On Letting Go

During a massage recently, I kept hearing the bodyworker say, Okay, now breathe into your feet, up into your heart, now out with a big Aaah sound. AAAAH!… That’s right! The world wants to hear how you feel.

Well, that was news to me! Great news! However, then she went, Come on Zuza, release all that sadness and anger, let it all leave. Aaah!… That’s right! Let it all go. Uh-oh, I thought, Houston. We have a problem. And the more she said that, the more sad and angry I felt.

Do you ever wonder how nobody is asking us to release all that joy, to let go of all the delight and excitement we feel? Often what is meant by “letting go” is an attempt at getting rid of necessary grief, appropriate anger, any deep feeling that puts us in touch with what the Buddhists call the universal heart of sadness.

Why would I want to get rid of any part of my experience? Me, I just want to open to whatever is here, feel it, sense it, eat my life. You want to help? Show up and be here with me whether I’m sad, or angry, or giddy.

That’s the kind of “healing” I’m after. It has the same root as “whole” and “holy.” So now… let’s breathe into our feet, up into the heart, and… let’s open to life as it arrives in our body: sad, mad, glad, hurt, so-so, or hard to say what.

Of course, it is all easier when in motion.