The Art of Letting Go – How Your Nervous System Learns to Release What No Longer Serves You
- Brainz Magazine
- 2 days ago
- 9 min read
Written by Ada Garza, The Transition Alchemist
Ada Garza is the founder of Love.Alchemy.Life, guiding individuals and corporate leaders through life transitions using emotional alchemy, breathwork, and energy healing. She helps transmute emotional chaos into clarity, enabling clients to embody resilience, reconnect with their soul, and lead with presence and purpose.
Your body knows. Even when your mind keeps telling you, “I’m fine,” your nervous system is holding onto what you’ve been pretending to release all year. The unfinished conversations. The patterns you swore you’d break. The chapters you said were closed but never actually sealed.
Your nervous system doesn’t lie. It keeps score. And it won’t relax until you do the work of genuinely letting go.
What most people miss about year-end reflection is this: it’s not about positive thinking or gratitude practices. It’s about helping your nervous system finally downregulate from holding what’s no longer yours to carry. When we don’t consciously release, our nervous system stays locked in a low-grade vigilance, still protecting us from a situation that no longer exists, still braced against an ending we never actually finished.
The end of the year isn’t just a calendar marker. It’s an opportunity to help your nervous system complete what it’s been holding, integrate what it’s learned, and prepare for the next cycle from a place of genuine safety and clarity.
Letting go: What your nervous system actually needs
Letting go is rarely easy, not because we’re weak, but because our nervous systems are designed to hold on. Attachment, even to pain, feels safer than the unknown. Your nervous system would rather know what it’s protecting against than face the vulnerability of release.
But conscious endings are vital. They send a signal to your nervous system: this chapter is complete. We are safe to move forward. We don’t need to keep protecting against this anymore.
Sometimes, this signal needs to be tangible. It needs to be something your body can feel shifting. For me, this year came in the form of finally signing my divorce paperwork, a process that had lingered for almost three years. Not being in a rush to sign the divorce papers wasn’t about emotional closure. I had already mentally moved on. But my nervous system hadn’t received the signal that this door was officially closed. Some part of me was still in a state of unfinished business, still expending energy on a situation that no longer existed.
When my ex-husband reached out in October, I moved immediately. I signed the papers, and he submitted them. And here’s what happened: my nervous system exhaled.
That’s not a metaphor. Your body literally changes state when you complete something your nervous system has been holding as “unresolved.” Your baseline activation drops. Your breathing becomes fuller. The tension you didn’t even realize you were carrying releases.
This is integration at the level of the nervous system. Not thinking about the past differently, but actually allowing your body to receive the signal: it’s done. We can rest now.
The three stages of year-end release: Feel, transform, embody
As your year winds toward completion, your nervous system needs three things to genuinely let go and prepare for what comes next.
Feel: What are you actually holding?
Before you can release anything, your nervous system needs permission, actually, to feel what it’s been carrying. You don’t need to intellectualize it. You do not need to analyze it. You need to feel it.
Most of us skip this step. We go straight to “I’m moving forward” without letting our bodies acknowledge what we’re leaving behind. The rush to move forward is why so many year-end reflections don’t actually create change. Your nervous system never got the signal that something shifted, because you never let it feel the weight of what you were carrying in the first place.
During the final two weeks of this year, I did something unconventional. I let myself feel the full heaviness of 2025, not through journaling or therapy, though those help, but through physical clearing.
I deep-cleaned every room in my house, the closets, the fridge, the freezer. I sorted through finances. I scheduled doctor appointments I’d been avoiding. I attended to my car, as it needed some updates. These weren’t just practical tasks, they were acts of somatic processing.
Here’s the nervous system science: when your body moves through physical space, when you touch things and decide what stays and what goes, when you organize and release, your nervous system is actually processing at a cellular level. You’re not just thinking about what to keep, you’re embodying the choice. Your nervous system learns through movement and action far more effectively than through thought alone.
Transform: Integration turns experience into wisdom
Once your nervous system has felt what it’s been holding, transformation happens, but not how you think. Transformation isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about your nervous system finally integrating experiences so they stop controlling you. Integration is the difference between “I failed at that,” which stays locked in your body as shame, hypervigilance, and protective bracing, and “I learned from that,” which is stored as wisdom, accessible and grounded.
When you genuinely integrate, your nervous system releases the protective armor it built around those experiences. It doesn’t need to keep you hypervigilant against that particular threat anymore because the lesson has been incorporated.
This year, I took stock of everything: what worked, what didn’t, where I grew, where I stumbled. Not from a place of self-criticism, but from genuine curiosity. What did my nervous system learn that will serve me in the next cycle?
The divorce paperwork completion taught me that small completions create significant nervous system shifts. That honoring unfinished business, even when it feels minor, signals safety to your body.
Launching Love.Alchemy.Life while working full-time taught me about my capacity and also about my limits. About when to push and when to rest, not because someone told me to, but because my nervous system showed me through exhaustion and dysregulation what I actually needed.
Integration means your nervous system can now hold these lessons without the emotional charge. You remember them without reliving them. You carry the wisdom without the wound.
Embody: Stepping into the next cycle unburdened
The final stage isn’t about planning or goal-setting. It’s about your nervous system actually feeling what it’s like to step forward without the old baggage.
This stage is where most people get stuck. They’ve reflected, they’ve set intentions, but they haven’t given their nervous system a felt experience of what it feels like to be free from what they were carrying.
So the old patterns sneak back in because your nervous system never actually learned a new way to be. Embodiment requires ritual. It requires your body to know through experience, not just your mind to understand through thought.
What most people misunderstand about endings and growth
Myth 1: Letting go means forgetting
Nervous system truth: letting go means your nervous system can access the memory without being controlled by it. You remember, but you’re no longer locked in protection mode around it. The memory is stored in your conscious mind, not your survival instincts.
Myth 2: Reflection is about dwelling on mistakes
Nervous system truth: reflection is about your nervous system extracting wisdom from experience. It’s the difference between reliving trauma, dysregulation, and integrating lessons, regulated understanding. True reflection transforms experience into guidance.
Myth 3: Growth is linear
Nervous system truth: growth is cyclical. Your nervous system naturally moves through phases of activation, integration, and rest. Every ending creates space for a new beginning. The cycles aren’t failures, they’re how your nervous system learns.
Myth 4: You need to feel ready to move forward
Nervous system truth: you don’t feel ready first and then move forward. You move forward with intention, and your nervous system becomes ready through the action. For me, completing the divorce paperwork didn’t happen because I felt ready. I felt ready because I completed it.
Practical nervous system practices for letting go
Acknowledge the past with your body, not just your mind: Don’t just think about what you’re grateful for or what you learned. Move through it. Walk through each room of your home. Touch objects. Physically release what no longer serves you. Your nervous system integrates through sensation and movement.
Ritualize release in a way your nervous system understands: Write down what you want to release, but don’t just recycle the paper. Burn it safely, bury it, or shred it. The physical act of destruction signals to your nervous system: this is done, this is released, we are moving on. Your body needs to witness the ending. If you need to do a ritual multiple times, do it. This means there are multiple layers to the thing you are trying to let go of.
Complete what your nervous system perceives as unfinished: That phone call you keep avoiding. That paperwork in a drawer. That conversation you never had. These aren’t small things. They’re keeping your nervous system in a state of unresolved tension. Even tiny completions create significant shifts.
Align with what’s next through embodied intention: Don’t just write goals. Sit with them. Breathe with them. Let your nervous system feel what the next cycle will be like. What does safety feel like? What does forward momentum feel like? Let your body know before your mind tries to plan it.
A somatic ritual to release 2025 and prepare for 2026
For your nervous system (Mental and emotional release)
The Feeling Dump, 10 minutes: Set a timer. Write down everything, thoughts, beliefs, patterns, regrets, worries, that no longer serve you. Don’t edit. Don’t organize. Just dump what your nervous system has been carrying. Then safely burn, shred, or bury the paper.
Why this works: your nervous system releases through acknowledgment and physical action.
For your body (Physical release)
Choose One Space to Deep Clean, 30 to 60 minutes: Pick a room, closet, drawer, or even just your car. Remove things you haven’t used or needed this year. As you touch each item, ask: does this serve my next cycle? When you release it, you’re signaling to your nervous system: I’m making space. I’m lightening the load.
Why this works: movement through physical space equals nervous system processing at a cellular level.
For your emotions (Somatic integration)
The Feeling Practice (5 minutes, can repeat). Identify one lingering emotion from 2025: grief, anger, disappointment, or fear. Set a timer for 2 to 5 minutes. Let yourself feel it fully. Do not fix it. Do not suppress it. Just feel it. Breathe into it. Let your body express it however it needs to, through tears, movement, or sound, whatever your nervous system requires. When the timer ends, take three deep breaths and consciously release it.
Why this works: Your nervous system completes emotions only when it is allowed to experience them fully. Suppressed emotions stay locked in your body. Felt emotions can be released.
For your spirit (Nervous system recalibration)
The Intention Embodiment (10 minutes). Sit in stillness, with a candle, music, or silence. Reflect on lessons learned. Then, instead of writing goals, sit with one or two clear intentions for 2026. But do not just think them, feel them. What does this intention feel like in your body? How does your nervous system respond? Can you feel the shift toward safety, toward possibility? Journal or sit with whatever emerges.
Why this works: Your nervous system learns through embodied experience. When you can actually feel the shift toward your next cycle, your body knows how to move toward it.
Timing wisdom
Complete this ritual before New Year’s Eve. Give yourself the final days of 2025 to truly rest in a state of clarity and integration. Your nervous system needs a reset. Your body needs to know we are entering 2026 unburdened.
2026 is the Year of the Horse, symbolizing forward movement, vitality, and momentum. But horses do not gallop carrying yesterday’s baggage. Neither should you.
Closing: The integration point
The next cycle is not waiting for you to be perfect or fully healed. It is already here. By releasing what no longer serves us, by allowing our nervous systems to feel what we have been carrying, by taking action on unfinished business, and by giving our bodies a ritual to mark the shift, we prepare to enter the new year fully regulated, unburdened, and ready.
Growth lives in the details, in the paperwork you finally sign, in the room you deep clean, in the emotion you let yourself feel, in the small completions that signal to your nervous system we are safe to move forward now.
Your nervous system is ready. It has just been waiting for you to help it understand that the old cycle is truly complete. Ready to deepen your emotional and nervous system work as you move into 2026?
My Emotional Alchemy program launches February 2026, a transformative journey designed specifically for people who are tired of being controlled by suppressed emotions and dysregulated nervous systems. You will learn to understand what each emotion is trying to communicate, how to connect with the emotion, and how to practice practical somatic exercises to release emotional patterns stored in your body for years, so you can finally step into genuine freedom and embodied resilience.
If you are ready to move through your emotions instead of around them, let us work together. More information in the link below:
Read more from Ada Garza
Ada Garza, The Transition Alchemist
Ada Garza is a Transition Alchemist and founder of Love.Alchemy.Life, guiding individuals and leaders through major life transitions using nervous system healing, breathwork, and energy healing. Through her signature Alchemical Spiral method, she helps clients transform emotional suppression into embodied resilience, reconnect with their authentic selves, and navigate change with clarity and self-trust.
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