The niyamas series - Ishvara pranidana
The last of the five niyama, Ishvara pranidhana, invites us to surrender. For some this is a spiritual act - surrendering to a higher power or a higher purpose. If that’s not something you naturally connect with, it could be about surrendering to the flow of life. Having the courage to trust that deep down we will find our best path.
All of the yama and niyama lead us to this point, but in particular the last three we’ve discussed - self-discipline, self-study, surrender. When we understand ourselves, what pushes our buttons, how we hold ourselves back by our actions sometimes, when we can find the space and the stillness to trust our intuition then we can be open to new ideas and begin to surrender to the flow.
Thinking about surrendering to the flow reminded me of earlier in the summer when I visited a water park. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a fun swimming pool (well over 25 years long time) so it took a while for me to go down the slide and it was the second visit before I attempted the rapids. I’d even watched from outside to get an idea of what they were like, where I saw others on there having a great time. So I plucked up the courage, or thought I had, joined the queue and pushed myself over the ledge to let the water take me to the bottom. Except it didn’t work like that. I was so cautious I’d tried to stick to the shallower parts where all that happened was that I got stuck. So most of the way I had to half crawl half swim down, with very laborious progress, right up until the last bit where I was unceremoniously and suddenly dumped into the plunge pool. My anxiety about where I was going, what I was doing literally stopped me going with the flow.
Of course the place in a yoga class where we surrender is savasana - corpse pose. Placing ourselves in stillness and in quiet is hard to do, which is why we do it at the end of a class where we’ve prepared our bodies and mind. Have you ever left a yoga class and suddenly a solution for something that’s been bugging you pops into your head? How do we bring that process of surrender off the yoga mat and into our daily lives?
Last time I mentioned mindfulness in conjunction with self-study, but I’m going to come back to it here too. When we are mindful in our actions, we give ourselves space to respond from our heart, our true self. Mindfulness helps us pay attention on and off the mat, clearing our minds and letting new creative options flow in.
More information
Deborah Adele (2009), The Yamas and Niyamas, Exploring Yoga’s Ethical Practice
Rachel Bonkirk (2020), Flex your mind, 10 powerful Yoga principles for less stress in a busy world.