The body is the easiest place to sense where we are holding on. Very often we will walk around holding our shoulders up close to our ears, or tensing our jaw, or with a perpetual knot in our stomach, which over years become habitual patterns that become symptomatic signs of dis-ease.
A very useful practice of letting go is: whenever you remember, try simply softening those places that are holding on. Let the shoulders drop down , allow the head to gently wobble on the neck and loosen any tension there, allow the jaw to relax, even opening the mouth softly, and you will notice how much tension you have been holding unconsciously. Try some deep belly breathing,perhaps putting your hands over your belly to help you relax in this area. Maybe you want to sense the energy spreading from your core, where we hold so much tension, into the limbs. Allow the arms and legs to soften, open and relax.
Make this a many times daily practice, whenever you remember to gently and repeatedly to soften and open the body, allowing it to teturn to a natural state of ease and well being.
Of course the breath is a great tool to help us to do so. If we are holding in the breath, it is difficult to lt go in the body. So constant coming back to the breath is a wonderful reminder also. As we breathe in, we take in oxygen and new life and energy, and as we breathe out, we let go of the carbon dioxide we don’t need and any other toxins and tensions also. So deep breathing (especially focusing on the out breath) is a great way to help us to let go. You might even want to say this little mantra to yourself: “As I breathe in, I take in this new moment, as I breathe out, I let go.”
These simple practices can help us to remember the joy of letting go, each moment is new when we are not holding on. And as we let go, we are invited into the freshness of a new moment and a new possibility to experience our connectedness with all of Life.
As I write this from my bedroom in my father’s place in the UK, I can hear the wind
rustling in the trees, shaking the crisp leaves down from their high places, so full of life and new
promise just months before yet now humble before death, as we all are. I am writing about letting go, this Fall time of year. And I get a sweet sad feeling as I think of all the ways we are forced to let
go in our lives.
Staying here with my father, once a vibrant and seemingly ageless man, full of passion and desire to live life to the fullest, he refused to grow old, stating confidently that he was going to stay young and fit forever. I see him now, dear Papa, and his sight is almost gone, his ears don’t hear much, he shuffles along in his frail body and he too has been humbled by age and impermanence. He has had to succumb, to admit that there are things more powerful than our own will. Life! The endless turning of the Earth around the sun, the seasons around each year, and one day, we too will be old and frail and facing death.
In my own journey with cancer I was faced with the indignity of lettinggo of my looks and my health and my own importance in the Universe, realizing that death could take me at any moment. With the return of my blessed health, this solid sense of I has also returned and I have to keep reminding myself that all that may leave at any moment. Disease, old age and death will happen to us all.
This autumn time is such an opportunity for us to remember this sense of letting go, to practice the releasing of what we hold dear. As they say in the Buddhist tradition, the recognition of the impermanence of Life is what helps us find the motivation to wake up.
Like the leaves falling from the trees, the letting go can happen gracefully, or it can happen with a lot of fighting and inner resistance. I am a fighter, it helped me make it through stage 3 B cancer. It runs in the family, my father is a fighter too. Although now I see him and there is a gentle grace about him that I hope I have when I reach his age. Whereas a year ago he was still talking about leading his next workshop (which he did do just over a year ago at the age of 82!) now he is settling into a sweet acceptance of his life and his body and failing mind the way it is. There is a Grace that comes with letting go, where we find ourselves arriving more in the present moment and not so focused on making life happen, but just appreciating it where and how it is. Allowing rather than efforting, relaxing rather than pushing. I feel it in myself, a longing to be more still, more quiet, more in the “Being” space, less in the “doing” space. We often have to let go of the busyness on the outside in order to surrender to the letting go on the inside.
I am grateful for this time in my life, it brings many gifts. Although my body doesn’t always do what I want it to any more; it aches in the places where it was once limber and free, and my mind doesn’t remember what it needs to a lot of the time, I am enjoying the simplicity of this phase of my life, the sweet surrender and the gentle acceptance of the letting go into Now and Here. There is a Grace that shines through when I am present to it, the more I allow things to be exactly as they are, the more I sense the Grace surrounding and filling me. In letting go, we open to a larger perspective of the Divine infusing and orchestrating our lives…
…And how beautiful are the leaves crunching underfoot, and the way the light shines through the trees where the leaves have left space for it to do so. How perfect is this precious and fleeting moment!
With Love,
Rajyo and the Celebration of Being Team