“Button your lip.” Whenever I expressed dissatisfaction or some other “negative” emotion, this slightly more polite version of “shut up” is what my father would say. It was meant as a warning; if I didn’t quiet down I could expect to be sent to my room or swatted on the backside. I even recall having my mouth washed out with soap once or twice for talking back.
My father isn’t a cruel man. He simply parented me and my siblings the same way my grandparents had parented him. How many of us are all too familiar with the adage, “Children are to be seen, not heard?” My father had taken the advice to heart.
As the first of five children, I suffered early on from what I call perfect oldest child syndrome: I wanted everyone’s approval, especially my parents’ and others in authority, such as teachers. I was proficient at empathing – feeling what other people wanted from me – from a very young age. I was so good at this that I met their expectations time and again without considering the cost of ignoring my own wants and needs.
This method of relating to the world left me docile and polite. I excelled in school and by my mid-twenties had landed a job as a trial attorney, fulfilling my family’s dream for me. On the outside, I was the model of success. On the inside, however, a maelstrom of emotions had been stuffed down in my body for decades. I was miserable in my career, depressed and lonely in my personal life. I couldn’t shake the nagging sense that somehow, despite all my accomplishments, I was a fraud.
By the time I found my way onto a yoga mat, I was an emotional time bomb. And explode I did. My time on the mat opened up my body. Try as I might, I couldn’t suppress the backlog of emotions any longer. I’d feel great as I unwound in the warmup sequences and strong and steady in standing Warrior poses. But when I settled down for savasana, the final relaxation pose, something mysterious happened. All those old, unexpressed emotions bubbled and then erupted in a rush of tears. My arms and legs shook, my nose ran, my throat and jaw ached from the effort of holding back sobs and wails. The phrase “much weeping and gnashing of teeth” described me at the end of many a yoga class.
I tried giving myself a stern talking to inside my head, replaying my father’s “button your lip.” Repeatedly. Sometimes it worked. I’d hold back the tears, the frustration, the worry. Other days, emotions spilled up and out, leaving me reaching for the Kleenex box kept in the studio for just this purpose.
I started practicing yoga with someone whose mission is to heal life’s emotional wounds, Ana Forrest. “Breathe deep, connect into your core, and feel the Truth of your life. Acknowledge that truth to heal from your wounds and to create the life you most want to live,” this inspiring and powerful yogini instructed in my first workshop with her.
I wanted so badly to follow her instructions, wanted her approval just as I had sought the approval of the other teachers and people I looked up to in my life. But this teacher didn’t want something particular from me. There was no right answer I could glean from her cues, from a textbook or my classmates. The answer was inside me and couldn’t come from any other source. To some this might have been an exhilarating exploration into their own desires. But when I looked within, I faced a seemingly impenetrable brick wall. I’d spent so much of my life seeking what other people wanted that I’d lost my ability to recognise and say what felt true for me.
For several years, I had to take Ana’s instruction on faith. Every time I breathed, every time I did a posture, I’d close my eyes and check inside: what did I feel? For the longest time, I felt nothing. Just numbness, an absence of any connection to my body beyond the stretch of tendons and ligaments or the burn of holding a pose long enough to make a muscle protest.
Then one blessed practice, something changed. I came out of a physically challenging pose and took a huge inhale. Something shifted up and out of my abdomen, creating a sense of more spaciousness. I took another big breath, right into all that newfound space. A vibrant tingle moved from my pelvis down both legs.
Pearl S. Buck wrote, “The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.” Her words get to the heart of the matter. When we dim our truth, our lives dull as a result. Truth is exciting because it is constantly changing; growing and evolving as we do. Excitement was what I felt the first time I connected into my core and my truth — excitement and exhilaration.
That first glimmer of connection was fleeting. When I told Ana about my experience, she encouraged me to hunt and stalk it. The next time I practiced, I set an intention: I wanted to seek out my truth, no matter how far underneath the pile of my unspoken emotions it was buried. I had a great set of tools to help me. These included meditation and breathing exercises to connect me to my center, unstick old emotions and give expression to my feelings; backbends to open my heart; and neck stretches to improve communication between my brain and my body. Today, I’m thrilled at the new rapport I have with myself. I’m committed to living from the inside out – in every moment, with every breath.
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