Letting Go of the Old to Make Room for the New

The start of a new year is a beautiful time of renewal for everyone. It provides an opportunity to set new goals and to evaluate one’s progress through life. Most people set resolutions to improve themselves in some way or to accomplish something worthwhile. I hope you have made some plans for yourself, too.

I have one question for you, though: Have you made your energy resolutions? I ask this because you will have a difficult time keeping your New Year’s resolutions if you don’t consider the energy underlying your habits and mindsets. To do so, I recommend checking all three of your energy bodies—physical, mental, and spiritual—and letting go of anything blocking your progress.

Clearing Your Physical Energy

The most common resolutions for the new year involve physical improvements of some sort, such as losing weight or getting in better shape. Letting go of tensions held within the body, which is essentially stagnant energy, will help make the process of achieving these goals much easier.

To help release tension from the body, I first recommend breathing and deep relaxation exercises. Start by lying down on your back on a firm, flat surface that is comfortable but that won’t cause you to fall asleep. Then, with your arms slightly away from your body and your palms up, begin to scan down your body, head to toe, noticing where you are holding tension.

Breathe in through your nose, filling your chest slowly with air, and then exhale through your mouth as you relax your body completely, more and more deeply with each exhalation. Keep a normal, relaxed breathing rhythm without holding your breath. Continue to scan your body as you breathe. If you notice a body part holding tension, focus your attention on that area, imagining energy flooding in as the area becomes more and more relaxed.

Clearing Your Mental Energy

Letting go of negative emotions held as conscious and unconscious memories in the mind is critical for any kind of change in your life since negative patterns and habits often have mental and emotional roots.

To begin, take a mental inventory of what you have been holding on to emotionally. Is there some hurt from the past that you keep returning to in your mind? Do you feel angry or sad about something that happened last year or even longer ago? If so, it is time to let the past be the past and to come back to the present. Essentially, you are wasting the energy you need today on old, irrelevant events if you can’t let go of them.

For this, I recommend some visualization exercises. First, make sure you are completely relaxed, perhaps by using the breathing and relaxation exercise mentioned above. Then, sit comfortably either in a chair with your arms to the side or in a traditional meditation posture, such as a half lotus posture. With your eyes closed, imagine yourself walking along a path in a forest with a large backpack and several packages tucked under your arms. These burdens are full of all your held emotions—old resentments, jealousies, sadness, and so forth. You can even name them in your mind: “The backpack holds my childhood hurts,” “That package is my loneliness,” and so on.

Now, imagine a bright energy coming into you body from the sun, penetrating the top of your head and infusing all your body. As more and more energy enters your body, the stronger you feel and the lighter your burdens become. One by one, the burdens drop to the ground as you let go of them, saying to yourself, “This emotion is now in the past and only in the past,” as each one falls. You are now free and refreshed.

Clearing Your Spiritual Energy

Clearing your spiritual energy is about letting go of information that is false or counterproductive to your growth. This may include preconceptions, beliefs, and biases that cause you to behave in opposition to your own True Self or soul.

The goal is to reestablish the bright energy of your soul, which is always there but may be hidden behind such information. To do this, start with the two relaxation and visualization exercises above, and then add the following visualization.

Begin by sitting comfortably in a chair or in a traditional meditation posture, as you did for the second exercise above, the mental clearing visualization. Sit up straight to form a straight line from the top of your head to the bottom of your spine. As you breathe comfortably, imagine a beam of light coming down from heaven, like a ray of sunshine, directly into the top of your head. Visualize your brain lighting up with bright energy as the dark energy of the unhelpful information is whisked away with each exhalation. As you brain grows brighter and brighter, it lights up the entire world.

Make a Clean Energy Habit

Just like any change, clarifying your energy takes time and practice. Without regular maintenance, your energy will tend to go back to its old state. Tension will return to the body, negative emotions will linger in the mind, and your soul’s brightness will be hidden away. But don’t forget that your energy is the basis of all you do; it guides your decisions, affects your interactions with others, and regulates your power to effect change in the world. For that reason, it’s important to observe your own energy regularly and to find ways to clarify your energy by letting go of anything that bogs you down.