9/28/23 Live Session Recording

Ishvara Prianidhana is the hardest Niyama for me to connect with honestly. It stirs up a lot of emotions and hesitancy honestly. Surrendering to me is accepting the unknown and the path that happens after that. It is a scary thought to surrender to the truth like Eric and Leah mention if there is any form of unknown. I like the idea of control, and I am learning that is a response to an unstable childhood so I am still working on understanding and accepting the notion of this niyama. slowly but surely! 

For the 30 Min Practice-

Energetic release- movement based on the read of the room 

dynamic warm up- Shoulder rolls, arm circles, neck stretches and leg engagement

Centering- Seated Meditation with hand on heard and stomach, focus on breath. 

Strength and Mobility-  hands and knees with movement with legs and arms, high plank into cobra pose

Concentration and Focus- Tree Pose, Chair Pose,  Warrior I 

integration and Relaxation-  Seated Twists, Supine belly twists, corpse pose 

Ishvara Pranidhana was a niyama that brought up a lot of feelings for me. When asked to define "surrender" I wrote "giving in, releasing". Like you Jen, I had conceptions about surrender that were not positive or nice. Surrendering can feel like giving up or allowing adversity to win when looking at advocacy work. I thought about my patients and how the idea of surrender could bring up trauma such as having to surrender themselves to the police. I thought about how surrender can be triggering for people with trauma impacting their bodies where they felt they needed to surrender and let the trauma take place so it can be over quickly. I really appreciated the conversation on how surrender can have both positive and negative connotations. For me, surrender was also a term used to give weight to another person gently or to "surrender into the floor". I think this dialectic of surrender can be seen in my definition of surrender as it brings many memories. It made me reflect on a DBT group I provided once where we asked patients in my facility to take a posture that shows the emotion "surprised". Many people were thinking of a surprise birthday party whereas my patients who were former gang members were taking cover and low as if taking cover from a drive by. I was surprised in a scary way that sent a jolt throughout my body. Each person's experience and privilege showed up in their interpretation of the emotion and this is also true of the concept of surrender.

When speaking of steadiness and ease, there was a conversation about how we respond in the world and how we all want to feel safe and secure. While safety is one of the guiding principles of trauma informed care, it also made me think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and how we need to have our basic needs met and feel psychologically safe before we can reach self-actualization. This concept can definitely be missed when speaking of incarceration as safety is not always guaranteed and how we as facilitators can provide a space even for an hour that a person can feel slightly safer.

Here is my 30-minute practice:
Energetic Release: Seated, stomp feet on the ground, shake out arms, and ask patients what they need to “shake off” today (anxiety, fear, etc)
Dynamic Warm Up: Seated cat cow, seated side bend stretch on horizontal plane, circles in head/neck/ankles/wrists, windshield wiper knees side to side
Centering: Sitting with one hand on chest and one on stomach (if comfortable) engage in conscious breathing while noticing our heartrate and stomach movements.
Strength/Mobility: Seated forward bend, Thread the needle, Cow Face
Concentration/Focus: Boat, Seated Twist, Shoulder Stand
Integration/Relaxation: Inverted pigeon, corpse pose, body scan/guided relaxation