We are nearing the end of yoga teacher training -- done in August! I don't yet feel like I can teach or sequence, but I did have COVID and then a killer migraine when we were doing that part of things. Or maybe yoga is one of those things like teaching English where you don't actually feel like a teacher until you've been at it for 5 years...
The last niyama of yoga is ishvara pranidhana - surrender.
Well hot damn, they saved the easiest one for the end! J/K. This one's hard af.
After you've done all the non-stealing and non-excess, after all the self-discipline and self-study, what does it mean to completely surrender?
In The Yamas & Niyamas, Deborah Adele writes, "We can be so busy feeling cheated or victimized when life doesn't go the way we want it to that we often miss a new opportunity life is offering us in the moment" (165).
Well, that's a gut punch.
I was talking with someone recently about online dating. We went on some great dates, but then it turned out he wanted five million children and I did not. He was trying to come to grips with the fact that there are not a ton of women online who want to just now start having a huge family at this stage of their life. I don't know what it's like for men, but for women in their 30's and 40's, you don't have the same energy level you did a decade ago. You're not eager to begin having a ton of kids. There are only so many options, then, for a man wanting a big family: focus on dating younger, more fertile, and enthusiastic women; keep combing through profiles looking for The One and hope you don't regret it later; consider other ways to be a family; take stock of your non-negotiables.
I felt a lot of compassion, which is unusual for me because I was also mad that I am old and tired and not particularly motherly except for with the squirrelly youths. But I remember trying to come to terms with the fact that my life has not gone the way I thought it should, either. There is such a grieving process to go through. And then right when you finally make your peace with how life looks, you've got to start over surrendering to and grieving some other thing. It's like Life is this constant process of wanting, losing, grieving, and surrendering.
I went through a really long grieving process as my friends all got married. I think I eventually decided I didn't want that because it was just easier to not want it than to want it and accept the fact that it probably wasn't going to happen for me... maybe I bypassed surrender by refusing to want something anymore.
Or maybe that's what surrender is: maybe it's less waving the white flag and more a readjustment of expectations.
In yoga class, I asked the group how I could surrender something (for example, finding a high school teaching position) when I'm still striving for it (going on my 18th interview tomorrow). Does surrendering mean I just give up and accept my fate as a middle school teacher? Does it mean I quit trying or quit wanting it?
Or for my friend, does it mean that he gives up on his dream of having a family? That he settles for a woman who is likely never going to have kids because she's still a wonderful person and they get along great? That seems incredibly depressing.
Yoga Elsa says it does not mean you quit trying, but rather that you put forth the effort while detaching from the outcome. One of her favorite sayings is "and that is the work of a lifetime," which always makes me feel better because I am an emotional person and have a hard time detaching from outcomes. "You prep for the interview, and you go to it, and you give it your very best shot, knowing maybe you will get it and maybe you won't. But you give it everything either way."
But then she also said that maybe surrender looks like getting to the point where I choose to quit trying rather than continuously putting myself in this place of being rejected.
I thought about that. Those seem like opposites. Keep putting myself out there but detach from the outcomes? Decide to take my hat out of the ring because it's too painful and it's just giving away my power? Which thing is really surrender?
I did set aside looking for high school jobs for a year or two. But then I come back to it and once again put myself in a place of vulnerability. I think I would rather risk the continued rejection than wonder if I'd just gone on one more interview, if that one would have made the difference.
I think of dating the same way. I hate the inevitable feelings of sadness and disappointment that come when things don't work out. And things most often do not work out. You can only have one Person, after all. But worse than the feelings of sadness or disappointment is the fear that if I'd just tried one more time, it might have been the one time that mattered.
So it seems to me that there are two methods of ishvara pranidhana: readjusting our expectations (I want it, but I will be all right without it); or, if we are unable to detach adequately from that expectation, deciding to stop trying and just surrender to what the universe does have for us. That means taking back the power, even though it feels kind of defeatist.
Life has not given me the partner, family, or job that I wanted. But I still see beauty, and I will still choose to focus on that, surrendering to what life has given me. I have a bomb-ass book club (even if Heather judges me for moving too quickly in dating :) I have Clementine The Great One. I have good siblings. I have a 105-year-old house. I have one needy cat and one cantankerous one.
I have no idea where to go from here. But I'm going to try to surrender to the process.
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