Week 4: Feeling

Mar 13

Last week we arrived in the body. This week we find out what it's been holding.

I remember the first time I let myself actually feel something I'd been carrying. It wasn't dramatic. I was sitting still, and something in my chest just, loosened. Like a fist that had been clenched so long I forgot it was clenched. And then the tears came. Not because anything was wrong in that moment. A therapist once told me that we have tears because our heart is opening up.

Our emotions don't just live in the mind. They live in the chest, the throat, the gut. The grief we haven't processed. The anger we swallowed. The fear we've been performing our way around. The helplessness we can't afford to feel because there's too much to do. It all waits. It waits in the body, patient and heavy, for permission to be witnessed and moved throough.

Most of us were taught to manage this. Push through. Stay strong. Don't let them see you cry. Or the spiritual version: pray harder, trust more, give it to God, as if listening to the perfect bible verse will make that emotion go away.

But there's a difference between what happens when we resist what's there and what happens when we let it move. When we resist, it cycles. The same grief shows up as irritability. The same fear shows up as control. The same sadness stokes into anger.

When we let it move, something opens.

The desert tradition had a name for this. They called it "joy-producing sorrow." I love that phrase because it holds both things at once. The sorrow is real. The joy isn't a replacement for the sorrow. It's what's underneath it. What becomes available when the defenses soften and we finally let ourselves feel what's been waiting.

I've found that the body knows the difference between suppressing and releasing. Suppressing is tight, controlled, effortful. Releasing feels like surrender. Like exhaling after holding your breath for longer than you realized. The tears that come aren't weakness. They're the body finally breathing.

This week, we're not trying to produce an emotional experience. We're creating conditions where what's already there has permission to move. If something rises, we let it. If tears come, we let them. If nothing comes, that's okay too. We stay present either way.

What has your body been holding that's waiting for permission?