Surrendering the Ego Through Yoga
- innerlifetime
- Jun 9
- 12 min read
We talk about the ego all the time. We say someone has "a big ego," or that we need to "check our ego at the door." But in yoga and spiritual traditions, the ego means something deeper and far more interesting than arrogance. Understanding it changed the way I live — and it can change the way you experience your practice, your relationships, and your own sense of peace.
This is part teaching and part personal story, because I cannot write about the ego from the outside. I have lived it. Surrendering the ego through yoga once took me from burnout back to myself, and it is still the practice I return to every day.
What Is the Ego, Spiritually? What Most People Get Wrong
Most of us are taught that the ego is a bad thing. We picture arrogance, vanity, someone who thinks too highly of themselves. So we assume the goal is to crush it, to be "egoless," to feel guilty whenever we put ourselves first.
That is not what the ego is.
In yoga philosophy, the ego has a specific name: ahamkara, which translates roughly as the "I-maker." It is the part of the mind that creates the sense of a separate "I" — the voice that says this is me, and that is not me. It is not a flaw. It is innate, and it is essential for survival. The ego lets you function in the world, remember your name, know where you end and the kettle begins, and protect yourself from harm. We are not meant to destroy it.
The trouble starts when we mistake the ego for the whole of who we are — when we let it run our lives. We begin to believe we are our thoughts, our labels, our successes and failures, our need to be seen a certain way. The ego is constantly narrating, comparing, defending, and wanting. And when we live entirely inside that narration, we stay locked in the mind, separated and unsettled.
So the work is not to get rid of the ego. It is to stop letting it run the show.
How the Ego Keeps Us Separated, Isolated, and Burnt Out
The ego's whole job is to draw a line between self and other. That boundary is necessary, but taken too far it becomes a kind of prison. The more strongly we identify with our separate self, the more isolated we feel — because separation is precisely what the ego is built to maintain.
This is why so much of modern life can feel lonely even when we are surrounded by people. We are caught in the mind's commentary:
Am I good enough?
What do they think of me?
Do they see me as worthwhile?
Did I say the right thing?
Why haven't they replied?
Why does she have that and I don't?
Am I falling behind?
How could they do that to me?
Don't they know what I deserve?
Who am I if I'm not my job, my role, my achievements?
Will I ever be enough?
Notice how nearly every one circles back to I, me, my — and how most are rooted in either fear of not being enough or comparison to someone else. That is the ego's signature. It is always slightly anxious, because it senses, deep down, that it is fragile. It must constantly protect and prove itself. That low-level defensiveness keeps us guarded, performing, and cut off from a simple, direct experience of life.
I know this because I lived inside it for a very long time.
My Breaking Point: Burnout and the Ego That Ran My Life
For years I poured everything into succeeding. Not for myself, I realise now, but so that other people would see me as worthwhile. My sense of value was outsourced — it lived in how I imagined I was being perceived. I pushed and pushed, certain that if I just achieved enough, I would finally feel like enough.
It took me to burnout. To isolation. To a breaking point where the life I had built no longer fit the person I was underneath it all.
So I walked away from that world. And instead of running toward another external goal, I surrendered — inward. I went into my inner world, the one I had been too busy and too frightened to look at. It was the hardest and most freeing thing I have ever done. The moment I stopped trying to control how others saw me, and started paying attention to how I actually felt about myself, something in me began to soften and heal.
That is what surrendering the ego really felt like for me. Not weakness. Liberation.
Letting Go of the Ego: What Surrender and Self-Love Opened Up
When I stopped letting the ego narrate my worth, I could finally reflect honestly. I looked back at past choices and, for the first time, at my own part in difficult experiences — not to punish myself, but to understand and grow. The ego hates this kind of honesty, because it is always defending. Stepping back from it let me see clearly.
It also taught me to love myself. I learned that I did not have to let every thought and emotion dominate how I behaved. A feeling could arise without becoming my master. A judgement could come and I could simply notice it, rather than obey it.
And it taught me to trust connection over fear. I had stayed in situations I knew were toxic, in relationships and friendships that no longer aligned with the person I was returning to — myself. So many of those bonds, I came to see, were ego-driven. Not in a cruel or arrogant way, but rooted in my need for people to see me as a certain kind of person. When I let go of that need, I could finally close those doors.
Here is the part that still amazes me. Closing those doors felt, at first, like isolation. But what it actually did was open something beautiful: a community of genuine connection, authenticity, and acceptance. By stepping away from what was ego-driven, I made room for what was real. That is the heart of what I have built at Inner Lifetime.
Yoga and the Ego: Why Yoga Aims to Quiet It (A Little History)
This is not a modern wellness idea — it is the heart of yoga's oldest teachings. Around 2,000 years ago, the sage Patanjali compiled the Yoga Sutras, the foundational text of classical yoga. Its second line gives the entire aim of the practice: Yogas chitta vritti nirodha — "Yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind."
In other words, yoga was never originally about flexibility or fitness. It was a method for quieting the restless, chattering mind so that we can experience our true nature, beneath the ego's noise.
Patanjali also named the obstacles that keep us suffering, called the kleshas, or afflictions. The first is avidya (not seeing clearly), and the second is asmita — egoism, the mistaken belief that we are only our small, separate self. The whole path of yoga is designed to loosen the ego's grip so that clarity, peace, and connection can arise naturally.
Feeling Connected Through Yoga: What "Something Bigger" Really Means
The word yoga comes from the Sanskrit root yuj, meaning "to yoke" or "to unite." Yoga is, quite literally, the practice of union — reconnecting the small, separate self with something larger.
You do not need to adopt any particular religion to feel this. "Something bigger" can mean the whole of life, of nature, of all living beings, of consciousness itself. In felt terms, it is that moment when the self-talk goes quiet and you simply are. The lonely, defended self softens, and you feel part of something. The wave remembers it was never separate from the ocean.
The Many Ways Yoga Helps Us Surrender the Ego
You do not have to force the ego away — in fact, trying to is just the ego attacking itself. Yoga offers gentler practices that let the sense of a separate self soften on its own.
The breath (pranayama). Conscious breathing draws your attention out of the storytelling mind and into the present moment. The ego lives in past and future; the breath lives only in now.
The postures (asana). Moving with awareness gives the busy mind something simple and immediate to rest on. As you focus on sensation rather than thought, the constant "me, me, me" naturally quietens.
Meditation (dhyana). The most direct practice. By watching your thoughts rather than believing every one, you begin to see that you are the awareness behind the thoughts — not the thoughts themselves.
Surrender (ishvara pranidhana). One of yoga's ethical guidelines is literally "surrender to a higher power." It means releasing the ego's exhausting insistence on controlling everything, and trusting life.
Stillness (savasana). To lie still and simply be, with nothing to achieve and no one to be, is a small, beautiful practice of letting the ego dissolve.
Chanting and sound (mantra). Repeating a sound or phrase occupies the verbal mind and creates a sense of resonance and unity, especially with others.
Practising with others. Sharing a room, breathing together, moving together — gently reminding us that we are not as separate as the ego insists.
Surrendering the Ego Is a Daily Practice — For All of Us
I want to be honest: surrendering the ego is not a one-time event. It is a practice I return to every day. Even now, when I meet something unfamiliar — a person, a belief, a way of living different from my own — my ego still whispers, that's different, we are different, I am not like them.
The difference is that now I can catch it. I bring awareness to the thought, look at the judgement honestly, and choose to see through it. And on the other side of the difference is always the same truth: we are all still connected.
That is the gift of this work. Not a perfect, egoless life, but the freedom to notice, to soften, and to keep coming home to who we really are.
Catching the Ego in Real Life: The Story of My Car
Surrendering the ego is not something I did once and finished. It shows up in the small, everyday moments — especially when I feel something strongly in reaction to someone else's behaviour. When a wave of emotion rises, I have learned to pause and ask myself one quiet question: is this reaction coming from ego?
Am I angry because how could they do that to me? Do I want justice? Do I feel I deserve better? Notice how much "I" lives inside those feelings. They are completely human responses — sadness, betrayal, pain, even regret for letting myself end up in a situation in the first place. I do not pretend they are not real or valid. But once I have honoured the feeling, I ask a different question: how can I use this experience to surrender the ego?
Let me give you a real example. A few years ago I left a toxic relationship. Long story short, he took all my money, and in the chaos of those early weeks, the car I drive today was simply left at a location with an instruction to go and collect it. No choice. Nothing close to what I had paid into our previous "family car" — which, I later discovered, he had quietly placed in his own name. I had trusted him. I thought we were a team. But it is what it is. And an act that demonstrated the very reason i walked away.
For two years, I resented that car. A few months ago I decided I was done with it: I would let it go and get something new. This car is not what I deserve. I deserve choice. I deserve better, because I paid for that family car. But while I was away recently, slowing down, I recognised that voice for exactly what it was — ego. And something shifted.
I have accepted the car now. (Even though, true to form, it broke down yesterday. -all fixed now though :-).) The funny thing is, when I imagined actually getting rid of it, I felt sad. It is just a car. For two years I had poured all my emotion and all my sense of injustice into it — and yet, underneath that, maybe I have grown quite attached to it. Rather than letting the ego convince me it was not good enough, I felt something else entirely: gratitude. Gratitude that I left.
This is where I see the quiet damage the ego can do. It does not just make us boastful — far more often, it keeps us small and separate. It hooks us into resentment, into replaying who wronged us and what we are owed. It tells us we are better than and worse than, us and them, and it ties us, through bitterness, to the very people and chapters we thought we had left behind. Carrying that injustice around for two years did not punish anyone but me. It kept a thread of connection alive to a story I had already walked away from for all the right reasons. That in itself is something to be celebrated - not resented.
The old Jade who wanted something shiny because of how it looked is long gone — that was never really about the car, it was the emotional charge underneath, and that charge came from ego. But I have accepted it. This car is mine. It gets me from A to B. It is not forever. And rather than a symbol of what was taken from me, it has quietly become a reminder of something I am at peace with: that I walked away, and that I would choose myself again every time. That is not pride in the egoic sense of wanting to be seen — it is self-respect, the steady kind that does not need anyone else to witness it. And at the very same time, I can smile and see the simple truth: it is just a car.
That is the practice. Not denying the feeling, but refusing to let the ego — and its endless sense of separation — write the ending.
Small Ways to Notice When the Ego Is Running the Show
You do not need years of study to start spotting the ego at work — you only need a little honest curiosity. The next time you feel reactive, defensive, or caught up in a story about yourself, try gently asking:
Is this reaction really about the situation, or about how I want to be seen?
Am I defending a version of myself, rather than responding to what is actually happening?
Do I need to be right here, or do I just want to be at peace?
Am I comparing — feeling better than or worse than someone else?
Is my mind saying they are different, I am not like them? Can I look past the difference to what connects us?
Am I holding onto resentment because letting it go feels like "losing"?
Whose opinion am I really performing for right now?
None of these are about judging yourself harshly. They are simply little doorways back to awareness. The moment you notice the ego, you are no longer fully inside it.
It can be just as revealing to notice ego in our interactions with others — not to criticise them, but to understand the dynamics we all share. You might notice the person who talks non-stop about themselves and never asks you a single question, or the one who always needs to one-up your story, name-drop, or be the most impressive in the room. You might feel the conversations that leave you a little drained, where you sense you were an audience rather than a person. We all do these things sometimes. Seeing them clearly — in ourselves and in others — helps us choose connection over performance, curiosity over comparison, and presence over the constant need to prove.
Why I Share This: Connection, Wellbeing, and an Open Heart
If you have ever practised with me, you will know the ego comes up a lot in our classes. That is no accident, and it is the reason I wanted to put these thoughts down properly. We have explored what the ego really is — not arrogance, but the innate "I-maker" that keeps us feeling separate — how it can quietly run our lives, isolate us, and tie us to resentment, and how yoga, in its oldest and deepest sense, gently helps us loosen its grip. And i will continue to explore it with an endeavour to live consciously.
But here is what I most want you to take away. When we surrender the ego, even a little, we become more open-minded, less quick to judge, less caught up in what we own or how we are seen, and far more accepting of the countless things that connect us all. And that matters enormously for our wellbeing. We are social beings by nature — we are wired for connection, and we genuinely struggle without it. So much modern anxiety and loneliness comes from living trapped inside the separate, defended self. Softening the ego is not about becoming "less" of a person; it is about feeling more held, more at ease, more part of something. Connection is not a luxury. It is one of the deepest needs we have, and tending to it is one of the kindest things we can do for our mental and emotional health.
That is the whole reason this studio exists — and the whole reason I share what I have lived.
A Gentle Invitation to Beginner-Friendly Yoga in Lincoln
Surrendering the ego sounds lofty, but it begins with something very ordinary: one conscious breath, one honest moment on the mat. You do not need to be flexible, spiritual, or experienced. You only need to be willing to pause and reconnect.
At Inner Lifetime in Lincoln, our classes are warm, beginner-friendly, and completely free of judgement — a calm space to step out of the busy mind and into real connection. I built this studio out of my own journey home to myself, and if stepping into a yoga class feels a little daunting, please know that is completely normal, and you would be more welcome than you know.
If you have been curious about yoga but unsure where to start, this is your gentle nudge.
Ready to begin? Explore our beginner-friendly classes at Inner Lifetime or message me on Instagram @innerlifetime. I would love to welcome you.
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