Held energy

I started reading a book I bought a few years ago but had never finished and it was exactly what I needed to read right now. It's called Saying Yes to Change: Essential Wisdom for Your Journey by Joan Borysenko and Gordon Dveirin.

I'd like to share a passage that I particularly liked:

Life is renewed only when held energy can leave our bodies, often in the form of discharged emotion such as the tears of grief or the physical shaking of fear. Letting go is initially just this: a physical exhalation of held energy. Bioenergetic psychologist Alexander Lowen defined freedom as the absence of inner restraint to the flow of feeling. Imagine yourself as having an interior zoo effectively shut down by powerful elephants of restraint, and then imagine the enormous relief when that immovable power is finally set free.

Letting go or emptying our bodies of accumulated stress is essential so our barrels don't overflow. As Gordon Dveirin says: "life is a continually self-renewing stream of energy, charging and discharging". However, when energy or stress is not discharged, havoc can ensue. That's why body based therapies, and therapies that include the body, are so practical and effective. As Arthur Ashe said "Analysis is paralysis". We're not going to solve everything with our mind or brain, the body is a huge resource in our healing journeys if we honour and listen to what it is saying.