The Art of Surrender

Expect this to be at least one part Yoga and one part Christianity, all parts me and we should be good.

Not one of us is immune to the stuff of life. Of course by stuff, I mean shit, but I was at first thinking I would refrain from cussing today. Oh well. The difference between those who sit and wallow in their pile and those that stand and walk through the fire is really actually pretty simple. I have already mentioned that my secret was choosing not to be robbed of my freedom by the circumstances that were created by sometimes my own, but most often my husband’s choices. Just as I chose to respond, albeit sometimes following the gut reaction, I first had to choose to surrender.

The thing about surrender is we immediately see the image of the white flag on the battle field. It connotes giving up, losing, folding your hand and walking away or even being captured. The kind of surrender I am talking about is active, not passive, it requires renewed commitment rather than complacency, it is hard and it does not mean that the battle ends. In the philosophy of Yoga this is known as Ishvara Pranidhana and as I dove head first into my own studies, preparing to become a teacher, it was this aspect that would have my small town Methodist roots converging with the ancient work of Patanjali and my modern experience on and off the mat. It was this type of surrender that saved me from the madness.

On the eve of my 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training was the second time he was arrested. I am sure there was a domestic, we fought and I think that might have been the time he sent a hammer through the door I had barricaded. He was so drunk that when they brought him in to the station he blew 3 times the legal limit, and that was after he drove off and hid in the woods for what felt like an eternity. It was amidst the chaos that night that I had to decide whether to put my future on hold again or carry on. I scrambled for kid care for the weekend and I went. I threw my hands up in the air, looked skyward and declared it was what it was and I was not going to be stopped from what felt like a calling, not anymore.

We got a word that first day, a word that was to carry and shape us on our way throughout the next six months of training. While he was walking south down a four lane highway in mid January without a coat, I was pulling the word ‘Faith’ from a jar.  It was the first time that weekend that my childhood faith and my practice would intersect. It would not be the last, not then and not in the nearly two years since that moment.

According to google, ‘faith’ is a noun that can mean either the complete trust or confidence in someone or something, or a strong belief in God or doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof. Surrender, in this context, is the action of turning oneself over completely to our faith. Deborah Adele highlights two phrases in her book The Yamas and Niyamas on this type of surrender, Ishvara Pranidhana, that Yoga calls us to:

Ishvara Pranidhana, the jewel of surrender, presupposes that there is a divine force at work in our lives. Ultimately this guideline invites us to surrender our egos, open our hearts and accept the higher purpose of our being (166).

Surrender asks us to be strong enough to engage each moment with integrity while being soft enough to flow with the current of life (172).

As the year would press on and life would press in the phrase “strong enough to engage, soft enough to flow” would become an important affirmation for me. It would remind me that through faith in God, the Divine, Universe, Soul, whatever I wanted to call it in the moment, I could simultaneously summon the strength to deepen my roots, standing my ground when necessary, and yet allow the winds of change to blow freely through my life. It would remind that God had brought me this far already and that certainly He would see me through it all.

There are plenty of greeting card adages that you hear during these types of periods in your life, you know, when the fog is so thick you sometimes doubt your ability to see through it. One of my favorites is one that comes from my upbringing, God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. Ha. For sure there were many days I thought, I knew, that was a lie. There were many moments where it certainly felt like God had given me much more than anyone could or should have to handle, in much the same way all of those men and women we know with trauma have been given a burden that was far too heavy to carry. It wasn’t until I began to understand surrender in the yogic context, that I realized that even though sometimes surrendering to life’s stuff felt like I was being chipped away, like my roots were being exposed, in reality it was giving me the ability to shift with what was and not just survive, but thrive.

Surrendering my life to something bigger, greater, and more powerful than myself simultaneously made my problems and pain seem very small and me seem like a giant and important piece of the divine puzzle. In the process the pain unfolded into purpose as I released the narrative that my ego wanted to write, as I reminded myself of the smallness of my problems. It kept anxieties at bay and allowed me to live in a space where I could still find joy in the every day moments. Surrender to the will of the Divine created the space of healing that has led me here, where I type these words in an effort to show you that overcoming and healing from our current and past pain is not only possible, but probable, should you choose it.

And as I continue to walk through the smoldering ash of the last few years, sifting through what is left and extinguishing the flair ups that do inevitably burn from time to time, I continue to practice the art of surrendering my Self, my life, and my pain to the greater purpose that has been set before me.