Making Room For Sadness

This gentle meditation describes the sensations present in the body before and during crying to help describe somatic (body experiencing) sadness, grief and sorrow. This meditation is for people who want to have space for sadness, however, it does or doesn't get expressed by the body.

Transcript

Hello everyone,

This is Amy Echo with Meditations of Unlearning and I decided to kind of impromptu make this meditation right now because I realize how difficult it is to get in touch with my own feelings sometimes,

Especially if I'm trying to power through the day or if you know I need to have some shielding up or some blocking up around me because of how the world is and I wanted to make this recording,

This offering,

To try to help you tap into the sensations of feeling grief,

Sadness,

And what it's like to experience the beginning parts of crying and I'm hoping that by making this recording and hearing what kind of body sensations happen slowly in the process of crying that it could help you connect with that sad place inside,

Even if you don't cry or you don't want to cry,

Just to sort of think about how that might be in the body to try to process some of those emotions somatically.

And somatically means within the Soma,

Within the body.

So often we try to process things by talking them out and I think that this is an offering for experiencing things through the body.

So I want to invite you to think about something that makes you feel sad.

Maybe it's touching the grief inside of you.

Maybe it's touching something deeply lost or never had.

Maybe it's something that has been lingering that has been really hard to connect with and you're just having a sadness that's staying in with you and maybe being shoved down or pushed away.

We're going to give that feeling a chance now to come out and breathe and be inside of your nervous system for a window of time.

Sometimes when we're,

When I'm used to not pushing,

When I'm used to pushing my feelings away and not letting them come out to the surface,

Be expressed or be felt even,

That I will be resistant to want to welcome this feeling in,

Thinking that I'm trying to encourage it or that I'm making it happen.

But the purpose of this meditation is not to encourage those things or to make it happen or to dwell on it or to do anything but accept the fact that it's here and it's okay that it's there.

It's okay that it's here and it's okay to express it.

It's okay to feel upset and it's okay to be real.

So I bring something to mind now that causes sadness,

That causes that grief.

I first feel it as like a welling in my throat and I feel it as a striking kind of ache in my jaw.

I feel my jaw tightening,

Constricting,

And then I feel kind of an uprising of energy from my belly going up through my body.

And then it feels like the surface of my skin becomes very sensitive.

You can feel all the hairs on my body standing up on end.

And this is typically when I start to feel the crying happen,

When I start to feel the tears coming to my face.

And maybe even a step before the tears is my nose starting to have a little congestion,

My nose running from the crying that's about to happen.

And there's this moment of surrender,

Like a wave breaking.

All the emotion inside is just starting to pull and then it's just there and it crashes over.

And the crying can finally happen.

The sadness can finally be reached.

And I might feel tingling in my body.

I might feel a little relaxation all over,

Maybe a little relaxation in my shoulders as I finally let some of that feeling go.

I might feel a little relaxation in my throat as I make sounds with crying.

And I might feel more energy coming up from my belly area up towards the top of my head.

This rising energy that I feel is bringing me from a place of stillness and slowness and not feeling place to moving up into the feeling place into an emotional space.

And at this point when I'm crying,

Sometimes I try to think of somebody that I know will be okay with me crying.

And if you don't have anybody like that for you,

You can imagine me or you can imagine your phone or whatever device you're listening to this on as a being that wants to accompany you as you grieve and in your sadness.

But you can imagine me too,

Because I do care.

And knowing that you're not putting it on that other person and the other person is not condoning it or encouraging it again.

But just that being that's willing to accept what exactly is going on for you in a loving and caring way.

I'm trying now to get in touch with your own body.

As you're feeling and experiencing that sad part.

Maybe tears are coming and maybe they're not and that's okay.

Today we're just making space for the feeling and for the emotional freedom.

You don't need to have any feeling in particular just to allow the space to be there in case you would you do have that feeling someday that wants to be expressed.

We'll take another moment here.

That's really good.

Open the door.

And if you feel like you have a little bit more right now that you want to express,

Go ahead and pause the recording and allow yourself to feel that and know that in that in between time where this recording isn't going,

That that is a little timeless space that you can continue to hold that person who's holding you.

This is a process that we call co-regulation.

This is how we understand and process the things in our lives because we are social animals.

We need other human beings to live from the very first moment that we're born until the last moment.

We don't lose that need for connection and for other people to love us and see us and be with us.

And at this point,

If you're ready to complete this exercise,

I invite you to take just a few moments to be still and thankful for the space that you created for yourself today to allow feelings to come through.

And remembering that the expression of feelings coming out in a certain way or at a certain time is part of perfectionism.

In Meditations of Unlearning,

We unlearned perfectionism,

That feelings have to look or come out in a certain way.

So we're just thankful for that moment of coming together,

That moment of being able to make that offering to self and to each other.

And we give thanks for the long line of people who've had feelings before us and who have created spaces for people to have emotions and feelings and be safe and understood as human beings in that process.

And so after thanking ourselves and thanking the long line of people,

We can just feel a little bit of safety opening up for us now,

A little bit more safety.

We recognize the air around us,

We recognize the walls around us,

That relative bit of safety,

The roof over our heads,

Protecting us from the rain and the wind,

The sun.

And we're thankful for water being available to us to drink.

We touch some basic gratitude for these things that have been really difficult to acquire,

Not only for some people right now,

But also throughout human history.

We take a moment to let that feeling of safety and enoughness fill our bodies.

And I want to give you a chance now,

At this last moment,

As you're wiggling your body and coming back into the space that you're at,

To check in and ask yourself,

How you're feeling right now.

What's your response to this meditation?

Good,

Bad,

Or however you are on that scale.

Let's take a moment to touch into that feeling.

And I thank you for taking the time to come here and meditate with me and to get in touch with your own interior feeling space.

And I would recommend listening to this recording or making space for yourself to feel the feelings in accompaniment with someone else who's safe to feel feelings with,

Either in the meditation space that you're holding them in co-regulation in your mind and heart,

Or if there's somebody physically that would be there for you in that way.

I encourage you to feel your feelings.

Thanks so much for being there.

Reviews

Thank you for this beautiful meditation and for helping me express my sadness. 💕

I wanted to thank you so much for this offering. I have always struggled to step into sadness, instead burying it, rarely crying. During this practice I was able to cry and find release as I know it's been building for a couple of weeks. Thank you so much for your beautiful voice, softness and guidance x

Thank you. Extremely healing and beautiful. I am grateful to you for this space.

I'm 7 months out from the death of my son, my husband has dementia and my daughter is setting healthy boundaries that change our dynamic and I feel alone. I liked accessing these feelings with you. It gives me a tool to access my grief and do find space for feeling ok. Thank you so much. You're beautiful