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Should It Not Be Hard?


People often come to yoga to relieve pain, but they can be very surprised when yoga is itself painful. A real yoga practice looks nothing like depicted in ads – it isn’t always filled with moments of serene quiet and calm, soft light flowing in, peaceful facial expressions. The real yoga is challenging. It can make you feel like you have to go outside yourself to find strength or cope with a new kind of opening. Effort can manifest in determined and tense facial expressions. It can make you grunt or even cry out sometimes.

And why shouldn’t it be painful? I mean, there are certain kinds of pain that are absolutely to be avoided: knee pain, low back pain, certain kinds of shoulder pain, headaches. But lots of kinds of pain are required for change and transformation. In the classes I teach, when people complain that something hurts, I make sure it isn’t an injurious situation. But I’ve heard the Iyengars say, basically:  Well what do you expect? That it should be easy? That’s not how it works.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot this past week or two, because we are experiencing a collective pain around the threats to our peace and stability and democracy. But I have to ask – what do we expect? That we don’t have to struggle? That building a just society won’t be hard? We’re in a quest for the full realization of our dreams and ideals that mirrors, metaphorically, the yogi’s quest for full realization of the self. There are going to be some very hard moments.

The violence in Portland sent me on this long thought process. I felt so devastated about it. I started imagining that this is the beginning of the end. The openly naked displays of white supremacy feel like something new, on a new scale, though my people of color friends may well dispute that.

And for some reason, I started thinking about my friends all over the world who live in countries where human rights are as endangered – or have been – as here. Friends from India, East Africa, the former Soviet republics. I started thinking about the south and central American civil wars of the 1970s & 1980s (which our country helped create, fund, arm). People the world over have suffered so much – continue to suffer – in the quest for justice.

It’s easy for us white people in America to think we should be exempt. To think we’re special. We were born into a democratic system someone else made for us. Our struggles have been much diminished compared to people of color in this country, and certainly compared to people in other parts of the world. Even those of us who are devoted to making our system more democratic and more just – I count myself one of them – have to admit that we have had a special status. Our rights have been guaranteed even while others’ are in question. So now is our time to struggle. It is our time to wake up to the pain and determination required for transformation. We can’t shrink away from it – we have to go into it.

The Bhagavad Gita begins when Arjuna sits down on the battlefield and says he cannot fight. An entire spirituality is explicated in the service of convincing him he must choose to do so.

Our charge, right now, is to live fully in this moment. Not to resist being in it by dwelling in anger, and sadness, letting the emotion create even more disturbance. To fully take stock of what is happening, the dangers it creates, and to act against it. Not to resist being in this moment by fixating on possible future moments. By thinking about what may feel like an inevitable downward slide to authoritarianism. Yes the impulses are there. The tendencies are there. But we haven’t lost our democracy yet.

Living fully in this moment means also acknowledging the beauty and joy in each day. The sun on your face. Flowers blooming into spring. The way love and friendship create pockets of restoration.

Be in the moment. Don’t lose heart. Address the threats and the circumstances we face now. Don’t get caught up into what those threats might turn into later. That’s my prescription for myself and anyone joining me on this path.

With love, gratitude and solidarity.

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