Effort in Asana

Everything in life has equilibrium, the “happy medium”. I believe this is also true for the amount of effort one places on their asana practice. Effort may be in the form of the physical strength necessary to keep muscles and bones steady in a posture. Effort may also be exerted to control the breath and ensuring long, deep, inhales match long, deep, exhales while practicing. And effort may be exercised to still random thoughts and in steering the mind to focus and concentrate during practice.

If I do not put enough effort into my practice, my posture wobbles, my breath is uneven or my mind wanders and I lose touch with my practice and my self. If I exert too much effort, I could tear a muscle, get dizzy or forget where I am and what I am doing. Although, it is very rare (if ever?) that I would exert too much effort on stilling my thoughts—my mind is a very wild place that needs much effort to control.

Another point that is also true of effort is that it changes each time you practice. The effort I put into the physical asana when I began practicing yoga several years ago was very weak compared to the effort I exert now, mostly because my body was untrained, or I was unsure of what I was doing. My effort then was on watching the teacher, trying to see what she was doing and copy it. Or I would back off on a pose because I did not feel good in it. Now that I know more about the poses after practicing them for years, I exercise less effort on how “correct” the pose looks and more effort on how I can settle into and enjoy the posture. The focus of my effort in asana has shifted.

I also exert more effort in engaging muscles and bandhas and also more effort into controlling my breath than I did when I began. Again, practice makes it easier, but as my practice matures, I discover new things about my practice to which I explore.

For instance, I recently began focusing more on my lungs. I learned more about the lungs and how they work, so I have begun to put effort into feeling and investigating my lungs. I learned that the lungs have three lobes. While lying in bed one night, I took several long breaths, filling and emptying my lungs. I realized that there were two very subtle pauses in both the full inhale and full exhale, separating my breath into three sections. It was like driving a car over small cracks in the road—if you did not see them and know they were there before, you otherwise would never have noticed the light "tap" of the wheels over them.

I also learned about pulmonary pressure and how the diaphragm works. The diaphragm also has a happy medium. Full inhale creates effort on the diaphragm to contract, and when it relaxes, it brings the lungs to a neutral breathing area. Effort on the ribcage muscles (I think) to contract allows the lungs to exhale completely, then it relaxes back to equilibrium.

Too much effort, too little effort? It is a question to apply on effort in asana from day-to-day. One day I may find it easy to do a pose, the next day difficult! It depends on my energy and how my body, mind and breath are tuned together. Every time I practice, I adjust levels of effort to ensure the equilibrium is maintained.