Laugh, cry, sit still! This is what you'll be doing for twenty minutes each, China, the event leader, said. Really, I thought without much enthusiasm! How am I going to sustain laughing and crying for 20 MINUTES each.
Resistance had reared its head and I was thinking this is going to be hard. Immediately, I was out of energetic alignment with the upcoming activity.
This is the last in my trilogy of blogs on the lessons from my Goa, India, retreat adventure that Sandeep and I ran in late February-March. I have also been resisting writing part 3 and so overcoming resistance is the theme of this blog..
It's interesting that if you google the word resistance, the top search results are for electrical resistance, antibiotic resistance, resistance in physics. I like this definition from physics - “Resistance is the hindrance to the flow of charge.” And “charge is the physical property of matter that causes it to experience a force when placed in an electromagnetic field. There are two types of electric charges: positive and negative. Like charges repel and unlike attract.”
Laughing and crying are generally perceived as opposites and as quantum physicists tell us that we are actually electromagnetic beings with DNA that vibrates at a rate of 52 to 78 gigahertz (billions of cycles per second), then these two “unlike “ charges should cause us to experience some kind of attraction.
Step 1: Laugh
So we set about laughing for twenty minutes. We were to be child-like and see the wonder in everything. We were given a few children's toys (I don't recollect what they were now) to help and we laughed, giggled, guffawed, giggled, guffawed, laughed, guffawed, laughed, giggled... People started to get creative and water from bottles lying around were poured over each other – I have to say it was not easy laughing when water was poured over me as I did not like it. But I faked squeals of laughter and didn't stop.
It was actually a great exercise in team work because we all helped each other to laugh. Some people found it naturally easy to keep laughing infectiously and others had to fake it until real laughter happened.
A lot of our joy is repressed. All the negativity around us in the media, for example ,teaches us to be serious. This makes it hard to just laugh for the sake of laughing like young children before they have this conditioned out of them. There is joy and bliss inside of us. Along with unconditional love, joy is there all the time buried under layers of conditioning. Laughing is a way to access this joy.
I felt happier and relaxed after laughing. There was more mental clarity and as I'm sure you know from your own experience, laughing makes us feel more energised and positive.
Research shows that laughter can reduce stress – the positive feelings from laughing release neuropeptides that help fight stress and potentially more-serious illnesses. Laughing improves your immune system, relieves pain (laughter increases the endorphins, natural painkillers, that are released by your brain), relaxes tense muscles and improves your mood.
Step 2: Cry
After twenty minutes it was time to cry. We sat comfortably, closed our eyes waited for tears. I was curious and a little anxious about how I would cry at all. I decided to just allow any crying to come by focusing inwards and letting go.
The intention was to cry and it was a case of getting in vibrational alignment with that intention. So I waited. I could hear a few people sobbing loudly and others were sniffling. It seemed like an eternity before I eventually felt tears well up in my eyes and trickle down my face. Then the crying stopped and I sat expectantly waiting for more crying, which didn't come. Those who laughed loudest seemed to cry more.
There are health benefits to crying. According to the biochemist, Dr. William Frey at the Ramsey Medical Center in Minneapolis, USA, emotional tears have special health benefits. He discovered that reflex tears (e.g. to clean the eyes) are 98{a96b29581f8ce42daab38f712645ee506149849ec98e0c0df66c3db27bbbe002} water, whereas emotional tears also contain stress hormones which get excreted from the body through crying.
Tears also help to release sadness, anxiety, frustrations and grief. For me, crying feels cleansing. It's a way to purge repressed emotions so they don't manifest as dis-ease.
Of course, many people are uncomfortable about crying especially in public. In our society it is mostly considered inappropriate or weak to cry. I remember as a child my mother asking why I was crying and then not liking what she heard, proclaiming that she would give me something to cry about. Crying is seen as disempowering and so we are encouraged to repress our sadness, grief and fears instead of doing what's natural and release these emotions
So we cried it all out in our own way.
Step 3: Sit Still
Finally, it was time to sit still for 20 minutes. The laughing and crying had emptied us emotionally. Now we simply had to sit and watch. To go within and be with ourselves without busyness and distractions getting in the way.
This was day one. On day two, we had to do this 'Mystic Rose' meditation three more times. It actually got harder each time. By the final meditation, there was a lot of resistance. We did not want to do it. People were protesting and asking to do other things instead.
I too felt a very strong resistance inside me. I tuned into it and wondered what this strong desire to avoid repeating this meditation one more time was all about. Where was it coming from? Who/what was not wanting to repeat it again? What was this resistance?
My answer...
My ego did not want to let go of any more repressed emotions. It wanted to keep disallowing joy, laughter and the sense of freedom that comes when we become one with who we really are – pure loving energy. The ego wanted to keep the conditioning. Why laugh again for no reason. Why cry – that's stupid! It is enough, it screamed!
China, went off the check with the master. Of course, we had to do the laughing, crying and sitting still one more time...or rather we chose to do so. No one would have stopped us from walking away. And one person actually left. The rest of us chose not to quit.
At the end of this experience, I felt inner calmness, peace and much happiness. Love is there within us all the time and to access it we have to peel away the layers of pain and conditioning. We have to let go of the mental chatter and create space for magic and transformation to happen.
We walked away into the dusk knowing that we were not the same as two days earlier. And took a taxi to town to shop!
Often we get hooked on working hard, on being busy, putting up with overwhelm, stress, exhaustion and becoming like robots mechanically performing daily routines and seemingly unable to get off the treadmill. Disallowing and denying our mind-body regular down time to recharge. Yes, it's nice to retreat to places like Goa, but shorter more accessible and affordable retreats like my upcoming mini Spring retreat are available on your doorsteps.
If you feel in need of a soothing retreat and want to recharge, allow yourself some pleasure and bring the spring back into your step, this Spring, I invite you to join me for my half-day Spring Revitalising Retreat on Saturday, 30th April, 12pm – 5pm, Chelsea, London, SW1.
Please go here for more information and to book.
