The emotion, not my emotion

The emotion, not my emotion

This is what Yumiko Yoshioka had us working on in the butoh workshop.

We were expressing and embodying the energy - but she was clear, it is not our anger, not our grief, it is the grief, anger, joy.

Emotions are universal experiences. Everyone grieves. Everyone has been angry. Everyone has experienced joy.

So perhaps emotions are not self generating, but instead they are currents that move within and through us. Yes, we have our particular life experiences and resonant structures within each of us that harness them, but the emotions; they don’t belong to us.

In this podcast interview Bayo Akomolafe shares “Emotion is not ours- it’s not a brain phenomena it’s a territorial phenomena, and it enlists bodies in how it comes to matter”

Would you feel more or less free if you believed emotions moved through you, but did not belong to you? That you do not need to generate or harness them, just allow the process? What if you did not need to either hide or define yourself by them?

What if our individual bodies allow just enough capacity to experience a small amount of a HUGE energetic current. Not one person can digest it all, but if we all digest it a little it keeps the emotion from growing stagnant.

I have seen and felt what stagnant emotions living in a body can do. They create pain, physical illness, and of course more emotional distress. They mess with our lives and ability to relate.

What if not only in the individual, but in the collective there are undigested emotions just hanging around. When we refuse to let them move through; they fester, and when we let them move simply with depth, expression, and honor; they refresh. It is like the emotional veriosn of a money laundering system!

Today I am offering more questions and curiosities than answers, but that is often the case in these writings.

What I will do is - research it in my body, in my movement, in my heart, and through my conversations with others. I invite you all to do the same. There will probably be more about this. Let me know what you notice!

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photo by Adrian Hutapea