We spend a ton of time talking about how the body holds trauma, and the brain is certainly wired that way. It was necessary for survival that we use precious memory space to remember where and who and what was dangerous, and there was so much, from the plants and animals to other people to weather patterns.
Now most of us live in relative safety. It might not always feel that way but historically speaking? Truth.
We live in relative safety but with these damn brains that are constantly, like, WHAT IS WRONG!?!?! What can I find that is SCARY!?
Here’s the thing though: our bodies also happen to hold our good and happy memories. Our joy. Our love. Our successes. Our celebrations.
Just think about what happens when you smell a scent that your loved one wore when you first met them.
Or what happens when you hear certain songs.
So body is just ready to be JOY.
But again…asshole brain gets in the way.
We can change this. We can work on this.
It’s all about wiring. And wiring is all about repetition and details and breath. Sounds a whole lot like our movement practices, doesn’t it?
In classes, I have often led people through a process I call “hold the happy.” We start in meditation and we focus on a happy moment. Could be from last week or when you were two. Whenever.
I ask them to get really clear on all the sensory details of the memory. We spend time with this. We breathe with this. There are more advanced things that we do with it after the fact, but this is the important part in this writing.
The sensory details are key and breathing deeply and gently is key and focusing and repeating is key.
Do all of that and you can develop what I’ll call a storehouse of “joy gems.”
Imagine all of that information in a tiny box. See the box. Decorate it. And then put it in a wee cupboard inside your heart.
When you’re feeling like shit or lost or lonely, you then have to remember to access one of these boxes, but the more we work with them — even doing things like making visual representations of them that we place where we see them often — the more we work with them, the more easily this will come to us.
Here’s one of my favorites that has held me and carried me through so very much in my life, and I call it the yellow room.
I was probably 3 or 4 at the oldest, and I was at my Great Aunt Ardelle’s house, a place that is no longer there but that I return to more often than I can say. I am often in her house at night as I fall asleep.
I was outside her kitchen as she was cooking. I had her all to myself.
I was sitting on a chair that my father now has. I was kicking my feet and I was SINGING.
Oh, was I SINGING! I was just singing whatever came into my head, and Delle was just LAUGHING and I could FEEL her smiling through the wall.
I stopped. She said, “Keep going!” and I went into the kitchen, singing and dancing.
And suddenly I was in a room full of yellow. The walls and floor were a yellow shade and the sun was just pouring in and it was like the air itself was filled with yellow glitter.
My chest felt full to bursting. Delle was laughing and I was singing and the world was perfection.