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Over recent months I’ve found myself hearing a particular phrase again and again within spiritual and wellbeing spaces:
“Let go.”
At first glance, it sounds simple enough. Wise, even. And certainly there are times in life when release is needed. Yet the more I’ve sat with my own experience recently, the more I’ve begun to wonder if our relationship with “letting go” has itself become another form of striving.
Another thing to get right, another healing task to accomplish, another subtle way of trying to control life.
A quandary can be not even knowing what it is we are supposed to let go of. Often, we are not consciously holding onto a single thing at all, but an entire way of orientating towards life — a posture of vigilance, preparedness, self-protection, and subtle bracing that has become so familiar we scarcely notice it anymore.
Since the Winter Solstice, I’ve been living with pain and restriction in my shoulder. At first it was little more than a whisper — an occasional discomfort, easy enough to dismiss. But over time, the whisper became louder. More insistent, sometimes almost a growl.
As many of you know, my work quite literally involves carrying heavy gongs and equipment. Yet instinctively, I sensed there was something more being asked of me here than simply resting a muscle or joint.
Some years ago I came across the work of Louise Hay and her reflections on the symbolic language of the body. Whether or not one takes such ideas literally, I referred back to her book 'and read that an issue with the shoulder can represent burdens, responsibilities, and “carrying the weight of life” — and something inside me quietly paused.
Because I knew.
Not only the physical weight. The other weight too.
The accumulated holding of a lifetime.
Perhaps even longer.
Life is guiding me more and more these days. I believe that everything arising within our lives is not only a mirror of the inner world, but also has the potential to become a teacher, and that especially within difficult places, bright jewels can be found. Not because suffering is romantic, nor because pain is somehow “good,” but because life, in its mysterious way, is always trying to bring us back into relationship — with ourselves, with our bodies, and with what truly matters.
Slowly, I am beginning to understand that my shoulder is not merely an injury to heal, an inconvenience to overcome, but a teacher asking for my attention.
Not demanding punishment, not asking to be conquered, but listened to.
There is something deeply real and authentic in realising how often many of us live in a state of subtle bracing, without even recognising it. Holding ourselves together. Holding tension in the jaw, neck, chest, belly and shoulders. Holding ourselves in readiness for what may come next.
Control can wear many disguises.
It is not always loud or obvious. Sometimes it appears as over-thinking, hyper-vigilance, endless self-management, or the inability to fully rest. If I stay prepared… if I keep carrying… if I keep thinking ahead… perhaps I will remain safe.
Yet the body pays a price for perpetual readiness.
What we now understand through nervous system research is that many people are living in prolonged states of fight, flight, or freeze. These ancient survival responses evolved to protect us in moments of immediate danger — the sudden appearance of a predator, for example, where heightened awareness and adrenaline could mean the difference between life and death.
But the body was never designed to remain in that heightened state continuously.
And yet modern life often keeps us there.
The constant stream of information, fear-mongering in the mainstream press, uncertainty, pressure, overstimulation, emotional strain, financial worry, and low-level anxiety means many nervous systems rarely return fully to rest. High levels of stress and adrenal activation have become so normalised that many people no longer even realise they are living in a state of tension and anticipatory holding.
The shoulders remain slightly raised, the jaw tight, the breath shallow.
When babies breathe, their bellies rise and fall naturally. The breath moves deeply through the body without effort or self-consciousness. But gradually, as we grow older, many of us begin to “breathe emotionally.” The breath rises upward into the chest and shoulders as the body reorganises itself around vigilance, performance, and protection.
The shoulders lift, the neck tightens, the mind takes over.
And perhaps that is part of the deeper story of our time.
For centuries, we have largely lived within patriarchal systems that have rewarded productivity, certainty, rationality, control, dominance, and relentless forward movement. The mind has been placed upon a throne, while the wisdom of the body, intuition, rest, cycles, relationship, and inner listening have often been dismissed or undervalued. Yet increasingly, many people seem to sense that another way of being is trying to emerge — a growing recognition of the feminine, not as gender, but as principle. A remembering of qualities long pushed aside within both men and women alike.
When I speak of the “feminine” here, I do not mean gender. I mean principle.
A different mode of intelligence.
One rooted not in domination, but in relationship. Not in force, but in listening. Not in mastering life, but in participating within it.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés once described the body as “consort” rather than “slave.” That distinction feels profoundly important to me.
A slave is driven, managed, overridden, expected to perform.
A consort is listened to, walked beside, honoured as intelligent and alive.
How differently might we live if we began to approach our bodies — and perhaps life itself — in this way?
I notice too how much fear often lives beneath our holding. Fear of uncertainty. Fear of collapse. Fear of the unknown. Fear that if we stop gripping so tightly, everything might somehow fall apart.
And perhaps this is why so much modern healing culture can become exhausting too. We strive to heal correctly, release correctly, awaken correctly — trying, often unconsciously, to control our way into peace.
Yet lately I have begun wondering whether healing may have less to do with forcefully “letting go,” and more to do with slowly discovering what it means to trust life, to trust ourselves, and to realise that perhaps true safety and support arise not through control, but through relationship — with the body, with others, and with life itself. Perhaps it is through this growing sense of trust that the body no longer feels the need to hold on in quite the same way.
Not collapse, not passivity, not abandoning discernment.
But a softening, a departure from perpetual bracing.
This question followed me strongly during my recent time on Hawai‘i, especially whilst wild swimming with spinner dolphins. There was a moment when I became aware of how easily longing can turn into pursuit — how the more we chase an experience, the more elusive it can become.
And yet, when we soften, become present, attuned, relational rather than grasping… something entirely different becomes possible.
Perhaps life itself works this way too.
My shoulder continues to teach me.
It is teaching me to put things down, to ask for help, to rest, to soften, to breathe differently, and to become less organised around control and more available to presence.
And perhaps, slowly, to trust that not everything depends entirely upon my holding.
In time, I hope not simply to “fix” my shoulder, but to come into wiser relationship with my body, with life, and with the quiet intelligence that speaks through both.
Because sometimes the body whispers before it cries out.
And perhaps healing begins the moment we finally pause long enough to listen.
As we move toward midsummer, I find myself increasingly aware of how many of us are longing not simply for rest, but for reconnection — with the body, with nature, with meaning, with joy, and with ourselves.
The Summer Solstice Retreat Weekend at beautiful Bossington Chapel on Exmoor is being created very much in that spirit — with story, sound, stillness, movement, fire, community, and time to simply breathe and be.
🌿 Friday Evening Sound Bath
🔥 Saturday Solstice Retreat Day
🌙 Sunday Afternoon Sound Bath & Integration
Friday 19th - Sunday 21st June.
Details and booking here.
Or, as Mary Oliver so tenderly reminded us:
“You do not have to be good.”
