‘Intertwined’: Candace Cameron Bure, Jennie Allen Explore Connection Between Emotions, Bodies
By Movieguide® Contributor
Candace Cameron Bure and author Jennie Allen are encouraging people to pay attention to the connection between their physical bodies and their emotions.
“Our bodies, our minds [and] our emotions are all intertwined,” Allen explained in an episode of “The Candace Cameron Bure Podcast.” “I’ve learned to just take inventory of my body, not to ignore it — if something feels off, to notice it and to just kind of tuck it away and think about it. ‘What’s causing this?’”
Allen shared some examples of simple ways your body can be connected to your emotional state. A clenched jaw or tight shoulders indicate stress, while fidgeting shows when you’re nervous.
She also stressed the importance of taking care of your body, even when you might want to push through any physical discomfort or exhaustion.
“It matters,” Allen said. “I can’t do what God’s put me on Earth to do and is equipping me spiritually and emotionally if my body is holding me back.”
She continued, “This is actually a healthy theology of the body, because when you believe that you’re finite and you’re not God — because that’s our problem, we all think we’re God. We think we can take on the whole, wide world and be tough and not be weak and win and do it all and meet everybody’s needs. And that’s not a healthy theology. We are finite creatures. We have limits, we have capacities. We need rest, we need play, we need sunshine and vitamins and our bodies to move and all of that God placed in us. It’s the way he designed us.”
Allen’s most recent book, “Untangle Your Emotions,” details this connection between body and mind, especially when it comes to fully feeling your emotions.
“We learned from a young age, ‘Okay, I shouldn’t cry, I shouldn’t act out. I shouldn’t be angry,’” Allen told Woman’s World of the book. “But when we learn to feel our emotions and to process them in healthy ways, we see that they’re really gifts given to us by God to help us navigate a really broken world and connect us to him and other people.”
Allen reemphasized this connection between emotions and faith in an interview with Men’s Journal.
“I would say for a long time I didn’t know God,” she explained. “I picked up somewhere along the way that Christians are supposed to be joyful. But then I would feel guilty if I got too happy because I felt like, gosh, we’re supposed to struggle and suffer for God. So, reframing the theology was super helpful for me in this work, to understand that he really delights in us coming to him with his emotions. You can see that clearest in the life of David. You see a very emotional guy writing Psalms that shared everything he was thinking and feeling with God. And you see how much God moved into those spaces with David. And so, I think we’re missing so much of a relationship with God when we turn those emotions off. God wants us to share those emotions because he knows how to heal us.”
Movieguide® previously reported on Allen’s thoughts on emotions and faith:
Candace Cameron Bure and author Jennie Allen are reminding us that emotions are an important part of our relationship with God.
“I think one of the real, hardest parts about sharing…is just because that is such an important part of emotions. They are God-given, they are built,” Allen said during a recent episode of “The Candace Cameron Bure Podcast.” “The reason emotions are so important is because they connect you to people. They connect you to Him.”
“I try to go to God before I go to anybody else…’I’m going to run to you first, God’ before I share with other people,” Bure shared.
Allen replied, “I think there’s a lot of people listening that would say, ‘I don’t do that. I don’t go to God first because I feel like He’s judging my emotion or I feel like He’s not safe’…I’m someone who just feels really safe with God.”
She explained that, like David’s conversations with God in the Psalms, she isn’t afraid to “let Him have it.”
“If we really view God as a relational God and Him wanting a relationship with us, those are the best relationships,” Allen concluded.
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