Every year, I set an inten­tion for my yoga prac­tice that I bring to the mat every time I take a class or do my home prac­tice. Last year, it was “Lis­ten­ing with the whole body.” In 2008, it was “dis­cov­ery” and empow­er­ing my brother’s health.

This year, my inten­tion is a kind of mantra that I repeat silently to myself: “Mike, don’t work so hard.”

I’ve been prac­tic­ing yoga for six years, often with explicit goals, like “chang­ing my life,” “man­ag­ing my depres­sion,” “improv­ing flexibillty,” — and the list goes on. Any when I come up against my lim­its, whether phys­i­cal, men­tal, spir­i­tual, what­ever, my instinct is to try harder, to redou­ble my efforts, to suck it up. But that approach does not nec­es­sar­ily get the results that I want. Yoga is dif­fer­ent than West­ern dis­ci­plines and sports in that it requires that you be present in the moment, dwelling in the body as it is now, aware of the present. If I am con­stantly mea­sur­ing my pos­ture against some ideal or count­ing how long I can hold head­stand, I am not fully grounded in the moment.

There will be times when I want to explore my edges, as dur­ing the Desirée Rum­baugh or Brian Kest work­shops, or try­ing a pose that I had never attempted before. That’s fine. But I also need to find the ease and grace that allows me to fully inhabit my body as it is here and now. At my recent work­shops, I became aware of what could be called “black holes” in my body — areas that I could not touch or access so I could not move past them to attain cer­tain poses because I could not exert any power or con­trol over my “black holes.” Push­ing hard does not do anything.

What’s required at this stage of my prac­tice is to pause, pull back and focus on deter­min­ing the topog­ra­phy of my “black holes.” I have to let yoga itself show me the way, let yoga do the work. I don’t have to “work harder,” but sit back in patience, ready for a new com­pass to guide me forward.