It Doesn’t Have to be a Struggle
There you were in Eagle—extremely hot, standing on one trembling leg with both arms and legs wrapped tightly around each other, sweat dripping off your chin, and your mind racing around in your head shouting out directions and corrections as you were fighting to hold on to the posture with every ounce of your strength – when somewhere, far from the distant peripheral edges of your awareness, you heard a calm voice state . . . “It doesn’t have to be a struggle.”
“WHAT?” you might have asked yourself, “How can you NOT struggle in Eagle? Isn’t fighting and struggling to someday attain a perfect posture what yoga’s all about?”
Please read on to understand this somewhat confusing suggestion and the studio’s Theme of the Month, “It doesn’t have to be a struggle”:
There’s a good chance the calm voice mentioned above was that of Teacher Kevin. Kevin’s been known to offer this tip a time or two throughout his classes because, despite the apparent contradiction of not struggling while performing a demanding posture, this idea is profoundly important.
In a nutshell, this thought is important because so much of the difficulty – or the ease – of our yoga experience is determined by the way we perceive our postures. In other words, when we listen to the voice in our head telling us how difficult a posture is, we experience the posture as difficult. When we view our effort as a fight or a struggle – it is.
So, if you’re having a hard time in a posture, chances are you are being distracted by thoughts telling you to interpret your experience as hard. As Rolf Gates says in his book, Meditations from the Mat, “Our minds are wedded to the habit of distraction.” So, instead of clearing the mind and focusing on the task at hand, most of us are in the habit of focusing on the running judgmental commentary in our heads: “This posture is hard. It’s too hot. I’m not doing as well as the person next to me. The person in front of me is blocking my view. I’ll never be able to get my hips squared to the mirror . . . ” Mr. Gates goes on to say that we can “train [our minds] to let go of this habit.” Training one’s mind begins by first being aware of the noise and then consciously letting it go. “Thoughts are energy, and you can make your world or break your world by your thinking,” Susan Taylor is quoted in Meditations from the Mat.
Along similar lines, if you’re struggling in a posture, there’s a good chance you’re trying too hard or pushing yourself too fast. We all have a desire to achieve picture-perfect yogic postures, but putting unrealistic demands on ourselves to move faster than what our bodies are capable of, or ready for, results in disappointment, pain or injury. Again, instead of listening to the running commentary of the expectations we hold for ourselves in our heads, it’s important to quiet the mind and experience the places we CAN get to in our postures.
It’s not uncommon to hear students comment on the phenomenon that some of their best practices have occurred during a class when they felt tired walking into the studio and decided they weren’t going to “push it too hard.” Moving in sync with their current energy level without expectations, they found an inner strength that moved them beyond their normal level of expectations. As our Kriya Yoga Master Arley Gaines has said, “You don’t need to make anything happen. Just be who you are.”
Of course, the yoga principles that help you on your mat can only help you off the mat. Being aware of the constant chatter and distractions in your mind, and then working to quiet them in order to pay attention to the present, without judgment, will help you to find a wellspring of inner strength at home, at school, in the office, while traveling, etc. In our world off the mat, “It doesn’t have to be a struggle” either. As Rolf Gates says, “Put aside your biography and allow yourself to simply be present with what is,” because, “To become happy, we simply have to stop making ourselves unhappy.”