Working. Less. Hard.

Oh, Shanti-towners...it has been one of those days.  One of those it's too hot in my apartment and I'm too grumpy so I'm just going to go ahead and cry a little curled up in our bedroom because it's the coolest room in the house and I have a million things to do but I don't really want to do any of them and what on earth am I doing and why can't I just be out in the world being productive for gods sakes Stephen Colbert has formed a goddamn SuperPAC at least he's saying something real about the world around him and what on earth is wrong with me ANYHOW days.

You know the kind of day I'm talking about, right?

(oh god, please say yes.)

After a productive (and relatively short) bout of this fetal-ing in our only slightly cooler bedroom, I began to think about what was bothering me (I won't bore you with the details) and what I wanted (again, I'll spare you), and I kept coming back to two of my favorite words...letting go.

Ugh.

If you have ever read a single post I have ever written about anything you can bet that in SOME way somewhere in that post there is some kind of talk of letting go.  It is my Excalibur.  It is my hero's journey.  It is my f-ing nemesis.

Because, here's the problem for us overachiever A-student types...you can not Work Hard to let go.  These two things are actually opposite things.

And as I was sitting on our bed, now all white for summer, having been stripped of its heavy burgundy blankets, I started thinking about how often I TRY to let go.  How often I work and work and work to surrender, sometimes working hard enough that I actually feel, for a short period of time, that I've succeeded.  But how tenuous that hold is, because it's all held up by effort.  How the slightest wind could knock me off-balance and back into the state I have been trying to cover up with all the letting-go talk.  You know the state I'm talking about?  The honest one?  The one that's not so pretty?

And I thought about what real letting go is.  I thought about all the times in my life when I have truly actually let something go--about the feeling of relief that comes from that, the feeling of mourning maybe for what is lost and then the feeling of ensuing possibility, the feeling of solidity, the feeling (like it is with any real change of perspective) that one has arrived at something infinitely more true and more lasting then all the efforting that came before.  And I thought about how you can't fake a state like that.

How if it's going to come, it's going to come from a place of ease, and not from a place of muscle.

One of my favorite alignment instructions, whether I'm teaching a class or taking one, is to soften your fingers.  It's  a very sneaky way of encouraging people to release into a pose, because, for whatever reason, if your fingertips are relaxed, it's much more difficult for the rest of your body to be tense and "trying".  And when you're not over-doing it, when you're not clenching your jaw and reaching like your life depended on it, the pose starts to open in this incredible way.  It sort of reveals itself to you.  And you might find yourself making adjustments the teacher hasn't even touched upon, because in that state of openness, the natural wisdom of your body starts to shine through.  Why?  Because some part of you (usually not your brain) knows that you're sticking your ribs out in a weird way and it just doesn't feel good. And that part of you (usually without much help from your brain) wants you to feel good.  But until you start to relax, that part of you (the I-want-you-to-feel-better part) hasn't got much lee-way.

And if that is true in my practice, then it is for sure going to be true in my life.

So, Shanti-towners, the hypothesis I present to you is:  maybe that problem you're trying to solve, that project you're trying to finish, that magic you're trying to make come true--maybe it could use a little chilling out.  Maybe you could try on some relaxation for size.  But, not the fake kind, Shanti-towners.  Not the kind that comes from the mind as stern little directives to all the rest of all your systems--I mean the kind that comes from deep inside.  The kind that makes you sigh...the kind that gets you up from your mid-day fetal position and back into the world...

In a nutshell, Shanti Towners, just soften your fingers...and see what happens.