Surrender

Praise be to You, Most Supreme God, Omnipotent, Omnipresent, All-pervading, the Only Being. Take us in Your Parental Arms, raise us from the denseness of the earth, Your Beauty do we worship, to You do we give willing surrender.

When I am attuned, I can feel that I'm holding on too tightly, tensing, constricting my muscles, and so probably too my heart. I might be knitting and realize the stitches are very terse against the needle and I understand where focus has been, then consciously relax my stitch. If the stitch is too loose, I'm trying too hard. But when I surrender to the movement of my fingers and hands, surrender to the act of creative rhythm, the stitches are just right.

It's the same, I've noticed, when I'm practicing yoga. In ashtanga yoga, there is the ujjayi breath, a constricting of the throat so that the breath passes along the back of the throat with a whispery hiss. This is to allow better control of and focus on the breath while practicing the asanas, or postures. But I often find myself struggling with that breath, feeling as if I'm not getting quite enough air, swallowing between exhales, interrupting my focus with my tight clinging. This has been going on for the entire year I've been practicing yoga, and the other night I had a break-through understanding that I was holding on too tightly. That like the knitting, there is a space where everything flows in harmony, where ujjayi is like a feather riding on the wind. And this I accomplished by just letting go. Surrendering to all of my life, not just my yoga practice, but coming to the mat with the attitude, "Okay, this is what there is. Let me be here."

These are gifts of surrender to take into my daily life, gems of understanding that change everything because they have been seen. Stress, conditions, circumstances, the holidays,... so many disrupting torrents causing me to hold tightly trying to steady the way. But the way is in surrender. Opening up the arms, the ribcage, the breath, the heart... and meeting whatever is there tenderly.

(Image: Statuette of goddess at the palace of Knossos, 13c. BC, Herakleion Museum.)