Relaxing effort does not necessarily mean “become a rag doll,” whether it be in your yoga poses or in your life, even though for some, it may take an image that extreme to induce any relaxation at all, and believe me, even though they may feel like a rag doll, most people I see don’t look anything like said doll.
Relaxing effort might be in the form of not trying so hard, not worrying about getting the pose “right,” or trying to impress oneself, classmates, or teacher with how hard you are working, lest we should walk by and “catch” them daydreaming at their desk. Oh yeah, that was school. But don’t many of us have those same fears and habits as adults?
Patanjali tells us to relax effort. While doing a pose, there is usually one side that is working – contracting – while the other side is relaxing – stretching. Let’s look at Parsvakonasana – side angle pose:
In side angle, pose, we are stretching on of the sides of the body. We are instructed to breathe into that side, to open the ribs, lengthen the waist, rotate the chest to the ceiling. That would be the side of focus, the “working” side. But what about the other side? What if instead of fighting our way into increasing the twist and stretch from the top, we softened the bottom half of the back to may room for the top side to float into it’s place. What if instead of stabilizing by trying to keep the second side just as long as the first, we soften that side, creating a space for the top side to go without having to push something out of the way?
By focusing on the second side, we can increase a feeling of effortlessness by releasing tension on the second side, allowing the action of the first side to be more effortless, instead of adding unnecessary muscular tone/tension/activity to the second side, thus creating the need for more force by the first side in order to go deeper in the pose.
What gets me is that there is so much talk about bringing tone, and in my opinion unnecessary tension, to the “relaxing” side. Do we really need more tension on one side in order to relax on the other side? In some schools, they say yes, in fact you do. That if one side is contracting, the other must be stretching. While this may be in fact what is happening, I'm not sure that information is being used effectively in most cases.
Is it fruitful to pull the body forward in a forward bend? On one hand, we are supposedly getting more stretch on the hamstrings. But what is happening in the neck, shoulders, back? In order to get more hamstring stretch, do we need to create upper body tension? Can't we have stretched hamstrings with a relaxed upper body as well? And if every time we do a forward bend with a tense upper body, aren't we in fact telling our body that in order to have bendy hamstrings we need to work the upper body?
And the big question is, is having bendier hamstrings worth the extra cost in tighter shoulders? Hmmm.
The idea is to get these sides to be balanced in their effort, to be the same, so there is no difference between working and relaxing. It is in gradually bring these 2 sides together in a balanced manner that YS 2:48 comes into play. When we achieve effortlessness on both sides and there is no longer the pull of the duality between working and stretching sides, “pairs of opposites cease to have impact” and from where I sit, in that Infinite non-dual moment, the pairs of opposites cease to exist. In that moment, we feel like we could stay there forever – it is that steady, comfortable, effortless, infinite, Whole. Yummy. It feels good to have it all. To be it all.
Next topic: Attachment to Effort
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