Hold On to Let Go

Introduction

One of the best things we can do for our health, life and relationships is to train the mind. And one of the most beneficial things we can train the mind to do is let go.

Relaxation

Relaxation is the precursor to anything effective in this life. Whether it's communicating, playing a sport or being creative; adopting a relaxed state is going to bring about more desirable results than if we're tense. And letting go is the precursor to relaxation.

But why are we so tense? There are countless reasons why we hold unconscious tension in our bodies. From old injuries and resulting bracing and compensatory habits; to mental and emotional dispositions, based on core assumptions about self, others, and life.

Practice

There are many ways to cultivate a relationship with the principle of letting go. One way I have found to be very effective is through movement. In some schools they teach us to contract the body into a habitual posture, essentially exaggerating the undesired position, and then slowly letting that go and moving out of it to neutral or the opposite extreme. What this does is bring an unconscious habit “forward” into our conscious awareness, empowering us by revealing to us that the tension we hold is something we are actually actively creating right now, albeit unrecognised. Then, from a consciously contracted state we educate the body how to release that tension; effectively rewiring our nervous system to let go of the unconscious tension habit. With lots of training the letting go principle takes on a life of its own and the habit of letting go eventually recedes into the unconscious and a new disposition is formed.

This is equally effective with mental and emotional dispositions. As with the body, almost all of us will find it difficult to jump straight to letting go without first conjuring up what we’re engaged in unconsciously first. To practice this we can generate undesirable emotional states by remembering a time when we were angry, or felt rejected or afraid. We consciously amplify a disempowering emotion or belief that we commonly hold, and then move our intention to a more empowering emotion or belief. The idea is to actively bring it into the conscious mind and stay with it; allowing your attention to envelop everything that is occurring while you bring up this memory and feeling-state. For example, if I have a habit of reacting angrily to certain experiences, I would consciously recreate that experience in my mind, then generate anger in response to it; tensing into it and really allowing myself to feel and amplify the anger and all the tension and bodily contortions that comes with that state. Then I would relax out of anger, to a neutral state, before generating a state at the other end of the spectrum; say, appreciation, joy, humour, love. It doesn’t matter so much what we call the emotion, as long as it carries with it a sense of relief and upliftment. Then I would traverse back and forth, between these two ends of the spectrum; educating my nervous system through the entire spectrum and empowering myself to the reality that I am in control of how I feel and that where I am on the spectrum is a choice. Then I would just let it go and allow myself to be wherever I am. Over time it’s obvious where we want to reside and we don’t need to consciously control our state. We naturally rest in a healthy state and we spend less and less time in time in reactivity.

Questioning

Your mind is unlikely to get onboard this process readily. That is why I find it essential to adopt a questioning attitude. Having a specific question or genuine attitude of wonder and curiosity helps to focus the mind. Without it the mind will do everything and anything to scatter your attention and distract you with things that are “super important” to do “right now”; anything other than look into these matters.

Some helpful questions to focus the mind could be:

What is bothering me right now?
What am I trying to resolve?
What am I running away from?
What am I resisting?
What am I craving?

Over time you will develop your own questions. Any question will do, as long as it keeps you focused on you and what you’re up to. Eventually questioning becomes a default state and you operate from an open, curious disposition. Then it’s just a matter of placing your attention on what’s most “alive” for you in this moment.

Letting go

Once you’ve identified what’s bothering you, what you’re trying to resolve, run away from, resisting or craving, then we ask ourselves, “Am I willing to let that go?” Notice this is an invitation. Maybe you’re not ready to let it go, and that’s ok. Trying to force letting go is not letting go! It’s generating more resistance. The question alone likely evokes a different state than the one you’re in. Which can provide an opening for letting go to happen naturally. Much of what we are letting go of is the mind’s resistance to an experience. Let’s say I have pain in my left shoulder. And I identify that as something that’s bothering me now. I may not be able to let go of the tension in my shoulder right away, but in my inquiry, I may notice that my mind is resisting the sensations there. The I would invite my mind to let go of resistance and work at it for some time, until the next thing arises. In this way we begin to map out our experience and how we are holding ourselves in opposition to “what is”.

And layer by layer we envelop our experience, releasing resistance to how things are; all the while developing our presence, acceptance, focus, curiosity, openness and wonder. That’s pretty cool, in my eyes. And has real-world ramifications… good ones!

Summary:

Relaxation precedes anything effective in this life. Relaxation arises from letting go. Letting go is simple but hard.

Although I have given you two practices here, understand that this is really all one thing. It all serves becoming more conscious of what’s true and learning to align with what’s most effective in relation to truth.

The first practice is split into two domains; the body and the emotions. But you will quickly learn that to practice one is to practice the other. So whatever gateway you enter through it’s actually the same business we’re dealing with.

Steps for the first practice are:

Identify a disempowering emotion, belief, assumption, posture.
Exaggerate/ amplify it; tense into it and be it totally.
Relax out of it.
Create its opposite and totally be that.
Relax out of that.
Move from one end of that spectrum to the other, several times until you are able to stay conscious of the entire spectrum.
Let it go and get on with your life.

Steps for the second practice are:

Ask yourself, “What’s bothering me right now?”.
Locate something - a feeling, memory, thought, fantasy - keep your attention there and ask, “Am I willing to let this go?”
Let it go (or let your resistance to having that experience go) and repeat.

When to practice

Now of course, in the beginning it might pay to set aside some dedicated time to work on these skills; and that will have a carry-over effect into your life. But I want you to realise you’re always being you. And so there is no part of your life that is not up for grabs here. Resistance is likely an ongoing dynamic in your life. Making letting-go an ongoing dynamic will take some work. So make sure you practice while in a conversation, while on the bus or driving the car. While sweeping the floor or cooking dinner. While running up the stairs or chopping wood. Basically anywhere you are being your specific self! This kind of integrated practice is what separates the Fairweather Spiritualist from the lucid being.

Enjoy.