Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign hello and welcome back to Deep in your yoga Practice. I'm your host, Lauren Leduc, the owner and founder of True Love Yoga in Kansas City, Missouri. And today I wanted to talk yoga philosophy just a little bit, specifically in regards to this concept of balancing, effort and ease. This is something I come back to again and again in my practice and also in everyday life. It's really been a guiding light for me and helps keep me in a state of flow. So today we'll talk about this dance of opposites of effort and ease, known as sira and sukha in yoga philosophy, and how they help us live in practice with both balance and presence. So this idea of effort and ease is expressed as thira and sukha in Sanskrit, thira meaning steady, strong, alert and grounded, and sukha meaning easeful, spacious, pleasant, laxed, even sweet. And these concepts appear in Yoga Sutra 2:46, which is part of the sutras that outlines the eight limbed path of yoga. And I have a whole episode on that if you're interested in knowing what that eight limbed path, limped path entails. But Yoga Sutra 246 is Sira Sukha asana, which means the posture should be steady and comfortable. So interestingly enough, steadiness and ease is guidance for yoga posture, which in the yoga sutras really just means a comfortable seat for meditation, but over the centuries has come to mean the myriad of postures included within the yoga practice. So you can find this sense again of steadiness and ease within the posture, but we can also expand this out to everyday life. So this can apply to really any expression of yoga, including breath, meditation and your daily choices. Because really, yoga is this immersive and expansive way of life, philosophy and science, rather than just something that is reserved for 60 minutes on the mat with a teacher. I'll talk about a few ways to explore this concept of Sarah and sukha within posture, within asana on your mat. So here's an example of the Posture Warrior 2, which we do in almost every single yoga class. And there is this sense of effort in the way that you ground your feet. Maybe you're finding your footlock padabanda in the way that you are engaging through your quadriceps or the fronts of your thighs and through your glutes in the way that you are maybe lifting the pelvic floor to help align the spine and create stability in the way you're holding your arms, and maybe engaging your triceps to create strength and length within the posture. And maybe you're holding Focus with your breath as you're in Warrior 2, which can take a certain level of effort. So that would be an example of the effort that you're putting into a posture. Now, where can we find the ease? Maybe it's through softening the forehead. Maybe it's through relaxing the jaw. Maybe you're finding your drishti or focal point, but then letting the gaze soften. Maybe it's softening through the upper traps where your neck and shoulders meet so that you're not tensing up there. And even though we're exerting effort with the breath, with our focus, maybe it's finding ease within the breath too. So instead of letting the breath be short and effortful, it's long and easeful. So we have this sort of pull of opposites going on really within every single yoga posture. That's just one example. In Warrior 2, I'll also take the example of sukhasana. So this is often referred to as easy pose. You might know it as crisscross applesauce, but it's sort of the OG posture that we're referring to in this particular sutra. So while you're finding this seat for breathwork or meditation or grounding, you're putting in some effort. Maybe that's grounding through your sits bones, aligning your spine, lifting up through the crown of your head, and using the strength of your core and your back to hold you steady in this position. But then you're finding ease again through softening the forehead, the eyes, the jaw, the shoulders, the hips. Maybe you're finding extra ease by supporting yourself with a bolster or a block. So we're finding that dichotomy where we're not exerting so much effort that that's all of our focus is on. We're also not let go in such a way that we can't be alert. So you might think to yourself as you're in something like Warrior 2 or Sukhasano or any asana, can I stay strong without gripping or overly tensing? Can I stay relaxed without losing the integrity of the posture? How do I find this balance, both effort and ease, as I practice? And I do think that this is something that can take time. If you're a yoga beginner, some of the postures can feel very effortful. But eventually you do build enough strength so that you can also find the softness within. We can also find this concept of sierra and sukha within breath and within the nervous system regulation that we can find through yoga. So you can think of Sira or effort as an intentional inhale and breath regulation. And sukha or the ease as this spacious exhale. So think of maybe a cleansing breath as this way to let go big deep inhale to bring in oxygen for the energy that we need for specific poses. You can think of the breath as this bridge between effort and ease. And I talked about that a bit through the asanas, in that yes, we're focusing, we're exerting effort with the breath. Maybe in more intense or advanced breath practices, we're holding the breath for long periods of time. So how do we exert this effort and focus to also soften through our minds? How do we relax around the effort? How do we not attach intense around the goal or the effort that it takes to find this particular breathwork? We can also think of seerah as activating the sympathetic nervous system. You might know that as fight flight, which sometimes can be talked about as something to avoid. But a lot of exertion practices do raise our cortisol. They do activate this part of our nervous system. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. It is something that helps us widen what we call our window of tolerance. And you can think of the sukha or the ease as activating the parasympathetic nervous system, what we might know as rest and digest, which again isn't necessarily good or bad. Many of us do need that downregulation due to our stressful lives, but it's not really where we want to live all the time. We want to be able to go between both and again have this window of tolerance that we're able to live within.
[00:07:42] I kind of think of this window of tolerance as this perfect or imperfect balance between effort and ease. We can bring the energy up, we can be activated alive on when we need to, and we can bring the energy down relaxing when we need to. I have a whole episode on pranayama. So if you're interested in different breathwork techniques to do both of those, those things or to find yourself somewhere in the middle, I offer some suggestions there. But a couple that I think are really balancing where you can maybe experience both of these within the window of tolerance and find this balance of effort and ease is box breathing. So breathing in for four, holding the breath for four, exhaling for four, holding for a count of four, or nadi shodhana, which is alternate nostril breathing, which is really balancing the different, what we would consider energy channels in yoga. So there's a lot of fun ways really to play with the breath to regulate the nervous system and explore this balance of effort and ease. We can think of sira and sukha as something we also hold in our minds and hearts in our practice. So we're holding space for both discipline. We can think of that as the structure, the steadiness, the sira and compassion, which we can think of as the sukha, the ease in our practice. So both discipline and compassion. So you might think of sira or the effort, the steadiness, as committing to your practice even when it feels really hard. That means showing up on days where it's difficult. It means facing ourselves sometimes when we don't want to be alone with our own thoughts. It might mean connecting with our yogic community, even when we want to turn away.
[00:09:28] And then there's this sukha or sweetness ease.
[00:09:32] Being gentle with yourself when you're tired. Maybe sometimes the best thing isn't showing up. Maybe the best thing is relaxing and resting and sleeping. Being gentle with yourself when you're feeling overwhelmed or when you're healing. Maybe today we need to explore restorative practice rather than power flow. We can also compare these concepts to a couple of the niyamas or spiritual observances in yoga, tapas and santosha. So tapas correlates with sira in that it's fiery discipline. It's focused effort and determination toward a goal. And we hold at the same time santosha, which is contentment, which is accepting the present moment and infusing that with gratitude. And we can work really hard and be content with where we are at the same time. Is it easy to cultivate? Not necessarily, but I believe it's worthwhile. And it's something, if you practice enough, will start to come more and more naturally. So you might ask yourself, am I over efforting in my practice? Or perhaps am I under committing in my practice? That might mean you need to show up more on your mat. Maybe that means that you need to explore more lunar or soft practices. Only you can really know. Like I said at the beginning of this episode, these concepts of sira and sukha or effort and ease, show up all the time for me in daily life. It's something I contemplate when I'm making my daily decisions. And that can mean something like balancing structure. So that's schedules, that's routines, commitments with flexibility and rest. For me in my life, I've really had to show up more than I want to. At times. I'm pretty introverted because of that. I think I've missed some opportunities that have come my way that might mean career opportunities, opportunities to really connect with a friend because I felt maybe overwhelmed in my life, but I could have shown up and said yes and committed more.
[00:11:36] There have also been times in my life where I am going, going, going, maybe because I learned that lesson of what happens when I miss out or when I intentionally pull back from things and then they burn out. So how do I balance schedules, routines, commitments with flexibility and rest? And often that means holding this container of structure, of the schedule of the Google calendar, whatever it might be, and scheduling in time for softness, for rest. It means finding ease also within full days. Because I'm a business owner, I'm a mom, the days are full. Typically I also have a lot of energy. I like to expend it, I like to keep busy in a way. So how do I unclench? Meaning how do I do these things? I want to do, that I want to accomplish, that I want to experience without over controlling, without feeling tense about it all the time, without having this very, very specific idea of how things need to go. That means I have to open myself up and allow for what happens to happen, to allow roadblocks to happen at times, maybe acknowledging when I'm upset that they've come along, but also accepting them and moving on and finding some flexibility around them.
[00:12:53] And that might mean intentionally scheduling in days for rest. So you might consider in your own life, whether it be through parenting, relationships, school, creative work, your career, when do you need more of this steadiness, discipline, effort? And when or where do you need more sweetness, ease, flexibility and softness? And you might consider what does balance for me look like in this particular season? For me, balance looks a lot different in this season of my life than it did five or six years ago. Pre motherhood and balance in a year from now, two years, five years from now could potentially look a lot different too. Think about when you're in tree pose, for instance, in yoga, your foot typically isn't fully steady. It's going to be shifting side to side. Your body is going to do what it needs to do to find balance. And it doesn't require perfect stillness. Balance isn't this thing that you achieve. It takes this constant effort and also surrender really to this moment, to the movement, to whatever shifts need to be made to maintain stability and equilibrium. Before we close out, I'll add some practical tips for cultivating Stairra and sukha for effort and ease. So on your yoga mat, use props and they can help so much for both of these things. Blocks can help provide stability and they can also help provide ease. It really just depends on how you're using them. So be fully open to using blocks, straps, blankets, bolsters, whatever is available to you in your practice. And in that vein, make choices that work for you that day. Sometimes that means ramping things up. Sometimes that means taking a rest in child's pose or in Shavasana. Only you can know what you're needing. And you can use your mat as this opportunity, even as this laboratory, even for exploring what it feels like to make those kinds of choices for yourself. And then hopefully, that's something you can take into your everyday life. You also might explore different styles of yoga. If you're a Vinyasa queen, you might take some yin classes and see how that feels and vice versa. And be open to new experiences and new insights that can come from that. In life. Schedule rest like you schedule work. You might even need to put it into your calendar. If you live and breathe through your calendar like I do, put in rest. Block out the time. No appointments, no meetings. This is the time for me. You might practice saying no to create more ease at times and flipping that. You might practice saying yes when that little voice inside of you wants to say yes. But maybe there are parts of yourself holding yourself back. You never know what kinds of opportunities and connections could be formed by saying yes to something that makes you feel a little bit outside of your comfort zone. So I think a lot of times we talk about boundaries, but we can also talk about opening ourselves up to possibilities.
[00:16:05] And only you can really know which one you need more of. But try both and see how it works. You might also create some rituals in your life that give you both this sense of structure and this sense of soul. So I think of, like, my bedtime routine. I'm really structured about it. Every night I put my daughter to sleep and maybe spend time with my husband. And then I'm doing, like, you know, skincare routine and teeth and all of that.
[00:16:32] And I'm reading and I'm doing breath work.
[00:16:36] And some of those things require effort. Like, do I feel like getting up and washing my face and doing that every night? No. But I do it because I know it's going to improve my. My health and my life. And then I have that space to read, to turn it off, and to just breathe and to relax. And I find that that balance is really, really nice. I really like that ritual in my life. I used to be a lot more loose with things like that. And as I get older, I find the structure and the built in rest really comforting and nourishing. So here's a journal prompt you can use as you are exploring the themes from this episode. One is where am I craving more steadiness? And the other is where can I allow more ease? So to close out, yoga isn't about pushing really hard. And it's not about slumping or fully always letting go either. It's about finding the flow in this graceful middle, this balance between effort and steadiness and structure, as well as ease and softness and flow. And I really encourage you to keep these concepts in mind as you're moving through your week both on and off the mat. And I hope that it empowers you to make choices both on the mat and in your life that nourish you, that maybe push you outside of your comfort zone and that really serve you, your family, your community, et cetera. And just remember that balance is not something you find, it's something that you create. Moment by moment, breath by breath, wobble by wobble. Thank you so much for joining me today. Have a beautiful balanced week. Om Shanti Om. Peace.
