How to be your own healer part 2 - Letting Go

The practice of letting Go

Letting go of feelings/ Surrendering

The practice of ‘letting go’ or ‘surrendering’ helps to create a greater sense of wellbeing and peace. This technique is a principle of the basic teachings of the Buddha.

In isolation, Letting Go is a ridiculously simple yet profoundly powerful self-care tool. Combined with other practices such as meditation and yoga, mindful living and sound holistic approach to diet and exercise, it has the potential to completely transform the way you experience life.

I strive to use this technique habitually, so whatever I’m doing and wherever I am, If I feel or sense an uncomfortable feeling, instead of distracting myself or ruminating, I stop and check in with myself, allowing myself to really feel whatever I’m feeling, sitting with it but not judging it or thinking about it, identifying and naming the feeling. In so doing, I ‘let go’ of the energy behind the feeling and immediately feel lighter and released. Letting Go is such a simple technique to learn, the key is to make it a habit and for it to become a natural process in your day to day life. Just surrendering to what is.

The process of Letting Go

Stress and all of its symptoms result from the accumulated pressure of our repressed and supressed feelings.

By its very nature, pressure seeks release. External events tend to trigger what we have been already holding down consciously and unconsciously. The energy of our blocked off feelings then remerges in our bodies leading to pathological change, illness, pain and disease.

‘Letting Go’ involves being aware of a feeling, letting it come up, staying with it and letting it run its course without wanting to make it something different or do anything about it. Simply let the feeling be there, identify it, name it and then focus on letting out the energy behind it.

When ‘letting go’, try to ignore all thoughts as they are endless, self - reinforcing and only attract even more (limiting) thoughts creating a never-ending cycle.

David R. Hawkins M.D., Ph.D. in his book, Letting Go – The Pathway to Surrender, writes;

“Letting go is like the sudden cessation of an inner pressure or the dropping of a weight. It is accompanied by a sudden feeling of relief and lightness, with an increased happiness and freedom. It is an actual mechanism of the mind, and everyone has experienced it on occasion.”

It is about letting go consciously and frequently at will any time, in any place and within any event.

By letting go habitually, you become in charge of your feelings and no longer at the mercy of the environment and your reactions to it. You are released from being the victim.

Most people carry around a huge reservoir of accumulated negative feelings, attitudes and beliefs. This accumulated pressure makes us miserable and is the basis of many of our illnesses and issues. Many people are resigned to living with this huge reservoir and explain it away as ‘the human condition’. We seek to escape it in a myriad of ways.

Hawkins writes;

“It is the accumulated pressure of feelings that cause thoughts. One feeling can create literally thousands of thoughts over a period of time. For example, think of one painful memory from early life. Reflect on all the years and years of thoughts associated with that single event. If we could surrender the underlying painful feeling, all those thoughts would disappear instantly and we would forget that event. “

Scientific research demonstrates that feeling tones organise thoughts and memory (Gary -LaViolette ,1981) Thoughts are filed in the memory bank according to the various shades of feelings associated with those thoughts.

The great value of knowing how to surrender is that any and all feelings can be let go of at any time and any place in an instant, and it can be done continuously and effortlessly.

The 3 ways we handle feelings

suppression, expression and escape

1. Suppression and repression: These are the most common ways in which we push feelings down and put them aside. Repression happens unconsciously, suppression happens consciously.

The pressure of suppressed feelings (when we consciously push feelings aside), causes irritability, mood swings, tension in the muscles of the neck and back, headaches, cramps, menstrual disorders, colitis, indigestion, insomnia, hypertension, allergies and other somatic conditions. There is also strong correlation between people who harbour strong emotions such as guilt, anger and hate and people who experience cancer.

When we repress a feeling, it is because there is so much guilt and fear over the feeling that it is not even consciously felt at all. It becomes thrust back into the unconscious as soon as it threatens to emerge. The repressed feeling is then handled in a variety of ways to ensure it stays repressed and out of awareness.

Of these mechanisms used by the mind to keep the feelings repressed, denial and projection are probably the best-known methods, as they tend to go together and reinforce each other.

Denial results in major emotional and maturational blocks. It is usually accompanied by the mechanism of projection. Because of guilt and fear, we repress the impulse or feeling, and we deny its presence within us. Instead of feeling it, we project it onto the world and those around us. We experience the feeling as if it belonged to ‘them’, ‘they’, they then become the enemy, and the mind searches for and finds justification to reinforce the projection.

Blame is placed on people, places, institutions, food, social conditions, fate and other things outside of self. The mechanism of projection underlies all attacks, violence, aggression, and every form of social destruction.

2. Expression. With this mechanism, the feeling is vented, verbalised, or stated in body language and acted out in some way. The expression of negative feelings allows just enough inner pressure to be let out so that the remainder can then be repressed. This is an important point as, for many people believe expressing their feelings frees them from the feelings. This in fact isn’t the case.. The expression of a feeling tends to propagate that feeling and give it greater energy and the expression of the feelings merely allows the remainder to be supressed out of awareness.

If we dump our negative feelings on others, the experience is like an attack and they in turn, are forced to suppress, express or escape the feelings. A helpful alternative is to take responsibility for our feelings and neutralise them. Then only positive feelings remain to be expressed.

3.Escape: Escape is the avoidance of feelings through diversion. We can avoid our own inner selves and keep our feelings from emerging by an endless variety of pursuits, many of which eventually become addictions as our dependency upon them grows.

People are so scared, of facing themselves - dreading any moment of aloneness that they habitually zone out watching tv for hours on end, involving themselves with constant, frantic activities – endless socialising, talking, texting, drug taking, alcohol consuming etc in an effort NOT TO FEEL.

The Process of Letting Go

Letting Go simply involves being aware of a feeling, letting it come up, staying with it, and letting it run its course without wanting to make it different or do anything about it.

As you become more familiar with Letting Go, you will notice that all negative feelings are associated with our basic fear related to survival and that all feelings are just survival programs that the mind believes are required. The letting go technique breaks down the programs progressively. Through that process, the underlying motive behind the feelings becomes more revealed. .

To be surrendered means to have no strong emotion about a thing: ‘It’s okay if it happens, and it’s okay if doesn’t.” When we are free, there is a letting go of attachments. We can enjoy a certain thing but we don’t need it for our happiness. There is a progressive diminishing of dependence on anything external of ourselves.

These principles are in accordance with the basic teachings of the Buddha to support avoidance of attachment to expectations, products and ways of a material world. Letting Go and surrender are key to living a life of peace and contentment.

The results of letting go are deceptively fast and subtle, but the effects are potent. Often, we let go but think that we actually haven’t.

It’s common when something is fully surrendered, it disappears from your consciousness. Now, because you never think of it, you don’t realise that it has actually left us.

When we resist letting go

Letting go of big feelings is the undoing of the ego (the inner voice) which will be resistant at every turn. The solution is simply to keep on letting go of the feelings you have about the whole process. Let the resistance be there but don’t resist the resistance.

When to seek help

If you feel strongly impacted by feelings of helplessness, anxiety, depression, limiting behavioural problems and self-beliefs, I recommend you seek support, guidance and healing from a qualified practitioner. Holistic Hypnotherapy offers a highly effective space to facilitate deep self-healing and transformation. To find out if this modality is suitable for you and for more information about Holistic Hypnotherapy, please contact me directly.