27: Crying in a Yoga Class
How much is oversharing? I’m laying on a dusty yoga mat, five euro worth of cold comfort as the morning light fades into my new flat in Italy. If what I share helps someone, isn’t it worth it? That’s what we’re here for right? My thoughts fade and my body relaxes into a new day. I begin writing this, for you.
About two years ago, I went to a yoga class with someone who I cared deeply about, who--at the time--I failed to realize was abusing me emotionally, which led to later physical escalations that I had to escape from. At the closing of this rather large, flow yoga class, the male instructor was pacing around the room, telling us to relax into shavasana. I laid on a borrowed mat with thirty other people and breathed deeply. As I lay there, I began to feel an upsurge of emotion come over me, wanting to get out. I felt safe enough to open the door. Tears began to flow from closed eyes, slowly down the sides of my face. Breathing, breathing, breathing. I let myself silently cry.
The male instructor tells us to relax, release the tension from our bodies--then a pause--to tell us, “don’t take this too seriously, it’s just a yoga class”. I wondered if he’d seen me crying. I wondered if anyone else did.
I wondered why I was crying at all.
“In our studies we keep seeing how difficult it is for traumatized people to feel completely relaxed and physically safe in their bodies. We measure our subjects’ HRV by placing tiny monitors on their arms during shavasana, the pose at the end of most classes during which practitioners lie face up, palms up, arms and legs relaxed. Instead of relaxation we picked up too much muscle activity to get a clear signal. Rather than going into a state of quiet repose, our students’ muscles often continue to prepare them to fight unseen enemies. A major challenge in recovering from trauma remains being able to achieve a state of total relaxation and safe surrender.” - Bessel A van der Kolk, “The Body Keeps the Score”.
Had I been failing to recognize the hurt I was harboring? Did it take a complete change of scenery, routine, and an environment of self care, loving awareness, and community for me to allow it to be released? Why did I feel I was “allowing” it?
I have cried many times after practicing yoga or meditation, physical release can cause emotional release. “Sports psychologist Adam Gallenberg notes that ‘in yoga, we put our body in certain poses that we might refrain from doing in our daily lives, like opening up our chest or standing up tall.’ It’s possible that such movements make certain emotions more likely to surface.
Breathwork is also linked to the release of emotions, as it engages the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps maintain bodily processes like digestion, as well as returning the body to relaxation after stress or danger by lowering blood pressure, and slowing your heartbeat and breathing.” - Dean Edwards, Yoga Could Make You Cry
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized more and more how old emotions can compound if we don’t transmute them and open the gate to set them free. We live in a society that hammers into our eager-to-belong minds that crying is a lack of self control, and that a lack of control equates to weakness. This is utter nonsense.
If the body keeps the score, we must continually finish the game.
I am here to remind you that crying is just a physical manifestation of emotions, it is pure and it is expected in times of hurt, confusion, or loss. There is no “right” way to be a human being. If your body does something in reaction, it is natural. “Right” and “natural” are not opposites.
If we continue using language like “allowing” ourselves to feel, it reinforces the idea that we need permission. That showing emotion needs to be justified. I am here to not only remind myself, but to tell someone who may need to hear it, to cry. I want us to cry because I want us to heal.
If you are like me, you may be a very sensitive person, always interpreting people’s tones, slight changes in body language, computing how to be the least affronting, the most accommodating, while all the while not realizing you’re giving away your power. You can be sensitive while also setting boundaries.
Feeling our feelings is reclaiming our agency. Thinking our way out of feeling is a way of reacting to a world that seeks to control forms of “lower” human functions as a way of performing self-mastery in a society increasingly built around the “optimization” of humanity into more perfect machines.
But we can never be “perfect” in the computable, measurable, roboticized sense--instead--we are already “perfect” in the human sense. We are the universe inside a human being instead of the other way around. There is nothing more true than our intuitive, corporeal sense of things. It is our mind that often deceives us.
I also recognize that there are imposed narratives around showing emotion based on gender roles, age, and class, but that’s an entirely different essay.
What I hope this post can do, is remind someone that it’s safe to cry. We can always come back into our bodies, breathe, and release any pent up emotions by crying and deep breath exercises. Flush it out. In our bodies, we have agency. In our bodies, we can feel safe again.
Thank you for reading! Share a comment below if you feel called to, and let me know if any of this resonated with you.
-Gabby
