On being a Cry Baby
It's my yoga and I'll cry if I want to
I used to hide when I cried.
At yoga teacher training, I stopped hiding.
Now I can notice the different ways my tears affect other people. It can make them uncomfortable. They can feel compassion, or envy. It can also make them feel liberated - like now they have permission to cry, too.
I had only experienced a few memorable occasions of crying on my mat prior to becoming a yoga teacher but I always kept it to myself. I never noticed anyone in a class cry, and I certainly didn’t want to be the first. Tears flowed more freely in 2020 when classes moved to Zoom, but I would still stop myself because I hated to cry. I just wanted to workout and feel good - isn’t that what yoga was for??
I cried more in a 9-month yoga teacher training program than I did in 2 decades of doing yoga. It was as if Mama G was a Shame Shaman - her steady, nonjudgemental presence accompanying me as some mysterious force ushered me across a threshold…to yoga and tears I had never known.
The most important thing I learned is that crying doesn’t have to occur because of something. It can just happen, it’s ok to not know why, and it doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you. It’s possible to cry without feeling sad, even. Perhaps it’s the body’s intelligence at work, and we’re better off giving it space to happen. It’s simply a form of elimination - so why would we ever hold them in? There are even numerous health benefits, for crying out loud!
In Women Who Run With The Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes:
Tears are a river that take you somewhere. Weeping carries a river around the boat that carries your soul-life. Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace new, someplace better.
There are oceans of tears women have never cried, for they have been trained to carry mother’s and father’s secrets, men’s secrets, society’s secrets, and their own secrets to the grave… A woman who carries a secret is an exhausted woman.
A woman’s crying has been considered quite dangerous, for it loosens the locks and bolts on the secrets she bears. But in truth, for the sake of a woman’s wild soul, it is better to cry.
I used to think crying made me weak, but now I see it as one of my greatest strengths. I have expanded my capacity to be with my own tears, and with the tears of other people if they wish to share them with me. It’s a relief to know it’s not up to me to fix or change anyone. While I trust in our innate capacity to find our own “Inner Teacher,” I know it can be nice to have some company along the way. I am learning to love my tender heart, even if it does make life pretty painful at times. Now when I experience love and joy in my heart that brings me to tears, it doesn’t make me feel embarrassed — it makes me feel Alive.
My tears have inspired a lot of poems. I’m tired of being exhausted, and I’m glad I don’t need to keep them a secret anymore. I look forward to sharing more with you. And perhaps the next time you cry, you can think of it as a yoga pose - see if you want to just breathe into it, allowing the tears to form a river to take you somewhere, maybe you will return to The O.K. Place, visit The Floating Place, or maybe you will land someplace new…you’re welcome to send me a note or comment below to share where you arrive after Sobasana.
Sobasana
Turn your back to the one watching over you
Tuck chin to chest
Shoulders round
Inhale, spread the shoulder blades apart
Tears roll down the cheeks, shhh
Saliva drops out of the mouth, ahhh
Belly pumping now
Cry out and reach for help
Is this how it begins?
Yes indeed
Receive through your ears
The first sound you ever made
Sob.
