The Story of the Raccoon Trap

This afternoon, I walked into the yoga studio wearing the weight of the world in my neck. I had so much stress about so many things that I was fighting the relaxation that comes with each yoga pose. I wouldn't accept the release because that meant letting go of my anxiety. And I wanted to keep all my anxieties tightly wadded in a toxic ball in my chest, where I knew they were safe.

Obviously, this is counterproductive. But it did remind me of a nice and unlikely little metaphor from the children's book, "Where the Red Fern Grows." I remember the teacher reading this aloud to us in 3rd grade, and I never forgot it.

In the book they tell of a no-fail way to catch a raccoon: You dig a little hole that's just a tad larger than a raccoon's paw and you throw a few shiny things at the bottom. Seeing the shiny things, the raccoon easily slips his paw in the hole to retrieve them. But when his paw is clutching the shiny things it is now bigger than the size of the hole, and he is trapped. All he has to do is let go and he is free. But the raccoon refuses to let go of the useless items and is trapped there until the hunter comes.

OK, so the metaphor may be a little less obvious to 8-year-olds. But it's good to know that the hunters tried never to use that trap because they considered it unfair to the raccoons. So let's not be too hard on ourselves. It's hard to let go of shiny, useless things that trap us. (In my case, dark useless anxieties.) But yoga does help. And by the end of the class, I had loosened my own grip on worry just a little.