Feeling Yourself Up (and Down) on Valentine's Day

I learned yesterday that I needed to cut the dead grapes from the vine or the mold from the old fruit could travel up into the plant and make it sick.

So this morning, still in my pajamas and wearing my L.L. Bean boots I have had since I was a freshman at Kenyon College, I got to work.

As I cut the dead from the alive, I listened to Dr. John Amaral talk on Dhru Purohit’s podcast Broken Brain. Dr. Amaral was recently featured as a somatic energy practitioner on Gwyneth Paltrow’s show The Goop Lab.

To save me a lot of time, it would be wonderful if you’d take a break here and go watch that episode and then, if you really want a deep dive into your body and health, listen to the podcast, too.

In the podcast, Dr. Amaral talks about, among many things, the power of connecting in to how you honestly feel in order to avoid having the body store emotions you didn’t or couldn’t process. He invites the listener to “scan your body with your hands and allow yourself to receive yourself.”

I thought that was so beautiful. Generally I am racing a few inches or feet or miles ahead of my body. There is my torso in the present moment, and there is the anxiety of what do I have to do next? that drives my energetic body in front of my physical body. I’m almost always racing to keep up with myself or to not lose sight of myself!

I’m almost always tired when I sit down and notice. My body is racing, but my eyes are fatigued. My heart races; my breath is shallow—if a cop were to pull me over and say, “Ma’am, how are you feeling?” I’d look at her like she was insane. How am I supposed to answer a question like that? Can’t she see how busy I am?!

In massage school, we used to play with energy. We’d rub our hands together to create heat, and we’d work with it—stretching and compressing the heat, the energy, like taffy. We’d hover our hands over each other’s arms and see how close we had to get to feel the slight pressure, the slight heat, the let us know we were touching the energy body. Mostly we’d end up falling in love with each other because we all felt so seen by the other.

It feels really, really good when someone connects in a loving manner with your energy. You know the flip dogs do so you can get to their belly when they are loving what you are doing with your hands? It can feel like that when someone connects with your energy, like you want to go belly up, not like a dead fish, but like an ecstatic dog.

You can also, since this is Valentine’s Day, and not all of us have a sweetheart close by, connect energetically with yourself. Sit down, relax, take a deep breath, and let it go. Let it all go. All of it. Everything. Forget your name. Forget what you did that day. Forget you need to buy a mouth guard because you’re grinding your teeth to nubs at night.

Let go of all story.

Let life boil down to truths: You are stardust. You are the pinprick in the universe through which the light comes through. You are the reason music exists.

Breathe into your right hand. Think about the palm until it gets warm. Hover that hand slightly above your left forearm. Move your hand incrementally until you feel an energetic bridge between your hand and your arm—it’s a presence, a slight density. Stay there.

Feel your own energy.

That’s the whole story.

That’s the beginning and the end.

How do you feel?

For J.A.