The practice of surrender

For much of my life, I thought surrender meant giving up. It sounded passive, almost like admitting defeat and I’m never one to admit defeat. I wanted to be someone who worked hard, solved problems, and pushed through obstacles. If something wasn’t working, I believed I simply needed to try harder.

Over time, life and thousands of hours working with people’s bodies, I’ve learned something very different. Surrender isn’t quitting. It’s letting go of the fight with what already is.

As a massage therapist, I’ve noticed something that continues to humble me. Two people can come in with the same complaint, tight shoulders, chronic neck pain, or aching hips, yet their bodies tell completely different stories. Sometimes a muscle is simply overworked. Sometimes it is protecting. Sometimes it has been holding on for so long that it no longer remembers what it feels like to soften.

I can invite a muscle to relax, but I can’t force it. In fact, the more force I use, the more resistance I often feel. The body responds to safety, not pressure. When it senses that it no longer has to protect itself, it begins to let go in its own time.

I think we move through life in much the same way.

We spend so much energy resisting what already exists. We resist painful emotions because they make us uncomfortable. We resist change because it wasn’t part of the plan. We resist people because we wish they would think differently, behave differently, or love us differently. We resist uncertainty because we want guarantees.

The struggle is rarely found in the moment itself. More often, it comes from our refusal to accept that the moment exists. The struggle comes from the story we create around what is and our desperation to make that moment different.

Our nervous system responds to that resistance. It doesn’t know whether we are facing an immediate danger or replaying the same fear over and over in our minds. The body prepares for action all the same. Muscles tighten. Breathing becomes shallow. Digestion slows. We remain in a state of readiness, waiting for a battle that may never come.

Eventually, that tension begins to feel normal.

When someone says, “Just let it go,” it can feel impossible because letting go isn’t something we do with force. You cannot push yourself into surrender. Surrender begins with honesty. This is what is here. This is what I am feeling. This is what I cannot control.

There is something deeply peaceful about stopping the argument with reality. One question that has helped me more than almost any other is…

What am I fighting right now?

Not what am I trying to fix. Not what am I trying to avoid but rather… What am I fighting?

Many times, I discover that I’m not fighting another person or even a difficult situation. I’m fighting reality itself. I’m exhausting myself wishing today looked different than it does.

The beautiful paradox is that surrender often creates the very change we have been chasing. When the body stops bracing, healing has room to begin. When the mind stops arguing, clarity appears. When we release the need to control every outcome, we become more present to what life is offering us.

I see this in my massage practice almost every day. Clients often apologize because they “can’t relax.” I always tell them that relaxation isn’t another task to accomplish. You don’t achieve it through effort. Instead, we begin with the breath. We notice the support of the table beneath the body. We give the nervous system a chance to realize that, for this moment, it is safe.

Little by little, the body remembers. I think the heart remembers too.

If you believe in a Creator, surrender becomes one of the deepest expressions of love. Love cannot exist without trust. Surrender is choosing to trust that you do not have to carry everything by yourself. It is recognizing that there is wisdom beyond your own understanding and allowing yourself to rest in that truth. That kind of trust changes us.

We still show up. We still do the work. We still make difficult decisions and have hard conversations. We simply stop carrying the impossible burden of believing that everything depends on us.

Nature has always been one of my greatest teachers. Trees release their leaves when the season changes. Rivers flow around what they cannot move. Nothing in the natural world clings to a season that has already passed. Perhaps we were never meant to either.

For me, surrender no longer means giving up. It means softening enough to receive what life gives and being okay with that gift. When I choose to operate from that space, everything just works itself out.

What is one small thing that you can surrender today? Can you soften your body and just let one thing go? I’d love to hear from you all as you let go of fighting and surrender to the flow of life.

Additional note: I read several of Michael Singer’s books a few years ago and later took his Living Untethered online course. His work has absolutely changed my life. Michael Singer’s work is based on surrender and accepting what is. His teachings have changed how I experience the world and who I am as a person. He has given me a completely different perspective on acceptance, inner peace, and what it means to surrender to life instead of constantly resisting it. I even visited “Temple of the Universe” where he teaches and met him in person.

If you’re interested in exploring some of the ideas I write about here, my favorite Michael Singer books are The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment. I also highly recommend his Living Untethered online course if you want to go even deeper into the practice. Right now, I’m reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, and I’m really enjoying how it builds on many of the same themes from a slightly different perspective.