Practicing Letting Go
There's an old story about a monkey and a coconut. And the more I sit with it, the more I think it might be one of the most honest teachings yoga has ever offered us.
Here's how it goes.
Long ago, in a sunny jungle filled with mango trees and chirping birds, there lived a clever monkey named
Hanuman. He was fast, brave, and full of energy. But one day, he learned an important lesson about letting go.
Near the edge of the forest, villagers had placed a strange trap. It was a hollow coconut tied tightly to the ground with a tiny hole in the top. Inside the coconut were sweet treats—juicy nuts and pieces of fruit that smelled delicious.
Hanuman wandered by and sniffed the air.
“Mmm... what is that wonderful smell?” he wondered.
Curious, he peeked inside the coconut and spotted the treats.
Without hesitation, Hanuman slipped his hand through the small hole and grabbed a giant handful of snacks.
But when he tried to pull his hand back out... it got stuck!
Hanuman tugged and pulled.
“Ugh! Why won’t this work?” he grumbled.
He pulled harder and harder, but his fist was too big to fit through the hole while holding the treats.
A wise old parrot watching from a tree called out, “Hanuman! Open your hand!”
“But I want the treats!” Hanuman replied.
The parrot tilted her head gently. “If you refuse to let go, you will stay trapped.”
Hanuman stopped struggling for a moment. He looked at his clenched fist. Then he looked at the open jungle all around him—the trees, the sky, the freedom to leap and run.
Slowly, Hanuman loosened his fingers.
The treats dropped back into the coconut. And just like that—his hand slipped free.
Hanuman laughed out loud and jumped high into the air again.
“I almost traded my freedom for a few snacks!” he said.
The old parrot smiled wisely. “Sometimes the things we hold onto too tightly are the very things that keep us stuck.”
Hanuman never forgot that lesson.
And whenever he felt angry, worried, or stubborn in the future, he would pause and ask himself:
“Is this worth holding onto... or is it time to let go?”
The teaching: Aparigraha
In yoga philosophy, we call this aparigraha. It's one of the yamas the ethical guidelines that form the foundation of yoga practice and it's often translated as non-attachment, or non-grasping. Not taking more than you need. Not holding on so tightly that you lose the ability to move.
And here's what I want you to hear: aparigraha is not about not caring. It's not about becoming a person who floats through life without preferences or feelings or things they love. It's about the grip. It's about the difference between holding something and being held by it.
There's a huge difference between those two things.
The class story
Last week I taught a yin class at our new studio built around this theme. And I have to tell you about what happened, because it became the most alive moment of the whole class for me.
Both of my boys were there with me it's solo parenting season this summer, so that's just how it goes sometimes. My older one was settled. But my three-year-old? He had other plans. Halfway through class, I heard him running down the hallway. Laughing. Asking whoever would listen whatever questions came into his head — and if you know three-year-olds, you know there is no shortage of questions.
I felt it. That little flicker of annoyance. The wish that things were a little more contained, a little more controlled. That this moment could just be easier.
And then I caught myself mid-grip. I was literally teaching aparigraha, and there I was, fist wrapped around my idea of how the class should go.
So I let it go. Not perfectly. Not in some enlightened, graceful way. Just enough. I smiled. I kept teaching. I let my kid be a kid in the hallway. And something shifted.
After class, one of my students came up to me and said she was impressed that I had stayed so present, so focused, so on-theme. And I thought: I almost wasn't. It was a choice, made in a split second, to practice what I was preaching.
The invitation
I'm not telling you this story to say look how evolved I am. I'm telling it because I want you to know this is hard. Embodying the teachings of yoga is genuinely, honestly hard. It doesn't happen because you've been practicing for years or because you know all the Sanskrit. It happens in the ordinary moments, when something irritates you or disappoints you or doesn't go the way you planned.
That's where the practice lives.
And I also completed the classroom portion of my yoga nidra teacher training recently I'm now deep in my 40-day sadhana to finish it out. And yoga nidra, at its core, is also about this. About releasing. About moving into the space between holding on and letting go.
So here's what I want to leave you with today. What is your sweet treat inside the coconut? What are you gripping so tightly that it's keeping you stuck keeping your fist closed when all you'd have to do is open your hand?
It might be a story you keep telling yourself. A relationship you're holding onto past its natural end. An expectation of how summer is supposed to look. An idea of who you're supposed to be.
You don't have to drop everything. You just have to notice the grip. And ask yourself: is this worth holding onto? Or is this the thing that's keeping me from walking free?
That's aparigraha. That's the practice.
I'll see you next week. And in the meantime open your hand.
Nourished & Rooted
I have opened up a new 1:1 eight-week Yoga and Ayurveda program. We can meet in-person or virtual. I crafted this for those "it depends" questions — so you can have those answers for yourself. Learning Ayurveda can be like learning a new language and seeing the world through a different lens. If you want to go deeper with your yoga or Ayurveda framework, you can read more about this new program above.
