What Yoga Taught Me About Letting Go – The Best Lesson of 2025

In my mental ear I heard my body squeak like an old wooden door in an abandoned ghost house. The imagined sound was so loud that I almost feared that the other participants would hear it.

I felt so out of place. So hopelessly stiff. I watched them, their lean bodies bending as if they had no bones, with an ease and grace that I could only admire.

But… I kept on trying. After three months with daily practice, I had the vague sensation that things were getting slightly better (I can already touch my toes without bending my legs), but real progress, so I thought, could be measured in millimeters only. It was my husband’s suggestion to attend those classes. A coincidence? Or did he sense that I urgently needed this new impulse? From today’s perspective, what changed most was an improved clarity of my thoughts, like the fog lifting after a long mental exhaustion. Especially after the breathing sessions.

The day before attending the three-day Winter Solstice Yoga Immersion and its pranayama practice on December 22nd, 23rd and 24th, I finally asked my teacher the “progress” question.

On the last day, she provided the answer, echoing Patañjali on abhyāsa (steady practice) and vairāgya (non-attachment): show up, do the work, and loosen your grip on how fast or how perfectly you advance.

The only thing you have to care about is practice.

The only thing you have to do is your best.

Until there is nothing more to add.

Then again. And again.

As long as you can.

And then, let go.

Doing is more important than aiming at a specific result.

Never judge yourself by progress. Do not wait for progress. Do not even aim for progress. It comes in a totally unexpected way: the moment you let go of wanting it. Or it doesn’t come at all. Which is also totally fine. Because you did your best. As long as you could.

And this attitude is valid not only in yoga, but in every aspect of life. The harder we try, the more we block ourselves: wrong breathing, cortisol rising, stress from wanting it too much, health issues … all of it blocking the very progress we are looking for.

Do your best. That’s all. Then let go.

Yoga, I realized, is inviting us into a different relationship with effort: do your best, stay aligned with your values, and then consciously release the need for a specific result.

2025 was marked by a story of trying to control an outcome and hitting the limit of control.

It ended in total exhaustion and my strategic withdrawal. I thought I had failed. But… what I actually did was protect my capacity for work that matters.

On December 23rd, the second day of our Yoga immersion, our teacher read us Yoga Sūtra I.33 and that’s where it hit me.

Patañjali suggests a completely different way of meeting people:

• Friendliness / loving-kindness (maitrī) toward those who are happy.
• Compassion (karuṇā) toward those who suffer.
• Joy or delight (muditā) toward those who are virtuous or doing good.
• Equanimity / wise indifference (upekṣā) toward those behaving in harmful or “wicked” ways.

I recently let go of a project. And a person. And kept wondering all this time, again, what was wrong with me, being able to let go like this. Without looking back.

Because I’ve done that before.

Not often but if I do, then it is final. Leaving when enough was just … enough. And never looking back.

And yet, for years I secretly wondered … what kind of person am I to be able to switch to total indifference at some moment? What has to accumulate to be able to do that? On Tuesday 23rd of December 2025, I got the answer: my reaction is nothing more nor less than a healthy nervous system responding to harm and exhaustion. It has absolutely nothing to do with character failure.

I had invested myself too much in a specific “mission” and the opposite happened. This gap between my values and reality resulted in a painful and constant conflict – the opposite of what was supposed to happen. I realized: you cannot teach if it is not wanted.

When I am standing outside of such a situation, I see it clearly. It is a completely different thing when you are in the middle of it. When friendliness, compassion, and joy meet chronic wickedness, negativity, aggression and distrust, equanimity becomes the only sustainable response. This isn’t a failure – it’s intelligent boundary-setting.

Even experts need reminders. My teacher Marie gave me the language for what my nervous system already knew: sometimes the most powerful communication is strategic silence.

Letting go.

Thank you, Marie, for this inspiration.