The Balance Between Boundaries and the Art of Surrendering
As we are first learning yoga asanas, surrendering is the first key. Letting go and experiencing what it feels like to trust, allow and believe. Surrendering is to stop fighting against things and accept them for what they are. We surrender as a means to make the connection to source energy easier. However, as humans, we make it hard.
When the mind runs in meditation or when we struggle to reach our toes, the ego comes in to tell us we are failing. We fight against it to prove we are not. This fight is what prevents the magic from happening. When we can free ourselves from the expectations and release the inner battle of body and mind, we can surrender and be open to the expansiveness of possibility—the possibility to feel and embrace the inner peace waiting for us to submit.
When we receive bodywork, this is the best way to recognize how we hold tension or resistance in the body. One of the most prominent examples of this movement from stress to release is the Thai yoga certification program.
Imagine this: a room full of lovely students, volunteers eager to be worked on. There is this realization of how hard it can be to get relaxed. Then you feel; you both feel it. “How can it be so tense? I didn't even know I was holding stress resistance in the body this way.” It happens all the time.
The touch, the pressure, the rocking, soothing the lines, the Nadis, meridian channels of energy into slow and steady release. But before that relaxation, we have an awareness of tension. We see it in class as stiffness, holding tight within the hips especially. That's where it is obvious. Then comes the recognition within that will allow release and surrender. So what does it look like to see and feel the shifts? It is unique to each body yet universal truths.
Over the 25 years of experience, this work comes into play first as a willingness to process attention to the stress and holding. As a practitioner, I have found trust in the partnership of collective energies that creates profound and cooperative results. To see the actual leg stiff, tight, not flexible as I hold it gently, softly pulsing this way and that, moving, swaying, very heavy in the surrendering portion to my capable hand. And I go, “aha, you did it! You let go.”
It is crazy how hard it is to do nothing, and that's what it means to surrender.
It's the mind in control when we are holding tension in our body, yet it's part of the healthy balance to set boundaries and parameters to keep us safe. We all know the fight or flight response can be potent to set up disease if it's on all the time. So learning the art of surrender is the first step in discovering who you are more accurately. The beginning is in the body mechanics, and then the rest will come with time.
