This is what happens when you don't feel your feelings

If you can teach yourself to sit in silence, you will feel the gifts within the stillness.

If you can teach yourself to rest in nothingness, you will feel the Divine within the empty spaces.

If you can teach yourself to breathe deeply, you will feel your anxiety break apart and leave your body.

The work that most of us need to do in this lifetime is not around healing one energy or the other—we must learn how to create a harmony between both our Feminine and Masculine.

The Feminine is energy (literally!). She is a beautiful, chaotic ripple of ups and downs // ins and outs. She is a current, forever moving, forever reaching within the depths of her heart and yearning.

The Masculine is consciousness. He is your presence and your master of time and space. He holds containers in your life so you can feel safe in your expression.

There are times in our lives where we would benefit from entering into our Feminine by moving energy within us (especially if we feel resistance around it). This could look like ecstatic dance, crying, screaming, bouncing up and down. We can embody Feminine energy in many different ways—but the main overlap between all of them is movement. Energy.

There are other times in our lives when we would be best served by embodying more of our Masculine energy—which looks like boundaries, stillness, silence and resting. Many people think that the Masculine is all about hustle and going, going, going but the true definition of the Masculine is not about constant movement. It’s about depth. Presence. Time. Space. Boundaries.

The past few days I’ve felt like I’ve been hit by a bus, in a sense. Last August I decided to pack up my things and hit the road with my *now former* boyfriend. If you’ve been following along our journey on Instagram, you watched us spend a month at a time in Portland, Santa Monica, New York, LA again and finally Denver. If you’ve been following along, you also already know we decided to part ways a few weeks ago.

It’s been a tremendously “Feminine” month for me, so to say. My emotions have moved through my body in so many ways—there was one night I started dancing in my bedroom at midnight to help process some things through. Another night, I cried in the bathtub. Another night I had hosted a retreat for 10 women and moved with them to help create even more energy.

These past week, though, I have felt as if much of the energy that needed to be processed has been…and it’s time for stillness. I’m pooped….but in a peaceful, content, completed way.

This is the beauty of feeling our feelings.

Eventually, everything comes full circle…but because I allowed whatever needed to come up (judgment-free) I’m released of it. I’ve grieved the ending of the journey I had with my former partner, and I feel connected to our memories without the stingy air of attachment most of us are familiar with. (I love him deeply still and I will always have his back)

Many times, we cry but we don’t really allow ourself to have the emotional experience of releasing. Physically, we cry… but we are so busy judging ourselves for it that no emotional release actually happens. So instead, the deep-rooted grief finds a hiding place in our body and stays there, growing bigger and bigger every day until it’s so massive that we find ourselves: unable to connect with new romantic // platonic friends, we feel misunderstood, we enter depressed, or there is a physical ailment such as an autoimmune disease, adrenal fatigue or brain fog.

Our bodies get tired of storing the grief and pain, so it simply says, “I’m done.”

Next time you feel something big and emotional come up, I invite you to set a container for yourself to feel it. A container is something that gives you a boundary or a perimeter; it’s the Masculine that allows your Feminine to feel fully—because she’s safe.

For me, that’s 1) a safe space and 2) a set amount of time.

For example, when I was in the heart of grieving my past relationship I would go into my bedroom when nobody was home (which allowed me to be free of the concern of anyone hearing me) and I would set a 10 minute timer for moving my body nonstop, expressing/feeling my emotion and doing whatever I needed to do to feel free of what was looming over me.

Because of the fact that I was so committed to feeling my feelings over the past month, now I can feel free to sit in silence and actually feel peaceful. Much has been processed (even though I’m sure much more will still be coming up over the next month).

Because I’m giving myself some space and grace to not do much work, and to instead just be, there wasn’t a podcast out last week….and there might not be one next week. I will be back in New York City next Wednesday, so I’ll return to my work groove then.

I would love to hear how this email affected you if you desire to share. Just hit “reply” and I’ll get back to you.

Warmly,

Madelyn

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