This week marks the beginning of a wonderful 6-week program called The Background Hum (#thebackgroundhum), which is a blend of mass distance healing (by me) + intuitive counseling by my good friend Lena Chen.
We will be having different themes every two weeks, and the current theme for this program is Joy.
I've already done a free healing podcast on Joyful Living, which you can listen at this link, so I was wondering what else can I talk about having more joy in our lives.
Inside-Out: a Disney-Pixar film on emotions
Then this brilliant Disney-Pixar animated film Inside-Out came in and blew my mind away. It's about how the various emotions work together as a team in a 12-year old girl Riley's head to help her cope with a sudden change in her living environment. JOY is the leader in charge in Riley's head and she gets to learn how SADNESS (which she constantly tries to not let her ruin everything for Riley) plays an important role for Riley to cope with this huge transition in her life.
What I learned from this film is that: If you view expressing of our emotions as a release that's vital to our overall health, then yes, expressing our sadness when it comes, though extremely uncomfortable, is healthy.
Being sensitive souls, we can get easily triggered by many things, such as menstrual cycles, people around us, global catastrophic events, full moons, surge in solar flare activity etc, so we might be feeling sad a lot more often than the average person. Feeling sad is just an inevitable phenomenon, but that doesn't mean our ability to feel joy is compromised.
It just means that when we feel the sadness starting to sink in, we let it sink in and carry us to where it wants us to go while having gratitude for being aware of it. This is the shortest path to letting the sadness do what it needs to do so we can let it go fully and return to our joyful states or at least to other states that lead us closer to feeling joy.
This is what I do in my healing work ;) Using the Wonder Method, I use whatever's troubling you as an entry point to uncover deeper issues underlying your sadness or other negative emotions. The healing process gets immensely satisfying when you stop trying to run away from your own emotions, don't you think so too?
Finally I'll just end off this post with a painting of this happy little cloud. This cloud is feeling light and joyful because it has managed to let go of its heavy sadness through shedding of tears. I bought it recently for some beginner art therapy and last night it finally dawned on me why I chose this picture: it is my perfect pictorial description of using sadness as an ally to joy, in a cute way ha.
What are your thoughts on this? Do share in the comments below.
Work with me
- Join me in this free bi-weekly #thebackgroundhum program.
- Take a look at the one-on-one healing and coaching sessions that I offer.
