Leaning into your Feelings
I'm a healer and a counselor. I am a yogi. I know that's not news if you follow my blog, are my friend, or have taken yoga with me. Emotions are a very big part of the human existence. We are in constant search of ways to express, repress, explain, and name these incredibly powerful feelings that make us human. Throughout my time on this planet my encounters with clients reveal an underlying discomfort with emotions that are not pleasurable. The discomfort is different for everyone depending on our experience, cultural influences, and world views. Women we tend in general to feel uncomfortable with anger while men are more uncomfortable with sadness. (I know this is over generalizing but stick with me.) I have been to more than one retreat, class, or discussion about how anger is a "negative" emotion. Well anger is just an emotion period. It is just like sadness, loneliness, happiness, joy, meloncholia, apathy, and love. It is just a feeling. Labeling feelings positive or negative isn't helpful for our human growth.Maybe right now you are like "ok Marcia we know you're sort of a hippie and peace, love, light is everywhere but ordinary non hippie people see happy as good, sad as bad." You would be correct. I am a hippie, sort of, and in our American culture we tend to see more pleasant emotions as good. I would agree with you as well that being happy is certainly more pleasant than being sad. But, If we push away the bad feelings or try to move through them too quickly our happiness will be short lived. As humans we need to have some lability in emotion to fully digest life.
When we are able to fully feel and not push away or label our emotions we can move comfortably through life. Leaning into our feelings and circumstances is always healthier than running, avoiding, numbing, or denying them. I know how hard it can be to lean into pain or discomfort, but feelings always pass. "This too shall pass". Sometimes that will need to be your mantra but all things come to pass. There is a beautiful image of life being a wave moving toward the shore and you sit viewing this wave from a surf board. You have many options. You can face the wave and let it hit you, you can try to dive under it, you can paddle away, or you can stand on your board and find the space in between the wave and the air where you can let the wave take you to the shore. When you face what is in front of you and lean into it you will flourish. Life will move in the way it is intended.