If you place your finger near a baby’s hand, the baby will sometimes close its fingers around yours, often quite tightly. This is known as the ‘palmar grasp reflex’ and is found in human and primate infants. Biologists speculate that this grasping reflex evolved as an important survival mechanism that still has a useful purpose in young primates who cling onto their mother’s fur to be carried. Although the evolutionary purpose may be a bit more metaphorical, there’s a similar reflex in our minds and emotions that grasps and holds onto some things that enter our experience. These can be pleasant experiences that we don’t want to let go of as well as unpleasant and negative things that we identify with, or that resonate for some reason within us.
So, why do we grasp at some things in our experience, and what makes us hold on to them? Our mental and emotional landscape is rarely flat and featureless; it’s more likely to contain hills and valleys. We tend to grasp things that reinforce our peaks, as well as fill our seemingly empty troughs of need. On top of this, life is not always harmonious, so when we experience discomfort or dissonance, we seek equilibrium, like a chord that needs resolving or a fragment that needs completing. There is also our in-built negativity bias, where we pay greater attention to and process threats more than pleasant experiences, which plays a role in holding onto negative things.
When we grasp, it’s almost like a hand in the mind reaching out at things we strongly identify with, which become part of “who we are”. The grasping impulse comes from the primal and emotional parts of the brain, which, like the baby monkey clinging to its mother, are all about making sure we’re physically safe and emotionally secure.
It’s no surprise that most of us wish that the good things in life would last forever, or at least stay just about the same. Unfortunately, the universe is just not like that; most experience is of things going through a cycle of emerging, playing out, and passing away, including our own bodies. So, it’s no wonder that we have the impulse to hold on, even if this is a futile attempt to deny the transitory and changing nature of reality.
Cultivating mindfulness is not about stopping these impulses. It’s about being more consciously aware of when we grasp and hold onto things, acknowledging whatever it is and allowing them to release.
Mindfulness is about working skilfully with experience as it arises, plays out, and releases. Like standing in the sea and bobbing up and down as the wave passes, rather than standing still and bracing ourselves as the wave crashes into us. Similarly grasping and holding negative thoughts and emotions can damage our health and wellbeing. This can happen if we’re not fully aware as a strong emotion arises, so fail to notice, or a strong emotion arises but we habitually avoid it. Unacknowledged and unprocessed emotions tend to be held in the body long after the triggering event, sometimes for hours, days, weeks, or even years. Researchers tell us that anger lasts about forty-five seconds if acknowledged and left to release naturally. As soon as we entertain thoughts about who’s to blame, for instance, then the anger gets re-energized and continues for much longer. If you notice that an emotion like anger is being held, you can acknowledge the emotion, maybe by mentally noting “there’s some anger”, then letting go and releasing the angry thoughts and feelings, as well as related tension and tightness in the body.
One analogy for taking a mindful approach to how we work with our experience is the difference between holding and storing music on an old iPod and streaming music through a service like Spotify, which is like working with the flow of experience. Being like Teflon, rather than Velcro with your experience is another parallel.
There’s a quote attributed to the ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, that goes, “If I let go of who I am I become who I might be”. Shifting from mindless grasping and holding to working skilfully with the flow of our experience promises freedom, flexibility, and choice in how we respond. By letting go of holding on, we allow ourselves greater energy, emotional resilience, and mental clarity. All we need to do is change the habit of a lifetime.
Suggested weekly practice
- Remember that emotions arise to tell you that something needs attention and to drive you to act. So, acknowledge emotions like anger as they arise, and respond as skilfully as you can, allowing the emotion to flow through you, and dissolve in its own time.
- Check-in with yourself during the day, maybe during a break in activities, and ask, “What am I holding that I can release?”
- Practise letting go and releasing any tension and tightness that builds up over the day.
Guidance
Find somewhere undisturbed and sit in a comfortable, dignified, and upright posture, where you can remain alert and aware.
There are two guided practices for this session. You can close your eyes, or lower your gaze while the meditations play.
- Play the settling practice, then read through the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
- Then play the second practice to explore grasping and holding, releasing, and letting go as you work with the flow of experience.
