The Body Knows Before the Mind Does
- SURBHI TAYLIA
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Why letting go is not a mental decision — and three somatic practices to actually release what you're carrying.
Expanding on : AN ART — LETTING GO
By: Surbhi Taylia : Spiritual Life Coach
In my original post on letting go, I offered you the image of a beach — sand slipping through your fingers, shells you can carry as long as you choose. The wisdom of knowing which is which. Many of you wrote to me: I want to understand this but its confusing and it's hard . I know I need to let go. And I still cannot.
That gap — between understanding and actually releasing — is where today's post lives. Because here is something that took me years to fully understand: letting go is not a mental decision. If the grief, the anger, the fear is living in your body — in your tight shoulders, your clenched jaw, your chronically held belly — the mind's decision means nothing. The body has not received the message.
Why You Can Understand Letting Go and Still Not Do It
The master's beads story I shared — holding the beads and letting them settle to stillness, neither pulled in nor pushed away — is one of the most precise teachings on non-attachment I know. But here is what that wisdom teaching doesn't address: the body does not care about wisdom teachings. The body responds to experience.
When a person loses a relationship, the body doesn't just experience an emotional event. It experiences a threat response. The stress hormones mobilise. The nervous system scans for danger. And if that response is not completed — if the grief is not allowed to move through the body — it stays. Lodged in the hips, the chest, the throat, the jaw. Sometimes for years.
Life is a balance between holding on and letting go.: Rumi
The Duality Teaching — What It Asks of the Body
In my original blog I wrote about duality — you know light because there is dark, strength because you experienced weakness. This teaching becomes medicine when the body receives it — not just when the mind hears it.
There is a story of a Zen monk who built an extraordinarily beautiful sandcastle on the beach. He spent an entire day — intricate, detailed, layered. At sunset, the tide came in. As the ocean dissolved his work, the monk watched with complete equanimity, even a slight smile. A child nearby began to cry. "Aren't you sad? Your sandcastle is gone." The monk looked gently: "The sandcastle is not gone. It has returned to the ocean. I always knew it was borrowed." We are all building sandcastles. The art of letting go is not refusing to build them. It is remembering — while you build — that they were always borrowed.
You surrender to the process of action, but release the need to know the outcome. — Surbhi Taylia
Three-Pillar Practice: Where Letting Go Becomes Physical
PILLAR 1 · BREATHWORK
Ksepana Mudra + Lion's Breath
Interlace all fingers, index fingers pointing down toward earth. Inhale deeply. Then exhale — mouth wide, tongue out toward chin, loud "HAAAA." Three rounds. Feel the release in your jaw, your chest. That release is your body completing what your mind began.
PILLAR 2 · RESTORATIVE
PILLAR 3 · JOURNALING
The Light Visualisation + Writing
Use my original white light visualisation. Then immediately write: (1) What I am releasing today (2) What holding this has cost me (3) What fills the space when I finally let this go. That third question is the most important one.
The wound is the place where the light enters you.: Rumi
I want to return to the beach image from my original blog — the sand, the shells, the ocean. Nothing we hold is truly ours. Everything we love is borrowed. And the most gracious thing we can do — for ourselves, for others, for life itself — is to hold what we hold lightly. To let the things that need to go, go. With love. Without clenching.
The letting go visualisation in my original blog is a tool I use with clients regularly. If you would like to take this deeper — to release something specific with support — come find me.
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