Release
reflections and guided meditations for a time of transformation
This is a time of transformation. Things are surfacing in both personal and collective realms at speeds which are hard to digest.
It’s no longer about painting over the rot: we’ve been digging for long enough to realise it reaches the foundations. We’re getting ready to build a new house.
But we can’t create something new whilst carrying old burdens and baggage behind us. So, as we rage and grieve at the ways of operating which no longer reflect the beings we are, let’s also release what no longer serves the beings we are becoming.
Let’s release in order to step wholeheartedly, unconditionally and uninhibitedly into creating something new.
Release
Releasing is central to the Buddha’s teachings. Through patient observation, he recognised that suffering arises when we hold onto an experience or push it away. He called this clinging: the tendency to manipulate reality before embracing it with curiosity and kindness. Before knowing how to respond with love.
Clinging removes us from intimacy with life, separating us from aliveness. But it also leaves us reactive, preventing us from participating with wisdom, compassion and delight.
Hollow and empty inside, we search for belonging, safety and meaning elsewhere. Looking in all the wrong places, we resort to false power, false masks and false control.
The rest is history. Many thousands of years of history.
Release the body
Releasing always begins in the body. Everything happens in and through this body: emotions, thoughts, beliefs and habits all leave their imprints here.
And our tendencies to hold onto or push away these experiences can also be found in the body. Which means it’s here in the body that these tendencies can most effectively be recognised and released.
Last week I offered daily meditations exploring this theme on Sangha Live. You can join the beautiful community who gathered from all over the world through the recordings below.
Release the heart
Releasing emotions doesn’t mean getting rid of them. Once again, we release our tendencies to hold onto them or push them away.
We hold onto emotions by replaying the stories around them in our minds: obsessing, reacting. We push them away by suppressing them: distracting, numbing, pretending.
Both holding on and pushing away are forms of outer and inner violence. Both push the emotion deeper into the body. Both create suffering.
When instead we recognise the presence of an emotion and give it permission to be here, we discover it’s possible to love even the things we don’t like.
Releasing the heart happens here in the body as well. Rather than relaxing the tension of an emotion itself (which can become another form of suppression), we relax around that tension, allowing the emotion to be held with tenderness until it’s ready to relax of its own accord.
Releasing the heart allows us to listen to what emotions need from us, to receive their wisdom and transform this into action.
Release thoughts
But first, we need to release the limiting thoughts and beliefs which hold us captive in stories of separation.
In order to release the body and emotions, we need to release thoughts enough to be present with sensations and feelings. And as we release the body and emotions, the obsessive nature of thinking begins to relax as well.
The body, heart and mind all support each other towards either clinging or releasing.
Releasing looping thoughts is a practice which takes patience and kindness. Wherever we direct our attention creates a larger neurological pathway in the brain. For most of us, decades of looping thoughts have left motorways of neuroses in our brains!
Meditation creates a new pathway of presence. At first, it’s just a footpath, maybe only recognisable by a few crushed leaves or footprints. We quickly find ourselves back on the motorway again.
But then there are moments when we remember… and remembering is a moment of celebration. We’re awake! We can choose where to place our attention. We can choose which pathway to strengthen and grow.
So we return to the footpath of presence again and again. Each time we walk there, it grows a little clearer, wider and deeper.
In the beginning, this requires patience, commitment and trust. But at some point, love joins us on the path too. Slowly, meditation becomes a refuge. Eventually, it feels like home.
Release beliefs
As we continue releasing looping thoughts, we start to realise how many of these thoughts crystallise into limiting beliefs about ourselves, others or the world. Beliefs which hold us small, afraid and often in opposition.
The beliefs we carry about ourselves are particularly pernicious. I’m unlovable, unworthy, unimportant, powerless…
When we hold onto these beliefs, we replay the story and act in life as if it were true, which in turn impacts our lives. (“I’m powerless and unlovable” are deeply disempowering and disconnecting beliefs to carry.)
When we push them away, we’re more likely to try to disprove them through force. “I’m lovable, worthy, important and powerful” turns into narcissism and arrogance when it arises from a suppressed belief of the opposite.
But when instead we release these painful habits of pushing away and holding on beliefs, they reveal what they are: real but just ideas.
Releasing beliefs allows us to meet the mystery of life beyond of our ideas about it. We rest in a space of curiosity, kindness and wonder. We begin to feel our true power.
Release separation
It takes courage to turn towards these painful emotions, thoughts and beliefs, however. But fortunately, we’re all in this together.
Not just you and I, but all of us.
The bird singing outside my window each morning during mediations last week… the magnolia tree offering us its flowers in the midst of February and providing a home for the bird… the soil which supports and nourishes the tree and the countless creatures which make up the soil… the water which falls as rain and enlivens life… the air co-created by all beings everywhere with each and every breath… the mountains, wetlands, forests, oceans and deserts… the abundance of human, animal and cellular life… the spirit realms which guide and hold us...
We’re all in this together.
So when it feels hard to walk this path of embodied loving presence, we simply ask for help. We ask to be held and guided.
We remember we’re not alone, that it’s not up to us alone to make things better. That, just like this breath, there are times we give, and there are times we receive.
This is how life flows, and this is how love flows in constant renewal.
Love’s renewal
When an experience is alive inside us with no holding on or pushing away, we feel love’s flow.
We release in order to feel and participate in love’s renewal.
Sometimes this simply means embracing the unfolding, shifting, changing nature of life as it renews itself through sensations, sounds, sights, tastes, smells, emotions and thoughts.
We feel how love touches pain with tenderness, delights in joy and beauty, expands spaciously around intensity and rests with luminous warmth beside complexity.
Sometimes this means participating consciously in that unfolding as well. We are moved by the wisdom of body, heart and mind towards any action which brings benefit.
Meeting this immediate, embodied moment with love, we respond to it with creativity and care.
This is how we show up in the world with love.
And this is how, together, we build a world which reflects the beings we are becoming.
Join me…
On March 14th, I’m offering a ceremonial space of yin yoga, meditation, cacao, live music and chanting with Lucidia and Rafael, as we remember, deepen and embody what it means to Be Kind To Yourself.
My retreat in Devon in June is fully booked, but booking is open for this year’s silent yoga and meditation retreat in France in September, where a deep magic happens which ripples out everywhere in mysterious ways. Register here.
Join me every Friday morning in London for yoga and meditation from 10.30am-12.30pm, open to all levels. My teaching is heart-centred, meditative and alignment based. We begin with one or more restorative postures to explore the theme of the class, before practising more dynamically to embody this theme. The last 30 minutes is for meditation, either seated or lying down, with an option to change posture half way through. A long, deep savasana is welcome too! Book here.
My next week of daily meditations on Sangha Live is from April 13-17 - please save the date and check back for registration closer to the time.
Ayala, thank you so much for sharing this. I too noticed the budding magnolias this week and am hopeful that the creative power of spring can bring release 💜