The Ecstasy of Surrender 12 Surprising Ways Letting Go Can Empower your Life

For most of us, the idea of surrender has only negative connotations – it’s a loss of control or a signal that we are being overwhelmed, even dominated. How can ‘giving up’ be a good thing, much less something we might want to pursue? With her trademark warmth and wit, Dr. Judith Orloff blends neuroscience, energy medicine, psychiatry, and intuition into a shining map for becoming truly joyful in our lives.

In The Ecstasy of Surrender: 12 Surprising Ways Letting Go Can Empower Your Life, Orloff gives us all of the tools we need to let go of control and allow our innate, powerful, intuition and connection with the Universe to manifest true success in our lives. She is compassionate and wry, sharing stories from her patients and her own life to illustrate how flowing with life allows us to avoid the so-called 'typical issues' of modern life: scarcity, success, sex, relationships, career, and health.

In my own experience I can say that when I experienced huge upheavals in my life -- that glorious rebirthing known in astrological terms as the Saturn return, the time that led to my 2nd * initiation, and (most recently) undergoing the Mr. Toad’s madhouse of cancer – letting go of my normal mode of control was a key component in coming through a more resilient and powerful person. In each of those times, I found myself trying hard to just ‘be’, my mantra was ‘let me learn this lesson quickly and completely’, and I spent a lot of time working with the imagery of lying prostrate as the storms rushed over (and through) me. I worked on opening and reflection and didn’t try to make anything happen.

Orloff has done an incredible job of translating a difficult and challenging concept into many practical solutions. There are tips, strategies, and tools to help us identify where we are pushing to hard, holding on so hard we’re actually squeezing it out and away. Over and over again she provides simple and effective ways to modify our perspective and our behavior so we can experience all of the positive benefits of surrender.

Highly recommended for everyone.

~review by Lisa Mc Sherry

Author: Judith Orloff, Ph.D.
Harmony Books, 2014
pp. 432, $16