ManicDDaily

Pushing Away Dark Cloud With Cold Water and Interpretive Dance

A week or so ago I announced that the long-term, if slightly, obscure focus of this blog has been stress and creativity.  (I could not quite steel myself to call it the interface between stress and creativity, which, I admit, would sound a lot more zooty.)

One follower of the blog suggested that the true sub rosa topic was something more obvious—the issues associated with being manic-d daily.   This suggestion brings me to today’s particular topic:  what to do when the black mood strikes.

By the black mood, I mean, that cloud, ache, depression that sometimes forms because of very specific sadnesses, other times because of a more generalized sadness (a sudden, deep, awareness of non-specific suffering).

This cloud may also simply result from a quirk of your personal chemistry, some habitual combination of molecules and electrical impulses that arises from your genetics, conditioning, and whatever you’ve just ingested.

Those with a more religious bend might considered this type of low to be a swerve in one’s tilt towards the universal, God, the Self, with a capital S.

Whatever the cause, when the black mood descends, a very practical question arises: how to get rid of it.  Frequently, the sad circumstances, whether specific or general, are not things that can be changed; what can sometimes be changed though is your chemistry, and, possibly, your spiritual or psychic tilt.

Perhaps the initial most important tool is to try to keep in mind that the black mood, no matter how deep and murky, will not last forever.  (Nothing does.)   So, even when you don’t know how to make it go away, tell yourself that it will go away—at some point—perhaps even if you do nothing.

Once that’s understood, you may as well try something.  If you tend towards the spiritual, you might go for meditation, prayer, a solitary walk.  If you tend towards the chemical, there are plenty of different choices.

Or, if you are like me, and tend towards the manic, you may like to try cold water (as in jumping into rather than adding to scotch.)  A pond or swimming pool is best—but if you don’t have one of those, and you do have a lot of grit and faith—an ice cold shower or bath may do the trick.

The point of the cold water is to get the blood flowing, the skin to stand on end;  to shake up all those teensy-weensy nerve endings.   Once that has been done, a certain hectic frivolity usually becomes possible.

Hectic frivolity may not be the right words for the state I am urging you towards—how about a certain loss of physical dignity?    By this, I am suggesting that you simply move, in silly unusual energetic ways.

In setting out on these movements, I would suggest an initial focus on the upper body.  Silly leg movements (“silly walks) are fun but can be dangerous.  (You don’t want to trip.)   But even a relatively straightforward walk or two-step can become quite silly, and correspondingly uplifting, if combined with strenuously interpretive arm motion, and curious body swings.

Think Isadora Duncan here—not strangulation but angulation, as in bold, possibly rhythmic (possibly not)  gestures.

I do understand that the black mood may constrain your interpretive dance.  The trick is to try to separate your conscious mind (the depressed part of your brain) from the coordination piece, the silly “why-not-just-let-go-a-bit?” piece.

It may not be possible.  Or, what’s more likely, your dark mood may only be alleviated while you are actually waving your arms about, and then fairly rapidly descend again.

In that case, you will at least have gotten some good exercise.  And anyone watching may find their spirits lifted considerably.