Hey there. Thank you so much for joining us and welcome my name is Josh. This is

Darmapunks New York. I'm a Buddhist pastor, so what that entails is I do everything by donation.

Everything, the counseling, the teaching is all done just by donation from people who get something from the teaching.

So if you do to support the work, the Venmo is DarmaP punks NYC or you can use the paybell button on the website so that's

about it tonight emotions what are they trying to tell us? How do we process them? Let's dive right in.

Emotions are, well, they're complex amalgamations. Say a shift in our environment or in our bodies occurs.

We suddenly become hungry or thirsty or cold

or suddenly the lights go out or the people that in childhood we rely on for care are not available.

So there's a change and this change will result in what we could call feelings.

Essentially there are changes in states of arousal and valence.

Arousal or levels of excitement, essentially different regions of the brainstem,

if you really want to know the reticular activating system and the thalamus and the midbrain,

essentially speed up if we become excited or they slow down if we become tired or overwhelmed.

And balances just changes in comfort or discomfort.

So comfort muscles relax, we breathe slower.

Digestion occurs circulation if we're uncomfortable muscles contract.

The pleasant neurotransmitters and hormones

are depleted in exchange for cortisol,

our respiration shifts and so we respond first internally with states of

arousal and states of comfort and discomfort and in childhood and throughout the rest of our life it's our fundamental wiring to convey shifts in our internal state to others. We signal our internal states to others.

Infants, babies, toddlers, signal our internal states that have shifted or have changed to our parents or caregivers for attention and support.

So for instance, if a baby feels suddenly hungry or thirsty, it might start crying or grasping for the mother, it might shake or flail.

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