Bouncing Back

When crises arise, some people flourish while others flounder. Here's how your practice can help you build resilience.

By Sally Kempton

For Laura, the process of self-study began when she stopped mourning her lost skills and began trying to discover who she was beyond these skills and talents. It was self-inquiry that showed her that her life's purpose might be very different than what she had supposed.

Many students are introduced to self-inquiry by therapists who are themselves spiritual practitioners and who recommend svadhyaya to help clients stop identifying with their suffering. Michael Lee, who teaches a method of yoga therapy called Phoenix Rising, shows clients how to move through buried emotional states by staying mindful in their asana practice; he finds that this can translate into compassionate observation of their thoughts and emotions throughout their everyday lives. Lee himself relies on mindfulness practice as his own best tool for moving through tough situations, having discovered that the moment he steps back from a problem and tunes in to his witnessing self, he has a better chance of discovering what to do.

Ishvara pranidhana is usually translated as "surrender or devotion to God," a practice that is at the core of every spiritual path. But another name for God is "reality"—the life energy that flows through every circumstance and makes things happen the way they do. Much of our suffering comes from the simple refusal to accept that reality. So, moment to moment, Ishvara pranidhana is the choice to open up to what is actually going on inside us and around us. It's the attitude of deep acceptance that lets us experience the inevitable hardships and disappointments of life without resistance, without constantly wishing that things were different. Surrendering instantly gives us back the energy we have been spending in resisting our lives, in feeling victimized, frustrated, or despairing. It is the most profound form of alignment with reality—and it opens us to love.

In physical terms, you practice surrender when you consciously relax into full awareness of a part of your body that hurts, rather than resisting the discomfort. Surrender can also mean, in the language of the 12-step movement, "turning over" your situation to a higher power, with the understanding that there are things your personal will does not have the power to change on its own.

When I asked Laura Derbenwick what advice she would give to other people recovering from a serious injury, she said, "The most important thing would be to give up your attachment to getting better—which is really, really difficult. At the same time, you have to continue to believe that it is possible that you will." She added, "Every brain-injured person I've met who was willing to completely embrace their situation has either recovered completely or experienced such inner expansion that it stopped mattering to them that they are physically sick or damaged."

Buddhist psychotherapist Mark Epstein would probably agree. Epstein has said that what makes a person resilient is "accepting the truth of impermanence"—that is, the fact that life is ever-changing and that the self we think we are is actually just a shifting kaleidoscope of temporary thoughts and feelings. The sages of my tradition, Hindu Tantra, would express the same idea in different language. They would say that when our egos let go of their need to control reality, we align ourselves with the intrinsic power at the heart of all phenomena. That's when solutions arise, spontaneously, to seemingly insoluble problems.

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