Try These Steps for Letting Go

To begin, it may be best to start by practicing with minor concerns before moving onto major worries or negative thoughts.

1) To begin the practice, sit down in a chair and adopt a relaxed and alert posture.

• Ask yourself:

  What am I experiencing right now? What thoughts are around, what feelings are around, and what body sensations?

• Allow yourself to just acknowledge, observe and describe these experiences to yourself, without trying to change them or answer the thoughts back.
• Spend 30 seconds to 1 minute just doing this.

2) Now bringing your focus of awareness to your breath, focusing on the sensations of your breath as it moves back and forth in your belly.

• Binding your awareness to the back and forth movements of the sensations in your belly from moment to moment, and letting all thoughts go.
• Maybe say to yourself ‘relax’ or ‘let go’ on each outward breath.
• Spend about 30 seconds to 1 minute doing this.

3) Now expanding your awareness to sensing your whole body breathing, be aware of sensations throughout your body.

• If there are any strong feelings around, maybe saying to yourself “whatever it is, it is OK, just let me feel it.”
• Allowing yourself to breathe with these feelings, and if your mind wanders to bothersome thoughts just acknowledge and let go of these - focusing back on sensing your breath.
• Continue doing this for about 1 minute.

TIP: You can try increasing the time of steps 2 & 3 as you start to get more familiar with this skill.

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