The Art of Letting Go

As the trees begin to shed their leaves, nature offers us a reminder of the beauty in letting go.

In Chinese medicine, autumn is associated with the Metal element, which teaches us about release, refinement, and completion — the end of one cycle before the next begins.

For many of us, though, letting go doesn’t come easily. I’m never sure how helpful it is to tell someone to “just let go”. It often feels tangled with self-judgment:
“Why can’t I just move on?”
“What’s wrong with me that I’m still holding on to this?”

I see this often in my acupuncture practice.
A woman might come in exhausted from trying to hold everything together — her fertility journey, her family, her work — feeling the weight of needing to do it all.
She longs to relax, to surrender, but when she tries to loosen her grip, it feels frightening. Her body tightens, her breath becomes shallow, and she blames herself.

Instead of forcing a letting go, a meditation teacher I love, Cory Muscara, offers another way of seeing this. He writes:

“If you want to let go, fall madly in love with the part of you that is holding on.
The reason we don’t let go is not due to a lack of will.
The reason we don’t let go is because we’re afraid of what we would have to feel,
or what it would say about us, if we actually accepted the truth of where e are.”

The part of us that holds on isn’t bad or broken — it’s protective.
It’s the part that doesn’t want us to feel hurt, alone, or unloved.
When we can meet this part with compassion rather than frustration, something within us begins to soften.

In the body, this softening might feel like a deep exhale after holding your breath for too long.
In the heart, it might feel like relief — the recognition that you were never doing it wrong.

So this autumn, instead of trying to make yourself let go, perhaps you could simply allow yourself to see the part that’s still holding on — and offer it kindness.
Like the trees, we don’t force our leaves to fall.
When the time is right, and the season within us shifts, release happens naturally.

With love,

Jo x