Have you been in a yoga class and your teacher asks you to “let go of your day” or “let go of your shopping list” etc. I have heard this countless times and also, guilty I know I have said this myself in the past. You too? no shame or guilt here, but lets get more refined! Letting go is not something that the mind does, the mind simply can place its attention on something and form mental and emotional patterns around that something. The beautiful thing about being human is we actually have the choice as to where we place our attention. The challenging thing is that we also have a number of thought and emotional patterns that are extremely easy to get distracted by. If you keep thinking about something that you want to let go of, this is simply a pattern of the mind. It is still processing something, or it is addicted to the past because our identity or belief system is wrapped up in it. If you identity revolves around “I am not good enough” than your mind will play a loop of all that really intense time when your parent, friend or teacher said something vaguely sounding like that statement. Sometimes you need to go into that thought pattern or memory and work through whatever needs to be worked through in order to unwind that pattern and other times you need to shift your attention toward the moment, or toward whatever you are creating in your life. Either way, letting go requires that you SHIFT your attention. This requires willful effort. No amount of relaxing will get you out of the thought pattern, or memory that is on a loop. I am not referring to relaxing your body and going to sleep – I am talking about the effort inside the walls of your mind. To make this clearer lets talk about Abhyasa and Vairagya. Be sure to watch the video below as well.