July 2026

FINDING STRENGTH IN SURRENDER

Dear Yogis/Yoginis ,

There is a particular kind of tired that has nothing to do with sleep.

It is the tiredness of someone who has been holding everything together for a very long time. Who learned, somewhere along the way, that asking for help is a risk — that needing something is a burden, perhaps even a betrayal of who they are supposed to be. So they keep going. They give more. They push through. And they call it strength.

I want to offer a different story.

In the yogic tradition, Ishvara Pranidhana — surrender to something greater than oneself — is not collapse. It is not giving up. It is the courageous act of recognizing where your effort ends and where grace must begin. The exhale after a very long inhale.

When we cannot surrender, it is rarely because we are strong. It is usually because we are afraid. Afraid that if we stop holding it all together, everything will fall apart. Afraid that if we show our need, we will be seen as too much — or not enough.

So we perform competence. We perform fine. And underneath, we quietly deplete. This is what the yogis called a violation of Ahimsa — non-violence. Not the dramatic kind. The quiet, daily kind we enact against ourselves when we refuse to ask, refuse to rest, refuse to be held.

Many of us were trained in the religion of more. More effort means more worth. More giving means we get to stay. And yet the yogic path offers a correction here — Brahmacharya, the practice of non-excess, of right use of energy. Not more. Enough. The chronic over-giver, over-doing, over-controlling, is not practicing Brahmacharya — they are living its opposite. The invitation is to ask: where is my energy actually going, and is this truly in service of something real? This creates a particular loneliness — being surrounded by people who love you, and still not letting any of it in. Because receiving requires vulnerability. The willingness to be seen in a moment of need without immediately apologizing for it.

Asking for help is not neediness. It is relationship. It is what allows love to move in both directions. It is also, quietly, an act of Satya —truthfulness. When we say "I'm fine" and we are not, we are withholding something real from the people who love us. Naming our need honestly is not weakness. It is integrity.

The inability to surrender is almost always rooted in a loss of trust. And trust, like flexibility, cannot be forced. It is practiced — slowly, in small increments — until the body remembers it is safe to soften. This is Santosha — contentment. Not the contentment of having everything handled, but the quieter practice of being at peace with where things actually are. Of recognizing that what we have offered today, imperfect and incomplete as it may be, was enough.

You cannot pour from an empty vessel.

Asking for help is not a retreat from your strength. It is an act of stewardship — of the gifts you carry, the people who depend on you, and the life you are trying to live with some measure of wholeness. And it may be one of the most generous things you can do for others: when you let someone help you, you give them the gift of mattering. The yogis called this Aparigraha — non-grasping. When we hold tightly to the role of the one who gives, who manages, who never needs — we are clinging. And in that clinging, we unknowingly take from others the chance to love us back.

The Tao Te Ching reminds us that giving and receiving are not opposites — they are one movement, like the inhale and the exhale. Where one is blocked, the other withers. To allow ourselves to receive is not to take — it is to complete the circle.

You make the love more complete. You make the relationship more whole.

If this resonates, come practice in person: 

⭐️Discussion: " The power in surrender, Giving back to the Giver"

⭐️Workshop: Yin Yoga and Gong  

⭐️Retreat: Soft Power- A wellness day retreat 

-Evelyne