Hygge Spiritual Practice: 2 Brief Letting Go Exercises

You could easily do either of these exercises at anytime during the day. When you first get up, while drinking your morning or afternoon tea. With your children, as you complete a day of homeschooling or at bedtime. With your family, just before or after dinner. Try them several times in one day and take note of how you feel at the end, writing down your thoughts & feelings in your journal just before you go to bed that night.

Hygge Letting Go Tealight Exercise

This is a great exercise for daily transitions from one moment to another. You can do it as you sip your morning tea, or at the end of your day, or anytime your kids need a tealight break.

If your kids are in school, you could use it when they come home, to let go of any stress from their day at school.

You'll need a tealight candle. I'd get a box or a bag, so you'll always have one when you need it. And scrap paper or tiny post-it notes, with a pencil to write down whatever you are letting go with this exercise.

At times, you also may need more time and process so that the letting go doesn't happen so fast, it hardly seems real. During those moments, take your time.

Make a cup of tea, write a little more about the situation in your journal and then, when you feel completely ready to let go, then you can move on to the rest of the exercise.

On a slip of paper write down the negative thought, negative moment or painful feeling you want to let go of and place it beneath your tealight candle. Light the candle and sip your tea, imagining that as the tealight burns away, so is whatever you are letting go of in that moment.

Once it has burned down fully, the letting go exercise is complete. Notice how you feel, but if you don't notice any change in the way you feel yet, don't worry.

Sometimes it takes time for your mind, body, heart and soul to process a change that has just occurred. But with any letting go exercise, your intention itself is powerful. The exercise is a physical demonstration and following through on the commitment you made to let go.

Eventually - and sometimes, it will happen almost immediately - you will feel differently about whatever you let go of and when you think of it in the future, you won't react the same way.

Hygge Letting Go Exercise with Water

 
This is a great exercise to do throughout the day whenever something has knocked you off center, or in the transition moments between different activities.

You'll need a hand soap whose scent you adore so much, it makes you enjoy washing your hands. And if you can, find a hand lotion in the same scent. Or one that combines well.

Do you remember the song about washing that man out of your hair? In a way, this letting go exercise borrows a bit of that idea.

You use it whenever there is a feeling or situation that you want to let go of, and you literally wash it away. As you wash your hands, set the intention to let it go and as you rinse your hands, imagine that the feeling or moment you want to release is going down the drain.

Afterward, rub lotion onto your hands and imagine that you are rubbing out any remaining stress and massaging in peace.

You could do that for your children, too, when they've had an upsetting moment. Let them wash it down the drain and then you add the moment of love and peace with lotion.

A variation could be doing the same thing while taking a bath or shower. And you could suggest it to your children during their bath time.

You could lengthen this exercise by making a cup of tea and writing everything out in your journal first. For some, it helps to pause longer, and really think through and feel the moment you want to let go of, so that you take more note of the transition and slow down the process of change.

I have needed that extra processing myself for things that were particularly worrisome or upsetting.  You might find that you need that, too.

Gentle Disclaimer

I just want to mention that I am not talking about trauma or major life changes like divorce or losing someone you loved or trying to make a difficult change like to stop smoking.

Moving through big changes like those or others takes time. I certainly care about your healing those issues, too, but they are not what I have in mind here.

It doesn't mean you can't journal about them, too, and do rituals to help them heal. But that is not the kind of shift I am talking about in this post or offering help with here.

These exercises are meant for everyday letting go moments.

Like letting go of the bad dream you had last night, or the argument you had this morning with your spouse. Or helping your child let go of a bad mood.

Or letting go of the stress you feel after worrying about a problem or thinking about this afternoon's traffic jam.

Or the snippy tone someone took with you while you were running an errand. Or the way you felt when your daughter snapped at you because she didn't feel like putting away her toys. Etc.

Even those everyday stresses can build up to become more if you let them hang around, rent-free, so these exercises can help you let go of them before they become bigger problems, like a headache, backache or upset stomach.

Try one of the exercises and let me know how it goes. Go wash something away and notice how it felt to let it go.

Wishing you peace!

Love, Jeanine