All We Need

“We already have everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement. All these trips we lay on ourselves never touch our basic wealth. They are like clouds that temporarily block the sun. But all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here. This is who we really are. We are one blink of the eye from being fully awake.” — Pema Chodron, Start From Where You Are

“Perfection in an asana is achieved when the effort to perform it becomes effortless and the infinite being within is reached.” — Yoga Sutras

Although Patanjali wrote 196 sutras concerning yoga, only three of them pertain exclusively to the asana. The first concerns the means — firm, relaxed postures; the second concerns the end — effortless oneness with what is. The sutra above speaks to the first stumbling block most of us encounter in our practice: we try too hard… we come to yoga with cultural baggage that says we are not enough and never will be. We must improve, we must pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, we must try harder and make some progress. With more effort, we think, and a little more strain, we will get more out of the posture. The mistake is believing we can get where we are going through effort.

Patanjali defines success as effortlessness. Floating in the center of our postures, the center of our experience, we succeed by moving into harmony with the moment, our limbs, our breath, our awareness. — Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat