madness
and never being far from it
held is a monthly newsletter centred around yoga + movement, and introspection + feeling. blending embodied practice with therapeutic self-exploration, we dive into different themes, ideas and respond to the world around us.
too busy to go mad
What nobody (correction, everybody) tells you about training full time in psychotherapy is that you will start to feel your own sanity fade and madness emerge. And madness has a bad name; it’s giving Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest, dishevelled, rocking in chairs and other derogatory stereotypes. It’s them. Those people. Far from me, an-other.
Madness also gets in the way of the productivity machine. Sorry, you want, you need time to just stay home or run into a forest and regress?! You’ve got deadlines. You’ve got responsibilities.
In the words of Britney, you better work bitch.
I’ve been thinking about madness, this othering, this lack of time to unravel. I’ve been enamoured by R.D Laing, the psychiatrist who was an existentialist in the psychotherapeutic field, who lived with patients in a house where people could quite literally regress to infancy. It was the 60’s so sure, there was some psychedelic play and free ways of exploring insanity and psychosis, but it’s the way he talked about those in the experience of it that I loved the most. In ‘The Politics of Experience/The Bird of Paradise’ Laing says:
“What we call ‘normal’ is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience. It is radically estranged from the structure of being. The more one sees this, the more senseless it is to continue with generalized descriptions of supposedly specifically schizoid, schizophrenic, hysterical ‘mechanisms.’ There are forms of alienation that are relatively strange to statistically ‘normal’ forms of alienation. The ‘normally’ alienated person, by reason of the fact that he acts more or less like everyone else, is taken to be sane. Other forms of alienation that are out of step with the prevailing state of alienation are those that are labeled by the ‘formal’ majority as bad or mad.”
Madness has a context, it’s bound up in privilege and oppressive systems and denigration and stereotypes and judgements. And much of my reflections and thinking is seeing madness with a small ‘m’, not the life altering psychotic break experiences that can split us. Those need, in my view, other additional interventions.
But that small ‘m’ madness is never far away from us. We are not other, we are somewhere else on a spectrum, a sliding scale. And in some ways, to spill and unravel is to be here, it’s a reminder of our aliveness. Our need to push and control the unfolding of that is to get in the way of something else being born.
I also love this quote from ‘The Divided Self’ where Laing reframes how we see a period of unravelling:
“Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.”
I think about this and movement ~ how embodied movement, movement that is led through feeling and experience ~ allows for things to open, to shift, to move. Where it’s less about fixed, controlled positions and shapes. Where it’s about spilling over the edges, discovering something new, a sensing ‘in’ whilst in the cocoon of being around others and their experience. And the sharing, the being amongst others, the not being in your head, your own way, but all together making sense through responding to cues in a way that makes sense in the bones and muscles and fibres of your being.
I noticed this week a tummy ache I’ve had humming in the background for more than a few weeks; a holding, a tightening, a containing. It’s a response to busyness, to the turning over of stones in my mind and what comes with that. It’s been a steady unravelling. Moments of felt insanity and instability. Of revelations and horror. And to contend with that amongst my commitments, deadlines, academic writing, responsibilities, I have been holding tight onto my abdominals. They are knackered, poor things.
Florence has helped with this, her Chamber Version of Everybody Scream is almost a calling, spiritually possessing and dragging me up to my feet, to the tips of my toes, arms open wide, chest cracked. There’s a drop, in holding, in grasping. These words churn over my mind, a mantra and reminder:
Here I can take up the whole of the sky
Unfurling, becoming my full size
Look at me burst through the ceiling
Aren’t you so glad you came
Breathless and begging and screaming my name
Screaming my name
The festive time is a madness inducing time and after a brief period of unsteadiness, I feel like fuck it, lean into it; play Florence, scream, regress compassionately with yourself and others. We can fear something that is not us, separate, split. Small ‘m’ madness is a part of us, it’s edges further and closer. Maybe it’s more about befriending it, than fearing it. Seeing it’s ability to deaden old things, allow for shoots to come through the newer parts of us.
reading by great thinkers…
R.D Laing’s ‘The Divided Self’ is an insightful short book on humanity, the experience of madness and to be with someone in it.
What happens when you combine a psychoanalyst and a violin maker? Well, you get musings about listening that speak to a depth and range you might not have read before. ‘Notes on Hearing & Being Heard’ by Anouchka Grose & Robert Brewer Young is gorgeous.
Christina Sharpe’s writing is always punchy and tender, and her piece ‘Beauty is a Method’ has been one I’ve returned to this last month when grappling with… all that needs grappling.
moving with great teachers…
Cosmic Dreaming with Kelly at Yoga House in Catford ~ an afternoon of yin, nidra and somatic practices in early January.
Lucy B has an online zoom wiggle club that you can join at different points across the week and there’s a delightful monthly restful practice.
For some heat, head on over to Camberwell’s Community Sauna for a movement practice in early January.
taking yoga off of the mat…
Ideas on how to spend time, money and energy this month:
A gorgeous fundraiser t-shirt for Palestine and Sudan by designer Bug and in collaboration with her daughter Forest.
This toolkit has a bunch of actions for supporting those on hunger strike in UK prisons and who were imprisoned for alleged actions in solidarity with Palestine.
Brilliant and brave folks from the psychotherapeutic school Metanoia, who are taking legal action in response to institutional racism are fundraising to cover legal costs and you can read more + support here.
thank you for reading held, this post is free and if you know people who might enjoy, please do share ~ thank you.