A few days ago, I flew down the rocky trail with ease.

I just moved to a new area and decided to check out a new mountain biking trail. As I turned the corner for the downhill section, I found that the usual tentativeness I had while dropping and swerving down new chunky rocks had disappeared. Perhaps I had left it in the car that day.

I felt good. I don’t know that I have ever felt so free on the first run, or on any run.

Lately, I’ve been processing a lot of emotions — particularly shame. I’m finally getting to a deeper level of emotional awareness and it is having a lasting and obvious impact. I can feel a clear difference in my motivation, memory, speech, cognition and in this case, physical freedom.

For years I struggled with learning how to do a ‘bunny hop’ or to pop up the front tire over what we call ‘steps’ on the uphill. I can’t say I ever had the coordination needed for the push-pull motion to do it, but suddenly, I could. No practice, no training, just letting go of emotions that were literally tying me up.

I have been bound in many ways by the small traumas and emotional upsets throughout my life — mostly because the safest thing was to stuff them away.

It was too unbearable to feel them at the intensity I did. But stuffing them inside stuffed me in there with it: my joy, my quirks, my opinions, my physical freedom, my desires and needs.

And so, all of the athleticism and physical prowess I was born with declined over time, rather than improving. I can confidently blame holding in my emotions for the evaporation of my, at the time, future professional soccer career. I’m not willing to let the same happen to my mountain biking one.

Just a few days ago, I was flying down the trail, hopping, jumping, dropping and cornering with ease…and joy.

But today, something changed.

Suddenly I felt awkward and uneasy again. Particularly, in my ability to turn a corner sharply.

A few days ago, I overstayed my welcome at a local coffee shop and when the owner asked me to leave, I unconsciously dipped into shock. It was too reminiscent of times when I was younger.

After the shock came guilt. The sequence felt familiar, and much slower. When I tried to recall the details, my memory felt fuzzy.

I was clearly ‘triggered’, but it took me a few days to figure out why.

Being triggered is another way of saying that you had a protective reflexive response. It could feel like a strong emotion, but typically is also a fight, a flight or a freeze.

Reflex patterns are responsible for your safety and your development. Because of this, if something disturbs your perceived or literal safety, whether that is physical, mental, emotional, you can develop a ‘trigger’ that relates to any one. A ‘trigger’ will remind your system of something related to the stress of the event, so you can adequately protect yourself in the future when you experience the same signal again.

Often, it manifests as more of a disruption than an assist if the emotions or beliefs that caused the ‘trigger’ haven’t been acknowledged.

Protection in response to something unprocessed will stiffen your body in some way. It will restrict movement. It also ‘stiffens’ your mind. It decreases higher thinking and deeper processing. It only allows you to do the essentials — it can even stop your digestion.

Protection biases your perception and decreases your memory. It makes you irritable and resistant to new things, or just things that may ‘put you out’ even a little. And it definitely keeps you from taking risks and having fun on your mountain bike.

Ideally, these responses only last a few moments, but often because emotions are uncomfortable, you may find yourself avoiding what you’re feeling and this can cause the moments of protection to expand into hours, days or years. Your subconscious never really has a chance to feel and understand that you’re not in fact in the type of danger you experienced before.

If you feel like you are becoming afraid to try new things, stubborn rather than opinionated, controlling, inflexible, recluse, or just generally not feeling like yourself, it is possible you have been in protection for a long time. acknowledging your emotions can help.

Instead of stuffing your emotions, hiding them or brushing them aside, try to identify them with curiosity, even if it is hours, days or years after they happen. Identifying them can make changes at any point. Your body may be waiting for you to take a look at them so they (and your body) can move and flow.