The Mickel Therapy Clinic, Auckland, Mickel Therapy - contact Kim or book a session
by Dr David Mickel
"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be."
Lao Tzu
We frequently talk about emotions within Mickel Therapy, how they are produced and how we need to work with them. However, we often find that in many arenas people are encouraged simply to let go of their emotions; the phrase, “let them go over your head” is one we have all encountered in our lives. The problem with letting them go over your head is that the nature of emotional energy is such that this cannot happen and they enter our physical cells and create or maintain dysfunction of our cells.
So this begs the question of whether there is any place for simply letting go within our lives. The answer to this question is yes, but what we let go of is the most important. Too frequently in our culture emotions and behaviour are lumped together as one-morphed phenomena when in actual fact they are two distinct things that need to be viewed and dealt with separately. How often have we heard that anger is blamed when people behave in an angry or aggressive manner. It’s not the anger that is at fault but the chosen response to that emotion of anger.
“You got to look at things with the eye in your heart, not with the eye in your head.”
Lame Deer, Medicine Man of the Oglala people
In recognising this we can see that it is not emotions that need to be ‘let go’ but the destructive or unhelpful behaviours that are often implemented when emotions arise. We often think that we are our behaviours primarily because they are often unconscious and patterned in that we exhibit them without thinking. When we allow ourselves to feel and experience our emotions more readily within our lives we can begin to identify the most appropriate behaviours that will allow the energy of emotion to flow and ultimately us to feel happier and healthy.
So recognise that changing some behaviours in subtle ways does not mean that you’ll loose a sense of who you are, rather it will enable you to be more of who you really are by letting your true nature flow. This after all is the embodiment of our emotions – they are representative of our true self whether we like it or not. So the other thing to let go off is the wrong assumption that you can change these waves of truth known as emotion. They arise spontaneously beyond our control and we only have control over our responses to them. We ignore them at our peril.
"People ask what must they become to be loving.
The answer is ‘nothing.’
It is a process of letting go of what you thought you had become
and allowing your true nature to float to the surface naturally."
Stephen Levine