Pratyāhāra: Inward Turning at the Solstice

Fresh back from a sweat lodge retreat, and still integrating what moved through me over the weekend, I feel like sharing now. While it’s still alive in my body.

It was my very first sweat lodge experience. I went in with no expectations — and honestly, no real knowledge of what happens in a sweat lodge or what the experience is “meant” to be.

All I knew was this: I love the outdoors, I love cold dipping, and I lose my mojo when I’m cooped up inside just because the weather’s cold. So when the opportunity appeared on my feed, something in me simply said yes. There was barely time for my brain to chime in with a “but what about…?”

No overthinking. No elaborate preparation. Just gathering what I needed for chilly nights in my van, grabbing my waterproofs and wellies I’d left with a friend, and trusting the pull.

Letting Go…

Before we entered the lodge — and even before the significant preparation that comes with it — our sharing circle revealed a familiar theme: letting go.

Letting go of thoughts. Behaviours. Beliefs. Situations. Old stories.

And then, at some point, held inside the lodge — in that sanctity, in the deepest blackness  — the same whether my eyes were open or closed — something landed in me with surprising clarity:

The body is letting go all the time.

We shed skin.

We pee and poop.

We breathe out.

We sweat.

Letting go isn’t some lofty concept we have to “achieve” — it’s a natural, essential part of being alive. It’s how the body releases what it no longer needs so that renewal can take place.

It’s part of homeostasis.

Part of the cyclical intelligence of nature.

Part of the ongoing rhythm that supports life.

As I had this thought, two things happened at once.

First, I noticed how obvious it sounded — almost laughably simple.

And at the same time, I felt a deeper, more visceral understanding of it. Not just a reiteration of something I already felt, but a deeper knowing that landed even more fully in my body.

That’s the thing about true learning, isn’t it?

Sometimes the most profound insights arrive as something you already “know”… and yet it lands on a completely different layer.

And yes — layers.

I can’t even say that word without thinking of the classic “layers of an onion”… and then Donkey in Shrek insisting it’s more like a parfait.

“Parfaits have layers!”

And Then What…

If letting go is part of a process then, when we say we want to let go of something, what is the follow-through?

“I want to stop biting my nails…” Because?

“I want to stop eating sugar…” Because?

What comes next?

What’s the bigger picture?

What are we wanting to make space for?

Letting go, in its fullest sense, is rarely just about stopping something. It’s about releasing what no longer serves life — so that life can move through us more freely.

If you’d like to explore what you’re ready to let go of — and what comes next — I have a limited number of half-price consultations available this January, for Lifestyle Prescriptions® Health Coaching and the Buttafly Technique & Natural Back Care.

Click here to book now.