Shake It Off: Releasing Emotional Baggage and Stepping Into What’s Next

A few years ago, I wrote a post called How to Avoid Getting Triggered by Your Coaching Clients. At the time, I was exploring how we can release emotional baggage, how our reactions can hijack us, and how learning to regulate ourselves can change the way we show up, not just as coaches, but as humans.

What I didn’t fully realize back then was how much that simple practice would stay with me.

Because what I was really writing about wasn’t just triggers. It was about emotional baggage: how we carry it, how it accumulates, and how rarely we’re taught how to consciously set it down.

The Baggage We Carry

I spent years traveling internationally for work, and I’ve stood at more baggage carousels than I can count. There’s something quietly revealing about those moments — watching what comes around, noticing what we reach for, and what we leave behind.

It turns out emotional baggage works much the same way.

Just because something appears in front of us doesn’t mean it’s ours to carry forward. Some things belonged to an earlier version of us. Some were necessary at the time. And some simply don’t need to come along anymore.

Yet unless we pause, we often keep carrying everything out out of habit, out of responsibility, or out of not realizing we have a choice.

Why the Body Matters in Letting Go

The body plays a much bigger role in this than we’re often taught.

In somatic psychology, particularly in a modality called Somatic Experiencing, developed by Dr. Peter Levine, it’s observed that animals instinctively shake or discharge energy after a stressful event. This natural response helps their nervous systems return to balance. (You can read more about this foundational idea here.)

Humans have the same capacity. But we often suppress it, staying composed, pushing through, holding ourselves together. Over time, that unfinished stress can live on in the body as tension, reactivity, fatigue, or a quiet sense of unease.

This is why embodied practices matter. They allow the body to complete what was once interrupted.

A Simple Practice to Release Emotional Baggage

(You can do this anytime — not just at the start of a new year.)

1. Shake Like a Dog (60–90 seconds)

If you’ve ever watched a dog after a stressful moment, you’ve seen it: the full-body shake. My dog, Ogden, does this instinctively. It’s a regulation.

Stand or sit and begin to gently shake your body.

Let your arms move.
Let your legs soften.
Let your shoulders loosen.

There’s no right way to do this.

As you shake, imagine loosening anything that feels sticky or unresolved, old emotions, old roles, old expectations.

You’re not forcing anything out. You’re allowing movement where things have been held still.

2. Hand to Heart — Feel What Wants to Be Felt

When the movement naturally slows, place one or both hands over your heart.

Pause.

Breathe.

Ask gently:
What’s here right now?

Not to fix it.
Not to analyze it.
Just to notice.

This is the moment you check in with what you’ve been carrying, before deciding whether it still belongs with you.

3. Release Through the Body

Now imagine a soft white light entering through the top of your head.

Let it move slowly through your body, through your chest, belly, hips, legs, and arms, washing through whatever you’re ready to set down.

You might imagine that energy flowing out through your hands and the soles of your feet, like placing a bag gently on the ground instead of hoisting it back onto your shoulder.

You can support this release with a simple gesture:

• opening your palms

• gently shaking your arms

• exhaling slowly

• or stepping forward

Let your body choose how release wants to happen.

4. Step Into What You Want to Carry Forward

Now notice what remains.

What feels lighter?
What feels truer?

Ask yourself:
What do I want to carry forward from here?

Not everything needs to come with you.
Some things were meant to be acknowledged and then left behind.

As you sense into what stays, notice your posture, your breath, your sense of presence. This is your body integrating a new choice.

Why This Matters

We often try to think our way into change.

But real transformation happens when the body feels safe enough to release what it’s been holding.

You’re not trying to fix yourself. It’s about remembering that you ALWAYS have a choice, even with old patterns, old emotions, and old stories.

You don’t have to carry everything forward.

A Gentle Invitation

If something in this stirred something in you, a sense of recognition, a softening, or even a quiet ache – you don’t have to sit with it alone.

I’m not a nervous system expert or a therapist, but I am someone who has spent years listening deeply to myself, to others, and to what the body quietly communicates when we slow down enough to hear it.

If you’d like a gentle space to explore what’s coming up for you to reflect, to untangle, or simply to be witnessed as you find your way forward, I’d be honored to walk alongside you for a while.

There’s no fixing here.

No pressure to have it all figured out.

Just space, curiosity, and support.

If that feels right, you’re welcome to reach out. We can begin with a simple conversation and see what unfolds.