Steady and Spacious

Namaste. I want to talk to you today about a yoga sutra that's in the eight-limb path of yoga. So there's many, many types of yoga out there as you might be becoming aware. And in the eight-limb path there are the yoga sutras, the yoga writings. And yoga sutra 2.46 states, sthiram, sukham, asanam. And those three words mean that the yoga postures should feel steady and spacious when you're practicing them. And that can get super confusing because, well, what does steady and spacious mean, right? So I wanted to give you a little example of that in your own body. Take your hand, right, and take your hand and spread your fingers as wide as you can. And even spread them beyond as wide as you can. Spread them so wide that you actually, it starts to make your hand feel achy. Spreading and spreading and spreading, even more, do it even more, even more, even more, even more, even more, even more, even more. Do you feel the quaking? Now relax your hand. And just look at your hand on your lap. Feel how relaxed your hand is. It's completely soft. Okay, so, handfully extended and crazy, straining. Handfully resting in the lap is sleeping. We want to be in between straining and sleeping. So take your hand again. Make it crazy again. It's as wide as you can. And now start to soften it. Soften it, soften it, soften it, soften it, soften it, soften it, soften it. Until it feels alive, but not straining. Alive, but not sleeping.

Try the other hand. Really wide. Soft, soft, soft, soft. Alive, but not straining. Alive, but not sleeping. Now, when you're practicing in your postures, there's always the opportunity. You're gonna effort. We want effort. Effort is part of what transforms, right? But there's a big difference between efforting and straining, right? Efforting is intelligent. We're conscious of what's happening. We're asking our body to do a certain thing and we're monitoring the body. We're watching to see is effort turning into strain or not, right? The other thing that's beautiful about efforting is, since we're being intelligent, we'll know when to apply its opposite, which is surrender, right? Okay, I'm at this certain point and I'm feeling myself starting to strain in this posture, so I'm going to surrender now. I'm gonna move on to the next side or move on to the next posture, right? Because the opposite of straining is collapse. You're efforting so, have you ever done that? I mean, I know you have in your life. You've done anything, mentally or physically, to where you're straining and then there's just a break. You just break and then there's this collapse. Collapses way beyond sleep, right? You have no control. You have no other option, but everything just fall apart. And what we want in the yoga, we want to bind together the body and the mind in a way that they learn to trust one another. They learn to trust one another. And when you have that, you will develop a vital yoga practice. It will be so vital. It will feed you, it will nourish you in a way that nothing else does. And I'm sure many of you out there have already experienced that and that's sort of the magic of the yoga for you, right? One last thing about, about quaking, right? So there's a, there's a quaking that happens when you're efforting and there's a quaking that happens when you're straining. The quaking that happens when you're efforting has no fatigue in it. The quaking of the limb that happens when you're straining has fatigue in it. You're tired. So if you're feeling the quaking with the tiredness, that is simply tired. You're moving towards collapse. But if you feel a sort of quaky, trembly sort of thing while you're efforting, that's actually the prana moving through your body. That's the energy of yoga moving through your body and it's waking things up. It's sort of like the body's going, oh, what was that? Right? And the more you practice, the more sensitive you become, the more aware you become, and the more you know yourself. And that is really the true definition of a yogi or a yogini. Person who has mastered themselves, who truly knows themselves deeply. So get out there and practice. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. One of the top rule of thumb is to enjoy your practice. And we'll see you on the mat. Namaste.