"Surrender is not achieved until you surrender completely to your beloved. To accomplish this you must relinquish everything that deprives you of love, and nurture everything that comes from love"
Deepak Chopra
Ishvara pranidhana is not about what your yoga can do for you, but about approaching your practice in the spirit of offering. It offers a pathway through the obstacles of our ego toward our divine nature—grace, peace, unconditional love, clarity, and freedom. Lately I have been talking a lot about surrender... surrender to the yoga practice, surrender to the breath, and surrender to the source. As I preach these words to my students I reflect back on my own journey and the places in my life where I can surrender and as we all so casually say "just let go". However, these three simple are no easy task... it takes work. Every posture in the yoga practice involves some level of letting go and just like that pose after pose the disciplined student can work through the layers of tension to eventually experience the bliss of savasana. Some days this happens and other days it is a far fetched joke. Today I set an intention for my practice to "let go" and connect back to the inherent truth within me. I told myself that I would keep my mind in the now and within minutes I caught my mind off its leash wondering in thoughts of the past and fantasies of a nonexistent future, I leash the mind and bring it back to my balancing warrior 3 pose and the sound vibrations of Inhales and Exhales flowing through my body. Slowly I move through practice and letting go and eventually find myself in Raja Kapotasana: Pigeon Pose. To me, this posture is the ultimate surrender of mind, body, and ego. Today this pose did not come so easy and I worked hard... with each breath I experienced micro releases and I dropped closer and closer to the earth. I walked out of practice feeling a little lighter and more centered... still the thoughts of past conversations flowed in my mind but my reactions to these thoughts changed and I remained calm. We all have things that we wish we wouldn't have said or did but the reality is that it happened and whatever happens in any given moment is exactly how it is meant to happen. There is no point in being attached to these experiences and moreso passing judgement. We are mere mortals, we feel, we love, we attach, we hold out hope, and we must honor these experiences ONLY in the moment and then let go and create space for another experience. Each day, each moment is ever changing and at any given point 2 people are never the same as they were a moment ago. If you have an ugly encounter with someone this moment, let it go and experience a beautiful encounter the next moment. If you have an unbalanced day today, let it go and have an amazing day tomorrow. This is life. The ups and downs, beauty and ugliness are all a part of it. As humans all we can do is enjoy it without attachment. How? By practicing the art of letting go in yoga. What is done on the mat translates off the mat.
Everyone, myself included, has had a moment where the mind ran off and made a mess and rather than embracing the mistake the response is expressed in regret and judgement which begins a downward spiral to the black hole. The best way out is to not fall in, in the first place. It takes great patience to peform Isvara Pranidhan, once the work has been done, life becomes livable and enjoyable. And compassion and humilty grow wihthin us all.
Try to keep the mind in check during your next practice and see how it goes. Continue repeating "I will keep my mind in he now" and revitalize your life and your practice.
Going forward my practice intension is to surrender...
