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The Surrender Wheel

Writer's picture: Nate LangleyNate Langley

Updated: Jan 22


That's me on a foggy mountain thinking about complex ideas and how big of a pain in the ass it is to share them, but also feeling the pull to do it anyway.
That's me on a foggy mountain thinking about complex ideas and how big of a pain in the ass it is to share them, but also feeling the pull to do it anyway.

Words play an important role in our lives.

In the narrative based perspectives we shape around our experiences, they act as building blocks of meaning.


It makes sense then, that if you intend to alter the way you experience your life, words-and the way you relate to them is one of the levers you might pull to make a change. The past several years I've spent a lot of my attention on re-examining many of the words that make up the frameworks I use to move about in the world.


One word that seems to keep coming up for further refinement is "surrender."


I spent my mid twenties and early thirties turning a blind eye to what was a pretty serious health decline. Though externally I appeared "healthy," on the inside my gut and immune system (have since learned they're one in the same) had gone completely haywire. I woke up each day feeling like I'd been hit by a truck. My word recall and overall processing speed in my brain was grinding to a halt and my joints and muscles ached and were tuned so tight I think you could have played a sad violin song on my hamstrings.


As bothersome and disruptive as this experience was becoming, fear boiling up from my dysbiotic gut kept me from seeking medical attention. So I masked and marched on. I trudged through years of chronic pain using marijuana off and on to manage my symptoms and distract myself. (No, I'm not against weed, but I was using it as a crutch.) I didn't want nor did I know how to break my cycle of "just getting by."


Even though my status quo had eroded into a painful and limiting existence, I felt this immense pressure to maintain it.




It wasn't until a full on physical and mental breakdown landed me in the hospital that I began to gather the courage to dream about a state of being where I was out of pain, thinking clearly and moving with ease. My body- for all those years had been sending me very clear signals for how to initiate the process of getting there: "slow down." "tune in." "rest..." "SURRENDER."


I reached a point where I had no choice.


At the time, surrender felt like an end to the invisible battle I'd been in for most of my adult life. It felt like If I really allowed myself to feel and accept what was happening in my body that I would die. That sounds dramatic, but remember I'm speaking to you from my inner truth, not necessarily with the filter I might put on if I was afraid you'd judge what you're reading here.


In some ways my assumption was correct because when I finally let go of the tight grip on the facade I was putting on, a part of me did cease to exist. I refer to it now as my original operating system. The one that was shaped in my early childhood by my reactions to a turbulent home environment and an adolescence with its fair share of rejection and bullying. In those times, surrender was not an option to a hyper vigilant nervous system constantly on the lookout for the next threat. So I swallowed it down and put on a face.


But there was a lot of energy attached to what I was feeling back then- and as we know, energy can't be created or destroyed..simply transformed from one form to another. So all that fear, all the shame for not standing up for myself, the sadness for what it felt like to be me, it stewed around in my insides and fermented.


By the time I reached my early thirties, my body had grown weary of my patterns of "holding it in." The fermenting energy and emotion was boiling over. That breakdown I talked about with the hospital visit and the painful days that followed marked an end to my resistance. If I was to have a chance to get better, I needed to allow what I was holding in to come out.


Moving through the process of "letting it out," I learned that there is life on the other side of surrender. In the stillness of rest, little fibers of intuition began to re-establish their network throughout my body. As it came back online, my intuition brought bite sized messages on what steps to take on my road to healing: "Stop squeezing so tightly...." So I stopped lifting heavy weights and opted instead for stretching and yoga. I traded out late night hockey games for home cooked meals and early nights to bed. "Speak the unease out of you..." So I set out to talk about my past traumas-to use my voice to intentionally witness my own resonance removing stuff from inside that wasn't mine. I had countless painful conversations that I'd put off for decades. "Go to nature..." So I went on a walk by the river every day where I remembered that outside is where I feel most simply myself.


As the insights came in, I simply listened and acted on them and the pattern would repeat like a wheel moving me closer and closer to a better version of life. I won't spell out every revolution of the wheel, but I can confirm that this is the same wheel I'm still riding on to this day.


I was no longer thinking of surrender as an end to a battle where I was waving a white flag and instead it became a vehicle to a new experience that I needed to stop resisting.


I realize now that my old way of being (to keep moving through resistance) was actually me riding the brakes...in other words, in continuing down the path of unease I was actually slowing myself down from getting onto a more aligned and fulfilling path.


K, let's pause and break the fourth wall...


Does your relationship with surrender have you riding the brakes somewhere in your life?


As I continue to put miles on the wheel, I'm finding myself in new contexts and environments that require I do some maintenance and upkeep...


More on that in part 2 of this blog.






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