One of the reasons I love yoga is because of the way it connects me to my inner most self. My true, sensitive feeling nature. For most of my life, I have been brainwashed into believing that feelings are bad and that one must keep how they feel inside. Even today, certain people still try to convince me that how I feel is wrong and yoga + therapy have taught me that feelings just are. We must recognize them, honor them and let them go. The interesting thing for me with yoga is that the feeling I feel these days on my mat is anger. I’m angry about so many things and the thing I have uncovered most recently is that when I finally let go and learn to trust someone, I feel anger and disappointment when they let me down.
Since I have started my teacher training, it seems that every class and training session I take is hip opening. And boy, do my hips have a story to tell. Hip openers have enabled me to feel and express so many emotions in my past. Until recently, they mostly allowed me to feel grief and as I move along in this journey, the anger is starting to surface. Over the past couple of weeks, I have felt overly sensitive and critical of everything and everyone around me. I have been feeling mad at the world. I’m crying at the drop of a hat and some days I am feeling rather overwhelmed. The irony of that is though I am feeling a mass amount of negative emotion, in my core, I still feel happy.
These feelings of anger peaked on Monday night. I took two yoga classes in a row because my schedule is hectic this week and it was the only way I could get my three hours in. The first class is called slow flow, it is a slow paced vinyasa style class taught at a beginner level. The next class was mixed level vinyasa and is more challenging than slow flow but not quite power vinyasa. It was in this class that my feelings of anger really started to rise. I felt angry at Tim, the teacher, I wanted to scream and shout at him for challenging my body. My mind felt weak and as if I was teetering on the edge of crumbling.
I left the class and knew that something was slowly but surely bubbling up and that it needed my attention. Last week, someone near and dear to me hurt me in a way that I had never expected. I had put her onto a pedestal and had forgotten that she is only human. And those feeling of hurt and disappointment opened up old wounds that I thought were sealed off forever. Bonds that I made in my heart and mind to deal with the grief of losing my brother were resurfacing themselves and the pain is just too much to bear. That unbearable bond is with yet another person I had placed onto a pedestal and I faulted myself when they let me down. They shattered my heart into so many pieces that I never thought I would ever be whole. And for almost five years now, I’ve tied those emotions to losing my brother. Feeling the pieces of my shattered heart was easier than missing my brother.
In time, I’ve moved on and though I am scarred, my heart is whole again. I have awakened my true self and learned to live, to dream, to just be. But still, in the pit of my soul is the grief of losing my brother. And today, it is defined by anger.
christie, i recently stumbled on your blog and am so, so happy that i did. yoga has become a powerful and healing force in my life as well. the experiences you’ve had with it and the emotions you share because of it are truly inspiring.
i’m so sorry that you’ve had to go through the horror of losing a sibling. i don’t think there are any words that can ever heal that wound, but i do think it is good that you can still face those emotions head on. it’s ok to feel anger, negativity, guilt, etc sometimes – i agree that one of yoga’s wonderful rewards is the way it helps us face both the good and the bad that we feel.
I’ve never lost a sibling, but I have lost one of my closest friends so I can relate to some of your feelings. I think losing someone so close, so young, and so unexpected just shakes you to the core and makes it incredibly hard to truly grieve and start the healing process.
I think, even with this anger surfacing, the fact that you still feel happy and can feel that you are whole (including that scar tissue) is an awesome thing.
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sometimes it feels so hard to….feel. i admire all the work you’re doing, internally and externally. it is such hard work, particularly when we’re not raised to feel. anger was UNACCEPTABLE in my house, growing up. not much good training there for the real word.
may you continue to take good care of yourself and know that all your feelings are fine.
Christie, you (imo) are so good at feeling and interpreting your emotions. I’m not sure that you will agree with me, but I think that all of your work is really paying off. There have been times where I’ve felt angry or mad at an instructor, but I never put two and two together enough to realize that it’s probably something else in my life that’s bringing those emotions to the surface. Great post!
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Laura, I whole heartedly agree with you. I have come leaps and bounds in my recovery, my grief, my body image. All of it and I attest my yoga practice as being essential to that.
Yoga really brings up emotions for me, too. I had an experience being deeply hurt by someone close to me a few years ago. I felt the gamut of emotions: anger, sorrow, guilt, frustration. But it wasn’t until I started doing yoga that I was able to let go enough to acknowledge another feeling inside of myself: I missed the person and I loved them. Those feelings made me feel weak and weren’t very pleansant to experience, but they helped me find closure.
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Beautifully written post Christie. I love how open you are about your emotional journey on the mat, it takes a strong person to look so deeply into themselves.
I’m so sorry about your brother.
Jen x
Jen´s last blog ..Rejecting the diet mentality
Wow – you really explained what I’ve been going through the past couple days. I only recently starting taking yoga classes and on my second class after a tough day at work and not being able to let go of things (what, I’m not sure), I just became extremely angry. Everything was making me extremely annoyed and angry. I couldn’t let it go and I still don’t quite fully understand why this is, as I’m generally pretty easy going and light-hearted. We’ll see what happens!