These are emotional times.  I awoke yesterday morning to hear of yet another two deaths of my black citizens by police officers.  The FBI director was being interrogated concerning Hillary Clinton’s emails during her term as Secretary of State.  My tai chi teacher is dealing with life threatening cancer and several of my own students are fighting cancer and other serious illnesses.  I am distressed and wondering how my yoga or my teaching of yoga can help. There are many emotional reactions to these events that I am learning to respond to in a positive way by employing my many years of yoga practice.  I am attempting to resist my resistance as I have often had to do when dealing with difficult poses and emotions on the mat.

Last week I wrote about how some poses that we hold can cause a resistance.  This week I will address how I am able to find ease in a pose that I resist.  I am a Kripalu yoga teacher and we are taught how to guide students into poses that are then held for an extended time.  Kripalu has an acronym that they have developed to make it easier for yoga teachers to direct and instruct students while holding a pose.  It is known as BRFWA:  Breathe, Relax, Feel, Watch and Allow. So as a Kripalu yoga teacher I do move through the BRFWA cues that I was taught.  But I have found that it is the “Relax” part of this acronym that stymies people, me included.  Just how do you relax when you are uncomfortable in a pose? Cues from BRFWA include instructions to soften any unnecessary gripping, and let thoughts and feelings emerge.  Many of these cues don’t work for me or for that matter many of my students.  Sometimes it even makes the struggle worse.  When I am concentrating on holding a pose and the instructor starts languaging a number of scripted cues in a soft syrupy yoga voice I have all I can do not to come out of the pose and leave the class.  Over the years I have learned to identify those poses that agitate me and I am learning how to deal with some of my reactions to these poses.  Here are some ideas and techniques I have found that work for me when I am struggling in a pose or when I anticipate that I will be uncomfortable in a pose.

1. Identify the poses you find most uncomfortable to hold. Not all poses elicit the same resistance response for everyone.  I identified two of the poses that do cause a resistance for me: side plank and chair pose.  They are considered Brahmana poses or poses that increase the heat in the body. They stimulate the nervous system.  The type of pose I am holding and where in the sequence I am asked to hold the pose can affect the resistance response.  For me, holding side plank or chair pose for any length of time causes agitation no matter where they are placed in a sequence.  Poses like child pose, crocodile pose or sphinx pose are too relaxing to elicit any uneasiness.  I find I can stay in these poses for an extended length of time with little if any agitation. So the type of pose makes a difference.
2. Choose one or two poses that you often are asked to do in a class that you find uncomfortable. For me again it is chair pose and side angle pose. Both of these poses seem to be favorites in a yoga class.  We do them in most classes that I attend and sometimes we practice them more than once in a class.  Usually they are spaced between softer poses.
3. Become your own laboratory. I think the best suggestion I can give is to try holding a pose for a length of time (say 2 minutes) on your own.  Let your physical self become your own laboratory away from a class setting and a teacher’s voice instructing you how to do the pose.  Experiment on yourself.  Choose a quiet space where you can try things out and when you also have enough time to play a little. So when I did this I was able to closely look at my reactions to chair pose or side angle pose when I tried to hold them.  If I did them in a flow sequence all was fine.  But when I was asked to hold them it was troublesome for me.  Other than muscle fatigue, which of course was definitely some of the problem, I was intrigued by my mind’s workings. I tried to look at what was going on inside to endeavor to move a little past the physical tiredness.  My thoughts ranged from how this pose was not my favorite to the thought that I would skip it from here on. My thoughts and emotions would tell me that there was more to this reaction and struggle than purely physical.
4. Watch how you come into the pose. Begin at the beginning when you transition from one pose to another.  Become mindful of how you make the transition.  Is it smooth and slow?  Does it naturally flow from the pose you just left? Are you warmed up enough for the pose you are transitioning to or have you exhausted the very muscles you need for this next pose?  Sometimes I would intentionally exhaust those muscles to be able to watch my reactions more clearly.
5. Carve your way into the pose. Take time to be deliberate with your body and with your energy.  Notice where you place your feet or arms.  Can you move around a little and perhaps even millimeter by millimeter carve your way into the pose? Allow patience to be your guide.
6. Monitor and explore your alignment once you have settled into the pose. I often found myself wanting to change my position in chair pose.  My arms would want to move either up or down.  The weight in my feet would move forward or back.  Given the permission to move around while trying to stay present with discomfort I found that I could eventually arrive at a place that I could hold for several minutes. I also used props, variations and modifications.
   1. The use of props helped me to feel more comfortable and at ease in a pose.
   2. Variations and modifications in a pose also proved helpful. Modifications or adaptations are simplified poses for specific conditions or perhaps even body types that don’t quite fit the mold.  Variations on the other hand provide more advance pose options and sometimes help to provide more relaxation in one area of the body. I try both when I am attempting to hold a pose for an extended period of time.
7. Test yourself as to how long you can stay in this uncomfortable position. Ask yourself what you can do to lessen the physical discomfort or soothe the unruly feelings or thoughts that are bubbling to the surface. For me, just watching my thought pattern in an extended hold often takes attention away from the physical discomfort.
8. Know the function of the pose you struggle with. If you don’t know much about the purpose of the pose then investigate.  There is so much now on the internet about every aspect of all yoga poses that it is very easy to find what you need to know.  I investigate the muscles that the pose targets and what parts of the body are being stretched, or contracted.  I also  scout out any variations and modifications that might be useful.  Often it is fun to try different ways of expressing the pose.
9. Ease up on the self-criticism. I soon began to become  aware of my thoughts as I met the uneasiness I was experiencing in certain poses and after a while I learned to do this consciously.  I began to think about the areas of my body that were asking for more strength, more flexibility, or increased expansiveness, and instead of pushing ahead I would begin to come in and out of the pose to ease the tension.  As my body relaxed my mind calmed and I began to feel more relaxed in the pose.
10. Ease up on fighting against yourself. I once had a yoga instructor who told me that I was fighting against myself while I was in a seated twist.  I was twisting to one direction while my energy and every part of my body was attempting to go in the opposite direction. Now I am more aware that I sometimes fight myself and I try to be more vigilant especially in poses that I sense I will have some discomfort.
11. If you are struggling with your breath then you will naturally resist the pose.  So here is the big one.  Breathe naturally.  This is so very hard to do in some poses.  In fact I almost always have to cue my students to continue breathing; if they are having trouble breathing I instruct them  to back away from the pose.  But the ego has to move aside and this is not easy.
12. What is the pose telling you? If all the techniques I have talked about are not working for you and there is no moving toward a more comfortable pose then it is time to ask yourself what you are trying to find in this particular pose that is evading you. Are you looking to stretch a certain area physically or are you only trying to follow instructions and have no idea what is the purpose of this pose? Perhaps there is old trauma stored in the physical body that you unconsciously do not want to release. I have found that if you listen, your body will tell you what it needs, what it wants to release, and how it wishes to do this.  All we have to do is listen and become aware of what the body tells us.
13. Think of the Guanas. The Guanas are nature’s energies that permeate all of nature including humans. There are three basic energies that reflect the polarities in nature.  Rajas is the energy of activity. Tamas is the energy of inertia or lack of movement and Sattva is the balance point between Rajas and Tamas. When I find myself in a pose that is too energizing and I become Rajasic (agitate and heated) I tend to soften the pose or come out of it until I release some of the energy that has been built up.  On the other hand if a pose is to Tamasic (inertia) I will have to increase the energy by doing more heated poses or by moving back into the pose I am holding for a longer time.  I strive to reach a balance between the two to become more Sattvic or balanced. So this is why coming in and out of a pose is a useful technique to gradually increase your holding time.

Take it off the mat. So here is the hardest part of yoga. Can we take what we learn about ourselves while we struggle with the poses and carry this out to the world.  When we hit a challenge, which we will in life as well as on the mat, can we learn to react the way we learned to react to a challenging pose by finding balance and equanimity.  This is where the real transformation happens.  So I say to myself: yes, I can react positively to my wonderful life even as the day unfolds with many sad and distracting occurrences.  I reach for that balance that I practice to attain on my mat and extend it to my life.  It works but I also have to work at it.

As for Tai Chi. Tai Chi practice involves continuous movement so long holds are not part of the art form.  However, moving slowly, smoothly, and consistently from form to form holds its own challenges and finding ease as you move is yet another discussion for another blog post.