Shedding The Unnecessary in Our Lives -Letting Go

Chances are if you've been to at least one yoga class, you will hear your teacher telling you to just "let go" to "surrender" but sometimes it's hard to really understand why or how to let go.  The Buddha illustrated through his First Noble Truth that "life is suffering" and that once we accept that fact we can start to learn how to eliminate suffer.  A lot of what makes us suffer in life has to do with wanting something different than the current reality.   This makes us suffer because we are constantly in a state of flux and we will never have things exactly the way we want them.  As soon as we attach and relax into success, a failure will come up; or as soon as we get that job or that relationship maybe something else in our life goes wrong.  Ultimately, we can't hang on to anything ever staying exactly the same. Once we relax into "what is" rather than what we want to change or what we want   more or less of, we begin to have an honest relationship with reality, a feeling of acceptance and ok'ness about life "as it is."
Therefore letting go in yoga for instance means forget about trying to touch your toes in a forward bend, try letting go of your idea of how things should be and relax into the pose as it is. Letting go really means meeting reality face to face and accepting it regardless of your aversion to it.  Letting go means releasing the urge to identify with circumstances and remain calm and focused despite any chaos around you.  Let's take an example here: Sadness.  Does sadness make you suffer?  No, of course not.  The suffering comes when we push away sadness, or feel ashamed of sadness, or perhaps when we deny the feelings of sadness.  The buddha said, "Suffering is Optional" and he had a point.  It's a choice.  
Letting go is a choice.  It can't be forced and will come when we are ready. 
What can you let go of today.  The process of yoga is not to take on new poses, make progress, and beef ourselves up but to rather chip away all of the "stuff" that we don't need.  Think of it as a shedding process as a cat sheds it's fur in the summer, we too shed away all that is unnecessary in our lives. 
Namaste!
Natalie