Try these sounds to work through heavy emotions. Start with fear, move through anger, then anxiety and grief. End with a self hug.
I created the above image this morning, and posted it on my social media. Currently it has 15K views on TikTok. I’m surprised, but I’m not. This week, many of our deepest emotions have risen to the surface in the aftermath of the 2024 US election. Half the country is celebrating in bold, proud displays of MAGA pride, the other half is experiencing the trauma of shock, and an ungrounding mixture of fear, anger, anxiety and grief. We are in a stating of mourning and uncertainty. We are broken, but still whole.
For many, the everyday routine has become something that feels tenuous and fragile. The constant pounding of hatred has broken the hope that threaded the fabric of our collective humanity. We are broken, but still whole.
We need to find the frayed pieces. We need to find a way to sew the seams back together to find a feeling of unity. We need to find the goodness of common ground.
“Hello darkness my old friend. I’ve come to talk to you again,” this song of silence has words. We know it well. We have been here before. So many times we have cycled into our darkness, and once again, we are being asked to thread the light back into our collective story.
“We can do hard things,” because we’ve done them before. We can find “Goodness in common ground.” We can find “the light behind the story.” We have to, because we must.
It is a time of mourning and processing. It is a time of self-care and caring for others. Check on yourself, your friends, your family, your neighbors and your peers. If you are struggling, please ask for help. There are so many doors opened in kindness. Seek them out. There are more than ever. Be one of them.
If you don’t know what that door looks like right now, trust that its definition will form. I am relying on trust and faith. Navigating uncharted waters requires us to find the strength within, and the knowing that the way will find us.
I am also offering a free Zoom this evening, at 7pm EST. All are welcome. It’s spur of the moment, but that’s the nature of these uncharted waters. If you or anyone you know is struggling right now, please know this door is open to you. We will be working with the yoga and sound to process our emotions and find a greater sense of peace in these uncertain times.
Together we can find our way. One breath. One day at a time.
There’s a pose in EM Yoga that I call the “mother hug.” Lauren Walker, the creator of EM Yoga, refers to it as “cradling the baby.” The pose is simple, in essence. The arms are lifted to the sky, then wrapped around the waist, one crossed over the other. Eyes close while the body gently sways in its own embrace. The first time I hugged myself I wept.
Weeping is a natural side effect to the pose, as Lauren points out. Not many of us love ourselves unconditionally, and the act of self-hugging requires a surrender to this love of the self despite our perceived imperfections. It also requires the willingness to love the self despite not feeling wholly beloved. It’s as profoundly vulnerable as it is healing. The asana represents the element of Earth. The Mother energy.
In the pose, you are both the baby and the mother. You are the beloved and the one who gives love unconditionally.
A couple of weeks ago, I found myself on a (different) massage table inside the belly of a whale. As you may have guessed, it was no ordinary massage. While I lay upon a heated mat of amethyst, crystal bowls sang around me and tuning forks hummed into my cells. I was easily transported, and how I found myself in the belly of a whale, I cannot wholly say, but there I was cradled inside its womb.
I was not merely the baby, I realized, as I lay there listening to whale’s song humming inside each cell of my body. I was the child in the womb, but I was also the mother (whale) who rocked the child within. The mother inside the great mother, swimming in belly of Earth. There was no separation, only union. Three hearts beating as one. I never wanted to leave.
When I was a young child, I fell in love with the song of whales. Around my neck I sometimes wore pewter chiseled into the curve of a humpback whale and listened to recordings of its haunting song echoing through Earth’s waters. Whales pull us back to the womb to feel the unconditional embrace of the Mother.
It seems the whale has returned to me again. A few nights ago I dreamt of a beluga, and since that night it has appeared to me in images each day. When an animal messenger appears to you at least three times, it’s a good idea to pay attention to what it has to tell you.
Beluga whales live in Arctic waters, and perhaps it has appeared to me, in part because I am planning a trip to Iceland. They are white, an unusual color for whales, and are related to the narwhal or “unicorn” whale. They are also related to dolphins and can imitate the human voice. Belugas are fascinating, as all creatures are. And I have been wondering why the one has chosen to appear to me now, and not the beloved humpback whale of my childhood.
There is a solitary nature to humpbacks, which contrasts the more gregarious personality of the beluga. Each time I saw the beluga, in my dream and in the photographs that randomly appeared in the ensuing days, it was raised up vertically, peering at me, as though in greeting. The humpback, in turn, swam through my childhood alone in the dark depths of the ocean, its voice an echo unreturned. As a young child, I felt a kinship to the humpback whale and its song.
Perhaps the beluga is heralding a time of transformation. In my efforts to accept that I will not receive unconditional mother love from my human mother in this lifetime, I have slowly come to the acceptance that the mother love is always within. I am both the mother and the child.
This year has brought another layer of unfolding and acceptance. For the past five years I have made an annual trip to England, a land where I have felt Mother Love like nowhere else. It is a pull that travels though lifetimes, deeply encoded in my cells. Yet, circumstances have unraveled so that a trip this year seems unlikely. I have found myself somewhat surprised that this does not discomfort me more. And, so, I have found myself unwrapping not just the hold of one mother, but of the Mother. Not to reject it, but to feel the knowing that I am whole without the need to be held by the arms of another.
I suspect I am not the only one who finds the “mother hug” as complex as it is simple. I suspect that I am not the only one who has difficulty surrendering to the realization that the beloved is within. Whole and complete. The child and the mother in one form. To wrap your own arms around yourself takes trust in the knowing and a giving into love without conditions. To realize there is no need to look outside, but only within. One hug will not, in all likelihood, render you feeling a complete, unbroken circle. But, perhaps it is worth it once in awhile to give into the physical embrace of the self. To wrap our arms around our wombs and rock the mother and the child whole.
The Light Behind the Story 