Feel.

This morning I went to yoga, as I always do on Saturday mornings. At the beginning of class, we are instructed to set an intention. The purpose of setting an intention is to bring your attention and focus to a quality that you would like to emulate - both on and off the mat. Today, my intention immediately came to me: Feel.

Feel every movement, every inhale, every exhale, every stretch. 

Feel all the tension, all the tightness, all the resistance, all the struggles. 

Feel the releases, the expansion, the relaxation, and the peace.

Not just physically though. Mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. 

I typically don’t take the time to just feel. As an enneagram 7, my core desire is to feel happy and content. I tend to consume myself and my life with exciting things and experiences and will do anything to escape feeling sadness and pain. I’m always thinking about what’s next, always moving on to the next thing, and always trying to find the positive in situations. 

In the moment, it feels like a strength. That I can just keep pushing forward, despite all the bad things happening around me. And although, I do believe it is. The downside is that when I actually take the time to sit and feel, the weight seems 10x as heavy because of all the stuff I’ve been avoiding. And then, I realize that I wasn’t finding joy in the hard times. I was just ignoring the hard times. That’s when I also realize that what I once saw as a strength, is probably an unhealthy pattern that I created or adopted from somewhere. I’ve been working to unpack why I do it and where it came from, but as I do so I realize that sometimes that part doesn’t even matter. What matters is that I recognize it, and decide to break the cycle. So today, I made the choice to feel and surprisingly it felt “good”. 

If you know my husband, you know that he is a pretty emotional person. Not in a bad way, though. (Who made being emotional bad, by the way?!) Anyway, I used to tell him that I envy that he can express his emotions so well, with no shame. Whether he’s happy, sad, grateful, defeated, he typically is open to sharing with whoever will listen. I’m grateful that God is using him to show me that it’s okay to feel and that I don’t have to hide those feelings. I don’t have to envy him and I don’t have to communicate myself the way he does either. We all need an outlet, whether publicly or privately, to express our emotions and to just feel. 

I’m learning that my outlet is through writing. 

So, today, I’m taking the time to feel and I’m choosing to be open and vulnerable with those feelings. I’m feeling whatever I need to feel. Feeling all the things I don’t want to feel. Sitting in those feelings as long as I need or want to. And I challenge you to do the same.