Letting Go

In our household, September is the real New Year. I have two school-aged teenagers and September means back to school and back to extracurricular activities, after-school jobs, and teenage social life. Throw in three birthdays and life gets suddenly very busy. There I stand at the helm trying to juggle it all. Every year I feel this need to keep it all together. To get it all running smoothly. To get it right.

This year, I was also completing my Essential Somatics teacher training. Spending hours in front of the computer ( not my fav place…I’m a mover, not a sitter). Writing essays and lesson plans summarizing my year-long somatic movement education course. In the final paper, we had to discuss how the training impacted us and I talked about how the work of somatic movement reminds me of the power of softening and releasing, both my body and my spirit. But I was kind of full of shit because I was sitting there pulling myself into a “correct posture”, in pain from sitting at the computer for hours, and super stressed about getting everything done and right. I had to ace this paper, I had to pass the course, I had to be a great teacher… As I hit send on my final paper it occurred to me what if I ACTUALLY let go? What if I actually take my training to heart and follow my lines of tension into release? What if I actually allowed my nervous system to let go of patterns that I’ve been clinging to? What if I stop trying to hold it all together all the time? What if I stop trying to get it right?

Framing my practice, which I’ve had for years now, from this perspective was profound. I’ve always felt that as “the teacher” I needed to have all the answers, but at that moment on the mat, I started to feel okay about not knowing. I felt okay not having all the answers, not getting it “right” all the time. The tension melted away and an acceptance and softness took its place.

Interestingly…patterns of stability and balance I had been chasing for years gently showed up in my body to support me. I softened. I shifted. And my home base in my body changed. This is the power of somatic movement education I was writing about in my paper and it was a powerfully humbling experience.

This shift was quickly put to the test by life. My son got Covid shortly afterward and he and I missed an annual camping trip and music festival with friends that we love. In the past, the stress of this situation would show up in my body in its usual places, and I would fight it, trying to get this crappy situation “under control and right”. Curiously that didn’t happen. I was able to navigate this time from a place of softness in myself and show up for my son in a valuable way. A way that he recognized and thanked me for many times over the weekend.

As my course wraps up and the New Year begins, I feel myself stepping into a new place. I am practicing embracing not knowing. I am teaching my nervous system to let go of old patterns in my body and the stories that go with them. This feels “right”...for now.