A reflection on sadness
I’m sad.
I’m not sure I can hide that I’m sad, and I’m not sure that I should. As Brene Brown says, “when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive ones”. I’m not willing to numb joy or happiness or pleasure anymore. I did this for far too many years as a result of walls I constructed around myself in order to protect me from, well, anything and everything—failure, fear, abandonment, rejection, loss, etc. I refuse to make this sacrifice anymore. So this then begs the question—what do I do with this sadness?
I embrace it.
While I don’t want sadness to become my norm, to be my home, I do want to invite it in. I want to sit with it and move through it. I want to observe it in my body, my breath, my mind. I want to stay with it for as long as needed for me to experience it, see it, understand it. On the other side, I will be softer, kinder; I will find peace, love.
Difficult feelings can either be our poison or our ladder; they can drag us down or lift us up. A Tantric aphorism describes this as, “that by which you fall is that by which you rise”. How we choose to respond to stimuli often determines the direction these feelings lead us.
A while back, I had set an intention (a sankalpa) for myself such that I can no longer choose to run away from that which is difficult. This has required strength, courage and compassion to look inwards, to stop reacting and to start experiencing. I’m not there yet. I regress quite often. But I am trying, deliberately and purposefully.
Prior to this, my coping mechanism was to just avoid these difficulties, be them difficult conversations or difficult emotions, for example. This “choice”, which seemed more like an unconscious habit but was a choice nonetheless, oftentimes blocked me from knowing myself, from knowing others and from allowing others to know me. This poisonous choice has led to much sadness, loneliness and heartache over the years.
One of the greatest gifts to arise from this intention has been the ability to relate more to myself, to others and to the countless ways in which humans universally suffer. From this, I am becoming more emotionally resilient. I am connecting to more of you, to more of the world. I am realizing I am not alone.
I am embracing my sadness.
Right now, we are all undergoing the largest psychological stress test of our lives—experiencing pain, anxiety, disappointment, confusion, etc. As unnerving as it is, as uncomfortable as it all is, I am convinced this grief will be transformative at all levels—globally, nationally, socially, individually.
We are no longer able to run away from that what we don’t want to face, from what’s been lurking in the closet or hiding under the bed. We have fewer outlets now to fill the void or to numb our discomfort, thus providing us the time and means to look inwards for our truth.
So what can we do?
Move.—stand in Mountain Pose (Tadasana). Reach your arms out to the side as if in Warrior 2 (Virabhadrasana 2). Take them up and overhead, palms facing one another, into Extended Hand Pose (Utthita Hastasana in Tadasana). Reach wide with your heart and up with your mind.
Breathe.—sit well in any comfortable seat. Close the eyes or soften the gaze. Turn your attention to the natural rhythm of your breath, breathing in and out of your nose. After 1min, inhale for 5 beats, exhale for 5 beats. (If 5 beats is too long for you, just make sure you inhale and exhale for the same number of beats.) Do this for 3min. For the final 1min, inhale through the nose for one beat, exhaling quickly through an open mouth two counts on the beat. Let your breath then return to normal.
Be.—sit well in any comfortable seat. Close the eyes or soften the gaze. Let the breath be soft. If sadness or any other negative affect arises, let it move through you. Do not hold onto it. Acknowledge it, honour it and let it move on. We do not want to shut it out as it is a part of us, but we also do not want it to become us. Choose not to respond but rather to just honour the feeling. Listen. Tune in.
As we move. breathe. be., we sink into our bodies and the physical experience. We let go of pretending. We allow the tears to flow. Sadness becomes our ladder to growth, to understanding, to freedom, beyond the walls of constraint.
The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keep out the joy.
~ Jim Rohn
