Waking Energy 7 Timeless Practices Designed to Reboot Your Body and Unleash Your Potential

was suffering. The show had to go on! So I did what every good performer does and what I’d been
practicing daily for most of my life: I put on a brave face, and I stuffed that painful secret down.
Surfer God
I showed up at the Yin/Yang Workshop to find that it was being led by no mere mortal, but by a tall,
obscenely handsome guy with a bright white smile and sun-kissed skin, who looked as though he’d
just emerged from the ocean, jogging up on a California beach with a long board under his arm. As
Surfer God launched into his class, he warned us that we would be holding poses longer than usual
and, as a result, feeling things more deeply than we did in a vinyasa practice. As someone who
maintained control over my inner feelings, I found this idea disconcerting. I habitually wrestled every
emotion to the ground, keeping the leviathans safely locked inside. When he explained that we might
cry in the poses, I didn’t really believe him. For years I had equated expressing my emotions with a
loss of control and humiliation—it was dangerous. Nobody was going to see me in such a weak and
compromised state. I was a consummate professional. I was in control.
The practice began with the Dragon, the yin yoga pose that had apparently started it all for our
instructor—the one, he said, that had “cracked him wide open.” It didn’t sound appealing.
Regardless, I dutifully moved into a long, low lunge with one leg behind me. I had done this pose a
thousand times before in vinyasa yoga practices, but had flowed through it, holding it for five breaths
at the most. Now, as I held the pose and the minutes ticked by, I started to feel . . . angry.
I realized that I was working on my left side, the site of my hip injury from years earlier. I started
to feel as if my body wasn’t big enough to contain the sensations that were rising up inside me. I
needed to find the exit sign and get the hell out of there—out of the pose, out of the room, out of my
body!
Suddenly I felt a wave, a literal whoosh of energy sweep over the entire length of my back and
within seconds, the tears came. I began crying uncontrollably. Quietly, of course, because there was
no way I was going to cry in front of anyone. I was stronger than that. Desperately hoping that no one
would see me, shocked that this torrent of emotion was pouring out, there I was, feeling precisely
what I was dreading—out of control, embarrassed, and exposed.
And just when I started to beat myself up for getting emotional, it got much worse. Surfer God
was coming over. As he approached, I turned my face away, confident that I was sending a clear
signal that I preferred to be left alone. But he wasn’t having it.
He knelt beside me, his head just a breath away from mine, and, leaning in, he said, “You know,
the same thing happened to me the first time. What’s happening to you right now is a gift like nothing
else you’ve ever felt, trust me. Cry. It’s okay. You’re going to feel like a new person after the practice.
Celebrate your tears! Welcome to the first day of your new life.”
I didn’t believe him. Not even a little bit. I was in the midst of what felt like just the opposite of
something to celebrate. Head bowed, incredulous, I watched the tears spill onto my mat. With each
new pose, they kept coming. Slowly, I found myself giving in to it all, something I’d never done. I was
surrendering to my fear and vulnerability—to this opening and releasing, purging the pain of the past
from my body, memory, and spirit.