A Spotify playlist reminded me: Our bodies remember.
I recently found a playlist on Spotify that had all the music that I listened to in the early 2000’s-2010’s.
The playlist is called “Cyworld BGM.” This was such a unique and interesting find for me because most of these were songs I haven’t heard in what feels like centuries, and some of these artists were ones I forgot I used to adore. If you’re a Korean American millennial and you grew up listening to K-Pop, you would know hit artists of 2000’s like: Lee Hyori, 1Tym, Epik High, Supreme Team, SG Wannabe, and so on. (I know, such a throwback, right?)
I was driving back home from H-mart (a Korean grocery store) when I decided to put on this playlist. I smiled as tracks after tracks played and memories from my middle and high school that were deep in my memory bank started coming up to the surface. Faces of old friends, a mundane moment with a boyfriend from high school, days I sat in front of the computer writing a Xanga entry, the smell of the apartment my mother and I used to live in, the wrenching heartache from an unrequited love, the feelings of longing and yearning in an undefined context - feelings, moments, sensations, and memories of the deep past played on and on while these once popular and “cool” artists crooned and filled the inside of my car with songs about love, breakups, and hardships of life. These were songs that helped me get through a heartache, songs that validated my angsty teenage heart, and songs that played in the background of some mundane moment. Some words came back to me as I listened and I sang along, definitely fudging up some words/parts; nonetheless enjoying myself and bobbing my head to the rhythm. It felt like I was looking at an old picture album.
I was still catching up on remembering a verse from a song when a song by Drunken Tiger (a band I admittedly forgot that existed) called “I want you” played next. As soon as the first few seconds of the song played, my chest tightened, and a sense of darkness and sadness took over my upper torso. In my brain, flashes of images from the days when my parents were going through a nasty divorce and feelings of worries and concerns about my older sister (without the content of what they were) started flooding my mind. I stayed in my thinking brain and tried to remember why this song was bringing up these unpleasant sensations and memories. It wasn’t a song that I particularly enjoyed listening to when it first came out. Something told me this was my sister’s favorite song at that time. I continued to feel the sadness fill me up from the inside - I didn’t try to block it, I let it flood in. Part of me wanted to start crying because the sensations of longing, worries, and anxiety that I felt towards my sister felt so strong and overwhelming. It was the kind of sadness where you literally feel the ache in your heart.
I saw it very clearly - that young version of me, frowning and looking solemn: feeling fearful and helpless. Fearful that something bad might have happened to my beloved sister. Feeling helpless that I couldn’t stop whatever pain or hardship my sister might have gone through. I breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly and tried to bring my awareness back to the present moment. I told that little young version of me: “You are safe. You feel so deeply for your sister and it’s so clear that you love her. I see that you’re so scared and you want to protect her. It’s going to be okay. You are safe.”
I let the sadness and overwhelming ache swirl inside my body. I continued to breath in and out deeply and intentionally while I felt this sensation travel to different corners and parts of my body. Slowly but surely, the song was coming to an end, and so was this sensation. It started to feel less intense. My heartbeat felt less achy and heavy with each beat. When I breathed in, it felt like there were more spaces inside that the air was reaching. Lightness entered, and my body went back to feeling safe and neutral again.
“Memories/trauma/wounds are body-experiences.”
“My body immediately remembered before my brain did.”
I would have definitely preferred if this didn’t happen at all while I took on what started out as a fun and pleasurable walk down the memory lane, but it was an important reminder of how different parts and wounds still live inside us on the subconscious plane. It was also a humbling reminder of how our bodies literally store memories and trauma through sensations. It is our bodies that experience trauma, and when we’re disconnected from our bodies (which we often are), we forget to pay attention to our bodily sensations when working through emotions/memories/trauma. A lot of times we “remember” the traumatic moments and stay in the thinking brain (which is an important part of trauma work), but another important part of healing is connecting to our bodies. Memories/trauma/wounds are body-experiences. It’s the touch, smell, sound, taste, sight, feeling. Just like the moment I had in my car - my body immediately remembered before my brain did, through one of the bodily sensations, a sound (a specific song in this case), that there was a part of me that still needed my attention and care. Some of us might suffer from a physical ailment but don’t pay attention to it the way it should be and write it off as “my shoulder just hurts all the time.” But what if your body is screaming and telling you to pay attention to that physical hurt and listen to what it has to say? What if it’s asking you to listen to what it remembers so that you can start healing it?
While songs can store nostalgic memories of the past, they can also store painful memories and feelings. It is such a powerful medium to tap into our long forgotten memories. Some of them are probably memories or wounds of the past that didn’t get a chance to get healed, and some of these unhealed wounds probably show its face to the surface as an emotional reaction when triggered. Most likely, you don’t remember the context of this emotional reaction when it activates. A lot of times, people just write it off as “this thing triggers me and I’ve always been that way” or something along the lines of “I’m an overthinker and I’ve always been like this.”
If you happen to also listen to old songs of your past, I invite you to pay attention to how your body feels while listening. Some moments, you may be smiling gently as you remember a pleasant memory; some moments you may only feel a certain sensation like I did - a heaviness or tightness in the chest, or just an overall sense of sadness. Pay attention to it. Get curious about this bodily sensation and ask what it’s trying to tell you. It’s helpful to remember that there’s always an end to the rising of an emotion. You won’t get stuck in feeling that heaviness - you just have to sit with it, breath through it (like really deeply breath through it), and it will fade. Just as I sat with my old wounds, I invite you to do the same. If you’re afraid that it would be too overwhelming, consider doing this with your therapist or a safe person that you trust.
If you’re ever unsure or confused, trust your body to tell you and guide you. It already knows.
My fellow Korean American millennials - if you decide to listen to this Spotify playlist, you’ve been warned - it’ll be a serious throwback to our teenage days! (Get ready to laugh, smile, cringe, and maybe even cry.)
