i learned how to do this fairly suddenly, iirc around 2018 and inspired by impro but i might be misremembering, and actually trotted it out as a party trick a few times b/c the results were so funny to me. shaking, almost-crying, insane laughing. i have no idea how to teach it
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i used to call it “releasing” but i think “allowing” is more accurate. it’s something like taking my feet off the brakes of an inhibition process i was running all the time and am hopefully running a bit less now
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also i recognize now that there are safety considerations around this sort of practice. in some people it could surface emotional and/or trauma material that isn’t ready to be looked at yet. so uh you’ve been warned. needs to be paired with some kind of grounding?
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nevertheless it has actually been important for me, in the background as a muscle i have access to and don’t need to think about much anymore. there’s a lot of subtle things like this i think, tricky to talk about or teach, that some people don’t need and others desperately do
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this is perhaps only the kind of thing you need if you were punished as a child by being forced to hold your body still in an uncomfortable position for long periods of time, or similar 🙃🙃🙃
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finally this tweet is topical again, it’s been awhile old friend
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hey remember how we went to school where we spent 8 hours a day for over a decade having what our bodies could do completely under the control of authority figures
boy i wonder if that had any lasting effects
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funnily enough it is impossible for me to go straight to crying using just “allowing” and nothing else even if i am very sad, i have no idea why. the tears don’t quite come unless i either name some feelings or wail loudly, depending. both is even better
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lol someone just reminded me what the actual origin story is, i learned how to do this from a practice a tantra guy suggested to me of masturbating without orgasm every day. sexual energy kept building up until it was unbearable and i could “release” it into shaking
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i learned how to do this fairly suddenly, iirc around 2018 and inspired by impro but i might be misremembering, and actually trotted it out as a party trick a few times b/c the results were so funny to me. shaking, almost-crying, insane laughing. i have no idea how to teach it
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another modality that calls it "discharging," that's a pretty good name too. and this chart is *so* interesting. i get laughter a lot so seeing that it can indicate boredom, light anger, or light fear is... interesting 😅
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan
do you know RC / co-counseling? it calls what you're describing (laughing/shaking/crying) "discharge" & it's viewed as a central part of processing emotions
rc.org/publication/bo (website is awful but the practice is super interesting)
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followup thread about the sexual practice
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okay so i've been asked for more details about the sexual practice i mentioned the other day. in short, the practice is to masturbate for ~20m without porn and without allowing yourself to ejaculate, just paying attention to sensation twitter.com/desirepaths_/s…
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also wow the co-counseling link above has some good stuff, here's a few choice quotes. interesting claim here that "discharges" happen in a specific order: grief (tears), then fears (trembling, shivering, laughter), anger (loud words, movement), boredom (talking, laughter)
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very interesting, very interesting. roughly consistent with my experience i think? although i often find i want to move back and forth frequently, maybe that's because new stuff keeps coming up. hmm. hmmmmmm
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ah yeah that makes sense as a reading. also:
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interestingly i first heard of co-counseling from my improv teacher
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*my favorite improv teacher, to be specific
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You probably know this and are successfully mining for interesting bits? But imo this is overstating the consistency of these emotional expressions as release, and the extent they’re self limiting.
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People definitely sometimes do a re-triggering/re-traumatizing thing when they express big emotions, which causes it to loop instead of eventually tapering off. Obviously everyone stops emoting eventually but I’ve experienced from inside this being from exhaustion and not release
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