More on Repressed Emotions

Here are some things that I didn't find space for in my last post on repressed emotions.

Writing From The Body by John Lee and Ceci Miller-Kritsberg is ostensibly about becoming more creative, but also covers the freeing of repressed emotions, since this also frees one up to be more creative. This is a wonderful book that deserves to be much better known than it is.

Here is my favorite exercise from the book (in my own words, since I gave my copy away and haven't bought a new one yet). Choose a memory from your childhood that you want to write about. Sit and think about it for ten or fifteen minutes. Come up with a short sentence, the shorter the better, that sums up how you feel about this event. Scream the short sentence. If you live in an apartment or otherwise don't want to make too much noise, scream into a pillow. Sit with the release of emotions that follow. Finally, write about the event.

I came up with a modified version of this exercise to use when you don't have a memory in mind. Instead of starting with a memory, start with whatever symptom you have. As I mentioned in the first post on repressed emotions, a repressed emotion can manifest as a physical symptom like headache or back pain. What you can do is focus on the symptom for a while, and then ask that part of your body if it can give you a few words or a short sentence related to the feeling. It can take a few tries before you get an answer, especially if you're not accustomed to communicating with your body. It helps to get into a meditative, relaxed state. It also helps to suspend disbelief, because your body can come up with stuff that sounds weird and illogical to your mind. Resist the urge to dismiss; instead, take the words you're given and scream them. The rest of the exercise is the same.

Screaming can be helpful for releasing repressed emotions. Just ask the Primal Therapy people. What I appreciate about this exercise is the way that it works in verbalisation. Sometimes you feel something and you don't know why. Finding words can clarify what is going on.

Finally, I have a suggestion for people with chronic muscle tension. If you're one of those people, you can spend an inordinate amount of time stretching your ridiculously tight muscles out in an attempt to feel like a human being. It helps for a little while, then everything bounces back. Or you have a massage, which is not cheap, and everything bounces back. So the next time you stretch, try making some noise: a sigh, groan or even a scream if you feel like it. If the tension is connected to repressed emotion, making noise will release some of that emotion and loosen you up better than stretching alone. Try it next time you stretch. I'd like to say, try it next time you get a massage, but I find that massage therapists are not always up to speed on the repressed emotions thing and sometimes they will freak if you start crying on the table. I don't know why; they should know better. I imagine the reaction would be even worse if you screamed. You might end up like Jerry Seinfeld, unable to get another massage appointment.

Repressed Emotions

In part 3 of my Yoga Snobs series, I mentioned repressed emotions and the importance of releasing them. I thought it might be helpful to follow up with an entry delving into the subject in more detail.

Symptoms of repression

First of all, how do you know if you are repressing emotions? Not because you feel them. If you could feel them, they wouldn't be repressed. Still, they leave traces. When you bury emotions, you're like that guy in Poe's "Telltale Heart." Something always emerges to haunt you.

Physical Symptoms

Chronic problems like muscle tension, back pain, headaches and digestive problems, for which your doctor can find no organic cause, may be symptoms of repression. Obesity often has an underlying emotional cause; it's fairly common for people who were sexually abused as children to be obese. Such symptoms are called psychosomatic. Even serious conditions such as cancer can have a psychosomatic component. This shows how important it is to release repression: not only your happiness and general wellbeing but your health or even your life could be at stake.

Strong, Inappropriate Emotion

Now that's weird. How can emotion be a symptom of repressed emotion?

Some emotions are more socially acceptable than others. This can vary depending upon who you are and what sort of background you come from. For example, it has traditionally been more acceptable for women than men to express sadness (especially when tears are involved), and more acceptable for men to express anger. So men may repress sadness under anger, and women may repress anger under sadness. On the other hand, I grew up in a home where sadness was derided as weakness while anger earned respect, so that, although I am a woman, I repressed sadness under anger for many years.

If you often find yourself caught up in a strong, even overpowering emotion that seems out of proportion to the situations that trigger it, you're probably repressing something.

Obsessive Thoughts

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a complex condition with many causes, perhaps even physical. One of those causes is repression, though you'd never know it to read most of the information available out there. It is currently trendy to treat mental conditions primarily with drugs and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, in keeping with today's treat-the-symptom philosophy. This is unfortunate, as it means that all too often the underlying issues are never dealt with. And when the underlying issues aren't dealt with, they always emerge again, in another form.

It's possible to have the obsessions without the compulsions. Obsessive thoughts are a clever technique of the mind to distract you from whatever you don't want to feel.

How to Release Repressed Emotions

The first thing you have to do is give yourself permission. You have to allow yourself to cry, even loudly or as unrestrainedly as a child, even without knowing why you are crying. This is important. If you insist on behaving in a dignified and restrained manner at all times, you will likely just push the repressed emotions back under.

The next thing to do is to look to your symptoms. They are your body's way of screaming at you that something is wrong. Listen to them.

If your symptoms are physical

Focus your attention on the part of the body that hurts. Feel it fully. This is the opposite of what we usually do. We naturally want pain to go away, and the pharmaceutical industry helpfully steps in with a raft of drugs to help us not feel. If you can go off pain pills and completely feel your pain, you may finally receive the message your body is trying to send you. But you have to be willing to receive whatever comes and not push it down again, whether what comes is an image you don't like, a thought you think is ridiculous, or the urge to scream.

Expect resistance. You've spent years repressing. You're good at it. Your defensive mechanisms will kick in. Probably the most universal one is the wandering mind. Everybody who tries any kind of meditation gets this. I have an interesting one: I get tired and start to yawn. It helps to recognize defensive mechanisms for what they are, so you can stop them from derailing you.

Raphael Cushnir suggests that you can get at repressed emotions by asking yourself two questions: "What is happening right now?" and "Can I be with it?" If you take one of his workshops, he'll give you a handy magnet you can stick on your fridge to remind you to ask the two questions. He has also written a number of books on the subject, including The One Thing Holding You Back, which I recommend. (I can't recommend the other ones because I haven't read them.)

If your symptom is strong, inappropriate emotion

Find somewhere private. This is especially important if you cover up other emotions with anger; by removing yourself from the situation that is making you angry, you can avoid doing or saying something you'll regret later. Handy tip: public washroom cubicles are a good place to escape to. Once you're alone, feel the emotion fully (are you noticing a pattern here?) If you feel the emotion fully for long enough, the other emotion that it is covering up is likely to come to the surface. When that happens, feel that emotion fully too, emoting as necessary.

While feeling the first emotion, you can try asking yourself directly if some other feeling is underneath. Talking to your own body is not a sign of insanity at all but a good habit to get into.

If your symptom is obsessive thoughts

If you've got OCD, you may need professional help. If you only have obsessive thoughts, you may be able to handle it yourself. Either way, try this: when you catch yourself in an obsessive thought or compulsive action, ask yourself, "What am I feeling right now?" This is similar to Cushnir's two questions mentioned earlier.

We live in a society uncomfortable with the expression of emotion. We are told to "put on a happy face" and "laugh and the world laughs with you; cry and you cry alone." It is time for a change. In her book Transformation Soup, SARK writes, "I think that until we cry as often as we laugh, we are not fully alive" (p. 136). I like this thought. I don't know how literally to take it. I don't know if the correct ratio of tears to laughter is 50/50 or 40/60 or 25/75. But I know that we need to become as accepting of tears as we are of laughter. We need to feel freer to cry, to scream, to express whatever is in us.

Yoga Snobs, Part 3: Yoga Versus Psychology?

In the first two installments of this series, I described my experiences with two different Yoga Snobs. Both these incidents happened several years ago. What reminded me of them, and moved me to write about them at this time, was an interview in the latest issue of Ascent Magazine (Winter 2008, issue 40) titled "anarchy of yoga." The subject of the interview is the Yoga Snob under the magnifying glass in this third installment of Yoga Snobs.

Michael Stone is a yoga teacher who studied psychology in the past, but appears to have turned against it:

Western psychotherapy is caught in the delusion that our problems are primarily derived from memories in our personal past. So we go looking to the storehouse of memory in our personal past to heal our wounds in the present. Yoga disagrees.

I find this an interesting statement, not only for its content but for the little back-and-forth dance of tone the speaker executes. He begins with full-tilt arrogance: Western psychology is caught in a delusion. Then, as if realizing too late how he has exposed himself, he backs up: yoga disagrees.

Here's a handy tip on how to keep your disagreements friendly: don't tell your opponent he's deluded.

This is not the first time I've encountered arrogance in the pages of Ascent Magazine. It seems to be all too common among those who are supposed to be on the spiritual path. Sometimes I wish Ascent Magazine would print a disclaimer with their interviews, maybe something along the lines of: "Ascent is not responsible for the arrogance expressed herein. We just do the interview."

Stone goes on to say: "Yoga... is suggesting that the past is fictional. When you talk about your past, you are generating a fiction that gives you a sense of self. ... Health or liberation... from the yoga perspective, is seeing through the mechanism in the mind that always superimposes a self on everything."

There's that bad, naughty story again. Stone appears to be saying that the past is irrelevant, and that the key to health is to live in the present. Certainly it is a good thing to live in the present as much as possible. But surely there is much to be gained from looking at your past experiences and understanding the effect they had on you.

Stone claims he's seen a lot of people who have been through scads of therapy but remain unable to "let go" of their problems. Curiously, he provides no contrasting examples of people who have learned to let go of their problems through the practice of yoga.

Another curious omission: he makes no mention of repression, whether of memories or emotion. The past would indeed have no power to hurt us in the present if we did not drag something of it behind us. In what way do we do that? In part, by storing up repressed emotion, which, until it is released, continues to reside in the body and affect us.

Psychologists are well aware of the importance of releasing repressed emotion. That's why they always have a box of tissues located conveniently close to the couch. Their way of encouraging such a release is to dig up the past. Yoga too can be of help in initiating such a release; since the repressed emotions and memories are stored in the body, the right posture may release them.

But how many yoga students feel free to openly weep or scream in the middle of a class? And how many instructors would encourage such a display, and welcome it when it occurs? In both cases, I would guess the number is close to zero.

Kripalu yoga has an advantage over other yoga forms in this respect. Students are encouraged to sigh or groan after completing a series of postures, offering some opportunity for release. I have my doubts that much open weeping would be tolerated. I don't know what type of yoga Stone teaches or how much noise he encourages his students to make. However, his failure to make any mention of the issue does not give me high hopes.

It is a curious and sad thing that Stone feels yoga and psychology are somehow in opposition. Indeed, why not have both of them? Really, don't we need all the help we can get? What sense does it make to throw out anything potentially useful?

Stone's dismissal of psychotherapy and its "delusions" is ironic, given a comment he himself makes earlier in the interview:

Whenever you create a system, something gets left out. And so when two systems come together, all those left-out pieces come out of the shadows because one system points out the shadow of another system. That's why it is really good to study different systems and different teachers, because it will always point out your shadows.

Stone sees that yoga can point out the shadows of psychology. He does not see that psychology can point out the shadows of yoga. Those are the shadows that will continue to elude him.

Yoga Snobs, Part 2: The Anti-Story Yogi

In the last installment of this series, I described a yogi who, in my belief, chose to look down on certain people for physical reasons. In this installment, I will describe a yogi who looked down on people for reasons more mental/spiritual.

At my yoga studio, we sometimes had guest instructors. There was one in particular who taught a couple of times and then did not come again. I thought it might be interesting to take more of his classes, so I sent him an email asking him where he usually taught. He wrote back and told me that he taught regularly at the Y. We got to chatting. He told me he worked as a speech writer to supplement his yoga income. I told him that I worked as a Technical Writer to make money, but what I really loved was fiction.

His response was that he did not read fiction because fiction was untrue and he was opposed to untruth. He said that "at least" I did technical writing and that was based on fact (as if to say that the writing I did for a living took the curse off the writing I did out of love).

I was flabbergasted. This man thought that his allegedly spiritual, yogic beliefs made it acceptable for him to insult what I did!

I wrote back and pointed out that in fiction, no deceit occurs because there is an understanding between the writer and the reader that what is described is not literally true. On the other hand, there is ample potential for deceit in speech writing, especially when done for politicians.

I never communicated with him again, nor did I attend any of his classes at the Y.

The notion that a story can be a negative thing is not uncommon among yogis and meditators. Someone once told me about a type of meditation whose goal is to help the meditator achieve a state of "no story." I think they were referring to Vipassana, though I have not been able to find any references to "no story" on Vipassana-related web pages. Perhaps it was some other type of meditation beginning with "V." In any case, she explained that people cause problems for themselves and avoid seeing the world accurately by making up stories about the people around them. For example, an insecure person might walk past a group of people, hear them burst into laughter, and conclude they are laughing at him. He does not know this with any certainty; it is a belief, a story he chooses to tell himself. With sufficient practice of the right type of meditation, I have been told, one can free oneself from this habit of hurtful storytelling.

Are we to take this to mean that all fiction and storytelling is to be avoided? That is apparently how this yoga instructor took it. And yet, storytelling is an important feature of every culture on earth. Even Zen Buddhists use stories, called Koans, to teach and illustrate Zen principles. Many of them describe events that (gasp!) never actually happened.

Most likely, the yoga instructor had no problem with this type of instructive storytelling, despite what he said about being opposed to untruth. He would have understood that there is a higher purpose, indeed a higher truth, in such storytelling.

What he didn't understand is that the same is true of all good storytelling. Any decent-quality novel, short story or myth tells "untruths" in order to get at deeper truths. This man's avoidance of fiction is his great loss. I feel a little bit sorry for him. Not that sorry, because he was a jerk, but a little sorry.

Apparently I'm not that spiritually evolved.

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Are you a Yoga Snob or a Balanced Yogi? Find out by taking the Yoga Snob Quiz. Actually, this quiz is more of a joke than anything. It's worth doing for the fun of it, and also to generate a signature so that you can show everyone in your forum, or everyone you email, what kind of yogi you are.

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Have you ever been the target of a Yoga Snob? Please share your story--yes, story, because stories are good--by leaving a comment. Anyone can post a comment; you do not need to register. Thanks!

Yoga Snobs, Part 1: Snobs and Dabblers

I initially intended to have a single entry about Yoga Snobs, but once I started writing, I discovered I had a lot to say, more than could comfortably fit into a single blog entry. So I divided it into three parts. Parts 2 and 3 will be posted later.

I am a yoga dabbler. Every now and then, I show up at a class. There was a time when I was more committed. I had a specific teacher, studio, and yoga tradition (Kripalu). I went to classes a couple of times a week for two years. Even so, I never progressed beyond a certain level. I never developed a home practice. I never went vegetarian (for more than a couple of weeks at a time). And I never was comfortable doing the Plow, the shoulder stand or the Upward Dog, nor could I balance in the Crow for more than a couple of seconds. Having never attained the upper echelons of yoga, I have the perspective to see that there are upper echelons of yoga, and that there are yoga snobs. I have witnessed yoga snobbery on a couple of occasions. This is one of them.

It was the end of a class. We students were rolling up our mats. The instructor-- let's call her Debbie--approached one of the women (yoga classes are mostly women, as you'll know if you've ever been to one) and asked her if she was planning to go to the picnic. The woman was not aware about the picnic, so Debbie explained that "some of the yogis," as she put it, were planning a picnic, and that she should come along.

I perked up. "What's that? There's going to be a picnic?"

Debbie turned to me with visible reluctance and repeated that some of the yogis were planning a picnic. She did not invite me to come.

I pressed no further, not wanting to impose myself where I wasn't wanted. It was clear enough that the other woman had been selected and I hadn't. As to why, I can only speculate. It wasn't an issue of seniority; in fact, I'd been attending classes at that studio longer than Debbie had been teaching there. So perhaps this other woman was slimmer, younger, or could go more deeply into the Pigeon pose, even possessing the ability, which I didn't have then and still don't have now, to bend the back leg upwards and tuck the foot into the crook of the elbow.

None of that should matter. In yoga, where you are now is supposed to be perfect. The studio's founding instructor--let's call her Kathy--was always careful to remind us not to force or push ourselves too far, and that putting your face in your lap or your nose to your knee is "just a direction you're moving in."

And yet, when I asked her once if she could do a handstand, she said, "Of course!" and sounded insulted.

So apparently this kind of thing does matter.

It is of course possible that Debbie made her selections and exclusions for reasons other than physical. Perhaps she thought the other woman meditated better than I did or was closer to enlightenment. However, it is interesting to note that for a time, Kathy, the studio founder, was fierce in her defense of the idea that one can develop spiritually simply through the practice of the physical poses known as Hatha yoga. She'd gone so far as to promote this idea in the local newspaper, and start what she called "a controversy" (somebody wrote one calmly-worded letter in response). All this, because she believed that Debbie, the invitation-issuing instructor, had "come so far" simply through the practice of Hatha yoga.

It seems, then, that the physical was Debbie's primary focus, and Kathy felt the need to defend the position of the instructor she had chosen to work at her studio. In consequence, she needed to convince others, and perhaps herself, that postures alone could initiate spiritual development.

And yet, there's more to yoga than postures. One of the six branches of yoga is Seva or Selfless Service. I like this one, because it makes a lot more sense to me that you can evolve spiritually by getting out in the world and helping people than that you can do so by wrapping your body into a pretzel.

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong whatsoever with doing only Hatha yoga for the benefits it provides. After all, increased strength and flexibility, relaxation and getting more in touch with your body are all fine achievements in themselves. But anyone who tells herself that she is more spiritual because she does Hatha yoga is heading for trouble.

Come to think of it, anyone who tells herself that she is more spiritual than other people is heading for trouble.

Different people have different bodies that are capable of different things. There are many people who will never be able to get into the full Lotus position, no matter how devoted they are to their practice. Are they lesser than the person who always had wide-open hips, whose body has never been tightened by trauma?

In some circles, the answer is yes. And what a shame this is, as it hurts people like myself, the yoga dabblers of this world, the people who show up for an occasional class when they feel like it. We have as much right to yoga as the more committed, more flexible, more whatever. We have a right to practice in our own way. Indeed, the Yoga Snobs need us. If we go away, who will they feel superior to?

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Have you ever encountered a Yoga Snob? I encourage you to share your experiences in the Comments section. Anyone can post a comment; you do not need to register. Thanks!