Effort, Awareness and Joy
I want to share this extract from The Tree of Yoga by B. K. S. Iyengar.
“When you are practising a pose in yoga, can you find the delicate balance between taking the pose to its maximum extent, and taking it beyond that point so that there is too much effort creating wrong tension in the body?
When you are overstretching somewhere to get the optimum movement, have you ever noticed that you are also giving too little attention to other parts of the body? When you are stretching the legs, you have to send an alarm signal to your arms: ‘I am stretching a leg, so don’t lose your attention!’ That is awareness. Because we lose our awareness and our attention is partial, we don’t know whether we are holding the grip or not.
You can lose the benefit of what you are doing because of focusing too much partial attention on trying to perfect the pose. Focusing on one point is concentration. Focusing on all the points at the same time is meditation. Concentration has a point of focus; meditation has no points. That is the secret.
If you observe the effort involved in doing the pose as a beginner, and then continue to observe the effort as you make progress, the effort becomes less and less, but the level of performance of the asana improves. The degree of physical effort decreases and the achievement increases.
As you work, you may experience discomfort because of the inaccuracy of your posture. Then you have to learn and digest it. You have to make an effort of understanding and observation: ‘Why am I getting pain at this moment? How can I get rid of the pain? Why am I feeling this pressure? Why does this side feel uneven?’. You should go on analysing, and by analysis you will come to understand.
It is true that in analysis you dissipate energy at first. Later you will not. That is why effort will become less. Direction will come, and when you go in the right direction, wisdom begins. When wise action comes, you no longer feel the effort as effort - you feel the effort as joy. In perfection, your experience and expression find balance and concord.”
