Emotions Welcome

Hello you,
I am out of the country this week and thinking about emotions, because I truly always am. Every time, I come back to this: emotions are human. We spend so much fruitless time working to control them. Permission to feel the things you're feeling is central to having ownership over your own health. There's a reason we created "Permission Granted" as a mantra for The Assembly.

You have permission to feel the things you're feeling. You have permission to talk about them here.

This finds a home in fitness as well. During the course of any given workout I feel angry, defeated, invigorated, joyful, strong, weak, thankful, powerful, and vulnerable (just to name a few). That is why I love movement so much; it allows emotions to exist and pass through as I work. Hello anger. Hello frustration. Hello pride. Goodbye anger. Goodbye frustration. Goodbye pride.

Find a place and a conversation to give words to some of those emotions here. Find it in the studio, in your practice, and in the connections you create.

Two podcast episodes I've been replaying in my mind, both centered on emotions and emoting while female. Grief and anger are close friends and the flow between them is a challenge and a truth of being human.

The TED Interview: Elizabeth Gilbert "In February and March, I was sick with rage … I was frustrated because I felt like, This is interfering with my grief. Then I realized, Oh, no, this is my grief. My grief is manifesting itself as ferocious, blind rage right now."

Longform Podcast: Rebecca Traister "I don’t want my experience to be held up as so, ladies, your new health regimen is rage all day. Because the fact is we live in a world that does punish women for expressing their anger, that denies them jobs, that attaches to them bad reputations as difficult-to-work-with, crazy bitches. Because they’re reasonably angry about something they have every reason to be angry about."

Rebecca Traister's book Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger is also our next book club book. Date to be announced soon (end of Nov-early Dec so you have time).

The next two weeks will have us feeling all the things. I know that to be true. Sweat with us in a class (maybe our new Sunday yoga?). Make a new friend at Trivia Night. Gather with community on election night. I hope to see you very soon.

xo,
Molly