Emotions are an association between "fake" and "real".<p>We can take advantage of this with objectivity: if you have an objective perspective on emotion itself - as a process that transfers data between imaginary thought and physical feeling - then you can alter the surrounding circumstances of emotions, and actively pursue specific thoughts that are connected to desirable feelings.<p>But the utility doesn't end there: you can also directly hijack the process itself.<p>Emotion is only truly understood from an <i>implicit inference</i> perspective: the explicit definition I just gave is not provable the way a mathematical theorem is. The only available evidence is from experiencing the result. It's a soft science, but it's still useful enough to construct reliable tools.<p>Here's my testing method: breathing.<p>I know that the physical act of breathing is not functionally different, whether it's intentional or automatic. I know that physically, my lungs are filtering oxygen from my environment into my blood (with a breath in), and CO2 from my blood into my environment (with a breath out). Simply breathing does not have a noticeable effect on my emotional state, save for providing a baseline of functional cardiovascular support. I can feel happiness, anger, depression, pain, euphoria, or any other physical sensation: all the time breathing in and out with the same fundamental process. These elements of the breathing process have been <i>explicitly</i> proven, much like a mathematical model.<p>So how can breathing hijack emotion? Story.<p>The associations that an emotion is made of are volatile. They can be changed. We all experience emotional change that is unintentional: based on the experience of our surrounding circumstances. We can also make emotional changes that are <i>intentional</i>: based on the experience of our own imagination: by playing out a story.<p>Here's an example: Imagine the feeling of ice on your skin. It feels cold to the touch, even the air nearby it. The rest of your body is comfortably warm: blissfully unaware of the chilling sensation from ice in that one place. Your lungs are not for filtering oxygen and CO2 anymore: now they draw in that sensation of cold touch, and filter out the sensation of warm comfort. Each breath in draws another lungful of chill into the bloodstream. Your heart pumps, and your blood meticulously draws out (like the CO2 before) the warm comfort from the body, to be replaced by the chilling touch of ice. Each breath out releases that warmth out into the air around you, to be scattered away in the wind. Do you <i>feel</i> it? Now replace the cold touch with heat. Excitement. Peace.<p>The Rolling Stones told us that love is, "just a kiss away"; but it's even closer than that: you can find it in a breath.