Coalescing with the Universe

Hi, I thought we could begin today by talking a little bit about practice in life and where they intersect and how they relate and how we can use one to inform the other. And so I'd like you to think about these concepts of sthira and sukha, the effort and the ease. The yoga sutras talk about sthira and sukha and asana, and they talk about how when those two things are balanced, when effort and ease, sweetness and steadiness are balanced, we create what's called an asana, and from that we coalesce with the universe. I want to coalesce with the universe. That's why I practice yoga.

That's why I show up every day and move my body and sit and sing and listen. And there's something there that can inform our lives. When we're all effort and no ease, we become rigid. We become overworked. And then we need this space to recover from our very own lives.

And so the idea in our practice that I've been working with is to create this space for effort and ease in every shape, in every moment, in every breath. So that when we've finished the pose that we're in, there's no need for another pose. There's no need to counter pose. And that might sound kind of radical. That might sound kind of out there, but I think it's really useful for our lives.

How many of us have been in the middle of a big project where we've just pushed ourselves so hard and we've done just one more all-nighter, and then when it's over, we get horribly sick. We get mono. We get throat aches and bronchitis, and then we need to have the pause. We need the sukha. We need the ease.

And so what if we create space to have that in every moment, in every breath? And to that, I think we begin by doing less than we think we should. To support us, or as we move in this way, a process tends to reveal itself. And I first started thinking about this when I was in an immersion with Eric Schiffman, the process of our practice, and how if we're really open to it, we begin with how do I do it, what is required of my body to make a particular shape, and to really let ourselves be a student, whether it's the first or the 10,000th time that we've made a shape. How do I do it?

Sometimes that sounds like, how the heck do I do it? And from there, if we're in that space, we're really honest about answering the question, how do I do it? We're invited into this space of, okay, now what do I feel? And that's tricky, because the mind hears, how do I feel? What do I feel?

And it goes perhaps to an emotion, or a memory, or a thought, or an imagination. But if we go to our body, and we ask what are the sensations that are present right now, something happens, something opens up. And from there, oftentimes we're invited into a space of exploration, what happens if? And in that space, whatever experiments the body has ever dreamed of running, run them, try something, and notice what you feel. So that's the process that tends to happen when we're open to allowing effort, steadiness, thera, and sukha, ease, sweetness, into each shape, into each moment, into each breath.

Try it. Tell me what happens. I really want to know.