The dark side of laughter

I’ve been reading a book called “Releasing Emotional Patterns with Essential Oils” by Carolyn Mein.  Somatic or emotional release is something that is very interesting to me as a healing modality.  I’ve had the experience of stuffing many emotions in my life.  When they bubbled back to the surface, they would always come out in negative, self-destructive ways.  I believe that many of the states of disease that we manifest in our lives come from our inability to healthfully express or transform our emotional states.

Reiki and Yoga are two modalities that have really helped me release stuffed emotions and reprogram my thinking patterns in a positive way.  I found the Reiki attunement process to be extraordinarily cleansing.  I released multiple deep-seated sanskaras that simply evaded eradication through my yoga and mediation practice.  These sanskaras are impressions left on our lives or psyches that will form the basis of our desires and future responses and behaviors to various stimuli.  I first absorbed this concept when I read Patanjali’s “Yoga Sutras”.  In my opinion, Patanjali was the world’s first psychotherapist.  The Sutras are like a manual for mental health.  Experts disagree on the exact date of his writings but place them somewhere between 100 and 500 BCE.

In September of 2009 I experienced my first Raindrop Therapy at Young Living’s annual convention.  Afterward I felt great…light, completely aware, peaceful.  Everything seemed sharper and more alive.  The next day and for the following three days, I was on an emotional roller coaster.  I’m generally an even-keeled sort of gal.  Lots of people tell me I’m grounded — like Mother Earth.  (I suppose it helps being a Virgo.)  I was literally swept away repeatedly for days by waves of emotion – sometimes giddy, other times distraught or downright sad.  Later, when I read more on the emotional effects of the oils in the Raindrop Therapy, these experiences made sense.  (I’ll break this down in another post some time.)

Tonight, during my yoga practice, I found myself laughing almost uncontrollably after several very challenging asanas and kriyas.  When I receive energy work, I tend to release my stored items as laughter.  I always thought this was funny, saying to myself, “Awww.  I really am a happy person – look, when I release garbage it comes out as laughter.”  But the book gave me some interesting insight into this release pattern.

Every emotion is like a coin.  It has two sides.  We generally perceive laughter as a great thing (unless our parents chastised us for laughing as children), but the flip side of laughter is anger.  We all have our share of angry moments, thoughts and actions.  So I’m guessing that getting the giggles when you release is just a way of saying, “You gotta a lot of anger inside there, girl!”  Time to get back on the liver balancing Yin Yoga practice.  (Each emotion tends to pool in a particular organ.  Anger likes to reside in the liver.)

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