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I’ve frequently been told to “let go” in my life by people around me, including fellow teachers during my practice but what does it actually even mean? Letting go of what exactly? How can one achieve this and why should we bother trying?  When I think of letting go, I think of a child letting go of their favourite teddy bear learning to surrender it to another. An image of a child  clawing onto their favoured toy, refusing to let it go.

I’m learning to let go in mind and body by using the five stages of getting over grief.

1. Denial

Yoga

This point of letting go was brought to my attention again recently during an early morning Mysore practice. One of the yoga teachers was adjusting me in a bind, during a twist. When the teacher took hold of my arm she told me to inhale deeply but after she told me to exhale she looked me intently in the eyes and said “I need you to let go, you’re not letting go” I had no idea that I wasn’t. I’m a very compliant student or so I thought and didn’t feel this was a conscious choice of mine to not let go.

As individuals how do we know when we’re not letting go unless told so by another? What does letting go feel, look and taste like and how do we arrive at it?

Yoga being a journey, a practice even a dress rehearsal you could say allows us to make mistakes at this very moment in order to learn from them. We can start to achieve this letting go by no longer being in denial about what it happening physically from the inside out. Drawing our attention inwards and being open to listening to our bodies messages. Awakening the senses during our yoga practice and becoming open to receiving information. We may not always want to hear the truth but one should be open to seeking it in order to grow and learn.

Life

I frequently find myself holding onto a moment, a past experience, a person, a thing, a possession or an object. This is attachment in its purest form.

Some nights I lay awake whilst replaying memories in my own head. Replaying mistakes I’ve made in the past and torturing myself with them.

I also find myself holding onto my ideals and fantasies and I find myself being so disappointed that life hasn’t so far succumbed to these ideals that I fail to allow any more light or beauty into my life. I feel myself becoming consumed by grief and disappointment.  Like a mother that learns to let go of her babies when they become old enough to fly the nest I too must learn to let these attachments whatever they may be fly the nest and see what the future holds instead of trying to hold on and control everything. Stop denying the universe its opportunity to go to work, have faith, hope and trust that all will come good.

Your yoga practice will open you up to exploring feelings, thoughts and emotions that you may have buried. Maybe you have denied these and pushed them deep into the body that you’ve forgotten they’re still there festering. Maybe you’ve tried to hold on for so long it’s as if the muscles in  the body are clinging to the whole skeletal structure. Has this become your idea of holding it together? Have you kept yourself together so much so that you don’t know how to set yourself free anymore? What would happen if you were to stop holding on for one minute would you crumple to the floor in one big heap? You and I will learn to release these muscles and this tension and in turn it may mean releasing a fear back into the world, setting it free in order to set ourselves free.

2. Anger

Life

Look at some of the world’s most beautiful individuals. The adversity they‘ve dealt with during their lifetime. These people not only made changes to our history but they did it with dignity, integrity and peace. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi to name a few. Nelson Mandela could have come out of prison and felt tremendous bitterness about his years in there. These years in prison he could have held on to resentment and anger and allowed it to consume him but instead he came out with only love in his heart and he changed the world with this love.

I believe this is why it’s important to let go of this resistance against the things that make us unhappy in our life. Instead of resisting the things that are causing us pain in our lives right now engulf them, explore them and learn to ride with them like riding the crest of a wave. See them an as opportunity to learn and grow. Instead of protesting against the universe and sticking your fingers up and fighting with it – go with it.

Yoga

Surrender and yield to your practice and your body.  If you push and pull you self into the postures and force your body. You’re not able to listen to the subtleties that are talking to you. You’re inflicting upon it.

We hear on the news how certain countries are suffering at the hands of others whilst individuals inflict their opinions onto them. This is the metaphor that I give myself when trying to dictate to my body what I want it to do during my practice. I’m learning to accept my body’s limitations at this moment in time and work with the movement, depth and range that is there. I’m learning to love what I am able to so far and not always think of what my future holds.

3. Bargaining

Yoga

As a teacher I see this bargaining during classes all the time. I am a stickler for alignment and believe that sometimes less means more. The amount of times I look over and see that someone has allowed the integrity of the posture to suffer in a vain attempt to move further or deepen a posture. My mother’s words always ring in my ears “slowly, slowly catch a monkey” I’m not sure what this even means but I think about the stone ages when we were left to hunt for food. Hunting for prey all guns blazing (maybe more spears rising) could scare off the potential prey. Patience in this instance would be a virtue. Acting with stealth would more likely catch the day’s food for the family. This is far from a yogic metaphor but the idea behind it being that sometimes going in slowly and gently is best. You’re laying the groundwork and building a great foundation to build upon.

Life

This word reminds me of what my mother said to me once during the most harrowing moments of her life. My mother told me how she was brought to her knees by emotional heartache and pain. My mother had tried everything to keep herself and the family together and her world was falling apart at one time. An atheist, she prayed to a higher power. “Help me, forgive me for every sin I have ever committed” “Take what little I have left on this planet, do what you must, I leave it in your hands now”

Some of us are brought up in society to fight for our beliefs and ourselves. To fight for what is right and just and if we want something we have to go out there and grab it. If something stands in our way then we believe we have to overcome it and sometimes in this process we forget at what cost. Sometimes learning to surrender is harder than being what we believe to be proactive in our present and future.

4. Depression

You cannot go over it or under it you just have to go though it in your yoga practice and in life it’s part of the process.

5. Acceptance

What I found most interesting about my recent experience during my yoga practice was what the teacher told me after her disappointment in my not letting go. “If you tense up and resist during your lifetime when there is change or a problem then you’re constantly fighting and going against the tide”  At that moment I started thinking about my dog and his heckles that go up when meeting another dog. This may be because my dog has been rescued but during times of interaction with other dogs his fear is visible. The dog is pre-empting a problem and on a state of high alert just like I do in life. What our bodies believe to be a protecting reaction (flight or fight) is in actual fact encouraging a problem by the pro-active reaction to it.

The teacher continued to tell me “Instead of tensing up and resisting learn to breathe and go with it”. This then got me thinking about riding the crest of a wave and how easy surfers make this look. Maybe just maybe this is a huge metaphor for life instead of this clear fight or flight response that we can sometimes have during our lifetimes why not accept what life has thrown our way and learn to grab a surf board and ride the wave.

Acceptance that it is what it is. Accepting you body’s physical, mental and emotional responses in life and in yoga. There are many things that my body is unable to overcome during my yoga practice at present but the more I push, pull, force and fight against my bodies limitations it’s as if I’m playing an instrument without fine tuning it first. Expecting the sound to be beautiful and wondering why it’s not. Respect your instrument and finely tune it, breathing softly and moving gracefully.

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