I just returned from the U.S. after visiting family, and the trip left me with deep gratitude for the way I live now. Although I was born there, when I go back, I feel like a weird foreigner disguised as a native speaker visiting an unfamiliar country. I’ve lived in Germany and Austria for my entire adult life (close to 30 years now, how did that happen?), so I am probably blind to the everyday weirdnesses of Europe, but sensitized to all the bizarreness of American life.
I always have culture shock when I go ‘back’ and this time was no different. The vibe I picked up on in urban American hubs was all hustle and disconnection. People overconsuming and underresting. Busyness not as a means but as an end in itself fueled by 16-ounce lattes and 10-passenger cars. Mountains of garbage made up of last year’s new gadgets and clothes and yesterday’s takeout containers—and it’s all takeout, there’s nowhere to sit and rest anymore. Restaurants serve as feeding stations, cars as adjunct living rooms, homes as containers for piles of stuff; seen through the filter of my privileged European life, nothing seems to serve its original purpose anymore.
If this sounds bitter and judgmental, it’s only because bitterness is easier to handle on the fly than the feeling of sadness and despair in the pit of my stomach—which is the very thing I want to get at here. Bitterness can be taken in small sips, whereas sadness and despair threaten to engulf you.
As I write this, I’m back on my Austrian roof terrace looking out at the Alps. I love the pace of life in my town, having relationships with the shopkeepers, regular interactions with my neighbors, living within walking distance of supermarkets, pharmacies, and a weekly farmers’ market. Up on the roof, my eyes always fall upon a section of hillside forest that was devastated by a climate change-related storm a little over a year ago. It used to be a solid canopy of dark green in the distance to the naked eye; now it’s pockmarked by threadbare brown spots, like scabs that won’t heal.
This is what makes me so sad: the way we treat our bodies is exactly parallel to the way we treat the planet. The way we treat the planet determines our collective health as a species. No other life forms in nature attempt to produce 24/7 or destroy their own habitat. In fact, it’s a symptom of our neurosis that we talk about nature as if it were something separate from ourselves, as if these bodies had not been given to us as miraculous gifts that were billions of years in the making. The only way we can force our bodies and our natural surroundings into such dire circumstances is by profoundly disconnecting from both.
Chronic disconnection from the body also goes by another name: burnout. According to the American Medical Association, 55% of women report feeling burnout, compared to 42% of men. Emily and Amelia Nagoski have shown us in their important book Burnout that this phenomenon results from not feeling our feelings over a long period of time. Which begs the question, why are we not feeling our feelings? My long-held suspicion is that we leave no space for them, just as we leave too little space for wildlife and plant life. We are too busy functioning, achieving, maybe even just surviving. We are hypnotized by the dream of a tomorrow in which the to-do list will be checked off and we will have deserved our rest, and even then, who wants to spend time just feeling sad if that’s the flavor of the day? We would rather binge-watch a series where other people act out their sadness and despair.
How hard is it to actually sit with our feelings and what would it take to do so? Neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor describes the process of moving through an emotion in her book Whole Brain Living as follows:
“When a person has a reaction to something in their environment, there’s a 90 second chemical process that happens in the body; after that, any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop.
Something happens in the external world and chemicals are flushed through your body which puts it on full alert. For those chemicals to totally flush out of the body it takes less than 90 seconds.
This means that for 90 seconds you can watch the process happening, you can feel it happening, and then you can watch it go away.
After that, if you continue to feel fear, anger, and so on, you need to look at the thoughts that you’re thinking that are re-stimulating the circuitry that is resulting in you having this physiological response over and over again.”
Honestly, reading this makes me feel completely ridiculous when I think of the hours, days, months, years I’ve spent ruminating, wallowing, nursing low-grade fear, resentment, anger. Ninety seconds.
Obviously this is not the whole story. The mind is a complex labyrinth full of traps. Parts of us may be standing guard in front of these emotions, convinced that we will perish if we go there, that we will get stuck like Odysseus with the Sirens, unable to free ourselves ever again from the powerful throes of rage or grief. Anti-depressants can make it difficult or almost impossible to access strong emotions. It can take years of therapy to get to the point of disarming our inner guards just to start to feel.
But what if reconnection to our feelings were the key to treating ourselves better? And what if treating ourselves better—eating healthier food, sleeping regular hours, making positive decisions for our well-being—were the key to treating each other and the planet better, and to living in a happier, more harmonious society? Maybe this is a utopian vision, or maybe it’s one of the only sensible ways to approach life in our increasingly chaotic age.
“Emotional competence is what we need to develop if we are to protect ourselves from the hidden stresses that create a risk to health… and it is what we need to regain if we are to heal.”
—Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No
Music is something of a helpful Trojan horse for me, to continue with the Greek references. It feels nice to listen to, even if it evokes sadness or melancholy, and once it’s in your system, it activates every region of the brain and can help you feel things that go beyond words, getting you out of the verbal loop of rumination. According to studies1, it takes just 13 minutes of listening to sad music to process difficult emotions and yield a feeling of relief. If I imagine wallowing in sadness for 13 minutes in silence, it sounds like self-pity or punishment. Add a fitting soundtrack, and it becomes catharsis. Instead of letting bitterness brew inside, slowly eating up the lining of my stomach, I can let music embrace me and alchemize the sadness. It requires no effort on my part, just deep enjoyment.
This new Substack is the result of sitting with my sadness. For a long time, I struggled with the fact that I am not an ‘activist’ in the typical sense of the word (I would suffer multiple panic attacks if I attended a rally of more than 50 people and I don’t have the charisma to mobilize people for a cause). But this is what I can do: I can share my love of music and the way I’m embracing it in order to move through the many forces assaulting our nervous systems today.
Here’s where we start: I’m including a short free sample of a Cello Journey. All you have to do is sit or lie down somewhere or even go for a walk somewhere quiet-ish with your headphones or earbuds.
In the future, I’ll be charging for music journeys, but this one is my gift to you.
We can reconnect, even in a disconnected world.
About Cello Journeys:
Each Cello Journey is a one-of-a-kind improvised rhapsodic response to an emotion, a mood, the Zeitgeist. I record them in my home studio in one take, no editing, no planning. Spirit takes precedence over perfection, so enjoy the little scratchy noises or an occasional breath.
Before you start, take a moment to write down or voice memo what’s present for you. Then take a few deep breaths and listen to the track, holding the situation in your mind and letting the music ‘work’ on it. Notice what the body wants to do while you listen—let it move if it wants to. Afterwards, journal or voice memo about what shifted for you or what came up.
Published on September 11th—a day of remembrance, grief, and tenderness for many, including myself. If today feels heavy, I hope this offers a moment of peace and presence.
https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/how-to-use-music-to-boost-motivation-mood-and-improve-learning
Beautiful writing! Thanks!
Beautiful, Elena! Thanks for sharing 🫶🏻