Balancing Doing and Being.

The Dance Between Action and Surrender

As I sat with friends on New Year’s Eve, reflecting on the past decade and setting intentions for the year ahead, one conversation from earlier that day kept resurfacing in my mind. A client and I had been talking about her progress over the past year—how she’d found her voice and begun standing up for herself. Yet, as she moved into this new chapter, it became clear that she now needed to shift toward something that felt contradictory: releasing control, surrendering, and finding ease.

We ended up discussing the balance between action and surrender. In yoga philosophy, this balance is often referred to as sthira and sukha. These Sanskrit words roughly translate to "steadiness" and "ease" (or "good space"), and they provide a framework for exploring how we can be both active and at ease, how we can move forward while also letting go.