Give Feelings a Home...

This came up on my newsfeed the other evening, just as I had been thinking about how my day had felt and the gift of which I had been reminded. Here's what I wrote...

I rumbled through the morning, noticing vaguely how ‘something was bothering me’. My mind chattered in a white-noise-sort-of-way as to what it ‘probably was’, but nothing really changed. I went out to do some errands, couldn’t find it on the drive, bumbled on some more, then a phone call later found my edge tipped over and a few tears came. With them came my mind’s pompous ‘See, it’s all ok? It’s obvious why. Surely you don’t need to bother to weep about it? I mean, all life is here, you know all will be well, you know you are ok, so I wouldn't bother with all that snivvly stuff.’ But my body just sighed and softened with the release. It didn’t need to know the whats and whys. It didn’t need to understand. It simply needed to be acknowledged. My whole self, feeling witnessed by its very self, sensed being given a tissue to dab away the tears, even though this self also contained the   mind saying ‘why bother’....

What a community is a person! What a community was involved in my feeling bleugh today. My community. The bleugh one, the ignorer, the pompously ‘fine’ one, the struggler, the noticer, and the one who sees this big picture. All talking away to each other, and some listening, some not. And the one who released the 'bleugh'? The one who really knew what was needed? It was not the interpreter, nor the ‘get on with it’ one. Not the ‘talk me out of it’ one, nor the shadowy ‘poor me’. It was the weeper. The one who cried. Who knew it needed only to be briefly. And who then took a deep breath, picked up all the others in my community, and led them into carrying on a heap lighter and a lot happier. 

Immediately I saw the children - the ones who cry deeply and passionately as soon as the need arises, only to be laughing and smiling again within two minutes, and in neither case needing to say why. We laugh at their ways, forgetting that we were once thus - we who simply forgot how to release feelings from the body when permission was no longer granted as we ‘grew up’.

It's sometimes good to 'grow-down'... Tears. They are ok. We don’t always have to know why they are there, but we sometimes, as we do with our laughter, we could do well to just let them flow and allow our body the inner hug they offer...

And how did I come to be able to benefit from this awareness and ability to cease suppressing my feelings and judging them as 'bad', so much so that, years ago, they became almost unbearable? From having learned both Alexander Technique and the Transformational Process - I will write more on how they have worked for me, and my students and clients, another time. They are ways I love to share because they have been life-changing, and life-changing things need sharing, just in case...!