Krishna and the art of surrendering

Last night I was watching an online yoga video of one of my favourite teachers, Kelly Kamm in NYC, tell the story of Queen Draupadi and her surrender to faith, love, Krishna. Essentially the baddy of the tale wants to disgrace Queen Draupadi and so begins to rip off her sari in public. She clings to the sari with all her might and calls to Krishna for his help but she gets no response. Her knuckles are turning white from gripping the sari and she is sweating and crying in fear. She throws one arm up to the heavens and calls again ‘Krishna, I beg you, please help me in my hour of need’ but again…nothing. Her Sari is almost being pulled away and in despair and surrender she throws both arms up to the heavens and calls to her beloved Krishna once again. And as the baddy pulls and tugs on her sari, reams and reams of material unravel on top of him but Queen Draupadi’s sari and dignity stay firmly in place. In her surrender to Krishna, to her love and faith in him, he came to her side and aide.

This beautiful tale of faith, love and surrender really resonated with me last night. Frank and I have just arrived back from an awesome holiday in Ibiza. We spent ten days on the beach, swimming, lounging, soaking up some vitamin D and general living life large! It was wonderful.

But it was also a little bittersweet.

As a single parent, I found myself gazing at families on holiday and had a little ache in my heart that that wasn’t our reality (although a big shout out to yogini Lauren, who came with us and made the holiday rock a little more than it already did!) and the sunshine of Ibiza made me think so much more about Australia, how much I miss it and where home is and should be for us moving forward.

I spent a lot of time thinking through the benefits and downsides of each country that I call home and even more time wandering if there was a way of splitting our time between these two worlds each year. I finally came to the conclusion that we were definitely going to move back to Australia, probably this time next year….and then I got home to Falmouth and questioned that. Imagine how much space this was taking up in my brain!

Combine this with a little bit of jealousy over family units and it being so apparent how my little family unit (him and I) were so different in this holiday resort and my whole head and heart started to implode a little.

And then last night as Frank fell asleep I visited Kelly’s Facebook page to get some yoga inspiration and listed to her telling of the Queen Draupadi story. I had been holding on so tight to my sari in this battle of my brain that there was no chance to work anything out. Last night I lifted one arm to the heavens and fell asleep. This morning I woke and lifted both arms into the cosmos in my gesture of surrender. Surrender to the huge amount of love that surrounds me, surrender to being here in this moment, surrender to the winds of fate…I will let this year unfold as it needs to and I’m sure the question of home will become clear but in the meantime, home is where my heart is and my heart is definitely here with my little cyclone.

Home is where the heart is