Context: Letting Go

Context

In letting go, the goal is to focus on our emotions. When we say focusing on our emotions though, we do not mean to be focusing on labeling emotions, or the cause of the emotion, or the meaning of the emotion. We are focusing on the main indicator that an emotion is present: physical sensations. We turn our focus towards the physical sensations, while continuing to take deep breaths to calm the body and clear the mind. A relaxed body gives space for the the physical sensation of emotions to emerge and be felt. Often as these sensations emerge, we tense and want to resist them. This resistance itself is also another emotional reaction that we can calm our body to, and allow ourselves to feel. If feelings persist for a long time, we may worry that they won’t go away, but again this worry is yet another feeling to calm the body and allow ourselves to feel. This may feel somewhat similar to concentration based meditative practices, except here we are neutrally paying attention to the physical sensations of emotion rather than the breath. The thinking behind the Letting Go process is that our minds can process emotions and integrate results into our logical thinking if we just get out of the way and allow ourselves to feel the emotions fully.

Letting go, over time, releases the emotional charge that certain thoughts, memories, situations, and beliefs hold and allows us to resolve our thoughts on the matter toward a stable, neutral, and uncharged view.

We can use the letting go technique for emotions that we are currently experiencing (reactively), and also for emotions associated with thoughts, memories, situations, and beliefs (proactively).

Why Let Go Proactively?

You may wonder: “why would I bring up emotionally charged things that are not currently bothering me?”. The answer is that as we go through life, we come across circumstances that we relate to through our past experiences and our beliefs about the world & ourselves. If we have strong emotions associated with particular types of experiences/beliefs, we have metaphorical land mines waiting when those experiences/beliefs end up being relevant. The way in which things are deemed “relevant” in our minds can also be quite abstract, like through archetypes (e.g. good and evil) or concepts (e.g. love and safety). We may experience these strong emotions and make decisions because of their rising, or we’ll preemptively behave in ways that will avoid the chance of these feelings to come up. Whether you step on the land mine or steer clear out of fear of them, your life is heavily impacted. This is where we can overreact, overcorrect, and completely avoid things that could actually be good for us.