Crying is such a beautiful energetic release.
One of the first things I see happen when people begin really getting into some kind of energy work practice is tears. It surprises them. They come in expecting clarity or peace, and instead they get this flood of emotion they didn’t know was waiting.
That’s the body doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.
We Bottle Too Much
We bottle up so much hurt. Both individually and as a society, we just push the feelings down far too often.
When you begin a spiritual practice of some sort, the goal, whether your practice defines it this way or not, is to get back to an energetic balance point. The practice creates space. And when space opens up, what’s been compressed starts to decompress.
Crying is a balancing mechanism. Tears are the containers which grief and base level energy uses to escape the body. Even tears of joy are providing an opportunity for trapped grief to escape. There’s a reason why both deep sadness and profound beauty can bring us to the same physical response.
The body knows what it needs to release. We just have to stop getting in its way.
Ashamed of Tears
If we feel what we are feeling and cry when it feels like we need to cry, we can stay much more balanced than when we do not allow the emotions that need to express themselves to come forward.
I have had a lot of people I worked with feel ashamed of their crying. I was ashamed of mine for far too long. We’re taught that tears are weakness. That composure is strength. That controlling our emotions means we’ve mastered something.
I used to bite down and do everything in my power not to cry. Then one day, I did some authentic relating energy work and I just bawled like a baby for days.
And it felt so good.
Years of held tension just moving through me. Years of unexpressed grief finding its exit.
Clarity After Release
When I was done crying, I was full of new clarity and hope and awareness.
The key was that I learned to define the crying as a cleansing process that was good for me. As something beautiful, rather than a spitty, snotty, embarrassing display of some lack of self-control.
In that new definition, in seeing crying as an empowerment tool, I gained access to many other new perspectives. The shame I had carried about being emotional started to dissolve. I realized that the tears weren’t the problem. The judgment about the tears was the problem.
More in Control
Those who allow themselves to cry are more in control of their destiny when they label the event as something healing. As you release it all and honor yourself for doing so, you will find that you begin to have new realizations about the world and the way things work at the highest levels of awareness.
You will still cry when it is appropriate, but it will no longer upset you that you are crying. Rather crying becomes empowering and beautiful. It becomes a signal that something deep is being processed. Something that needed attention is finally getting it.
It is you feeling into the compass of your emotions. And when done selfishly and without blame, that connection to self and guidance is where unconditional love lives.
Let whatever needs to come up, come up. Trust the process. Trust the tears. They know exactly what they’re doing.
This is energy work in practice.
Explore Shadow Work practices to begin releasing what you’ve been holding.