Effortless Effort Continued

I’m still thinking about prayatna saithilya – effortless effort. I feel my work life starting to speed up. More projects are getting traction, more tasks need attention, more opportunities surface – all invitations to get caught up in the energy and surf the adrenaline rushes. There’s a point where the momentum of work can be self-sustaining, where it feels good. When you feel like you have hit a rhythm, lots of things seem to get done, tasks feed into each other. I’ve heard athletes talk about being in the zone. Artists call it the flow state. It is amazing when it happens. That’s a kind of effortless effort.

But there’s another side to it – when the adrenaline becomes the point. When you need adrenaline to be able to get anything done. And when the work saps your energy instead of restoring it.

That happens for me in part because I abandon some of my better habits when I get really embedded in work. I noticed that last week – I was travelling, doing lots of meetings and trainings. Those kinds of work activities require me to be more externally focused than inward. I’m not very good at keeping connected to my inner self while it’s happening. It starts with not doing enough yoga/meditation/pranayama when I’m on the road. I tell myself that’s because of the inconvenience – not having my space, my routines to help me go inward. But it is also because I’m a little bit addicted to things that take me outside myself, even if they sap my energy.

In yoga practice, we don’t talk about effortless effort to beginners, because the beginning of yoga is effortful. You have to tone the body, develop intelligence in the dark sleepy areas, start to understand how to move your awareness fully into your physical self. You can’t go from no effort to effortless effort. There’s a long stage in between that is just effort. BKS Iyengar talked a lot about the need to break through the tamas – the dullness in the body, in the cells, and in how the mind inhabits the body. That’s what effort does. It doesn’t start with sensitivity – it starts with hard work and sensitivity flows from it.

But over time, as your body becomes more dynamically awake and your intelligence gets more connected to your body, sensitivity comes. And that’s when it is time to find effortless effort.

Intelligence and sensitivity seem like key elements of effortless effort. What I am noticing in myself is the urge to fling myself headlong into the momentum of the work that is arising. That’s not a very sensitive impulse. It is at the gross level (not disgusting-gross but large scale/undifferentiated-gross). What I need to do instead, is pay close attention. Go into that flow state when it comes, but not get hooked on the adrenaline rush. Work with intelligence – that means staying connected to my inner self and the habits and routines that help me stay there, even when the external work is also in the picture.

I’ve had the luxury, with my reduced work schedule, of prioritizing yoga and pranayama this year in a way I never have before. It’s a matter of degree, obviously, because I’ve been a yoga teacher for almost 15 years so it’s long been a priority. But this year, I’ve been able to carve out time most days to do a serious asana practice and still have time for pranayama. The question is how/whether I can maintain that as my work schedule resumes intensity. Why do I believe I can? Because all that yoga and pranayama has made me more intelligent and sensitive to what is going on inside. I can feel the invitation to go outward at a much subtler level than before. My typical roller-coaster cycle is to get really caught up in work, go more, do more, commit, feel so good about how important and valuable I am in the work, until I’m exhausted and then I crash. It’s a physical and mental health cycle. The crash happens before I even realize I’m in the whirlwind part of it. Maybe I have a chance now to observe the invitation, but intervene before it happens. To stay connected internally, to combine the flow state with being present with myself.

That’s how I’m thinking about creating effortless effort.

Of course, I couldn’t have done this earlier in my life. Just like with asana practice – I had to be fully effortful first. That’s how I learned new skills, got good enough to do somethings with less effort, developed instincts about what will work and what won’t, got confidence about being creative and trying things that might not work. All of that is part of creating effortless effort in work life.

*****

I’ve been feeling uneasy about what I wrote about Erica Garner last week. Like maybe that was a white woman privilege/appropriation moment. I mean, yes, my point is still true: activism – which seems noble and beautiful and sustaining – can kill us. We all have to work on addressing the stress it creates. But there’s also the multi-generational trauma of white supremacy, which affects people on all levels – emotional, mental, physical, physiological. And that trauma comes to people who are also denied access to mental and physical health care. Did Erica Garner die from the stress of her activism? Maybe. But she also inherited and experienced first-hand trauma that comes from white supremacy and that made everything worse. It’s not for me to say. And I feel like I shouldn’t have used her story to make my larger point, when in fact I’m shielded from many of the things she and her family experienced because I’m white. So let me say instead, thank you to Erica, and to all the women who are leading on black lives matter and DACA and immigrant justice and trans rights and a million other things. I see the fullness of your struggle. I know that effortless effort might seem like a patronizing and condescending recommendation when people are taking on so much. And I’m also here for trying to figure out how to make it real. How we can be in the struggle together without struggling ourselves.

With love, gratitude and solidarity forever.