|
|
Crying is more than just one of our tools. It is the *cornerstone* of our tools. The most important one. That's not to say the other tools are unimportant. All the tools are important and working them together is the fastest, most effective way to heal. But if you only choose one thing to take away from this website, take the crying tool. If you have that, you have the means of gaining all the others quite naturally. Your healed soul will bring you to wholeness and balance. Why Is Crying So Important? Emotion is energy, and energy can move in a variety of ways - physically, verbally, with sound, by engaging in sports, or fights with others, even sexually. But in order for the deepest most complete healing to take place, emotions must move in an emotional way. It doesn't get much more "emotional", natural, or visceral than crying. We are born into bodies with a natural gift for expressing emotions. We do this process naturally and would continue to do it into adulthood if given the opportunities and encouragment - some more than others according to their orientation and preference. We actually have to be rigorously taught NOT to do what comes naturally. We are systematically trained, shamed, punished and programmed out of it. What If I Don't Agree That Crying is Necessary? We do believe that some progress can be made in other ways. You can gain ground by moving your emotional energy in other ways than crying. Pounding, yelling/screaming, physical activities, all these move enough energy to bleed off the surface layers of your emotional "charge". Continually bleeding off the surface charge can give you enough relief to continue on with your life and make small gains. But it has been our experience that the relief is temporary, and only waits for the charge to build back up again. What If I WANT to Cry But CAN'T? Adults that can still cry easily or reconnect with their feelings easily are blessed. Twice blessed. By many adults have not only forgotten how to cry in a natural way, but have disconnected from the feelings that might produce tears. Many turn to try to find their feelings and hit instead a bigfat brick wall, reinforced by stuff in their own unconscious! This wall we call resistance. Although some of it was built out of survival needs, nevertheless, for many people it proves to be virtually impenetrable. It's quite easy to say - just feel your feelings! It's quite another to be able to do it, and we believe it's a big mistake to ignore the wall and its power to keep us from healing. We have found many things that are useful / helpful in getting around and past this wall. The list is not final, there are many ways to get past the Wall, and each person will hopefully find their own ways in addition to the ones we've tried. Those who find it easy to reconnect with their feelings and get to ignition won't need these kinds of techniques. And we don't believe everyone should use them. We offer them as help, not as rules or things you must do. Isn't It a Bad Thing to Force Myself to Cry? We do not recommend forcing emotion, or forcing yourself to cry. If you have a feeling that is behind your eyes, in your chest, knotting your stomach, then it needs to come out. If you offer it a pathway, it will surface on its own. Feelings WANT to come to the surface. But for most people the soul is imprisoned and the direct pathway to feelings is blocked. The walls of that prison are made up of years and years of programming and resistance and judgments and fears. In order to free the soul and return to a state of natural emotional expression, we must understand the prison, and we must have tools for breaking down the walls. That doesn't necessarily mean taking a sledgehammer to our resistance. Systems like EST in the seventies used sledgehammer type methods to break down the walls of resistance. And this method may work for some people ... and for some issues. But usually what happens is the emotional body receives the blow as new damage, and there is a self-protective response that eventually builds the walls of the prison stronger and taller. That's why these type of tools don't work long-term. In order to get around our walls of resistance, we need to be clever, and persistant, not forceful. We need to offer alternate pathways. Much like building alternate connections in the brain following damage, memories and feelings can be found via other routes. If you're having trouble connecting to your feelings and getting to ignition directly, try some of our techniques to create an alternate route for feelings to surface. If one technique isn't working, try something else. If nothing is working, it may be time to stop and relax. Rest. Allow. As with many things, the harder you push, the more your resistance pushes back. Sometimes you have to take a step back and let everything relax. And trust that life itself will bring you the triggers you need when it's the right time to work on something. Life always will bring triggers. What is the Difference Between Emoting and True Emotional Movement? The simplest answer is tears. If you experience tears in your movement, no matter how few or for how long, you have dipped your toe into true emotional healing. It may only be the shallow end of the pool you're dipping into, but it IS the pool of real emotion. Emoting on the other hand, is the pretense of a feeling, and can manifest in a variety of ways, but it usually does not involve real tears. We have been accused of promoting false emotion by the use of our techniques, of encouraging people to emote instead of really feeling their emotions. We can only tell you what we experienced, what we have witnessed, and how we have healed. Offering alternate pathways for feelings to surface through is not the same as faking an emotion. We suggest those making these accusations have not FELT the difference in themselves, and therefore do not truly understand it. But again, if the techniques and tools do not work for you, don't use them! We are not giving them as rules or must-do's. They are offered as helpful ideas only. In any case, the issue is never as black and white as some people would like to make it. For instance, a child can cry real tears in an attempt to get something they want. This is a real emotion, being used. Actors can display merely the appearance of an emotion, by facial contortions, vocal changes, body posture, etc. In the black and white world, we would call that emoting. But an actor can also call on a real emotion within themselves and bring it to the surface to "show" and will have real emotion clogging their throat, real tears streaming down their cheeks. The emotion in this case is real, the tears they may shed are real, but the emotion is being used. The actor, like the toddler tantrum, has actually learned a very useful "trick", a way of tapping into and connecting with their deep feelings. If they had intent to heal their emotions instead of use them, they might sit down after a scene and have a good hour-long heartful cry. Of course, most don't, they just put the cork back in the bottle and expect themselves to just move on to the next scene. This is excrutiatingly painful for the soul, for the emotions that are seeking acceptance and an outlet, and hard on the body. But it IS real emotion that is coming forward. | ||||||||||||||
