Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
We live in a world that teaches the importance of ambition, efficiency, expediency, getting things done to produce the quickest results. It does not teach or encourage us to relax and just be where we are. In fact, if we are not crazy active and doing a million different things, we get labeled as lazy or unambitious. As a culture, we are uber-active, always trying to reach somewhere. The irony is that for the most part, nobody knows exactly where they are trying to reach. We’re obsessed with trying to go better and faster to get there, without really knowing exactly where “there” is.
Not surprisingly, we bring this paradigm to the mat. Sometimes while teaching, I will walk around the class and approach someone who looks like they are really struggling and trying hard. I’ll quietly ask, “Just checking in, and curious about where are you trying to get to in the pose?” Typically the response will be something like, “I’m not sure where I’m going exactly but I’m doing my best.” I get that. In a way, that’s all of us. Our whole life we’ve been going somewhere, but just like in the pose, we don’t know where we are going . . . not really, at least not in the big picture.
We keep looking to get anywhere other than right here where we are. Being where you are is a scary place for most. Can you be where you are and not freak out? Can you go to that scary place called right here where you are and not meddle, interfere, or need to fix anything? On the mat is the opportunity to be where we are totally, intimately, and wholeheartedly, and from that space allow the next move, the next possibility to arise.
Right now you might be thinking, Well, of course I want to get somewhere. I don’t want to just be stuck where I am. I want to do the work and get someplace new in my practice! Yes, of course you and I and all of society are wired to work and to get results, and we know how to do that. Even in Baptiste Yoga we use the slogan “Don’t wish for it, work for it.” Yet in our workaholic society, we don’t have any counterbalance. We don’t have access to our ability to be just where we are, as we are. There is one word that sums up our ability to be where we are: relax. We haven’t learned how to relax with what is.
I am not telling you not to do the work or to just hang out in Child’s Pose. I am asking you to allow yourself the space to relax with yourself and be where you are wholeheartedly and see what arises from that. Consider that you can only really exceed yourself if you can first relax with yourself, right where you are—on the mat, in the pose, and in your life.
If we aren’t satisfied with how our pose looks or feels, we tend to resist what is so. We become frustrated that we are not better, even resigned or cynical. When we move and breathe from a perspective of This isn’t it . . . I’m not where I want to be . . . , we experience emotional resistance that can feel energetically stuck and impossible to break through. Yet the resistance itself is precisely what keeps us stuck there. We are resisting what and where we are, which yields more of the same.
The clear acknowledgment and acceptance of what is reveals ground zero for growth. We are not wired for and have not been trained to do that in the modern world, so acknowledging (and even appreciating) the raw truth of where you are is revolutionary. That revolution disrupts the complacency or overdrive in your practice and puts you on a track to a new creation.
Say, for instance, we take Warrior III Pose. There is that brief moment just after setting it up and stepping into it where our mind is clear and we experience “now here.” This moment is the receiving pose. It is the extraordinary flash of full presence and expression for which we practice—and it is also the moment where most of us disempower ourselves by interacting with the mental noise in our heads. Our legs are quaking, and the sheer exertion of holding most of our body on a horizontal plane is simply uncomfortable, but the physical demands are not what get us. We begin to hear those familiar default thoughts of This isn’t it . . . I’m not doing it right . . . Screw this . . . I’m out of here. . . . We begin interacting with our resistance in the pose instead of the bare-bones experience in our bodies.
It is at this juncture that we can consciously decide who we will be in the pose. We can choose to keep what we’ve mentally constructed about ourselves and our experience in Warrior III, along with our explanations and justifications about why we shouldn’t go deeper or stay longer. We can even keep our complaints and our rightness about our complaints. Keeping all that is not necessarily bad or wrong. It’s just one path, which over time is likely to become a habitual dead-end path called How it is for me in Warrior III.
Or, we can recognize our limiting mental constructs and be 100 percent for them, and clear about what they yield, expecting nothing less and nothing more. In other words, we can get real with ourselves. We can look, listen, and accept what is so in our experience in the pose—in our bodies, our emotional energy, and our thoughts. This immediately connects us more deeply to what is actually happening in our body and experience, and from there we can give ourselves tools to empower us in the pose right here, right now. That is the art of conscious creation.
In the moment of receiving the pose, if we act from This should be different, or better than it is, we are interfering with the natural energetic flow and impeding what’s possible in the moment. If we are oriented around our narrative or justification of why we can’t, won’t, or don’t want to, we are in a domain where there is no velocity, no freedom, no power to generate and organically create.
Trusting our as-lived experience in the pose, on the other hand, frees us to act even in the face of our resistance. From a place of kindness, we can acknowledge any resistance or thoughts of This pose isn’t enough as it is. Allow for total acceptance of what is and what is not, and you will notice your energetic heaviness dissolve. From this new lightness, you can make a conscious connection to each point in your body and start to play in the pose, generating it as a joyful and creative self-expression, no matter what form it takes.
Whatever comes up in a pose, and whatever comes along, is merely something for you to be with and experience. It is so simple and straightforward: let your resistance be, and it will let you be. This approach expands your being and allows for the extraordinary to enter. The creative flow in the practice will expand because you expand. Resistance dissolves in the face of full acceptance, and you are transported into a whole new world.
We have a responsibility in our practice to be straight with ourselves. I don’t mean necessarily just being responsible for the physical facts of your ability, but rather being intentional and skillful in your ability to respond to your experience of what is so.
If you know you can go further and dig deeper and just don’t, then just take responsibility for that. Not with judgment, but simply acknowledgment. Making yourself wrong for it puts you on a whole other track. Just own it and be with it, as it is. Even if the story you tell yourself about why you can’t or won’t is valid and true, acknowledging it allows you the space to decide if you want to continue to rely on it, or choose another action.
When you really get to the idea that being exactly where you are is the key, that’s when you step outside the box you’ve been in. Your pose may not change, but your whole experience of it will change. There is so much available to you in whatever form of the pose you’re in, but you’ll never know if you’re struggling against it.
There’s a difference between accepting where you are and making excuses for hanging back. But really, you know. You know when you’re making up a story and resisting. Again, just be straight with yourself here, without judgment. Are you genuinely being where you are, or are you letting yourself off the hook and slipping into the energy of no? You’ve got to get real to get to the good stuff.
Tell the truth about where you are. Whatever it is, wherever you are in your practice, whatever your fear or limitations . . . just own them. That’s the secret to creating a new way, a new path, a new pose, a new practice.
What does accepting “right now” look like in a pose? When you truly experience right here, right now in your body and are aligned to the rhythm of your breath, you see it is all perfect exactly the way it is. When I am being myself, nothing more and nothing less . . . when I am present and allowing what is happening within and around me to be exactly like it is . . . when I am being in the moment instead of being fixed on where I am going . . . when I am observing it all just as it is without having to figure it out and adding any assessments or comparisons, then I observe that all is perfect.
The ability to be where you are in your body begins with your ability to respect your body. That means accepting, loving, and deeply appreciating your body’s complexity and magnificence, and being grateful for all it does for you. That also means being willing to listen to and follow your body’s cues. Once you start authentically listening and communicating with the moods, sensations, and experiences of your body, your practice becomes very easeful. Working from being where you are, not from trying to get somewhere, you can work organically with the energy and capacity available to you. You won’t need to fight with your body, or force it in any way; that just creates more tension and takes you out of flow. You don’t have to force your body to do something, because it actually wants to work for you. But all of this requires that you be right there where you are and tune into what your body needs while in the pose.
When I am in a pose, I am in a communication with my body. If I make that communication conscious and intentional, then something extraordinary can happen. In the pose there is no need to try to dominate your body. Simply listen to it. Once you really tune into it, the imbalances, holding patterns, and pockets of locked up emotion and stuck energy will begin to disappear.
Unfortunately, many people don’t really listen. In a demanding pose, the body may say, Stop. Don’t push any further. But if the default mind says, Don’t stop. You need to push harder, guess which voice gets heeded? On the mat and in life, we don’t listen to the body; the default mind too often dictates and overrides it. Case in point: Have you ever been eating and your body signals, That’s enough; you don’t need any more, while your mind says, Just a little more? We’ve all been there at one time or another. We don’t listen to the wisdom of the body and the consequence is that body gets imbalanced. Listening to your body happens in the moment as a conscious interaction.
You will be surprised that if you can relax with yourself and simply be where you are in the pose, it will give you a deeper insight into yourself. Being relaxed and present with where you are has transformative power and will alter the quality of the work you do on the mat. You will have an equanimity emanating from your center in every pose; your practice will be creative, not reactive. It will be more artistic, graceful, and skillful, and less stressful. You will notice you are less tired, less tense, less awkward than you used to be, because now you are more connected and centered at your core.
And if you can do that for 30, 60, 90 minutes on the mat, you will discover that even while doing hard work your body is at ease, your mind is relaxed, and your heart is open. Be where you are and melt into that experience and you will find that instead of having to recover from your asana practice, your body, energy, heart, and emotional intelligence recovers during the practice. All the frantic and unnecessary doing will drop away, and there will be new sharpness, precision, and flow. You will not be fidgety. You will simply do what needs to be done in the pose and in the moment: clearly, directly, exactly, and intentionally. That efficiency of energy that will transform you and transport you to beautiful places and expressions in your practice that are authentic and unique to you.
The technique of being relaxed where you are, as you are, is very simple.
Your body has profound wisdom if you simply listen, relax with it, and trust it. In every pose, trust that your body knows what it needs and that it will tell you, in contrast to you telling it. If it needs more integration from your extremities to your core, it will begin to activate the appropriate muscles to pull into your centerline. If it needs more oxygen, it will naturally begin to breathe from more depth and fullness and in rapport with your body movements. The less you interfere, the more you will be moved by the wisdom of your body. In this approach there is grace and beauty, and an inner sunlight radiating out through your posture.
As soon as you snap into not being okay where you are, you will stop trusting the natural body process and start trying to fix your pose and “get it right.” Notice how when you resist being where you are on the mat you get caught up exerting a lot of unnecessary effort, and thus lose vitality. The ease vanishes.
As you allow yourself to be where you are, you will gain the sensitivity to see how far to push and when to let be. There are times to push upstream and there are times to let go and follow the river downstream. Being where you are allows for the wisdom of your body to emerge and for you to get intimately connected with it—to experience your body not as a “fixed thing,” but rather as a dynamic, living, moving process.
If you want to get anywhere genuinely new, it will require that you be totally present where you are first. So if you do a pose you don’t like or that causes you to be uncomfortable, do it from where you are and not where you wish you were. Do the pose with all of your heart and being until you become deeply connected to your experience of it, allowing the wisdom of your body to lead you. Be in awe of how it suddenly becomes a total experience of yoga for you. Relaxing with what is allows you to become wholly immersed and one with the pose. Yoga is an experience—a living, breathing, moving experience. If you can simply do the pose and do the practice without the “yogi” or practitioner dominating or calling the shots, that pose becomes yoga; it becomes meditative. Meditate but don’t become a meditator, because the meditator starts manipulating the experience, focusing on the proper application of tools and techniques and thus losing the experience of being totally immersed and present. Lose yourself to find yourself in the pose.
If we are not connected to and in deep communication with our body, we are not in contact to the earth and the forces of nature that we are meant to be in tune with. Once you allow yourself to be where you are, you will get rooted in your body. From there, anything and everything becomes possible.