The Practice of Letting Go: Why Holding On Keeps You Stuck PART 2

The harder we try to fix something, the more we actually hold on to it.

Take impatience (not speaking from experience, of course!):

You can’t really practice being patient by forcing yourself to be patient. You can, however, become aware of your impatience.

What triggers it? What are you expecting? What happens when things don’t happen as quickly as you want? What pattern have you developed around needing things to happen now?

Letting go isn’t about forcing yourself to stop being impatient. It’s about understanding what is underneath the impatience. The same can be true physically. “No pain, no gain” has no place in chronic pain. Forcing a nervous system that already feels threatened isn’t necessarily going to make it feel safer.

We don’t learn safety by forcing ourselves into the deepest end, hoping we’ll adapt. We learn through experiences that our nervous system can actually process.

Small steps, manageable movement, attention, breathing, repetition and evidence.

Letting go doesn’t mean giving up. It doesn’t mean surrendering nor accepting that you’ll always be in pain. It means accepting where you are today. It means letting go of what you used to be able to do, of the fear of what might happen. Letting go of the need to control every sensation, of some of the tension you’ve been holding.

Sometimes it means allowing yourself to feel the pain without immediately fighting it, taking a breath. Relaxing around it. Observing it and noticing what happens.

Does it change? Does it move? Does it soften? Does it dissipate? You are not giving the pain permission to stay. You’re giving yourself permission to stop fighting it for a moment. And that can be a surprisingly different experience.

I worked with someone experiencing very acute shoulder pain.

The pain was affecting their ability to make a living. They were frightened for the future and were full of tension. They had spent a lot of time and money looking for answers and had been told that there was nothing structurally wrong with their shoulder and to keep stretching and resting. They came to me desperate.

We started by looking at the evidence. Together, we looked at the scans and the facts. We looked at the information from their medical team.

Their body was structurally sound, that didn’t mean nothing was happening. The stress, tension and worry were very real, and this was acknowledged and understood. The pain was also real!

So we started gently, we explored movement, paid attention to the pain rather than immediately fighting it. We used breathing, worked with small movements and gave their body opportunities to experience something different. We observed without fearing the pain by gently providing signals of safety.

Slowly, they began to realize something. Their body could move, the pain could change. They could move without the pain they had been expecting.

Something else happened. They started to believe there was hope and with that hope came results. The tension began to release. They could breathe more easily, move better and sleep better. Their confidence began to return slowly.

This is what letting go can look like. Sometimes you can actually see it. There’s a smile… a deeper breath. More freedom in the movement. A little less fear.

And it’s simply the moment when someone realizes: “Maybe I don’t have to hold on so tightly anymore.”

Sometimes, letting go is emotional.

It can be powerful to tell yourself: “I’m safe. I’m okay. I don’t have to hold everything so tightly.”

You can fully fill up your lungs, relax a little. You can take a slightly bigger step. You can test something you’ve been afraid to test. Not because you’re forcing yourself to get better. But because you’re giving yourself the opportunity to discover what happens when you stop protecting yourself in quite the same way.

Letting go isn’t about doing less. It’s about fighting less, understanding what you’re holding, why you’re holding it, and whether you still need to hold it in the same way.

Because the things that once protected you may not be the things you need to protect you now.

Letting go is one great first step to take!

And for me it’s beautiful to witness.

Your Body Is Your Instrument… Treat It Like One

Across very different professions; musicians, construction workers, surgeons, hair stylists, nurses, I keep noticing the same underlying pattern:

A body that is relied on, but is rarely treated as something that needs care. You start your work day doing what you do best. Your skills are what you are there for but these skills are performed by your instrument: your body. The demands look different on the surface, but the relationship to the body is often similar: constant use, repetition, precision, endurance, and performance under pressure. Before a musician plays they tune their instrument, it’s the necessary preparation; but what about your body? It will be performing for hours…

And over time, something becomes normalized. Discomfort gets managed. Fatigue gets pushed through. Tension becomes constant background noise.

This mindset is simple and understandable: “It’s part of the job.” But the cost of that mindset is substantial but rarely immediate. The body adapts. It compensates. It tightens. It reorganizes itself around demand.

Until what once felt like strain begins to feel normal.

What’s interesting is the contrast.

A musician will spend years maintaining their instrument, adjusting, tuning, repairing, preserving its sensitivity and responsiveness. But their own body, the very system producing the sound, is often treated with far less attention.

The same is true across many fields. We maintain the external tool. We push the body.

If a construction worker or hair stylist were to begin treating their body with the same level of care, maintenance, and precision as their professional tools, something fundamental would shift.

Not because the work would change. But because the relationship to themselves would.

Your body is not separate from the performance. It is the instrument through which everything is done. And when that becomes clear, not just intellectually, but practically, the question is no longer “how much can I push through?”

It becomes: “What does my body need in order to keep performing well over time?”

What Working With Performing Artists Has Taught Me

My work has involves supporting classical and jazz musicians and performing artists across Canada and Europe. Depending on the individual and their needs, I also often work in coordination with physicians and other healthcare professionals as part of a broader care team.

Performing artists develop remarkable levels of discipline, focus, repetition, and commitment to their craft. They learn to perform under pressure, manage demanding schedules, and maintain a high level of consistency even when conditions are not ideal.

For many, travel schedules are exhausting. Time zone changes add further strain, sleep becomes fragmented. Some weeks, simply figuring out what day it is or which country you’re in, can feel like part of the job description. Routines that normally anchor the body become harder to maintain. Balancing performance, rehearsals, recovery, and personal life requires constant adaptation.

In many ways, this ability to adapt is one of their greatest strengths.

At the same time, I have noticed that the same capacity for adaptation can sometimes make it difficult to recognize when the body or nervous system has been carrying more than it can comfortably sustain.

Tension becomes normal. Fatigue becomes expected.

A constant background effort develops , often so familiar it no longer registers as unusual. Discomfort is managed, worked around, or pushed through in order to meet the demands of performance, rehearsal, travel, teaching, or daily practice.

Over time, these adjustments can become so familiar that they no longer stand out as separate concerns. They simply become part of how life and performance are experienced.

What I find particularly interesting is that many of these patterns are not unique to musicians.

I see similar adaptations in people living with chronic pain, ongoing stress, anxiety, caregiving responsibilities, and other forms of long-term demand.

The environment may be different, but the underlying process is often similar: the body and nervous system adapt in order to keep functioning, often without the person fully noticing how much has been normalized along the way.

For musicians, however, these patterns are often easier to observe because performance creates such a direct relationship between their body, attention, emotion, and nervous system.

For many performers, the body is not simply something they use. It is the instrument through which they express their craft.

Over time, this has become an important part of how I understand both performance and recovery.