~ On Crying and the Healing Body

Yoga Through Cancer: A Sacred Return to Self – A companion series by Leora
Reflections released in rhythm with recovery

3–5 minutes

This morning, I cried.

It wasn’t a dramatic cry or even a fully conscious one. I was in the bath, one of my early morning rituals, a place where my frayed nervous system can soften and my body relaxes in the holding space of the water. My tears mixed with the warm water, flowing without urgency, without explanation. Just… a release.

At first, I thought there was no particular reason. But deep down, something stirred. My mother passed four years ago this past week. And though her memory now carries more tenderness than pain, her love has been quietly talking to my heart all week. My heart remembers, my body remembers and my mind remembers. I remember my mother, vividly. Her laughter, her view of the world, her life and her death. I remember and so did my tears… in my ritual spaces, the tub, the yoga mat, and my quiet porch at night… I held quiet, nondramatic space for my Mom, softly I wept and as I cried, I remembered too and felt that there is something sacred in the act of crying.

Spiritually, crying can be a form of prayer. A soft and holy prayer that says… Help me bear this. Or perhaps, Thank you for letting me feel this, or thank you for sharing such beauty. Whether we are grieving, celebrating, or simply releasing what we can no longer carry, tears are the body’s most honest form of truth-telling.

A true gift to humanity.

Emotionally, tears signal surrender. Not weakness… surrender. The kind that says, “I can no longer hold this pain alone”. Tears let the heart speak in a language deeper than words. A sacred conversation from the soul to the surface. This is also where trustful surrender lives… the willingness to let go of holding it all together, to let the body speak its truth, and to trust the process of emotional release without judgment. In the quiet release of tears, there is a sense of faith, unspoken, perhaps not even realized in the moment, but faith that we will be met, held, and maybe even healed.

An amazing wonder, the connection and communication of the heart and soul.

Scientifically, I was curious about tears, about crying… so I researched the scientific’s of crying and tada… scientifically, tears have a purpose. Emotional tears are chemically different from the kind that lubricate or protect the eyes. They contain stress hormones like cortisol and prolactin, and releasing them helps lower tension in the body. Interestingly, prolactin is also the hormone that relaxes the body almost immediately after childbirth, and stimulates the production of breast milk. Crying literally helps the nervous system reset, shifting us from fight-or-flight to rest-and-digest. It is the body’s built in mechanism for self regulation, for healing.

Beautiful this human body.

So I cry in the tub. Or on my yoga mat, held in crocodile pose. Or while sitting on my porch (taking in the dark and new beginnings of a new moon.)

Because the safest places, ritual spaces (and new moons)… let the tears come. And in doing so, they remind me that healing isn’t always about doing something. Sometimes, it’s about allowing something.

So, if you find yourself crying, know this, your body is doing exactly what it needs, trust that your body knows what to do. Let yourself be held by the space you’re in, by the memory, by the grief, by the joy, by the softness. Let yourself be undone in the safest of places.

Tears are not small.
They are ancient.
They are sacred.
They are Riqueza (Richness)