Cord Cutting: How to Release What's No Longer Yours to Carry
- Bronwyn Ayla
- Jun 16
- 3 min read
You leave a conversation and the person stays in your body. Hours later, you're still rehearsing what they said. Or — different version — you wake up thinking about someone you broke up with three years ago. Or you walk into your parents' house and your shoulders climb up to your ears before you've taken your coat off.
What you're noticing is energetic. We have ties — cords — to the people, places, and dynamics that have shaped us. Some of those cords are nourishing. Some of them stopped serving us a long time ago and just never got cut.
A working definition
A cord, in this tradition, is a felt thread of energy between you and someone or something else. It doesn't make them bad. It doesn't even make the cord bad. The question is whether you want to keep feeding it.
Cords show up most often around:
Old romantic partners
Family members who occupy a lot of inner real estate
People who hurt you and won't apologize
Places you've left but still dream about
Roles or identities you've outgrown
When to cord cut, and when not to
Cord cutting is not breaking up. It's not estrangement. It's not punishment. It's a clarifying practice — you're returning your energy to yourself, and theirs to them, so the relationship (if it continues) can happen on more honest ground.
Don't use it when you're acutely angry and want to "get them back." Wait until you can do this with steadiness.
Do use it when you've felt drained for a while, when you keep replaying the same scene, when you know intellectually that you're done with something but your body hasn't caught up.
The practice
You don't need anything for this except a few quiet minutes.
Sit comfortably. Eyes closed or soft gaze. Three slow breaths.
Bring the person to mind. Just see them — neutral, not arguing, not pleading. Notice where in your body you feel them. Most people notice it in the chest, throat, or belly.
See the cord. Trust whatever shows up — a thread, a rope, a thin line of light. There is no wrong image.
Imagine clean light, or scissors, or your own hand — whichever feels right — separating the cord. This is not violent. It's clean. As you do it, you can say silently or aloud: "I return what is yours. I take back what is mine. We are both free."
Place a hand over the place in your body where you felt the cord. Breathe there. Let it be tender.
After
Don't be surprised if you feel:
Lighter, almost giddy
Sad, like a real grief
Tired, the way you'd be tired after good crying
Nothing — and then later, something shifts
You may want to do this practice more than once with the same person. That's fine. Cords aren't always one-and-done. The work is to keep returning your energy to yourself, gently, until the heaviness has actually moved.
One more thing
If a cord-cutting practice brings up grief that feels bigger than you can hold alone, that's information. It means there's real material here. Get support — a therapist, a trusted teacher, a regular reiki practice. The work doesn't have to be done in isolation.
This is one of the foundational practices we work with in the Reiki Mystery School. If it lands and you want training in the full system, you can read more here:
By Bronwyn Ayla, LAc, founder of the Reiki Mystery School. Bronwyn teaches in the Usui Reiki Ryōhō lineage descending from Mikao Usui through Chujiro Hayashi and Hawayo Takata.
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