The Importance of Letting Go

Each and every one of us has our Stuff, our stories, our heart ache and our pain. It is part of the human experience and just because we experience stuff does not make us "bad" people or less worthy or faulty in any way, it simply means that life has thrown us some challenging situations in order to help us grow and learn key lessons in this life time.  My view is the greater our stuff, the greater our lessons, which means the higher we mature spiritually. As we mature spiritually we connect with our essence, which then means a realization and actualization of our purpose (wow, that was quite a mouthful) J

The key is not about avoiding situations or thinking life will be perfect, it is really a matter of how we deal with a situation. By dealing with our stuff I mean allowing ourselves to go through difficult situations and really experience them, feel all the emotions and then when the time is right and the cycle is over, learn to truly let go and move on.

This is the hardest part as we tend to hold on to so much emotion and bury it in the basement of our subconscious mind, stored as a keepsake. The problem with storage is that it collects baggage and gets over cluttered and every now and then needs a great spring clean. Releasing our stuff from our subconscious mind is like a great internal spring clean.

I like to break down the process into 3 parts:

Allow yourself to experience the situation

This means we embrace the good the bad and the ugly. We allow ourselves to feel, to experience, to risk, to fly, to fall, to laugh and to cry and give ourselves fifty shades of whatever comes our way. (Especially if it comes in Grey, for those of you who have read THE BOOK- FiftyShades of Grey- lol).

So often we avoid situations because we are scared of being hurt or scared to fail. We do all we can to avoid this pain and head for the comfort of our safety zone at every opportunity.  The problem here is that if we are not faced with a challenge we will not grow, so in order to grow we must embrace each situation enthusiastically. Without this attitude we forever live in the shadow of fear and miss out on the adventure of life.

Feel the feelings and allow yourself to process each and every emotion

Every emotion represents an episode on the life cycle of experience and if we miss or suppress an emotion we miss out on that part of the cycle. This cycle will continue to present itself to us in different forms until we acknowledge that emotion.

Part of us feels that if we numb ourselves completely then we won’t feel and won’t be hurt. However this dismissal of emotion gets buried within the subconscious and more importantly it gets buried in the body.

Releasing from the body  is key, as the body  stores every experience in your cells as cellular memory. Each experience gets imprinted in the body and these imprints get buried in our subconscious responses. Let me break this down:

When we experience any form of experience positive or negative we have a thought which in turn creates a feeling. The feeling creates a body sensation. So for example, a 5 year old child is asked to speak in class, he is not so confident with his reading and so when the teacher asks him to stand up and read, the first thought he has is:

I can't do this, people will laugh at me.

He then feels butterflies in his belly and his throat gets tight and scratchy. He panics, his heart race, breathing becomes shallow and his cheeks flush with embarrassment.

Kids start to giggle at his redness, validating his thoughts and so this thought now becomes a fear with the neurological links of if I speak in front of people they will laugh at me and his body memorize that response. So that when he is faced with any opportunity to speak in front of people he has the same body sensations, especially the hot cheeks- further down the track just the thought of people laughing at him make him blush. Obviously he will do what he can to avoid that feeling and that pain in the body, so will avoid all public speaking. And the body supports him by helping him loose his voice anytime he has to speak in public.

With the awareness of this pattern and these thoughts we can make the necessary changes to break those neurological links.

Acknowledge a lesson from the situation and let go

Once we are aware of the feelings and the body sensations we can begin to question the thoughts, question the experience and loosen our attachment to the emotion. The process of letting go can begin…

We can begin to ask ourselves what these challenging situations or people are teaching me. What is the message? What is the growth opportunity? I love how Caroline Myss refers to unfelt emotions as un-actualized spiritual lessons. Each time we grasp the lessons we grow and we mature, we recognize that each situation then makes us stronger, wiser and more informed.

Letting go follows 2 parts: forgiveness and healing the wound stored in the body.

Forgiveness is the ability to collapse the stories we are repeating in our thoughts; collapsing the drama and the meaning we are attaching to an event. We do this by looking at greater pieces of the puzzle which exist beyond us- we empathize, we detach we allow compassion to soften the armor of protection and we re-open our hearts. We realize that people do the best with who they are at the time and the resources they have. We realize that they have fear which we may have made about us or taken it personally.

Self Forgiveness means we treat ourselves with the same level of compassion and again realize that we make decisions based on our level of maturity and knowledge at the time; rather than blame ourselves we focus on what each situation can teach us and we grasp that lesson.

Forgiveness does however have a life cycle of its own and takes time, gentleness and space.  When we reach the cognitive recognition of forgiveness we can then release the memory and the wound in the body.

If we look at the earlier example of the boy with a fear of public speaking, we can see that the experience was imprinted on his body. He experienced the butterflies in his belly, the tightness in his throat and the flushing of his cheeks. With the right focus, concentration and persistence these body sensations can be released from the body and here is how….

Within the body we have our centre line. This is a central column in the body which extends from the top of your head (your north point) and down to the base of your perineum  (your south point).

Imagine the connection between this north and south point and see this imaginary line illuminated down the centre of the body separating the right and left sides of the body.

Now focus on your Inner centre line, extending from your throat, to your torso and to your belly. This inner centre line is also referred to as the inner child. Each and every experience is stored along our inner child.

Here is a simple and easy meditation to help heal your inner child:

Focus on your illuminated centre line in the body, give it a colour- see AND feel it along the body.

Now focus your breath along your centre line; breathing from your belly, to your torso, to your throat and back down again. Allow the inhale breath to rise up the body and the exhale breath to fall down the body. Channel your breath along the centre line.

Think of the person, event or memory which you are holding onto- create a vivid picture in your mind.

Notice the changes in the body as you focus on this visual image. Where do you feel this event? ( A tightness in the chest, a block in the throat, or tension in the belly) These sensations represent the wound in the body.

Focus on these blocks and body sensations

Bring your breath to focus on these areas and slowly allow your breath to work through the blocks and the sensations.

Feel the tightness in your body slowly dissolve. Send the sensations out the bottom of the centre line and release them out of your body.

Keep going until you feel a freedom and a void in that area- depending on your inner wound this could take some time.

Now that you feel a void and a release in the body send a golden healing light up the centre line with your breath and send it to that part of your body, filling that void with your healing light. Keep going until you feel warmth and an expansion in that area.

Keep on repeating this until you feel a total release.

This healing represents total empowerment as you use the power of your mind, the intention in your heart and the innate wisdom of your body to heal yourself.

Enjoy!

To your truth and freedom,

Cheryne

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