Where Did THAT Come From?

Picture the place you go to when you practice yoga. Maybe it's a studio...maybe it's your living room...maybe it's your front yard...

Now think about where you go mentally when you practice. A calm forest....a beach...a favorite place from your childhood...the arms of the person you love. You're present. You feel every single thing happening in your body and your soul. Each cell has a purpose and you are aware. The twists, the binds, the back bends...they all open up spaces within the body and allow all the things we are holding on to out. Broken relationships that still hurt. Angry words spoken either from our mouths of the mouths of someone important to us. When we are hurt, it can bury itself deep within. And it stays there and comes out when we least expect it. Yoga is one of the best places to unleash these unfelt emotions and cleanse our souls as well as our bodies.

The funny thing? When it's happened to me, I haven't always been able to identify the exact cause of whatever emotional release is happening. Many times when savasana begins, my body is heavy on the ground and everything begins to slow down...that's usually when I feel tears streaming down my cheeks. "Why am I crying?" I will think to myself, and the answer is usually not easy to pinpoint. Sometimes I know. Sometimes I have a few ideas. A lot of times it's a million little things that I hadn't before allowed myself to feel, but yoga forces me to be present and feel it. I might not always like it and sometimes yoga and I are adversaries because of it, but I know eventually it has to happen. How long it lasts varies. Sometimes I'm not the only one. It's amazing how inhibitions fall by the wayside when it happens and you notice another yogi in the midst of an emotional release and you wordlessly hug them. Dripping in sweat with tears pouring out of your eyes, the feeling of embracing another person in that state is priceless. There are just not enough words to describe it. You don't care about the sweat, the tears, the fact that you've never even met this person. Their soul honors your soul and acknowledges that you need that human connection.

Sometimes it's a few tears and it's over. Sometimes it's an hour of ugly crying in the shower while your family congregates outside the bathroom door with puzzled looks on their faces. When you emerge a happy and light souled person, of course they want to know what on earth just happened. How do you explain it to someone who hasn't ever experienced what you just went through? What do you do when savasana brings a heaviness not just to your body, but to your heart, too?

Let it out. Feel the emotions your soul is begging you to feel. Acknowledge them. Own them. And then? Let them go.