AHO!

by Elizabeth Campbell, MS, LPC, RPT-S

“Ahooooooooo!”  I had no idea what this phrase means, but it seemed like everyone around me was feeling great as they said it very loudly.  Almost a decade ago, I went on a yoga retreat called the Art of Letting Go in Mexico with Maura Manzo, yoga teacher extraordinaire and cofounder of Yoga Home in Conshohocken.  It was a combination of yoga, meditation, and local shamanic rituals.  One of those rituals was a Temezcal, or a sweat lodge.  It sounds worse than it is.  It basically was a long meditation in a hot little hut with aromatherapy.  You go through several stages of releasing, ending in a metaphorical rebirth.  One of those stages is making noise.  People all around me were screaming and yelling, “Aho” as I sat in the back of the hut, frozen and silent.  I left. 

In that moment, nothing felt scarier than expressing what I needed to release.  There is so much vulnerability in seeing and expressing our feelings, even if it is in a nonverbal catharsis. I needed way more safety than what was present in my system in that moment. I didn’t know all of the people in the group well; I was sitting in the back of the hut between two especially expressive and vocal yogis, and my senses and emotions were overwhelmed.  We need strategies to cope with the overwhelming impact of freeing our emotions, and we have to feel safe in order to let go.  This can be particularly hard if open communication wasn’t the norm in our early lives or if prior attempts to express ourselves were met with confusion, disdain, apathy, or anger. If it was unsafe to communicate feelings in the past, it can be all the more challenging to express them now.

Releasing long held emotional baggage can also connect us with deep feelings of grief and loss.  What do we have if we let go of the things that take up so much of us?  It is important to honor this loss and the feelings that come along with it.  Even if we do not particularly like what we are holding onto, our pain is part of us and may feel like it makes us who we are.  Letting go may feel like losing our roots, our very foundation. So it is vital that we find ways to ground ourselves – in our bodies and to the solidness of the earth.

Of course, none of this was going through my head during my sweat lodge experience.  I was in complete nervous system activation – and flight let me protect myself.  The following year I returned to the same retreat and the same dreaded sweat lodge.  The retreat really was lovely and I was determined to face my fears and release everything I was holding onto.  I spent the year connecting and building my yogi community, including those on the trip and the leaders.  I consciously chose to sit near the exit in case I felt claustrophobic or overwhelmed.  I continuously focused on feeling the ground beneath me and the wall supporting my back.  The safety and grounding that I established were enough to give way to the vulnerability of release and the wonderful freedom that it brought.  And I screamed my head off.  Aho!!

Elizabeth Campbell is a Licensed Profession Counselor who provides empowerment and strength-based support to individuals in personal growth and change.  She specializes in play therapy with children, family therapy, creative counseling for adolescents, and trauma-informed treatment for all ages using an integrative, mindful approach to address the whole individual and promote healing. If you would like to connect with Elizabeth, reach out at elizabeth@elizabethcampbellcounseling.com or 610-757-8163 or learn more at www.elizabethcampbellcounseling.com.