“It is the internal sense,” says Rothschild, “that registers the state of the body’s internal environment: heart rate, respiration, pain, internal temperature, visceral sensations, and muscle tension. ‘Butterflies’ or an ache in the stomach is a familiar internal sensation. A ‘gut’ feeling is a summation of the internal sense. It is the internal sense that helps to identify and name our emotions. Each basic emotion—fear, anger, shame, sadness, interest, frustration, or happiness—has an accompanying set of discrete body sensations, stimulated by patterned activity in the brain. This biology of
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