.
In the next step, each group needs to present the findings of their research to the whole class.
Now the student’s job is to connect hormones with feelings displayed in the table below. Emphasize to students that one hormone from the chart can produce feelings that are listed.
FEELINGS
HORMONES
Drowsiness
Tensing of the muscles
Euphoria
Mood
Appetite
Pain reliever
Sleep cycles
Feeling of reward
Increases heart rate
Melatonin
Serotonin
Epinephrine (adrenaline)
Dopamine
Endorphins
FEELINGS
Drowsiness
Tensing of the muscles
Euphoria
Mood
Appetite
Pain reliever
Sleep cycles
Feeling of reward
Increases heart rate
HORMONES
Melatonin
Serotonin
Epinephrine (adrenaline)
Dopamine
Endorphins
Another activity is to connect hormones with emotions, feeling or mental state as well. Tell students to choose the colour for each hormone that will be listed. They need to combine hormones as well as their level in the body in order to “create” a certain emotion or a feeling. The drowning of the test tubes represents the human body in which is shown the level of hormones (higher, lower or optimal) and their combination that produce a certain emotions and feelings.
Example of a drawing:
Tell students to write the emotions or feeling in the colour that associates them the most to certain emotion/feeling (as they did in the activity with music).
After these activities, you can open a discussion with the help of the following questions:
- How much do feelings and emotions depend on chemical processes in our bodies?
- Do we also need associations, experience, and external stimuli to trigger emotions?
- Have you ever experienced these emotions and mental states from the drawings?
- Have your senses ever triggered a memory and then an emotion related to that memory?
- For example: the smell of a dish that you often ate as a child.
- How do you deal with unpleasant feelings and emotions?
- If our feelings are part of a chemical process in the body, can we sometimes use the body to reduce unpleasant feelings? For example: better nutrition, more sleep, exercise, etc.
- Is there an emotion that you have never felt before and you imagined how it would make you feel when it appeared?
- How much do our thoughts affect emotions and in what way?
- Can emotions affect our thoughts?
- Explain the following saying: “A healthy body equals a healthy mind.”
When we talk about psychology, one of the first psychoanalysts that will pop into our heads is Sigmund Freud. But what is less known is that his daughter Anna Freud was also a psychoanalyst. Anna made a great contribution to child psychology and developed today’s well-known concept of the defense mechanism. She had very open disagreements with the then very famous psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, who developed significant techniques in play therapy.
Anna believed that young children cannot be psychoanalyze, while Melanie discovered that children communicate through play. By analyzing children’s actions through play the therapist can investigate how different anxieties affect the child’s development.
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