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Tears are just emotions moving...

  • Michelle Allan-Ramsay
  • Apr 6, 2022
  • 2 min read

Dance has always been such a huge part of my identity. It kept me healthy and strong, and fed my creativity. Over the past years I have reconnected with some friends from primary school (Yay Facebook!) and have been surprised that they have all made reference to dance being such a part of me when we were so young. I never realized that everyone else saw how important it was to me.


As I grew older and heartaches came along, I leaned on dance to get me through. Dance gave my body energy, my heart love, and my mind calm. I came to understand its therapeutic value to my mental health.


So, when I dissolved into depression, why didn’t dance help? Because I stopped moving. Completely. Pregnancy had been really hard on me physically and there was no time for recovery afterwards. A baby with feeding issues, a toddler, a hubby away with shift work – life was a constant stream of feeding, cooking, washing, caring for others and trying to get more than 2 hours sleep at a time. My body was too broken to dance and my time too stretched.


Depression tends to encourage lack of movement also. As I steeled my mind to get through each day, I also steeled my body – rigid spine, cowered shoulders, tensed



stomach – defensive and ready to ‘push on’.


By the time I thought of dance as a way to help, I was so physically immobilized and in pain that I couldn’t do much. I tried moving my arms one day to the music that was playing, but felt so vulnerable and broken that I burst into tears. I felt like vomiting. My dance was taken from me and I felt even more lost. I was so overwhelmed with grief and disgust that I’d lost dance that I didn’t try to dance again for years.


I wish I’d realised that if I kept moving, kept crying, it would’ve helped. Emotion gets locked in the body if we don’t express it. Crying is one way to release it.


Now, if I’m feeling stuck, I move until the tears stop.


If I start to dance and the tears arrive unexpectedly, I let them flow. I don’t worry about why – the back story doesn’t matter.


Tears are just emotions moving – they need to flow or they remain stuck somewhere in our body.

 
 
 

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About Me

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With a mission to help mothers during some of the most challenging years of their lives,  Michelle offers a safe space for those struggling with their mental health. Having gone through Postnatal Depression herself, Michelle has lived the experiences and wishes to help those who are feeling lonely and scared.

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