“Just surrender.”
Helpful, right?! Thanks, I hadn’t thought of that.
The amount of times I’ve felt overcome with rage being told to ‘just surrender’ or ‘just relax’. But how?!?!
True story, during my yoga teacher training, I wrote an essay on surrender, complete with quotes from great yogis and a six step Practical Guide to Surrender. I was trying so hard to crack that nut!
Instead of focusing on trying to let go, focus on creating a sense of safety in your body and practice feeling the sensations present in your body. You can’t surrender because the deepest parts of your brain don’t believe that you’re safe to do so. This isn’t an overnight job, but it’s a worthwhile one.
I don’t mean absolute safety, because we can’t control life, and we can’t completely protect ourselves from things like illnesses and car accidents. (As my partner likes to regularly remind me, life is inherently unsafe and we will all die. Thanks, mate.)
I mean safety in:
Cultivating good boundaries
Noticing how you can feel deep grief but it doesn’t kill you
Scuba diving into the deep seated beliefs about how it isn’t safe to be powerful, to be sexy, to be big, to be weak
Discerning situations when your body-mind is actually warning you that something isn’t right, and you do need to stay alert and protect yourself
Instead of focusing on just letting go, focus on all the ways you are safe and held in each moment, and see what happens.