Digesting Our Emotions

Photo Cred. Chris Caddenhead @chris.sees IG

The past couple of weeks have been heavy. These last couple of weeks have brought to the surface a lot of emotions. They have sparked many conversations that at times have been awkward, uncomfortable, saddening, scary, anxiety inducing. 

For a few days, I felt like I had no voice. I felt like my voice wouldn’t matter. I felt like we had been transported in time, back to a time that has always been hard to understand. 

I have been thinking a lot about what I want to say. How I want to use my voice in the midst of so much pain, uncertainty. 

Over this last couple of weeks, I have looked at my young black son, and I have cried. While he is joyfully playing and dancing around the house, my thoughts moved to when he is no longer six. When he is no longer safely within my care. What kind of world will he be growing up in?

Will he be looked upon as a threat? If he wears “the wrong thing”. If he is in “the wrong neighborhood”. 

Spending too much time going down this road could leave me huddled on the floor sobbing. 

So what should our response be? This has been the question circulating in my heart over the past week. 

What should our response be in the face of injustice? 

What should our response be when black men are being murdered?

What should our response be?

My response has been to be the light. Over this past week, I have intentionally held space for women to digest their emotions. To move through the fear, anxiety, shame, sadness, the despair. To move through the grief, the anger, the hopelessness. 

I have led heart-centered meditations to help us stay connected to our humanity. To realize that we are all carriers of life-force, divine energy, the creative force of nature, we are carriers of the same divine essence. When we move inside of ourselves to connect with the divinity within, we begin to recognize that the same spirit that lives in us, lives in every other living being on this planet. 

Over this past week, I have learned to breathe. To breathe through the waves of emotions that came crashing in on me in the most inopportune times. 

I have worked to stay connected to my heart beat, to the love, compassion, grace, joy, resilience, resourcefulness that resides in me. 

I have taken eyes off myself and my own experiences to really listen and understand the experience and perspective of others. 

I have engaged in conversations with people who don’t look like me, who don’t have the same fears I have, who have other fears and experiences that make it hard for them to see the other side. 

My job as a yoga teacher is to help my clients, my students, to connect deeply within. I hold space for my students to be able to digest their own thoughts, emotions, feelings. In order for me to effectively help others, I have to first help myself. 

So I practice mindfully moving, breathing, watching the emotional tide inside of me.  Sometimes the waves of emotions seem to overwhelm me. So I breathe. I return to the center of my being. 

I hold my mind in one pointed focus, so as not to be carried away by the swirling thoughts or the emotions that the thoughts trigger. 

I’m holding space for you.