On Love & Letting Go…
By Cara Chang Mutert
This particular rainy morning has given me pause and allowed me to drop in. To think, feel, breathe, and write.
It’s in these quiet in-between moments that I connect with all things. Watching the skies pour its nectar back into the earth, seeing the grass, trees and flowers drink it up and turn green before my eyes; it’s like a lifeline that arrived just in time. Silence, stillness and nature are my solace. It offers me time to reflect, remember my blessings, my lessons, and how every moment informed my life and made me who I am.
When I’m alone in the quiet of the morning, my heart and mind is still drawn to memories of my father, even though it’s already been 6 years since he passed. I remember his soft, gentle way. I remember the lessons he taught me, and how they formed who I am. Sometimes it’s easy to stay lost in wishing the past were still here, wanting to forget less and remember more. These days though, I try to stay grounded in what I know now, in remembrance of how my life has informed me and my movements up until this point.
Before yoga, I was a relatively closed and reserved person. Through the practice, I learned to open myself to love more, in the universal sense. I have come to realize that living a full life is the process of loving and letting go. And in the past 20+ years of running the studio, we together as a community have loved and let go of A LOT.
Through it all, I’ve grappled with what’s harder? Loving? Or letting go?
Like so many of you already know, the lessons of letting go and the grief that follows become more prevalent as we grow older. Friends and family pass, children and dear friends leave for greener pastures, to live their lives fully, as they were meant to.
As a teacher, it’s part of our process. To let go of your students. To watch them grow and move on, even transition. Regardless of your role or relationship, whether as a parent, a child, a friend, or lover, the human experience of loss can run deep. It is our attachments to what we feel have lost that cause our pain and suffering. It’s the letting go of that attachment that can free us.
Whether it’s a person, place, thing, memory or experience, we can often grow to feel so proprietary, especially after long periods of time. But truth is, we’re only here for a bit. And we belong to no one, but ourselves. So, for those of us still holding on, try to ease your grasp and loosen the grip of your holding.
Letting go does not mean that person, place, thing or experience did not exist, happen, or mean anything … it just means you can soften your tension around the holding on. Whether it’s in the form of sadness, anger, grief, or hopelessness, we as humans tend to let our emotions, fears, and attachments to drive our reality. Instead, we can let our deeper intelligence guide us. Our practice of yoga provides a conduit for us to tap into that.
As the trees and flowers teach us, loss is a part of nature. Letting go is the process of healing, but also returning. Watching nature move so beautifully through its phases without argument continues to be one of my greatest teachers. Realizing I’m part of the natural web of things helps remind me to stay with the course of nature, whether I like it or not.
So as the letting go continues, remember to flow with nature rather than fight it. Like the intricate heavy heads of Queen Anne’s Lace drooping under the weight of droplets from the sky, let the rains fall when they may, savor the sun when it shines, move with the wind when it blows, and always rest when you can in the in-between.
*For my dear friend and yoga brother, Jon, without whom The Yoga Lounge would not be what it is today. Thank you for all our years of friendship on the bright path of yoga.