The Surrender
In September I committed to my first yoga class in close to 15 years. In university, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to take yoga as one of my courses, which lead me to a regular practice just down the road from where I lived off campus. Yoga felt like the home I never knew. It wasn’t just about the physical movements, it was what my soul was remembering while I was on my mat that kept bringing me back for more. After university, I moved across the country and started working, got married and had kids and although yoga was always something that brought me joy in the background of my life, it wasn’t something I committed to. Until this past year.
Each class, I felt like I came away a little lighter. Minor shifts were taking place in my heart, guiding me back to myself. Near the end of the year, my yoga teacher reminded us that in order to release tension in the area of the body that we were working, it is important to search your body for another point in which you might be clenching. Surrendering to it fully. The body has a tendency to clench and hold on when things get hard, when tension grows and friction lands. Surrendering into that discomfort and tension, sitting with it and BEING in that feeling is essential to allow it to fully ease. This same concept can extend past our mats and into our physical worlds. Releasing your perceived control over a situation or course of events and allowing them to be what they are is where we make the way for real movement and change in our life. To surrender into what is.
Living a life of surrender is where we find the ease of flow in life. It is when we are allowing what is for us to come to fruition because we are no longer pushing and forcing what we think our lives SHOULD look like. It’s this blissful place where we no longer compare and judge our lives to others, for that is not our path, it is theirs. My life doesn’t look like anyone else’s nor should it.
It can be an uncomfortable feeling leaving the conforming culture that we are bombarded with since the beginning of time. Stepping out into the wild of my own life, my own way, feels scary sometimes and also the most soul fulfilling, exhilarating, freeing act I’ve ever done. To live each breath as my own, creating something that is so brand new and trying new paths that I never considered going before. In making an attempt to live this life of surrender, I’m learning to re-examine every pattern I’ve ever walked before. I’m listening to my nervous system, that is oh-so subtle for me, and recognize when she’s telling me that I’ve gone off the pathway. It’s becoming familiar to me, this old pattern of rushing and trying to squeeze everything in, writing lists either in my head or on paper, that leave no time for space. Space to breathe, space to enjoy, space to play, space to rest. Space to surrender.
Surrendering is a way to step out of the way. To allow life to unfold exactly as it will and witness the beauty in the excitement of it. Watching where it takes me and what opportunities will be presented for me to grow and evolve. Surrendering isn’t about sitting back and taking a passive seat in life. I’m still taking actions each day towards the way I want to feel each day, towards the life that would make the younger version of me proud. It’s through surrendering, though, that I’ve discovered the life that I’ve always dreamed of. It took me stepping out of my own way and being receptive to the lessons unfolding before my eyes. It meant searching my body for the other place to release tension, so that I could melt deeper into the area I was so fixated on.
I’m practicing the slow down. Trusting my intuition that is guided by my nervous system-my beautiful, Divine Source within-when these rush and force situations bubble up and slowing things down allows my primal brain to reset. Just by pausing and taking time to reconnect myself to my body, connecting breathe and movement, just like yoga taught me, will bring me back into the calm river of my life. Where my life flows in it’s own perfect time.
Journal prompt: Where can you step out of your own way? Where can you surrender to your own path?