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I finish my yoga session in savasana—corpse pose. Flat on my back. Legs extended. Arms by my sides, palms upturned. Relax the weight of your entire body, Adriene coaches. A taste of surrender.
I often turn to yoga because my overstimulated nervous system craves it. My physical body wants a more challenging workout these days, but my emotional and spiritual state cling to yoga like a lifeline. Calm down, I seek to tell my body. You are okay. You are safe. You can be collected.
This morning I was not my best self. Nor last night for that matter. It’s been a long summer of parenting. I put in fourteen to fifteen hour days by the time the kids are in bed, lunches packed, clean diapers hung to dry, and dishes done. I don’t really get a day off. The kids have been at each other, squabbles echoing through the house. School started this week and while the days have improved, the afternoons and evenings are still full of emotional dysregulation. It’s a lot for two small bodies to take in and process. It’s a lot for me to manage as well. Can I reach for compassion for myself? For my children?
Last night and this morning the answer was—not really. During yoga, maybe. I at least moved closer. Laying in savasana is the most calm and collected I’ve felt in the past forty-eight hours. So when Adrienne says the word “surrender” it verberates through my body and leaves me with this thought:
surrender feels like coming home.
That’s not a thought I would come up with on my own because my natural inclination is to associate the word “surrender” with pain and suffering. Giving over. Giving in. “You just need to surrender more,” my cult leader once demanded. In that season, surrender meant a form of abuse. I’ve been reworking this concept now for years, slowly reclaiming it bit by bit. True surrender has nothing to do with power over. It’s an internal posture, an agency that refuses to allow outward circumstances to dictate your inner well-being. It’s staying connected regardless of what is going on around you. I know this, but it still feels like a process that is painful and a lot of work. It’s difficult to pry my emotional fingers off of things that I want, things I tend to demand, things out of my control that I try to control anyways. On a daily basis right now these include all the things I dislike about my husband’s job, the tantrums of my children, the rhythms of breastfeeding and a clamoring child who can now walk and stand in the kitchen clinging to my legs while I attempt to tame the chaos of three meals of dishes. Do I really have to surrender to all this again? To meet it with graciousness? To be swept away by whatever it carries into my lap?
There. I catch myself.
Not a sweeping away. Again, not a power-over. Somehow I have to rewire the pathway in my brain that correlates surrender with this negative language.
Because when I lie in savasana and hear Adrienne say a taste of surrender, something in me quickens. Or slows rather. More fully relaxes. What if I stopped resisting surrender as if it will hurt. Counterintuitively, what if it feels like coming home?
True surrender is a coming home to the truest parts of myself, a releasing of the ego so my divine identity can come to light. It is a letting go of all the stress, the anxiety, the clamor, the things outside my control that are exhausting to try and cling to. It is a coming home and letting go, a resting posture where I relax everything and let the ground hold me. It’s always there, like Divine Abundance. What if surrender is like sinking into my bed after a week of travel, the deep sigh of my muscles finding their place of rest in the exact mattress and pillows they prefer. Cocooned. Held. What if surrender isn’t something to fight, but something to sink into?
For three seconds this morning, I thought I glimpsed it. If only I could convince my egoic consciousness to get out of the way and let me stay there.
Resources:
- A previous post that touches on layers of reclaiming the word “surrender”: Emotional Overwhelm and the Welcoming Prayer
- My landing page for practices that involve surrender: Contemplative Practices
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Shalom.
Danielle Klafter 