The kinder we are, the farther we go

That morning, I’m intent on getting the asana that we’re practising right. My forehead is crunched, my lips purse into a frown, cheeks tighten, nose squishes and my toes curl up - all in a Hail Mary attempt. I am trying to get my body into an asana that feels difficult. I can hear Medha’s voice echoing, “no lip-asana”, “don’t make faces at me (she laughs)”, “relax the shoulders”, “toes, toes!”. But when she offers, “big smiles!”, I frown, struggling to see how anyone could possibly smile when their body has been contorted into some strange position. Trying to be polite, I manage half a smile and as I look around, I can see that we’re all trying together. The struggle is shared, you can hear the sighs and grunts. Yet Medha persists with a joy that we do not understand and we’re amused with. We try again, and then all of us flop onto our mats. We turn to Medha, feeling all sorts of feelings about ourselves and the asana - disappointment, hopelessness, irritation, competitiveness and more.

As though she can see the hurt, she says something that forever changes how I practice. The kinder we are to ourselves, the farther we will go in our practice. At first, I’m unable to make sense of this. Isn’t this contrary to everything we’ve learnt - “No pain, no gain” plastered all over workout spaces?

I thought that for our bodies to arrive at an advanced asana, there must be a struggle, a push and pull, a battle.

Therefore, I had spent time moving every body part that I could, desperately trying to make the asana happen. Little did I know that our bodies know better than we do. 

The kinder we are to ourselves, the farther we will go in our practice

In the shoving and moving, my own aggression came to the forefront. I angrily moved my body, asking “Why can’t you do this?”. My body often responded with pain, “I am not ready”. Like a woman on a mission, I refused to listen, “But you have to! Push some more”. My body would then teach me a lesson. It stiffened and shrunk, solemnly and stubbornly said to me, “no more”. This made me release the asana and give into my body’s reluctance to cooperate with my aggression. For a long time I thought I had to compete with my body. In sadhana I began to learn that when I competed with my body, both of us lost. I felt disappointed in my body and my body too, felt disappointed in me. I was hard pressed to learn that the gains only come with having grace and patience with what our pains are trying to teach us.

There is a soft kindness in learning from teachers. They do not push, there is no final posture to be rushed into, they do not ask my body to enter a space it was not ready for, instead, they help me listen to myself and what my body is trying to communicate. In going through this process, I figured that this is the only way my body would learn. My body responded well to these moments of grace and it thanked me for slowing down and pausing where I could push no more. How did my body soften into the asana when it was moved with kindness? I did not understand. And maybe we experience much before we understand. I knew that something had shifted, and I began to trust that kindness.

The asana happens to us, when we are ready to receive it.

My aggression had to find another place to go. Whenever it came onto the mat, my body asked me for love in response. On the mat, my aggression began to be tamed. Of all that has changed through sadhana, I notice that I smile more often. I am teaching myself that if I can be as kind as my teachers are to me, perhaps my body and I do not have to compete with each other. The kinder I felt towards my body, my body began to take my side. Asana shifted from being a dialogue between my mind and my body, “you have to do this”, to now being, “we can do this together, one layer at a time”. It began to find an ease, a stillness. Perhaps the yoga sutra could be felt now, ‘prayatna shaithilya ananta samapattibhyam’.

As I move through life off the mat, I remind myself that the kinder I can become to myself, the farther all of us go with each other.

Kindness leaks and spills, and we could do with more of this mushy mess.

The voices in my head, the thoughts that pass me by, the words used, the actions done, the intent carried, the responses to my choices, all of it slowly continues to be transformed by this kindness. And on the days when I find myself struggling and battling, I can hear Medha’s voice. I know that I will find myself in class the next morning, learning all over again how to be kind.