When I’m feeling centered I think “Everything will be ok.” When I’m feeling less than, that is when the fear will creep in. I’m not talking about a paralyzing anxiety, just this nagging, niggling presence that brings a little bit of terror into the part of my body where my heart is located. You can feel emotion, physically, but I know that being afraid has nothing to do with the organ, my heart because it truly moves the blood around my body and keeps everything functioning nicely.

When I was teaching yoga and practicing more often, I would randomly cry from poses that I had done many, many times. A seated forward stretch would send me into tears, and pigeon pose? Relaxing the hip muscles would be a disaster, emotionally, that would send me running to the bathroom to stuff my face with toilet paper and bawl. And then, it would be as if nothing had happened, and I would go back to class the next day or week and be entirely fine.

Apparently, the body holds onto what the mind forgets. Sometimes I worry that by hitting my head so hard about 18 months ago, I broke something in the recesses of my brain and have unconsciously forgotten what I may have wanted to remember for decades to come.

But in an effort to live consciously, it’s important to “feel the feels,” as they say and be present in what is happening, in the moment. Sometimes experiencing too strong emotions is scary, other times it’s impossible to keep everything in. Like the champagne cork that spontaneously shot out of the bottle last night (I kid you not, this actually happened, I was bloody lucky it didn’t take out an eye) everything can and will explode, and being an adult is learning when to feel the explosion but not spill forth the bubbly all over the floor.

At the same time, there was a shooting star printed on the bottom of the cork, which means the feelings and experiences and very nature of life is formed from and connected to the same material as those faraway twinkles in the night sky.

And sometimes, it’s ok to spill the bubbly.