My greatest challenge : surrender

Surrender… Not just bending my bones… As I walk into the warm yoga room at east west yoga in Newmarket I am glad to be here. Why you might ask? You are going to be tortured and be incredibly hot…yap! 

I look at it this way: every morning again this is my chance to clear my mind, to clear my body from any blockages accumulated by thought processes, self-talk, experiences, triggered memories, emotions…

Being a Kinesiologist I know how certain emotions can weaken a muscle or a muscle group and meridians ultimately the immune system and organs. 

So as I walk into the warm yoga room I am grateful for this time I am going to have for myself to better myself health wise, mind wise, heart wise… whole-wise. Pranayama breathing exercise… feet together, heels together, interlace your fingers underneath your chin… breath in… as I am breathing, I focus on the sound that I am creating using my breath… It's like the ocean; it comes and goes effortlessly in and out with a never ending rhythm. I surrender to the rhythm of the teacher… At times, that can be very challenging for me… surrender used to give me a bad taste in my mouth… sounds so weak, like giving up or losing something. In fact it contains a whole lot of fear for me. Surrendering down, bending your knees, kneeling down, being vulnerable… open… letting go of control. 

About 6 years ago I injured my left knee during strenuous rehearsals for a dance fashion show which I choreographed. I had been out of the business for a while living in South Africa and then returning to Germany to have my little baby girl. Now I was back but felt judged and a bit rusty which of course was a scenario I was creating for myself but so it was… I wanted to show how good I still was and created way too complicated and strenuous moves. I had to show and go over them too many times and felt increasingly insecure. All this led up to a severely torn cruciate ligament, meniscus tear, and lateral ligament tear. This injury was caused by my own strong feelings of fear and my stubbornness around not showing vulnerability and weakness. I did not have surgery – which was a mixture of great doubt in the medical industry and I was at that time already studying osteopathy and other alternative medical healing modalities. I wanted to heal my knee myself. Well, actually I ignored it at first and did nothing other than Reiki healing on it. After a year of doing that my knee kind of was fine but felt unsupported and weak. A reflection of exactly how I felt at that time in my life... This is what the body does, it follows what is going on in your mind. If you feel hungry it will create the hormones and enzymes needed for digestion, if you feel anxious the body will create and release the hormones into the bloodstream that help you to run away or to fight... My knee felt unsupported as I was not sure, in my mind, which direction to go in my life.

Immigrating into New Zealand was amazingly healing. I started to study Kinesiology and during that year we did a lot of work on my knee, clearing the emotions held through the trauma and the emotions leading to the trauma as well as any other unwanted patterns still attracting injuries to that knee (as I injured it again during Body Jam classes) and other emotions hindering the healing. 

Now I can do anything with my knee. It’s normal, my normal strength, flexibility and health. I can now surrender and let go of having to be someone that I am not. I can be vulnerable at times and that is ok as it is a place of great transformation… I can surrender to infinite possibilities of the moment and trust that whatever comes up will be the exact right thing for me at that moment, instead of holding on to a limited image of myself from the past. Listening to what is and not to what was or might be. 

Now I can surrender to the teacher in the yoga room and to the heat… I choose to and even though we do the same old 26 postures over and over again every day is different. 

This is something the teachers say a lot

But some things, you hear over and over but they never make it into your awareness, under the surface and one day they finally do and as they drift down into the deepest part of you… like the bottom of the deep deep sea... they can drift down deeply… all the way down... into the bottom and there you can... start growing like a seed planted into the ground… this ground can be so fertile, so rich, this ground is as pure and nutritious as you choose... by taking good care of it, loving it and respecting it… taking out weeds and any waste or toxins... weeds and toxins which might have names like worry, fear, anger, bitterness, resentment, sadness, grief, blame and guilt. Every day, every moment you become aware of a weed… as you are growing more and more aware of these things that are harmful for you... you can take it out, dissolve it or you might even breathe it away…

I do not know what suits you most but as you do this, as you let them go... your seeds with beautiful names like trust, confidence, courage, happiness, joy, willpower and many other beautiful names that you choose, can grow… higher and colourful… vibrant and strong… any way you like them to grow.

In hypnosis, I teach my clients to go into a trance… easily and naturally and any time they come back, any time they go back into their garden wherever it is... they can go even deeper and go there even faster… instantly… just like you might have just slipped into a light trance reading my blog… 

Love and light …Gloria