I was travelling from Munich to London recently when my flight was delayed by two hours. Relief swept through the gate when boarding was finally announced. We settled into our seats and then the pilot's voice came over the tannoy.

"I'm sure many of you have already seen in your app that we're expecting another hour's delay. After waiting two hours already, I imagine you're frustrated. I'm sorry. We discovered on a safety check that a tyre needs replacing, and safety always comes first. We'll get water and snacks to you and work as fast as we can. I'll keep you posted."

Just before the announcement I felt the mood in the cabin shift. People glancing at their phones, turning to their neighbours, exasperation quietly spreading. The moment the pilot named it, "I imagine you're frustrated", something shifted, the tension evaporated and a calm settled over the cabin.

Feelings first. Rationale second. I think that's a good rule to follow when faced with strong emotions. Feelings make us human. We all have them, yet many of us are better at thinking about our feelings than actually experiencing them.

Feelings live in and on the body. They are sensations, not concepts. Have you ever tried to reason with someone who is angry or frightened? It doesn't work. Feelings need to be acknowledged, not solved. This isn't something we learn in school. We are taught to think, analyse and make sense of things.

Unfelt feelings block our energy. Our body wants to digest feelings by feeling them; when we suppress or ignore them, we create a backlog that we carry with us, wondering why we feel tired, depressed or depleted. Carrying unfelt feelings takes energy.

None of this means you are overly emotional. Releasing a feeling is a physiological process. When feelings are felt and released, energy flows freely again, clearing space for clearer thinking, better decision-making, and access to creativity and innovation.

One way of categorising feelings is to say there are four core types: fear, anger, sadness and joy, the rest are subsets and combinations. Frustration, for example, can be interpreted as a subset of anger, while jealousy often combines fear and anger: the fear of losing something, coupled with anger that someone else has what you want.

I believe there is great value in naming our feelings accurately. The four categories are a good starting point, but if you can pinpoint exactly the right word to express the emotion, there is often a "yes, that's it" moment. I encounter this in my coaching, when clients describe something that happened and I reflect back to them my sense of their feeling. Sometimes, when one of us manages to name the exact emotion, there is a sense of coherence and relief. Simple recognition can begin to ease the blockage.

Naming the feeling – that's step one.

If you want to go further, the Conscious Leadership Group suggests locating the feeling as a sensation in your body: identifying where you feel it, then expressing it through sound or movement: sighing, crying, thumping a fist on a table, jumping up and down. Let the body complete what it has started.

A personal example springs to mind here. I've been rowing for a few years and recently entered my first single scull race. Standing in the boathouse beforehand, my neck was stiff, my whole body tense. I can't remember the last time I was that nervous. So I jumped on the spot and shook myself out. It helped - significantly. Then I warmed up on the ergo, allowing more nervous energy to move through my body, and by the time I got into my boat I was feeling much calmer. Still nervous, but not detrimentally so.

Step two: locate it, move it through.

The same principle applies to an important presentation or a difficult conversation. A boardroom and a boathouse have different rules, of course, but most buildings have a bathroom. Go and shake it out.

Step three: ask what the feeling is trying to tell you.

Feelings carry information. Anger can signal that a boundary has been crossed. Sadness may be pointing to something that needs to be let go. Fear asks you to pay attention. Joy is worth noticing and might be an invitation to celebrate.

Being human means having feelings. You already have everything you need. All that's required is to start noticing your own feelings, and those of the people around you.

Being human means having feelings. There is no getting around it. You have everything you need to identify the difference between feeling and thinking. To help you mine that information, here are a few questions to start you off:

What feeling have you suppressed recently?

• Can you name it? Start with the four core categories, then see if you can get more specific.

• Does it still have a charge in you? If so, where do you feel it – and how might you express it?

Is there wisdom in the feeling? What might it be pointing to?

Notice how you are once the feeling is expressed. Lighter, more spacious? Now you have the space to settle in and think that problem through.