“Letting go” is another one of those phrases I have trouble understanding, along with “losing and finding oneself”. How does one go about “letting go” of feelings anyway? I know my feelings are trapped in my gut, wound around my muscles, coursing through my veins and arteries and interwoven through my diaphragm. If I just I just slit open my stomach will they just fly out like a baby in a cesarean delivery? I really don’t think so. So then, how do you release something so trapped within you? You can say “I’m letting that go” until you’re blue in the face, but it’s just words. Empty words, void of action. After many years and situations that demanded “letting go”, I finally stumbled upon my answer rather accidentally in my recent journey of “finding myself”.
I came to two conclusions:
1. “Letting go” is not something you can do – it is the result of something else you have done.
2. Don’t try this without your yoga, because it requires a healthy, strong, spine with the imaginary tattoo of strength written on it vertically.
So, let’s look at number 1. What is it that you must do before “letting go” can take place and vacate your innards? Be honest. When someone dies, you go and kneel beside the casket and face the honest fact they are gone. Only then you can turn and walk away and “letting go” happens. When a relationship is in trouble, you must be brutally honest with the other person. Say what you have to say, honestly….with no hidden dialogue, or underlying meaning, because that is what’s keeping the “letting go” from taking place. You were so afraid of being honest because you didn’t want to lose the person, so those feelings stay trapped, eating your gut alive. (In other words, no pussy-footing around)
“Letting go” is like a big crap shoot where you wager everything in one shot. You put it all out there on the table. Say your piece and walk away. And if you were brutally honest, the feelings will evaporate because there is no more for you to say – but only if you were honest. If you’re crafting messages that have hidden meanings trying to shanghai the other person, those feelings will stay inside as you go through your days mired in tears and thoughts going round and round in circles. “Letting go” will only be empty words.
What does yoga have to do with it? Everyday we do the spine strengthening series. A healthy, strong, spine is where the essence of your life begins. The strength of your whole body resides in your spine, as well the strength of a disciplined mind, because your mind is not separate from your body. Whatever you do to your body, translates to your mind as well. Day after day of your mind telling your spine to “go up, more up” gradually builds a herculean strength in both. A strength so essential to do the hard stuff in life.
Also, everyday in yoga, after each posture in the floor series, my teacher (I truly love my yoga teacher) says, “Savsana, on your back and “let it go”. Each floor pose uses specific compressions that constrict the blood and use the tourniquet effect to release rushes of fresh blood and oxygen cleansing our bodies of contaminants and toxins that make us sick. Without the compression, there can be no “letting go”, and in turn, if you are not honest in doing each pose to the best of your ability, you cannot reap the medical benefits of “letting go”.
Doing and hearing this day after day, for almost 20 weeks now, has trained my mind, as well as my body, to be nothing but honest to enable me to “let go” of both physical and emotional toxins that cause stress, which in turn cause innumerable diseases, including cancer. So, as I said earlier, if you need to “let go” of something in your life that is literally eating you alive inside daily, be honest in your messages and be honest in your yoga practice, and then, and only then, is “letting go” possible.
And so, as another day goes by, I was honest and risked losing it all, the trapped feelings have been “let go”, and….I have written.
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