Food For The Soul : Preshana Yoga

Stay tuned for regular body and soul guest blogs from Ananda Trettin, former international model and owner of Preshana Yoga.

Letting Go

When I talk about letting go, I am not talking about withdrawing or disengaging from life’s challenges. In fact, I am asking you to face up to life and acknowledge your reality. The reality of ‘self’, or soul, is that of perspective.

In this process of letting go, we must consider what exactly it is we have to let go. Really, the only thing we can let go of is the attachment to ideas: preconceived notions of what life should look like. This notion could be something we were taught growing up or it could be something we take on through culture. In wanting to be accepted and valuing relationships, we accept these preconceived ideas. In many ways, they help us to structure reality and allow us to fit in and feel protected by culture. These concepts of how one should behave are useful for a developing personality up to a point. They stop being helpful however, when we can no longer see beyond them and get stuck in a pattern of being conditioned by them.

There are times when a situation in life may not match up with our idea of what it should necessary look like. In this case, it is important to abandon the idea and form a fresh perspective. The letting go and formation of a new perspective is a vital process. This practice of surrender can be a tremendous challenge. The invitation is to bring our attention to the moments when we are most attached to an outcome. By bringing our awareness into these moments, we immediately achieve distance from ourselves. It reintroduces the possibility for a different viewpoint. The work thereafter lies in understanding the effects of attachment and asking what is seeking to be acknowledged through it? When we insist on seeing things only one way, an acknowledgement is requested. Upon further self-reflection, we must then surrender to the fact that an idea really owns us. Rather than us ‘having’ them, they have us, and so we must let go.

The practice of surrender is a way of participating with life in a way that helps us create what we desire, engage with what is, and to ground ourselves in a more authentic perspective.