An unfortunate aspect of the human condition is finding ourselves waiting, often at times when we’re desperate for things to make progress. This can take many forms on all sorts of levels, like waiting for a development in a house-buying chain so we can finally move house, to waiting for exam results, to just waiting for someone to phone us back. If you’re waiting for something, especially if it’s important, then even waiting for the kettle to boil can seem unusually irritating.

Waiting can be at least annoying, sometimes truly exasperating, and at worst it can interfere with the rest of your life. How can we stop this kind of frustration from becoming so stressful that it affects our health?

The answer, Kendo tells us, is that time-honoured phrase – it’s simple, but not necessarily easy: let it go.

Once you’ve instructed your estate agents, finished your exam, and said, “Speak to you later”, you’ve done all you can, and you should remind yourself of that – there’s nothing more you can do, so let it go. As in a meditation, if the subject creeps back into your consciousness, let it fall away, evaporate, and turn back to the rest of your life.

This is one of many little tools of Kendo’s help you to stop being enslaved by your ‘monkey-mind’ by cleverly using it to direct itself. ‘Let it go’ is perhaps the most useful and most often needed – it’s always a good idea to meditate, switch off, and re-boot your mind, but by letting go of the things you can’t do any more to progress, you’re also being mindful about what’s in your mind.

So – take a deep breath, let it go, and you’ll be letting go of stress too, which is always healing.