How’s your February everyone? Did you make New Year’s resolutions this time around? If so, how is that going?

If the answer is, “Not too well,” I have another approach to offer. Those of you who, like me, chose not to weigh yourself down (or should I say load yourself up) with resolutions, might also consider this alternative. It was gifted to me during a New Year’s Eve Zoom class, hosted by one of my favorite yoga teachers, Kristin Bilella.

Kristin’s invitation at the beginning of class was to write down five things we wanted to let go of during the coming year and five things we wanted to bring into the new year. Once completing our lists, those taking the class at the yoga studio placed their let-go list onto a “flying wish paper” (a specially treated sliver of paper that you roll into a tube, light on fire and then watch float upward). It then disintegrates into ash. Those of us on Zoom were invited to crumble up the let-go list and flush it down the toilet.

Did I flush my list down the toilet? Not right away because it occurred to me that I wanted to be able to look back at that list at some point– to see how successful I had been in letting those five things go. So I decided I would xerox the list the next day and then throw it down the toilet. Which I did. If you are wondering if I felt silly, the answer is yes. But yoga frequently asks of its disciples to lighten up!

As for our lists of what we want to bring into the new year—those we were to put in a safe place and have a look at every once in a while as a reminder during the year.

You may be asking, “What makes this exercise any less fraught than adopting a new year’s resolution?”

For me, it feels very different because listing the things I want to let go of doesn’t carry any commitment with it. I don’t resolve to let go of these things. I don’t promise they won’t come with me into the new year.  I just express a wish to let five........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)