Recently, my yoga instructor, Amy at Downtown Yoga Memphis, began a class by telling us it was OK to “surrender.” And because she knows her studio can sometimes be full of Type A’s and skeptics, she went on with the context:

Surrendering is not about giving up or giving in. It’s about being exactly where you are supposed to be at this very moment. 

Fortunately, this stuck with me for the past several days as I became very busy. Six months ago, this degree of busyness might have hit an overwhelming point. I would have “technically” kept it together, but my mood and demeanor would have been affected, my sleep would have been quite disrupted, and my energy level would have taken a pretty significant hit.

With meditation and yoga practice helping me clear the overly compacted state of my brain these last couple of months, I took the recent increase in busyness and heightened responsibility in much greater stride.

One of the surrendering moments was last weekend. I typically go to yoga on Saturday and Sunday mornings, go to brunch, work on things like this blog or other personal interests, and so on.

But last weekend, I had a big presentation to get ready for. I woke up Saturday feeling the stress of needing to be two places at once — yoga, because I like it and it’s good for me … and working on the presentation, because I like my career and take my work responsibilities seriously.

I decided to do at-home yoga practice last weekend, rather than heading out to the studio. I know my tendency to get carried away by social and fun moments, distracted by the feeling of freedom in the fresh air and sunshine. So, last weekend I had to surrender myself to the obligations at hand and minimize my risk of distractions.

Once I made that decision — surrendering to where I needed to be at that moment and reducing the “either/or” conflict I was feeling — I had a really darn good at-home yoga session. I focused nearly exclusively on my spine — trying to “uncrunch” all that desk job tension. I also worked on balance and felt like I could hold balance poses for days!

I did the same at-home practice on Sunday, and I spent the majority of the weekend dedicated to working on the project. It’s where I needed to be at that moment, and that clarity felt good.

If there’s one major, life-changing thing yoga and meditation have brought into my life, it’s patience in the pace of my thinking. Overwhelm has been replaced with a heightened sense of balance and control over those things that I can control. I’m noticing the intensity of my stressful moments reducing as every week goes by.

My friend Laura told me last night I must be entering my “second life” – some reference to a book I haven’t read it, but surely will at some point.

The presentation went very well. Tomorrow I return to weekend morning yoga once again. Hooray!