Authentic. Showing Up. Living Life. Striving.

What do you think of when you hear the word surrender?  Giving up, losing, quitting... I'm sure we could list countless more definitions. My own therapist once told me to "surrender and drift." My initial response to this was "what the....." Give up and give in? No thank you! Not me! I don't like to lose and I'm very competitive. I was receptive to the drifting part, but surrender? Please.  Until I looked up the definition of surrender. Well, here it is... "cease resistance to an enemy or opponent and submit to their authority" Cease resistance.  I like that part. Stop fighting things out of of control. Stop struggling and fusing and over identifying with difficult and dark emotions. Many of us have come to believe that emotions are the enemy. They are not! Our behaviors and reactions are what aren't always healthy or safe. I know personally that when I stop resisting my anxiety and begin to accept it, the level of my anxi...

So a few weeks ago, I took a poll among my friends and asked them to let me know the first word that they thought of when they heard the word "yoga." The following is a list of responses I received: Peace  Happiness Mindfulness Relaxing Pants 😋 Flexibility Bent Stretching Namaste Breath Calm Balance Centered Control Strength  Goodness Surrender Play Of note, more playful responses included Yogi Bear, mat, station wagons, tattoos and some others that were more PG13. ☺️ Additionally, most people that responded to this question, to my knowledge, have little experience with a longstanding yoga practice.  So why did I ask this question? As a therapist and now a yoga teacher in training, I'm starting to make more and more connections between what people are searching for in their lives and what yoga (and a good therapist) can offer them!  Our world seems to be the exact opposite of what we are striving for. As a society,...