Let it go. Three words you have heard your entire life. And if you are honest with yourself, you have probably nodded politely, agreed yes, and then in private completely failed to. This long somatic talk argues that most teachers have not been honest about what letting go actually is.

Letting go is not something you do. It is what becomes possible when the body finally feels safe enough to stop holding. It is the result of conditions, not the result of will. The thing being held is almost never in the head. It is in the body — resentment in the jaw and shoulders, grief in the chest and diaphragm, old shame in the belly, ungrieved anger in the upper arms. Telling someone in their head to let go of something that is being held in their body is, structurally, a category error.

Guided by Abi Beri — Integrative Therapist and Nervous System Specialist (Dublin, Naas, Newbridge & online) — this is for everyone who has been quietly failing at the one piece of advice the entire culture seems to agree on. The work I do is, in many ways, the slow building of the conditions in which the body can finally, on its own terms, exhale.

Looking for somatic therapy in Dublin, Naas, Newbridge or online from anywhere in Ireland or the world? More at somatictherapyireland.com and blissfulevolution.com.