Playful Emotions – Creating Beyond Catharsis
Written by: Kelsay Elizabeth Myers, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Are you drawn to the light or the dark? Do you focus your personal growth, your work and your creative endeavors on being positive, enjoying trance-like high vibes or on a mystical spiritual journey of ascension? Or do you focus your personal growth, your work and your creative endeavors on the struggles in your life, what’s wrong with humanity, the shadow self and descent into a shamanic underworld?
In Asian cultures, we call it yin and yang. In Western European cultures, we have come to understand opposites as either/or—good or bad, dark or light, this or that. It’s one or the other. The opposite has become opposition, competition, and one side gets valued above the other. But as human beings, we contain both light and dark qualities. In yin, there is yang and in yang, there is yin. Neither has value without the other.
At some point, we will have a dark night of the soul and be called to descend into our shadows and move through our struggles. And if we listen and learn enough of our own resources, we will be called to a higher vision, a higher purpose and rise again. And because we are human, we will also fall again and rise again. This process called life is our greatest source of material as creative beings, and we can respond in so many ways: resistance, exultation, anger, fear, grief, ecstasy, contentment, liberation, ferocity, softness, compassion, love, apathy, numbness, anxiety, stress, etc. Our feelings and responses to what we’re experiencing create who we are, but who we are is not static unless we stop using our creativity in how we respond to our life circumstances. We each hold darkness and light, joy and despair, shadow and spirit, human compassion and human fallibility.
If we are triggered or have unmet needs and unhealed wounds, they will come out in our relationships and even in our interactions with random people, particularly if we’re experiencing low points in life. I recently had this experience with a former friend and roommate who is experiencing a lot of blows and lows in her life. Even though I am highly skilled, highly trained and used to studying human behavior, I was stunned (and equally fascinated) by the extent of her ability to be out of tune with reality and distort, and even forget, the things she’s doing and saying.
And even though I am highly skilled and highly trained, I am also human and will react like any human when attacked, provoked, dismissed and abused—particularly when violence and delusion are part of it. We can either hold the darkness and lightness or succumb to it. In my line of work, we play with it!
We use our very humanness to connect to as many parts of ourselves as we can, allowing them their full range of emotiveness in a safe container that honors our own capacity to tolerate and be with it. And that presence and ability to be with it and acknowledge the edges of our capacity is the difference between purely cathartic emotional release and the creative play that leads to healing and art.
I offer you the following example of how I played with my own embodiment of some of my core values, beliefs and emotions that make up different aspects of who I am. I call these aspects personas because the idea of a persona allows more emotional distance for the creative self-play required.
I’ve spent at least 6 years (some of them a good 12 years) on my own practice of embodying all of these qualities, values and emotions that I believe make up the foundation of who I am as both a person and as a leader.
Are there 12 qualities, emotions and values that you hold dear—that make up the foundation of your core beliefs about yourself and the world? Write them down and notice if you can place them in 6 categories where at first glance, they might appear in opposition to one another or like yin and yang.
Then spend one minute embodying each side of those categories through a shape, a gesture, or a repetitive movement to get the felt-sense of each quality in your body and muscle memory. In my work, we call these “movement expressions.” Allow each movement expression its full extent. You might feel comfortable doing it for only a minute, but if it takes longer for you to really get that felt-sense, take all the time you need until your body naturally releases, shifts or comes to a resting place. Then go to the next one. A week, a month, even a year later keep revisiting these qualities through movement expressions. Notice if the expression changes or evolves in some way. If you feel inspired, track those changes and create a story, an art piece, a dance or a performance ritual out of it that documents your own process.
I found that after embodying all these shapes of my persona, I am able to be all of me: the light and the dark, the yin and the yang, the shadow and the spirit, the human compassion and the human reactions without self-restraint or shame. I am free to be confidently me finally.
Are you confidently you?
This article is adapted from one of my lessons in The Magic of Embodied Metaphor online membership course. If you find it helpful and would like to know more, consider taking the full course on my website!
Kelsay Elizabeth Myers, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Kelsay is a professional writer, artist, and registered somatic movement educator (RSME) with the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association. She is passionate about trauma healing and restoring connection to ancestral roots and wisdom for a fuller sense of self and creative expression. As an expressive arts coach and founder of Dialogical Persona Healing Arts, LLC, she helps people from all over the world that want freedom from inner blocks holding them back embody resources to transform their lives with soul-based expressive arts programs and courses. The mission of her work is to hold space for the full expression of a living, vibrant and multifaceted self through the embodied arts. She has trained with Tamalpa Institute in the Life/Art Process, Clean Language facilitation through The Academy for Soul-based Coaching and Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy approaches.
