We’ve all been there, forcing ourselves to sleep only to lay there staring at the ceiling while our brain seems to take over with thoughts and run on its own. Forcing ourselves to stay awake with coffee or forcing ourselves to listen to someone we have no interest in, straining with focus and concentration, while albeit well intentioned, seems to only lead us down the rabbit hole of confusion and “oops what was that you just said”? We have all been there in some way or another, whether we know we are doing it intentionally or not. This article is for everyone, however, I am speaking more directly to those Type A personalities, overachievers and perfectionists who seem to force almost everything they do in their lives, including their relationships, their jobs, their exercise routine, and yes, even their Yoga!
You know the ones. They are the first to sign up for that double challenge Hot Yoga Class and be at the front of the class in the mirror intently staring at themselves as if their lazer-sharp focus might lift them into the sky. The truth is, we all have a little touch of the type A personality in each of us. We all don’t feel “good enough” or like we are “doing enough” or are enough, and so instead of accepting that we will never feel good enough, and that its okay to be just another spec of star dust in the universe, we push ourselves to extreme measures leaving us more stressed and burnt out to the point that all our efforts become lost in the struggle and we are left feeling useless, running on an even emptier tank than when we started out.
I invite everyone to really look at your entire life and ask yourself, where am I forcing things in my life or where do things feel forced? Is it really just me? Am I really just stuck in a personality type? Well, it can feel that way. It can feel like you are powerless, yet the irony here is that when we feel powerless, we tend to hold on even more for fear that if we let go, we will really become nothing.
But what is wrong with being nothing? Or doing nothing? We all started as a nothing, and every great invention or creation started out with nothing! A blank canvas just waiting to come alive and the possibilities are open, and expansive. Often, Yoga instructors will talk about Prana: life force or energy. While Yama, is how we control that energy often through breathing exercises. However, this can be taken in all sorts of ways, and often overachievers will forget that the first thing we did when we were born was take a breath. It is the first action we take as a human in this world, and we do so without thinking about it or controlling it or forcing it. When I was in my yoga training, I struggled with my sleep schedule, and my teacher used to tell me that the body will sleep when it is supposed to. Forcing myself to go to sleep doesn’t work, and when we know that absolutely nothing has to happen we allow an organic process to occur.
In Yoga, a sense of balance or equilibrium occurs, so we are always working with opposing forces to create that balance, and it is mindfulness that allows your focus to shift into a state of relaxed awareness. In yoga we are often moving from an outward state to an inward state, always working with opposing forces to create the stretch. Toppling -tree for example, is like tug of war with the body, the legs and arms move in opposite directions of each other to create the stretch. Yoga is said to promote focus AND relaxation to create equilibrium in the body and mind, so if you are forcing the poses, you miss the point of Yoga.
So, while we overachievers and perfectionists have a real desire to do our best, to stay focused, to be dedicated, too often we are forcing the effort without even knowing it. With mindfulness practices, there we don’t force anything. Rather, we are listening and allowing. When we do this, we allow the pose to work for us (such as allowing gravity to work for us during a forward bend for example), rather than forcing the body to work for the pose.
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