I know you. I see you, my yogi friend. You want to be a better person, you want to do good. And maybe – like many of us – you think that doing better means that you have to work harder.
But here’s the irony: at some point, you have to work less to move ahead.
Let me share a story. I’ve been seeing a speech pathologist to clear up some bad vocal habits (teaching public yoga classes and teacher trainings for fifteen years can wear on the voice after a time). At my last appointment, she looked me (as readied myself to “be a good student”), and said, “What do you think about EASE?”
I immediately flinched. Ease? No, please say something else. Tell me what to do, tell me what action to take, but please don’t tell me that I have to “let go,” or “release” or some hippy nonsense like that.
But of course, that’s exactly what was needed.
Why We Get Tense
Over time, we all get knocked around a bit by life. We fall in love, and get hurt. We fail, and we armour up to hide our vulnerability. We laugh to hide our feelings, we smile to hide our fear. We develop compensatory patterns to deal with any variety of challenges: emotional, physical, and mental. We call these habits of tension our “personality.” Yogis may refer to them as samskaras, or deep, habitual patterns of conditioning. In your yoga practice, you may be all sthira (effort) and no sukha (ease).
We all have these tension patterns. And once you’ve been walking around on the planet for thirty years, these patterns of tension may start to have unforeseen side effects. You may start to develop back pain. Or maybe you become emotionally withholding. Maybe you’re in a relationship rut and don’t know how to break the cycle. Or maybe you have vocal issues.
Unfortunately, we can’t overcome these engrained habits through direct effort. That’s like adding a layer of “effort cement” on top of a faulty scaffold. The only way to find a pathway to greater functionality is to ease up and untangle the essential patterns of tension that have gotten you there in the first place.
This process can be enormously disconcerting.
When you come from a culture that encourages “working harder to get ahead,” letting go feels all wrong. In fact, letting go is actually harder than doing more (take that, workaholic brain!) because it takes incredible vigilance and care to inhibit your conditional patterning from arising.
While my vocal situation illuminates the particular challenges of unwiring a physical dysfunction, unwiring emotional and mental triggers provide a similar challenge. (In fact, they’re all the same thing.) Like my vocal habits, the emotional patterns that have served you well in the past may now be getting in the way of how you want to move forward.
However, letting go of these habits derails the familiar pillars of support and “self-ness” that have guided you thus far in your life. Inhibiting a defensive smile of politeness may feel as vulnerable as taking off all your clothes. Because, in a way, you are. You are taking off the layer of tension that you somehow associate with self-protection and “you-ness”.
Letting go of my throat tension isn’t just about releasing some physical muscles. Letting go unravels a sense of “Rachel-ness” to which I have become identified; it unhinges a sense of my own perceived I-ness. However, when I do inhibit that tension, I am in a greater space of possibility and presence.
Being present gives us the opportunity to “de-scaffold” ourselves from the layers of habitual reaction that will otherwise guide our actions and responses. When we become present, we can practice (practice! practice!) relaxing and opening to what is really going on. How do I really feel right now? If we can gently inhibit our conditioned responses of tension and reaction, then we are suddenly awake to a world of complete possibility. And while this is a little being thrown out of a window without a parachute, it’s also the only place where you really get to see the sky.
Your challenge?
More ease. In your yoga practice, but also in your life. Be willing to relax in the moment without immediately grabbing for the conditioned responses that may feel safe. Explore the no man’s land, and see what arises.
