This weekend, I heard a very cool statement from one of my teachers and I thought I would share its essence here. To paraphrase, she said that it is not always beneficial to do poses with MAXIMUM effort, but rather to go for the OPTIMUM effort during the asana practice. When we push ourselves to the max at all times, the body will respond in a defensive manner: the breathing will be altered, the nerves begin to fire, muscles and fascia grip and tense up. As I confessed in an earlier post, I sweat a great deal under normal circumstances, but when I push for MAXIMUM effort, the aforementioned changes occur in my body and I am showered with perspiration. Better to find the OPTIMUM effort in a pose: finding a place of resistance and staying there, breathing, allowing the body to acclimate to the sensation. You will know shortly if you can push ahead a bit more, or if you have reached your limit or “edge” in this particular pose. In the OPTIMUM space, the nerves are more serene, the brain is cool and the body does not fight itself, as it may do when pushing to the maximum. There are times, for sure, that you want to approach MAXIMUM effort; just do not live in that mode throughout the whole practice, or you will melt down! Conversely, you do not want to settle just under the bar of the OPTIMUM effort; being lazy or restrained will inhibit the transformation that the asana practice promotes in the body, mind and spirit.
The maximum-optimum effort debate brought to my mind the gunas. According to Hindu philosophy, the manifestation of consciousness has three different qualities, called the gunas: sattva, rajas and tamas. A person’s life, consciousness and spirit can be ascribed one of these attributes. Tamas, briefly, is a quality of delusion, inertia and ignorance. Read: lazy, slothful. One who is Rajasic is active and energetic, but is very tense, unsteady and easily distracted. Sounds sort of like the qualities of ADD. Sattva is the good, pure quality, full of illumination and serenity. Sattva is described as being “near to the divine,” marked by truth, non-violence and tranquility.
Although not exactly correlative, the gunas point toward effort. If one is overdoing the practice with effort, is energetic, he is rajasic; this brings about tension, lack of focus and anger. If one is putting forth no effort, the practice might be called tamasic: lazy, unenlightened, uninspired and deluded. The proper quality for the effort in asana, as in all things is sattva: pure, serene, humble and non-violent. There will most assuredly be moments in a practice that may be tamasic or rajasic; that is human! If we understand the gunas and strive for sattva, however, we will benefit from clarity of purpose that-even when briefly attained-is the ideal quality of our existence.
Peace,
Trent
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