MacroLife – Marijke de Coninck – Macrobiotic Counsellor and Healer

Everyone talks about “letting go” these days.  Letting go of a thought, a trauma, a beloved one, letting go of our children, a feeling a dream.  If we are able to let go, they say, we will feel better.

 Letting go doesn’t happen like that, it is a process.  Let’s have a closer look at the process of letting go.

 In my previous article, about “emotional healing” I talked about letting go and healing the emotions.  Today, I want to talk about how to make the process of letting go very practical.

 If we are able to let go, we will experience real freedom.  Taking in and letting go is the natural flow of energy in our body.  We breathe in and breathe out.  Eat and excrete.  Every cell of our body contracts and expands.  We feel and ‘be’ the emotion as thoughts come and go.

 Our whole body and being is the materialisation of energy.  If we aren’t open to being, to letting go, we often become mentally and physically constipated.  We develop breathing problems, menstruation problems.  We hold on.  On a mental level, we become stubborn, too focussed, we lose our flexibility.  The energy doesn’t flow freely and stagnates.

 Letting go on an emotional level is, for the most of us, even more difficult.  Often, as a child or earlier in our lives, we were not allowed to express our emotions and we had to swallow our fear, our anger, our jealousy, our pain, our sadness. 

 Example 1:  If we were trained to become the “exhausted giver” then we have the belief that through endless giving we will receive love.  We give until we burn out and funnily enough will discover that we are not loved but ‘used’ and never were able to meet our real needs.  We end our lives in bitterness and loneliness if we are not able to let go of the pattern, to give up the mask we are wearing and becoming real is the answer.

 Example 2:  If we were trained as a “controller’, we think the answer of life is control.  By controlling others, we think we will receive love.  However, people gradually run away from us.  If we cannot surrender, letting go our control, we end up lonely; controlling others is never the answer to finding love in life.

 We know that in the end that harms our organs (see previous article).  If we cannot express freely what we feel, we eat our emotions.  This is hard to digest and often leads to digestive problems.  What can we not digest? This is a good question to ask ourselves.

 Stomach ulcers, heartburn, irritability, being ‘liverish’ are signs of not being able to let go due to hindering the normal flow of energy.

 Often this behaviour is very deep in our being, it often is in every cell of the body.  It started early in our childhood where we took a family pattern over.  Although we often see clearly what the behaviour of mother and father is and we think we won’t repeat this.  Later on in our lives we find ourselves in exactly the same position.  Family patterns are very strong and we have to slow down to become conscious of what we are doing and how we can change this.

 Step 1:  Letting go is healing old family patterns.  Getting rid of the mask that we are wearing in order to become real and to heal, find the way to our true self.

 When we are not able to let go, often our solar plexus is blocked (our 3^rd chakra).  Energy comes in but cannot flow deep in the body. It discovers a knot in the 3^rd chakra and comes back up:  resulting in worry, thinking, over and over the same thought, holding on.  All the energy is in the upper body.  We lose contact with the lower part of the body, which often feels cold, bloated and weak.  We have a strong relationship with our sexuality.

 This is happening on an energetic level.  The deeper the imbalance the more we experience problems on a physical level.

 HOW CAN WE CHANGE THIS?

 Step 2:  The house we are living in is our physical body which needs to be clean in order to help the energy flow.  Clean and well nourished.

 Food   >>>>   Blood  >>>>   Cells

 We want to get rid of old stagnations in our body.  Food that stagnates easily is all animal food, saturated fats such as eggs, cheese, meat, all dairy food.  These foods create mucus and stagnation.  Too much salt, and baked flour products also create stagnation.

 By eating and drinking alcohol, coffee, English tea, sugar, lots of juices and southern fruit, spices, taking medication, we become weak, we lose our minerals and our boundaries.

 If we are not well nourished, the energy goes up in the head more and more.  We become over sensitive and cannot distinguish what is important in life and what is not.

 Unclean blood gives unclean thoughts! >>>>  Difficult to see clearly, difficult to know what we have to let go!

 Get rid of all the food that causes excess to your body and makes you weak.  Treat your body with respect ‘as a temple’.

 Choose the best organic food:

 unrefined food

sugar free food

eat according to your climate and season

eat a dairy free and meat free diet

eat only when hungry, drink when thirsty

eat traditional food like whole grains, beans, vegetables, seeds, fish, soups, sesame oil and use natural seasonings: shoyu, miso, ginger, rice syrup, horseradish, etc.

 Do breathing exercises

Get some daily exercise and chew your food well.

Step 3

 Look at your feelings!  Do you have suppressed anger, do you feel sad?  Start writing a diary and see a counsellor.  Talk about it.

 Steps 2 & 3 will help us to release old physical and emotional excess.  It will cleanse it deeply and we can build a new temple for a soul.  More and more we will feel open and gradually able to let go.

 Step 4

 In order to do the previous 3 steps, we need to practice Step 4: slow down!!  Making time to feel who we are.

 -          what are my family patterns?

-          what are my eating habits?

-          what are my thoughts?

 Our thoughts and beliefs are often determined by our upbringing, education, religion, culture.  Can we take a little step back here?  Who am I?  How do I want to live?  Write it down!!

 Often, we get attached and over value material things in order not to look to the shadow side of ourselves.  Letting go – looking at our shadow side, at our dark agenda.  We give it light, we give it love and embrace it, we bring it back into unity.

 Rest, meditation and creating order in our lives and making choices.  This is a process that takes time.  There is no such thing as a quick fix.

 In our society, everything is goal orientated, being on our path – the Tao, ‘being without a goal’ is very helpful in learning to let go.

 If we ‘let go’, we do not have to give up, we gain the responsibility of our life back.

 Step 4 is the Inner Journey

 What is your heart telling you? 

What does your Liver want?

What are your Kidney’s screaming?

How do your sex organs feel?

This has nothing to do with what is going on in your head, the duties you have.  From here we can make the right focus on our life.  We can heal deeper and let go more and more.  If you can find a personal coach who can help you with this process, this is fantastic.

 By letting go, you will gain a lot 

 Listen to this story!  A mother and a daughter are walking on the beach, the daughter is in love and wants to marry.  She asks her mother “How can she keep the man in her life”, the mother looks at her, takes two hands full of sand.  One hand she closes, all the sand is gliding through her fingers, the other hand is open, all the sand stays on it.  That is the secret, my love, she says!

 Some tips to work on in order to achieve ‘Letting Go’.

 -          give up the dependency of the reaction of other people on what you do and of who you are or look like.

-          In real friendship, we help each other grow!

-          Learn how to love yourself.

-          Don’t use – too much work, too much sport, alcohol, drugs, coffee, sugar, cheese, overeating, being busy, shopping

 For not feeling what we need is an excuse not to do the previous steps.

 Stop perfection.  It doesn’t exist!  You can put your power in your passion for the things and people where you feel your blood is flowing.  Don’t expect too much from yourself, you are doing great!

 -          Use humour in life, it is the best stress releaser.

-          Use positive thought and visualisations.

-          Use a practice such as yoga, pilates, tai chi etc.

-          Pray, meditate every day.

 Make contact with your higher self, with nature, with the universe, with a higher power than you.  Ask for help.

 Finally, you can look back at your life without pain, without sadness, guilt or anger, you can look at the past with forgiveness, with compassion.  You are able to let go.