Effort and Ease

I’m teaching at a new gym, and sometimes potential students ask me if the yoga classes I teach are hard. That’s a difficult question to answer.

Depending on your flexibility, and the way your body is structured, some poses that are hard for me, will be easy for you, and vice versa. There’s no set level of difficulty in any given posture.

To add to the complication, some poses that look cool in photos, aren’t typically all that “hard”. Take 8-angle for example. You’ll see a lot of yogis using this one in profile pictures and such, because it looks really cool. But if you have the flexibility it takes for the first step of the pose, the rest of the journey there is pretty easy.

Baby grasshopper is another one. The tricky part is grabbing your extended leg. If you’ve got that part down, you just have to shift your weight on to your planted foot and… voila!

Meanwhile, poses like happy baby, that don’t really…. uh… photograph all that well, can be really really hard. I inserted this pose into a sequence for a long hold recently, and had second thoughts when I was rehearsing it myself. I decided to leave it in, but made sure to give students the option of coming out of it mid-way through the set time. It’s no joke.

Other poses are “hard” for other reasons… especially if you’re someone with a long to-do list, that’s not getting “ta-done” while you’re on your mat. It can be hard to sink into child’s pose, or surrender to savasana if your mind won’t slow down. I struggle with this, and tend to give myself permission to think these thoughts when they come at me for three breaths. The idea stays for three long breaths in and out, and on the third one I exhale it away.

Ease and effort …. effort and ease. There’s room in everyone’s practice for both, but only you can decide where you find it.