This past weekend, I wasn’t feeling so hot. I was having a sad, lonely day and wanted to do anything but feel sad and lonely. I tried going to the gym for a workout, followed that with a yoga practice filled with handstands and fancy moves. I then proceeded to run errands all around town, called my family and cleaned my apartment. I was keeping busy – all in an attempt to not feel what I was feeling. Finally, the end of the day arrived. Everything I spent the day running from was sitting on my couch, at home waiting for me. I sat down to eat dinner and across the table, loneliness piped up and said, “Pass the salt, would you?”
Damn it. I thought I shook this guy.
I took to social media. A quick fix for the lonelies is to scroll through the pages of Facebook looking at life happening outside my own. The whole day I had been debating whether or not I would post a small video of me practicing handstands. Why not? It would be a quick ego boost. People love handstand videos. They like them and leave comments like, “You’re so awesome!” followed by lots of heart emojis. I could show my friends and family how hard I’ve been working on my practice. Instant validation!
But when the moment came to post it, I couldn’t pull the trigger. It wasn’t the whole truth about how I was feeling. I realized I was curating an image. I wanted people to think I was feeling awesome and happy. Yes, I have been practicing my inversions a lot. And yes, I felt accomplished and happy with them. But on that same Sunday, I was also feeling really crappy and tired. The crappiness and the tiredness were feeling even more intense the more I tried to ignore them.
This same weekend I came across strategically placed sidewalk postings. Poignant messages left by a group called #thesadcollective; Torontonians intent on raising awareness for mental imbalance and illness. The messages read “We’re all in this together” and “It’s okay not to be okay.” I decided to post the pictures I took of these instead.
I was not feeling okay, and that was okay. I closed my laptop and crawled into bed.
I woke up to 40 likes for this photo. Woah.
Right away it helped me feel so much less alone. It pulled my head out of my own sadness. It reminded me how we really are in this together. Everyone has bad days. Hell, sometimes we have bad years.
I was finally able to settle into my own skin and allow two streams of emotion to coexist in my body; the happiness I feel from teaching yoga, the gratefulness I hold for family and friends, alongside the loneliness and sadness I feel at the end of an exhausting week.
When I teach, I find myself using the phrase, “Create space” a lot. To the point where I feel a bit like a broken record. When we breathe deeply, we are quite literally creating more room in our lungs. When we stretch, more area arrives in between the joints. When we bend and breathe, by the end of the practice our bodies sometimes feel taller, lighter, kind of floaty. We’ve “created space” inside our body and mind. By breathing in more oxygen and breathing out worries and tension our insides start to de-clutter.
After this space has been made, the question remains, “What do we do with this space?”
My suggestion? Feel.
Feel all the feels.
There’s this misconception in our day to day lives that awesomeness and happiness must be achieved constantly, to the point where it can be a bit oppressive. Phrases like, “Wake up and be awesome” or “I just awesomed all over the place” litter our speech.
For me, I prefer, “Wake up and be human”
The space yoga creates in the body and mind can become this neutral zone that allows us to hold the duality of sad and happy, joyful and angry, fed up and grateful, heartbroken and hopeful. As humans we are awesome, but not necessarily in the “be happy all the time” sense. We are amazing because we are capable of feeling all of these things in tandem with one another. We are big enough, strong enough, complex and multifaceted enough to feel all the feels. To me, this is awesome. To me, this is terrifying and awesome.
The neutral zone yoga creates in the body can also become a home for these feelings to set up shop while we decide how it is we will react to them. If I’m lonely – I can choose to call a friend. If I’m sad – sitting on the couch and letting tears squeeze out of the corners of my eyes might not be a bad idea. If I’m angry – I can write about it, talk about it, yell about it.
