My last blog post was about borrowing a yoga pose from someone to bring new energy to your practice and help you enjoy yoga more. Today I want to share with you how I gave up the struggle to achieve a particular pose and how it freed me to enjoy that pose, experiences all the benefits without worry or judgment about how I was doing the pose or how much better it should be.
In the warm-up sequence that Peter Sterios teaches in his Gravity & Grace yoga, he takes us through a serious where we point our fingers back towards our knees, hands and fingers together (as you would in mayurasana), and take our arms back and down slowly flexing our fingers back and lifting them off the matt. Once our fingers are at their maxed out flex, we bend our elbows slowly taking them to the mat as the palm of our hand lifts off the ground. At this point just, our finger tips are still on the matt and we push forward on our hands to stretch the wrist even more. Watching Peter do this over a period of years, I marveled at how Peter was able to keep all his fingers on the ground and I vowed to keep improving the flexibility of my wrists until I too could keep all my finger tips on the matt instead of my pinky and pointer fingers flapping awkwardly. But I never seemed to get any closer, no matter what I did. Then one day, Peter was demonstrating something with his hands, and I noticed that all his fingers were nearly the exact same length! His pinky is about 2 milimeters shorter than his middle finger and the rest are virtually the same. I looked at my hand and saw that my pointer is a solid quarter inch shorter than my middle finger, and pinky is at least a half an inch shorter. It dawned on me then that no matter how flexible my wrist becomes, I will never keep my fingers on the mat. The difference in length just won’t allow it to happen. I now do the pose without angst or concern, breathing smoothly, perfectly happy that my pinky and pointer float above the mat.
The second example of giving up the struggle truly surprised me. I have been doing Vajrasana (kneeling between you legs) for over 10 years, always feeling pain in the knees and needing support under by butt to stay in the pose. It required a lot breathing and focus to stay in the pose and I always came out early because of the pain in my knees. I felt it was a flaw in my yoga and that I should be able to easily place my butt on the ground and smoothly lie back flat on the floor like other super limber yogis and yoginis around me. Because I considered myself to be a fairly advanced student, I was frustrated that I was not making progress on this pose. Leading up to my teacher training, I worked hard and regularly at this pose, and gained almost nothing. Finally after doing this pose every day for 3 months, I got tired of struggling to achieve a goal, tired of doing the pose and tired of feeling frustrated with the effort. I truly accepted that I was just not meant to do that pose, and gave up struggling to achieve it. I stopped doing it and stopped thinking about it. Then two months later, the pose came up in class toward the end of our teacher training, and I sat back in the pose, ready to use a block and just sit wherever I landed, but something magical happened. It seemed easy. I removed the block and smoothly placed my butt on the ground. My knees did not feel the usual pain, and I breathed slowly and smoothly. Then I was able to lean back and comfortably hold myself on my elbows, doing the pose better than I have had in my life.
In one case, I understood that my body will not do every pose the same way that other bodies do, and that it doesn’t need to for me to get all the benefits of that pose. In the other case, I learned that the mental struggle to push for a pose was actually causing more tension and preventing me from making progress in the pose. When I truly let go of the emotional and physical struggle, wonderful things happened to the energy flowing through my body.
When you cup your and gently squeeze your fingers together, you can hold water in your hand. But when you try to hold more than your hand can cup, it won’t matter how many times you try to scoop more water, it won’t change a thing. But you still can get as much water as you need, handful by handful. And if you try to squeeze the water tightly wit hour hands to hold more, it will run through uour fingers, leaving with you with only a few drops.
I encourage you to give up the struggle and see what magic happens to you. You might find that when you give up the struggle to get into a certain pose, the pose will get into you.
