No doubt, sometime in your life you’ve been told, “Just let it go.” It’s a common phrase, and one that’s often misunderstood. We tend to think of letting go as detaching, cutting off the unwanted emotion or situation, and moving on. This way of thinking is a pretty brutal way of viewing release. It seems cold and inhuman. When non-attachment or release is practiced in this way, it is often more of a practice of aversion – of pushing away the unpleasant rather than being willing to experience the necessary discomfort to really create peace.
It’s in our nature to cling to things that are part of our conditioned existence. We’ve built those thought patterns and habits through so much repetition that they become like ruts in a muddy road, and the longer we stay in these habits, the deeper the ruts become. As children and adolescents we are conditioned how to experience the world. Try as we might to steer our cart out of the well worn path, we often lack the strength or motivation to pull up and over the ruts. There’s something about that well-worn path, even if it’s not leading us where we want to go, that is comforting and easy. There is a benefit to staying on that path and often, a desire to avoid real change.
New Year’s Day is one of my favorite days of the year. I love the auspiciousness of it all, the way that everyone at once is trying to evolve to a better place. 2010 was especially hard for our nuclear and extended family. It included: depression, the complicated death of a brother, a cancer scare, crazy work schedules, the break up of a sister’s marriage, Alzheimers, career changes, financial anxiety, and too much responsibility. My husband and I felt a big symbolic relief come at the change of the year. Rather than stay up late to celebrate, we decided to let it all go with purpose.
On the morning of New Year’s Eve, I taught a yoga class and invited all of my students to write down something from the year that they were ready to let go of, to say good-bye to and write it down on a piece of paper. I had them place the paper under their yoga mats and channel all of their efforts and intentions throughout class to letting these things go. The students were allowed to lovingly move across their mats, or smack their mats, to drip sweat on their mats – to approach this release with whatever emotions felt honest to them. After class I collected the pieces of paper for my upcoming New Year’s Eve ritual.
Later that evening, we had the kids sit down and do the same. Each one of us wrote down something we wanted to let go of. Our list combined with my yoga students was heavy. It included: forgiveness, extra weight, gossiping, procrastinating, seeking approval, yelling, drama on the playground, making messes, sadness, and a physical purging of extra belongings. We took the pieces of paper (much to my sons’ delight) and made a mini bonfire. We burned each piece one by one and paused to make an honest effort to let go. We came into the house and smudged all of the rooms to symbolize a clearing of any lingering negative energy patterns. And then we sat and wrote down our intentions for the New Year and gave the kids the option to share. The kids surprised me with their openness, and with what had been going on inside their minds. We sat in meditation for a few minutes (I should say that my husband teenager, and myself sat in meditation and the two little kids giggled and whispered and told each other to be quiet) and tried to really settle into the new reality of release, and the newly created space that it brings. It was a powerful and simple ritual and the perfect way to get ready to wake up to 2011. I felt my heavy cart pull out of the ruts in the road.
Fast-forwarding a week, I’m reminded that letting go sure sounds easy. Intending to let go is simple. Some of the things I released were easy to let go of. Others, not so much. Some of those things I want to release have a stickiness to them like the maple syrup my kids put on their pancakes in the morning that manages to make it’s way all over the whole house by nightfall. The reality of practicing true release and trying to keep my cart from being magnetically pulled back into my conditioned deep ruts is much more difficult.
Years ago, I suffered from eating disorder and body dysmorphia. Today, through a lot of education and hard work, those patterns are mostly gone. In order to heal, I’ve adapted a coping mechanism of allowing myself to eat without labeling one food as good, or another food as bad. I like myself and I eat fairly healthy. Yet, this coping mechanism has led me to passively eat sugar mindlessly throughout the day. It’s led me to some extra pounds, and although I accept and embrace my extra curves, they don’t leave me physically feeling my healthiest or my strongest. So, one of my intentions this year was to find a better balance with my sugar intake, and to nourish myself with more whole foods. I want to build my awareness and be able to listen to my body and trust it. I want to build better habits.
This week I’ve been taking a lot of deep breaths. I’ve been paying attention to my instinctual urges to take myself back to that habitual patterning, and learn how and when my unconsciousness arises. I’m sitting with these urges, rather than acting on them. Right before I would normally grab half a cookie or get up for an unnecessary snack, I’m finding that I feel a sensation in my belly. Immediately after that sensation in my belly, I have a thought or an image enter my mind – one of how to satiate that belly sensation. As I sit with that sensation, I notice that it moves up to my shoulders and out my arms to my hands. It feels like a very quiet, very subtle vibration. Eventually, it vibrates to my tongue. As soon as I notice it on my tongue, it dissipates. It leaves! It is so exciting when it leaves and I catch myself thinking something like, “Wow. That sure was easy. Now I’m in control.”
Guess what? It totally, completely sucks. As soon as I find myself feeling in control and moving into a groove beyond my habitual patterning, the sensation in my belly comes right on back. I sit with it. I notice it move up to my shoulders, and so on and so on. Here we go – again. I do this “sitting with discomfort” thing all day. Yesterday, I counted – and I sat with this process fourteen times. Fourteen times a day, I sat with myself and didn’t push away what grew up inside of me. I didn’t ignore it, I didn’t feed it or satiate it. After each experience, I began to wonder when the next party in my belly would start raving. Sometimes it would be hours between experiences. At night, after dinner when I was relaxed, the sensations came in waves, one right after the other after the other. A multi-orgasmic-type experience of craving. Yep. It completely, totally sucks. I reminded myself of what Noah Levine says, “If you can’t let it go, then let it be. If you can’t let it be, then tolerate it.” OK, that advice is strangely comforting.
In addition to complete sucking, it is also simultaneously exhilarating. Paying attention to something that has been such a struggle for me has been incredibly insightful. I’ve learned more in the last week on this issue than I have in my whole life. Just sitting and paying attention to the tiny subtleties within is completely enlightening.
One of the Niyamas of yoga is Ishvara Pranidhana – surrendering to the divine. To me, this is what “letting go” is really all about. As it says in the Bhagavad Gita: “The power of God is with you at all times; through the activities of mind, senses, breathing, and emotions; and it is constantly doing all the work using you as a mere instrument.” Somewhere in the act of becoming comfortable with discomfort, is a grace. A sense of letting it go on a visceral level, and offering that which doesn’t serve me to what is divine within. It is a purification through release.
Something tells me this is going to be a good year at our house! What about you? What do you want to let go of this year?
I”m trying to let go of food cravings, so I loved your experiences. Like you, sometimes I can do the mind control, but many times I can’t. And it’s okay. It doesn’t make me a bad person.
I can so relate to this post. It took me a long time to learn how to eat, probably years of eating without judging myself and counting every bite before I was able to eat in a more balanced and whole way, it is still a challenge at times, but I’ve made so much progress.
We had our own burning ceremony this year, on the solstice. I was e-mailing a dear friend about the challenging year that is coming and all the things we are facing and she said it was like we were sitting on the edge of a lot of cliffs. I have been feeling very fearful and so I am trying to let go of fear, to be grounded enough in the things that matter, to flow like water.
Having recently gone completely off sugar AND finally practicing yoga and mindfulness in what I’m eating, this post resonates with me so well. The first three days were much like this, but I found that taking my cravings and morphing them into some other type of mental energy really helped me to be more productive and get over the hump.
I still need to do my own burning ceremony for letting go of the things that are less concrete in my behavior though. There are a lot of mental habits that I want to put behind me, and this form of ritual seems like the physical connection I need.
Oh, I love that you did a burning ceremony, how meaningful and cathartic. And I love this post you wrote. There are so many similar themes swirling around in my life currently. I am letting go compulsions to eat, to judge whether or not I am losing weight. My stress levels have been really good lately, so I am keeping those patterns going and constantly letting extra stress go.
I am committed to a daily meditation that I am tweeting under #meditation365. I am reading Thich Nhat Hanh, being kinder to myself, and sitting quietly more often. I sip my tea mindfully, I eat mindfully, I clean mindfully. (In fact, I tweet some of those too, under #clean365). I have committed myself to understand my chakras better this year, to pay attention to the moon’s cycles and be outside at night under each full one. I want to bind myself to these positive, nurturing patterns, so I don’t end up with time to backslide. And if I do backslide, I’ll let that go too.
The ritual sounds beautiful and empowering. I am going to try it myself.
Thanks, too, for the “totally sucks” comment. Nice to hear that as well, the reality of it. A good reminder that letting go requires effort.
I’d like to let go of needing approval. I’m going to sit with that for awhile and see what bubbles up.