Another point of surrender in yoga is to take off the hats we wear in this life, strip down to our essential selves, when we come to our mats.
Many of us identify ourselves by the roles we take on in life. As an example, I often introduce myself as " a Speech Pathologist (hat)" or "I'm a Mom (hat)" or "I'm a sister (hat)". It isn't that we are not these things because those roles are aspects of us that help make up who we are as people walking the path of this life. And yet not just any one of those roles is the totality of who we are. Some of us feel this keenly when we run into a spell of feeling lonely even though our lives are full on so many levels. At that juncture we can choose to see that we are a divine and unique spirit, soul or personality. After all, there is actually no one like You on the planet except you. I know this very well, as I am an identical twin. And as alike as we truly are, even sharing the same DNA...we are still vastly different and each a unique individual.
The rolls we take on as we grow in life can begin to bury us - our essential selves. Of course, that is not meant to happen. I mean we do after all choose a lot of the roles we become out of happiness and in effort to live full loving lives. As we all know and/or discover those roles have responsibilities. As time goes on we can get lost in the responsibilities of the roles. We often lose sight of ourselves and most of the time it's truly altruistic.
One thing I've learned through my practice is how coming to my mat helps me set aside all of my hats and strip down to just Me. With some moving and breathing I can release all roles and responsibilities for a little while. I can reach in and re-connect to my essential self. Everything else can be put aside. Surrendering those roles or hats and just coming home to myself. You can find this too!
This kind of surrender on your mat is one of the greatest gifts we can give to ourselves and to
everyone else we love and live around. When we tend to our True self we rejuvenate, then we are better able to attend to our roles with responsibilities with clear, clean energy - full of true love and giving that nourishes us, as well as others, rather than deplete.
