Finding Our Way Towards Effortless Effort

For the past few weeks I’ve been reflecting on one of the sutras that talks about the physical asana practice:

Prayatna saithilya ananta samapatibyam

Perfection is asana is achieved when the effort to perform it becomes effortless and the infinite being within is reached. (Light on Yoga; 11.47)

…when the effort to perform it becomes effortless.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could find a way to live our lives with effortless effort? To bend the arc of history toward justice with effortless effort. To not only survive but thrive in the era of DJT with effortless effort.

This seems especially relevant to me given the recent articles about how much activists are experiencing the negative mental and physical health effects of their work. Erica Garner was the daughter of Eric Garner, the African-American man killed by NY police after being detained for selling loose cigarettes. His plea – I can’t breathe – became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement and Erica Garner worked tirelessly to fight police brutality and realize the liberation for other people of color that was denied to her father. She died of a stress-related heart attack at the end of 2017, only 27 years old. It was a tragic loss for her family and the movement, and a reminder of the toll oppression takes. She died trying to fight the system that killed her father.

We can’t afford to run ourselves into the ground, and we can’t afford to let our best and most heartfelt and inspired leaders kill themselves in the fight. We have to figure out this effortless effort thing.

That doesn’t mean we just sit around and try to feel better. It means doing the hard work every day, absorbing the disappointments, challenges and frustrations, figuring out how to recharge before we become completely depleted, finding ways to keep going without losing our physical or mental health.

I’m thinking about this a lot right now in my personal life because I have long struggled with crippling insomnia. Not like – oh I didn’t sleep well last night. I can go days without sleeping more than an hour a night. I take medication for it, which helps dull the worst of the impact. But there are still times when I don’t sleep for a week or so here and there.

There’s a clear yoga prescription for dealing with insomnia – it involves a set of poses and pranayama that help soothe the nervous system and put the mind/body complex into a state that is ready for sleep. I’ve done it for long periods in the past. It didn’t help me that much, and I know it is because I had too many other things happening that counteracted the effects of the practice. In order to really sleep I’d have to change my entire life and I haven’t been willing to do that.

But since I am working less and travelling a lot less right now, I decided this would be a good time to work on sleeping. I just heard a podcast from Fresh Air where a sleep expert basically said medicated sleep is not the same as real sleep – sedation doesn’t allow for the full integration of self that sleep achieves. I found him very persuasive and I decided maybe I’d try to wean myself off my sleep medication and work on creating the conditions in my life that would allow me to sleep on my own.

Guess what? The main condition I need is learning how to do all the things I do with more effortless effort. Without revving my nervous system up into such a frenzy that sleep eludes me.

It doesn’t necessarily mean doing less. It might just mean doing it in a different way. But it is helpful to try to ingrain new habits while I am doing less, so that I can take them with me when work ramps back up.

The question is how – how to get to effortless effort? Maybe looking at how you can achieve it in the physical practice helps point the way toward getting it in the rest of life.

What creates effortless effort in asana:

• Repetition, which creates muscle memory – so instead of having to actively hold your muscles in a certain way, they build their own habitual right actions
• Sharing the effort – for example, using the legs to help relieve pressure on the arms, like lengthening and lifting the legs up in handstand so the arms/shoulders have less weight to bear;
• Sequencing and coordination of actions – doing the right things together and in the right order, to make it easier for every part of the body to sustain its effort and so that different body parts aren’t working at cross purposes
• Finding internal space – effortful effort can tax the mind and even sometimes lead to a panicky feeling; moving the mind through the body to find internal space can create calmness and allow the physical effortlessness to come through
• Creating opposing actions – opposing actions create dynamic energy instead of dullness and that dynamic energy can feel self-sustaining
• Using the breath to soothe and quiet the mind, e.g. for the feeling of being overtaxed

These are just a few ideas. They all help. Most of us who practice yoga know that at some point we have felt effortless effort, even if it’s just a fleeting experience.

I’m thinking a lot about how to build these strategies into what we do for social change. How to create space. How to cultivate and shepherd an internal feeling of not being revved up, of being soothed, even when the work is heated, demanding, intense. Somehow, even thinking about doing it helps it seem doable. So maybe I should add setting an intention to the list. Intending to be calm and cool even when circumstances are the opposite.

This weekend I went to the events in downtown DC that were organized to oppose the white supremacist rally. I felt trepidation, anger, and fear at confronting hatred, and the possibility of violence. And also joy at the beautiful counter rally showcased in Freedom Square. And very proud of the diverse group of people who showed up to counter hate with love. There weren’t many white supremacists and things didn’t get violent as I feared they might (in part because of how the police exacerbated tensions by attacking counterprotesters in Portland during a white supremacist event a few weeks ago).

I’m thinking a lot about the possibilities of effortless effort in that situation. And in the deeper work for change that makes up more of my daily life – the meetings, trainings, writing, aligning, dealing with conflict among our allies/partners. It seems like a good project to tackle right now.

Our lives depend on figuring it out.

With love, gratitude and solidarity.