One of things I love so much about yoga is that it really encourages me to be more in my body. It’s not about pushing or powering through, it’s about feeling my way along. During yoga, I am in a process of assessing what’s stiff or tight or unbalanced and then adjusting based on that in a way that flexes or loosens or balances. And one of the benefits to this process has been gaining an understanding of where I carry different negative emotions in my body. For example, I’ve known since my cancer journey that I carry grief and sadness in my breast. I’ve since learned that worry for my child gets carried in my pelvis and hips. And apparently stress in my sense of connection lands in my mid back / solar plexus and impacts my digestion.
Knowing this about myself gives me a powerful way of moving through those emotions with my body, rather than just with my brain. And for someone like me who’s so much in their brain, this is a ground-shattering revelation.
I recently had a challenging day where I felt a disconnect or inability to connect effectively, which made me sad and also made me worry about my kid. Result? Really sore hips and chest! My husband suggested that I might benefit from massage, and I actually found a last minute booking. The massage made my body feel better, but it also helped me process being sad and worried. Then, overnight my back tightened and my stomach hurt, badly. Fortunately today was a yoga day and we got to focus on stretches to help the digestive system (my yoga studio often has really small classes, so we get personalized attention). And that session also helped remind me both that I do connect with people, but also that I don’t have to. I can also just connect with myself. Result? Better feelings and better feeling body.
However, I can also turn this knowledge around and point it in the other direction. Personally, I don’t always know when I’m sad (blah blah blah childhood, blah blah blah therapy). But when my chest hurts, when the bones of my sternum lock up and my tissue aches, it’s a warning sign that I’m feeling grief/sadness, but I’m not consciously aware of it. It’s a diagnostic tool as well as a healing mechanism – it’s pointed on both ends.
It’s also interesting to think about this more broadly. When you are hurt/stressed/angered/saddened by something outside yourself, that something is a very useful pointer for what’s really bothering you inside. Imagine a crossbow bolt. Something out there is upsetting and you pull the trigger (lol, you’re triggered, right? get it?). The arrow flies. But the arrow is also pointing back inside, to the interior wound that you can’t stop poking. That’s exactly what happened to me. Something outside upset me because of something inside that was hurting.
Which brings us back to the idea that the universe is always talking to us, and talking to us in its myriad, varied languages. The language of emotions is a bodily language. We speak it with body and hear it with the body as well (tongue and ear in every joint and muscle and nerve ending). I should point out that positive emotions too reside in the body. I’m focusing on the negative ones here because there’s so much of that energy outside us that it’s easy to miss the hurt thing inside. And there’s so much noise outside that we may not hear the body speaking to us (such a quiet language compared to the din of human speech).
