Surrender: A Practice of Letting Go

Photo by Kira Boden-Gologorsky

Amidst a sea of pregnancies, health challenges and changing relationships, many people are grappling with surrender in the face of new unknowns. For me, surrender is not a sign of defeat but a practice of letting go. When dealing with real life issues, letting go can feel scary because the stakes are high. At the same time, holding onto something that isn’t working–a dream, relationship or belief system–just solidifies stagnation. People become stuck at the doorway of transition.

This is where the process of birth can show us how to move through life. In a pinnacle moment during childbirth, it’s normal for a laboring woman to doubt herself. She may say directly, “I can’t take this anymore. I can’t do it.” For many midwives and doulas this statement is an indication of transition. A doorway is opening and the intention is to support a woman in surrendering to the power of birth.

I believe we can each access the transformative nature of birth through growing awareness. Learning how to navigate physical, mental and emotional energy includes a practice of letting go. Instead of getting stuck in transition, we can discover how to welcome, hold and follow the energy of our lives. In this way, surrender becomes an opportunity to cultivate new beginnings. So that–especially when the stakes are high–we can trust our capacity to birth ourselves.

Culminating Seeds

Some life moments simultaneously culminate the past and seed the future. As a recovering type A personality, life has taught me that I can’t order these moments to appear on demand. As a woman consciously embracing the unknown, I recognize these appearances as a rare gift.

My path to growing a work life has been way off-road. I left law school to follow my heart into earth-based traditions and women’s spirituality. Conscious pregnancy, birth and mothering was just as much my training ground as years spent studying healing ways. When holistic childbirth preparation called me, I became a Doula without looking back. And then when I hit a brick wall in conscious pregnancy, I left Doulahood to remember myself as a writer.

There have been many mainstays as a holistic healing practitioner. Individual sessions emphasizing personal process, guided visualization and energy work. Sacred Dance and Maitri Breathwork. Women’s circles. My root intention to help grow consciousness. But I can see why some people have raised an eyebrow at my choices. For me, learning how to navigate the unknown consciously has not been an academic exercise but a way of life.

Has learning how to feel my way through the dark always had good outcomes? Absolutely not. But even life choices that looked like digressions has led to lessons I wouldn’t have gathered had I stayed on track.

Because it’s been a long road, I receive wholeheartedly those moments when birth initiates life. To that end, I’m excited to share that I’m writing a book on Practical Spirituality that will be published by Conari Press. I’m celebrating by creating a Practical Spirituality Group based on the book.

Within this new reality, my prayer is that you learn how to grow your intuition. Not so you can have the perfect happy ending, though I wish you well. But so you can learn how to listen to yourself. From there, gifts will greet you and guide you through your unknowing, especially trust.

What have your seeming digressions led you to learn?

Balanced Expectancy

A couple of days ago within a space of 30 minutes I listened to an excited pregnant woman explore her future and learned that a dear family friend is facing her final moments alive.

Is it me, or are you also noticing extreme highs and lows of existence? My daughter just got into a great high school, a friend’s daughter is at home in pain.

I arrived confused at my R&M dance class and found myself telling the teacher, Amara. “I’m just fine and I’m grateful. ” I said, “But so many people around me are suffering.”

She responded.”Sometimes people need to go through things so their soul can learn.” She looked at me sternly, “Don’t you go there too.”

I snorted. “Believe me, I’m a holistic healer, I get it. My teacher Maggi always said, ‘Honey, if you’re in the tar pit of life, I’ll give you hand, but I’m not going in there with you or we’ll both drown.’ Still, my heart feels heavy today.” Amara nodded knowingly and then it was time to begin class.

And so, as I danced the joy and the sadness I found a space between the two, more of an edgy place than safety zone. I really just wanted to shake my hips and make the edge disappear, so I could hang out in the joy. But since, for the most part, I’m not into denial as a form of healing, instead I breathed into the edge. I’ve been there ever since, experiencing the edge of joy and sorrow, life and death.

Since I’m a big believer in synchronicity as a messenger, I have to tell you that as I’m sitting here writing this, my 14 year-old is upstairs belting out an Alicia Keys song, “I keep on falling in and out of loving you…how do you give me so much pleasure and cause me so much pain…”

I’m not sure what synchronicity is saying except that what I’m finding inside this edge, the space between pleasure and pain is the unknown. Sometimes the unknown makes me squirm with discomfort. Sometimes it feels freeing to not know. As the discomfort and the freedom rub up against each other, they grow something in me. Probably different things at different times, but in this moment, a balanced expectancy.

I’m going to rest inside this state of balanced expectancy until the time comes.

What is the unknown growing in you?

Mystic humor

Laughter comes easily in our house and no subject is taboo, including my work choices. But humor can also convey change, love and acceptance, even if it’s reluctant.

In response to my latest January Dancing-Tree Consulting Newsletter, my mother-in-law emailed my husband, privately, writing, “Do you think the time will come when you and I would be able to sign-up for this type of program/class? Oh gush…”

This from a woman who is still recovering from the fact that I gave up financial security 15 years ago when I quit law school in favor of a women’s spirituality degree. “A what?” she used to ask.

My husband, being the loving son that he is (from 3000 miles away) wrote back to his mother, “Whenever you’re ready, though some of these programs are for women only.” Then he added, “P.S. I live these classes EVERY DAY!!!!” with the following image:

After two kids and 21 years of relationship it’s nice to know that my extended family loves me and wants to connect, even when they don’t understand.

P.S. As for the image, who’s wearing the rose colored glasses in our house now?

Healing music: how relationship grows relationship

One night about ten years ago I was asked to select music for a group of people participating in a healing circle. Reluctantly, I agreed. For about six hours I sat staring at a pile of world music CD’s with my stomach twisted in agony. I had no idea what to play. The CDs meant nothing to me because I hadn’t listened to them. No doubt, the music sucked that night. Over the next year I played music twice more. I wish I could say it was a better experience but I couldn’t hear much beyond the waves of anxiety crashing through my system.

One day a dear friend, Sue, invited me to be a guinea pig for her upcoming presentation on dance as a spiritual practice. As we moved together, the vision for Sacred Dance landed inside. Because music was an integral part of dance, Sue and I began to spend many hours listening to world music together. Within 6 months there was an opportunity to be an ongoing assistant for a beloved healing form, Maitri Breathwork. The catch: the facilitators needed help with music.

Music was knocking at the door and love ushered me across any threshold of resistance. In those days creating playlists meant hunching over a CD player and then burning a disk song by song. As I spent hours listening, feeling my body’s response to different music, and studying the art of transition, songs shifted from being strangers to close friends. Eight years later and with the help of iTunes, I now curl up in bed with ear phones and a blanket for a restorative moment as I weave music together for an upcoming group. I’m nourished by listening for the ways my song friends want to gather and form themselves into a basket of healing.

Last Saturday, January 16th, I sat in the lead seat for Maitri Breathwork for the first time. The decision to ask the people holding music to rely on my collection was instinctual and unexamined. And then during the breathwork, alongside a great team of human helpers, my community of music enveloped me. As I moved through the day, golden strands of harmony ignited an inner compass that helped me relax into my new role as lead facilitator for Maitri Breathwork.

Days later and I’m still in awe. That music moved from trauma to treasure in my life was plenty. That music gifted me by bridging a joyful expansion with Maitri Breathwork, a healing form I’ve loved for 14 years, leaves me full of gratitude for how relationship grows relationship.

What relationships have grown you in surprising ways?

Embodied Joy

In gratitude to Rhythm & Motion Dance Program on it’s 30th Anniversary…

In the beginning your un-skinny sculpted beauty invited my 15-year-old chunky self into the splendor of my curves

There your leaps showed me how to celebrate the female power blooming in the arch of my back and the depth of my thighs

The slow roll of your hip along with an “Uh huh, come on now” wrapped my growing sensuality in a cocoon of divinity leaving no room for doubt or objectification

Then a change in song engaged your playful pelvic thrust igniting my teenage angst into serious fun

I entered college my body remembered with seeds of Sacred Dance tucked inside my heart

Now I am a woman grown awake in life sustained by love where planted feet spirals belly into an unencumbered voice

My body is a doorway for healing and movement is my medicine

Your dancing spirit transforms exercise into a daily prayer composting grief into inspiration

Amidst waving arms and stomping feet your living glory is a compass of choice leading away from victimhood and into an open heart

Inside you are a fluid Oz weaving music into a tapestry of moving love lifting us on dancing strands of soul as we rise with the sun

Beside sincere humility your artful essence creates a rhythmic temple where together we experience embodied joy great love becomes