On the importance of catharsis
Deconditioning is not simply a mental process, it’s physical.
Sometimes inhabiting a human body feels easy. I wake up in a lovely mood feeling clear and grateful. I flow through my day with ease and intuition, it does’t require much effort. If I choose to, it won’t cause much harm for me to indulge in heavy foods or enjoy alcohol, because I’m not too sensitive.
And other times, being in my body is very challenging. Sometimes it’s excruciating! It takes heaps of discipline to rise to the occasion and stay in my body, intuiting and giving her what she needs instead of trying to numb, dissociate, or escape my experience. Sometimes I feel highly sensitive and I need to be very careful with my delicate internal ecosystem, as the wrong environment or meal could have an wildly uncomfortable effect. A mild hangover might produce a deep depression.
Today, I woke up feeling sad and angry, lots of emotional charge, and my mind hard at work inventing and looping on unhealthy narratives. The last thing I wanted to do was my breathwork, but I knew that this was what I needed.
So, I began my practice, three-part breath through the mouth. As I attempted to drop in, all the unhelpful thoughts in my mind that were causing me unecessary suffering would begin to rise to the surface ready to be transformed, my mind would contest: “no, stop!!! We need these thoughts to protect us! You don’t need to feel this intensely, it’s too hard,there must be a more comfortable approach….” I had so much resistance to continuing the breath pattern, so I would pause and sit up and move into emotional release. For as long as needed, I allowed my body to shake, move, hand scream, cry… then I would lie back down and try again to enter into my breathwork. I went through 4-5 cycles of this before I was finally able to drop in and surrender. I FEEL SO MUCH CLEARER✨
This is an example of what it looks like for me to take responsibility for my emotions and my experience of consciousness, which also translates into taking responsibility for my impact on others.
Genoa Bliven (3/5 Splenic Manifestor) says:
“The not-self is an addiction. We can’t just make up our minds to stop it, but we can allow our bodies to repair themselves. But ironically, what the body needs to do in order to repair itself are specifically the things that have been repressed- we’re not supposed to shake, we’re not supposed to be loud and unruly, we’re not supposed to express ourselves with passion and intensity, we’re not meant to cry, to weep, we’re not meant to feel anything actually- the freedom to come back to your life requires your mind giving your body permission to repair itself”
It is my conviction that cathartic practices are an essential component of any HD deconditioning experiment.