by Mohammed Halwa

I have practiced ‘conscious feeling’ for a week now and yesterday I found myself slumping into a chair and breaking down in tears in the middle of a mostly uneventful day.

I had just been put on the spot in what I felt was an unfair circumstance, and as a result, I had walked away from the situation with a rush of anger welling up in me. More lost on me was that this was anger I couldn’t express.

Anger is a useless poison that harms its wielder more than the person against whom it is wielded. When the tears came, they did so with slow ease, reluctant but not stopping; it was a testament to the fact that they weren’t a response to the slight I felt I was done, but an apology to myself for deigning to poison myself like that.

I was crying, I told myself, in a conscious attempt to self-cleanse, and as I cried I repeated an affirmation in a hushed whisper that I alone could hear, “I willingly forgive myself,” and reached within to embrace myself, to feel every inch of my body and apologise for all the ways in which I hurt it.

The tears washed away the anger, but more than that, they reminded me of the healing power of crying.