Do you recall the feeling of moving home and realising how much stuff you have gathered throughout the years, trying to get rid of what you do not need. I do.
We are collectors, all of us, we are gathering feelings, persons, things, memories etc. But we also collect hurt, stress, feelings of not being enough, of lacking this or that, of not being good enough, of not performing enough. I can go on forever here. Instead of letting emotions flow through our bodies, we store them deep down in us, making it hard even to discover them, recognise them. We are holding onto so much for our dear life. But did you know that the power of letting go is so much stronger than you think? It’s even stronger than when you get rid of clothes or shoes.
I have been a real collector. At home we always saved post cards, paintings, gifts, you name it! Already as a kid, I needed help to get rid of things. As an adult that changed somehow. Since I never have had a need of buying things or felt that I needed to follow fashion or have the coolest cars or tech stuff, I have never gathered too many things. Still, somehow, I feel that things have entered my life. So every time I get rid of things, I feel such a relief.
So, why is there so much power when you let go?
I will share my story. During the last couple of years I have been letting go of so much. First I needed to accept and face myself and see what was true to me and what was not. Then I needed to let go of everything that was not, to stay true to myself, even though my mind was making up stories and held onto my past harder than ever.
For years I was trying to understand and recover from the severe car accident I was part of. It was not until I started to look for the places in my body where all this was stored, that I could start the healing process. I needed to connect to my body, embrace all that was in there and then start moving my body to let go. The process needed to be filled with acceptance and unconditional love.
I believe that we all have places where we feel blocked or where we hold onto for our dear life. We can be blind or we can just suppress them. These places are all unique to all of us. Many of us do not understand that we need to accept them and see them as unique instead of becoming angry or frustrated about them. So we need to start exploring these places with curiosity and with love. If we start looking deeply enough into these dark and hidden places, we will discover something that is of great value to us and in the future could be of great benefit to others. We usually cling to an experience, a partner or specific moment without asking ourselves: WHY? Our heart has usually already let go, but our mind is making up these beautiful or crazy stories and our ego does not want to lose control or be hurt. In our search for freedom or to be fully alive, we need to let go of that clinging. We need to break free from that. We need to discover that at the heart of the problem lies our great strength.
To grow and to thrive we need to let go of attachment. We need to let the old die. The cycle of life, something needs to die to be reborn. Each moment must die for the next one to come into being. As mentioned before it is often hard for us to allow the cutting off our attachments without feeling confused or being in resistance. Christopher Harrison, my dear friend and founder of AntiGravity Fitness says: What you resist, persists, stay in flow and grow. So we need to change our attitudes or reactions towards the process of letting go. It is not as easy as it sounds, but the simple fact is: We need to just let go. Break free. We need to make space. The sensation in the body is like waves leaving the shore. Our soul is on a movement or journey and we need to let go to feel alive.
As a sum up, what I discovered regarding letting go is that we can be in our mind and try to let go, but we will not succeed. We need to start looking into our bodies. We store so much physically in the body and therefore we need to understand where. When we know where, we can start to release by moving our bodies. Then the process of letting go is initiated. I tried for years to let go of so much from my accident mentally. When I discovered and understood the power of movement to let go, magic started to happen.
As a last thought on letting go, remember this: We also need to stop doing things that make us cling even harder to a partner, an experience or a specific moment and this is usually the hardest part for many of us. We need to really listen within. So before ending, I ask you the following question. Is it your mind holding on to something that your heart does not want to be in?