Surrender

A person looks, The blossoms look back: Plain heart seeing into plain heart.

~Sun Bu-er

Teaching yoga, many times, is a humbling experience. Well, most of the time it is...wait... I take that back...I don't think there's ever a time when I don't feel completely humbled and inspired by students...with all their effort and insight. Its exciting to observe the transformation process. Witnessing the expansion and opening of their hearts is extraordinary.

Yoga takes one deep...if willing. When facilitating a class, I enjoy keeping the rhythm and pace of the practice going....taking the mind out of the experience. Getting practitioners to empty out the head space and enter into the portal of the body, and into the heart is easier when maintaining the pulse and tempo. For many, its a new way to exist in reality. Its a whole new way of being. Not really something that is expressed readily in our culture. Interesting. I have struggles with this from time to time. When reminding students, it becomes a reminder to myself...

Today I had a student come up to me and tell me she had something to share regarding her practice. I was bit apprehensive at first...you know we all have insecurities as teachers at times...not sure what will be expressed. One reason I felt this way was because she was one of the students who never really had much to say before or after class...which is fine...and many times when cuing she would do her own thing from time to time. I let go of that, but I often wondered if she enjoyed the practice. However, she had continued to show up, and in the beginning I like to give practitioners space to explore and be as much as possible. Anyway, she went on to tell me that when sitting in Padmasana...breathing our last 10 conscious breaths, she felt a strong connection to a greater energy...a bigger energy than herself...and she told me that she had the awareness that thoughts were meaningless. Just from observing her while she talked I saw an openness...a blossoming that I hadn't seen before. I've always felt the last 3 postures in finishing sequence to be some of the richest...and I enjoy breathing and counting with the class during the 10 breaths to assist in keeping everyone present. I continued to listen to her expressing this new found awareness...not putting my 2 cents in...for why should I? Why should I put my own identifications on her...tarnishing her own experience and opening.

To listen to a student's experience such as this is special. More so than one being able to finally jump through...or to complete a bind in Mari D, or Suptakonosana. When a practitioner immerses themselves into Tristana, and surrenders to it...wow...what beauty shines through!

Surrender has been a big theme for me in the last several months. Recently, I was talking to a former student, who has become a mentor...for she's over twice my age and has such rich life experience. She was telling me that it doesn't matter...to what or to who...just allow yourself to surrender...surrender...surrender! She went on saying that if she could sum up the writings of the Bhagavad Gita into one word...it would be SURRENDER. Ahhhh. Yes.

Its a challenge at times...surrender. But when we finally stop resisting, and loosen our grip...grace can finally flow.