Let it go or let it through? Relax + Release.
When I set off on my run this morning (week two of my training plan = 6 miles) I wanted to use the time to let a theme emerge for my blog this week… Many times I find inspiration or the solution to a problem whilst running… the process enables ideas to come to the surface. Try it if you haven’t!
I digress… Whilst thinking on my run, I was thinking about the lessons that have come up for me this week. And one of the conversations I have been having with Paul (my partner) and Nicky (my business partner) is around the process of letting go of difficult emotions.
This is a deep subject area and it’s not one I can easily tackle in one blog, especially as I’m only at the beginning of working through this one my self. I know plenty of theory on the subject – we teach this stuff in the training room for POINT3, but it’s a different thing to be able to put the theory into practice. They say you teach what you need to learn yourself after all!
I’ve started listening to Michael Singer’s Widsom Untethered on Audible this week, on the recommendation of Paul. Singer has written The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment as well… the latter I read a while ago, but I’ve yet to read The Untethered Soul.
Wisdom Untethered is described on its own website as offering direct answers to life’s deepest challenges: how to find peace amid chaos, how to handle the mind’s endless chatter, how to let go of emotional pain, and how to live from the vast awareness that you truly are.
Sounds deep! That’s because it is. Whilst I’m only really getting started with the book – what I’ve taken from it is this… Freedom and peace come from within, they’re not found outside of us. In order to feel peace, it’s a process of understanding that our ego and our wounds not only protect us and help us achieve the things we strive for, they also actually hinder us from fully finding the freedom many of us desire. I said it was deep! It’s the deepest personal and spiritual work there is. Some, including Singer, would say this is the work we’re here on earth to do.
So, how do we let go of the ego and our wounds in order to find inner freedom? Well, I need to finish the book before I know the answer to this! What I’ve learned so far, is that when we feel difficult emotions – we typically either try to suppress them, intellectualise them or numb them, or all three. True inner peace comes when we can witness them for what they are – trapped energy that wants to be released. So, Singer tells us to relax into them, and let them pass through… The struggle and the tension that we attach to the emotion and the event or conversation around it – actually reinforces the pain or discomfort. If we can let it pass through naturally of its own accord without getting drawn into it we will find peace on the other side. Sounds easy, right?! Haha, not at all… but I certainly want to give it a go. And just like going to the gym, and strengthening our muscles, the more we do the reps, the more it becomes easy.
I’ll report back in time on my progress! So, there we have it… the first lesson in letting go, is in letting our difficult emotions through. They won’t last forever. We are not our emotions. We don’t need to let them run the show. If we can relax into them, and breathe love and compassion into the tension instead, we are one step closer to releasing the trapped energy and finding inner peace and freedom. And I like the sound of that!
I think there’s a series of Lessons in Letting it Go… Let’s see!
For now, a couple of questions for you – do you use running or walking to help you problem solve or come up with ideas? Next time you find yourself in search of an answer or solution to something, take it on a walk or run… and see what bubbles to the surface. It’s just occurred to me that the process of relaxing into movement, be it a run or walk, also allows things to be released in the process. So, it works for ideas just as it does for emotions. What else does it work for? Hmmm.
And finally, how easy do you find it to let go of those difficult emotions? Let me know if you think the relax and release method works for you…
Happy Friday x
Not The Mayo Clinic 