Heavy but Hopeful: Cultivating Nagomi in Your Life

It’s hard enough to feel one emotion. But to feel multiple emotions? That’s a lot.

Angry, sad, regretful. It’s distracting. It’s destabilizing. It’s loud.

But when the emotions you’re feeling feel like opposites? Oof. That’s the hardest of all.

Discouraged AND hopeful? Anger AND acceptance? Resentment AND forgiveness? Heavy AND light? Grief AND joy?

That is CONFUSING.

One challenge is that any one of the above feelings absorbs our attention and energy.

For example, a feeling of heaviness slows you down emotionally, mentally and physically. The couch feels like the only place you can feel safe. Sad music is what’s on your playlist. Your phone is silenced and all calls are going straight to voicemail. Tears flow.

Feeling light, on the other hand might look like making time for tea with a friend, finally cleaning up all those post it notes on your desk, going for a wildflower hike, baking something delicious and sharing it with your across the street neighbor.

These experiences are so vastly different.

My client, Kiley, in grief over the loss of two significant people in her life, and also in the throes of new creative possibilities for herself, told me this at the beginning of her session the other day: "I’m feeling heavy but hopeful."

So then, how do we hold the emotions that underlie them simultaneously?

3 tips to hold opposing emotions below ↴

I recently read about a Japanese concept called "nagomi." Ken Mogi, a Japanese neuroscientist and author wrote a book about nagomi in which he describes it as "balance, comfort, and calm in the heart and mind." It’s also related to harmony, "In kanji (the Japanese version of Chinese characters), nagomi shares the same character as wa, meaning harmony."

Several years ago I was considering the word "balance" for my inspiration word for the year. Life was turbulent to say the least (it was the year I was coming out of the closet!) and I was longing for a sense of stability, calm, and harmony.

But as I explored the concept of balance I realized that finding balance isn’t actually about laying back on your raft in the middle of a mirror-still ocean. Balance is about staying on top of your life raft in the middle of a turbulent sea! Balance is a constant recalibration to find stability.

When I realized that, I decided to try a different word: And.

And encapsulated what I needed in that moment: the possibility of more than one thing at the same time.

Light and dark. Letting go and holding on. Excitement and dread.

As I was letting go of my straight life and identity, including everything I’d built and planned for it, I was creating a new queer life and identity. There was so much anticipation and so much loss—which was why I’d resisted the call to it for so long. I frequently found myself in tears one moment and thrilled with excitement the next.

And held it all for me. And was the place that could be all the things. And it was the reminder that multiple experiences were possible even in the same moment.

For me, nagomi is and. It’s the blending of flavors and notes into a particular experience that is unlike any of those flavors on its own. Nagomi is finding peace within multiple, simultaneous possibilities.

When you are experiencing simultaneous conflicting emotions, what can you do to find nagomi?

Here are three tips to moving with and through that experience:

Breathe. Take a long, slow breath, counting to 5 in and then out. Noticing your body as the breath comes in and goes out, does so much for the nervous system to ground and stabilize. So much of our experience is somehow outside of our felt being. Breathing brings you back to your body and your body’s experience.
Notice. Notice your surroundings–what you see, hear, smell. Notice your body: sensations, your heart beating, places of tension, your weight in the chair. Next, notice your thoughts without getting caught up in them. Say to yourself, "thinking about my to do list," "thinking about my mom," "thinking about my son getting a new job." Finally, notice what you’re feeling without getting caught up in it: anxiety, pressure, sad, proud. Say to yourself "Feeling anxiety. Feeling sad. Feeling proud."
HeArt journal. Make art with it! Get out of your head and into your heart and onto the page! Creative expression is a powerful way to acknowledge, honor, process, and release emotions. A creative practice gives you space to do something with all the turbulence in your mind and heart. A heArt journal, or an art journal, is the perfect place to keep a record of all that you experience. It’s a no rules, private, personal, and powerful thing to do with your story.

You can live with more than one feeling at a time, even completely opposing feelings. You are a complex being. Recognizing the complexity of your situation and yourself is a pathway to resilience and a way to value yourself during challenging times.