Acceptance (The Subtle Art of Letting Go)

I was outside with the baby on an amazingly beautiful day. She was playing with rocks while I sat nearby and let my mind wander. I ended up in a painful time in my life, thinking about a situation in which someone else experienced pain and I felt responsible for it. I know that I made a bad choice and the consequences were inflicted on someone else. It left me feeling guilty and upset. Then, part of my mind thought how ridiculous it was to feel so bad about something that happened so long ago. The thought stemmed from an idea of how another person might have viewed the situation. They may have thought it was silly to let something effect me so strongly after so long, so I immediately pushed it away. I didn't come to terms with it and let it go. I ignored it.

This week we will explore the concept of acceptance. I have spoken before about the ability to choose how you feel. It is important to make the distinction between choosing happiness and pushing down upset feelings. Choosing to be happy now by stomping down pain so you can ignore it is only going to result in greater pain at a future date. Maybe you'll always feel some lingering shame about certain episodes in your life. The question is, can you put aside those antiquated feelings and accept the fact that there are things you've chosen that were a bad idea, and move on? This is also a practice that can be aimed at feelings you cling to regarding the way you were effected by someone else's bad decision. Not to push down or aside those feelings of upset, but to come to terms with them. It is our own minds that insist on judgment and recrimination. The truth is that the incident is without value until we create some. It happened. It is something that happened that doesn't have to create future suffering. Hopefully, we can learn from it and our lives will be enriched by it. We can choose how we feel. We choose to experience melodrama so we can feel alive by experiencing the chemicals that create emotions.

This is work. This process involves consistent and regular awareness about who you are and how you react to experiences. The idea of letting go is easy to talk about but requires diligence to achieve. If you are in the habit of picking at scabs, it'll take some time to stop.

Asana this week will revolve around the hips. The hips are a repository of long held negative emotion we can't or won't let go of. When we manipulate the hips we encourage the flow of energy down and out, increasing our eliminative capabilities, so we can become more flexible in body and mind. When we have trouble digesting and eliminating stimuli and the resultant emotions we experience, that energetic stagnation translates into physical difficulty. If you have difficulty with your large intestine it may be that you have tension and fear around some of your experiences.

Pranayama will be sama vritti with a Let Go mantra. As you inhale, Let. As you exhale, Go. Allow the idea to permeate your mind and create ease within the structure of all postures. Experience the release of long held tension. Be aware of the areas of your body in which you hold your tension. As you become more aware of this, you will be able to notice in everyday life when you're experiencing tension and are ignoring it. Your body will always let you know.