Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

surrender and dance in harmony with the many crosscurrents of life in which we find ourselves. Watching and learning from the interplay of control and surrender in asana is an important dimension to include in one’s practice.
    This insight was brought home to me while swimming in the rapids of a river in California. It was a beautiful summer afternoon and I was sunning on a large rock next to the river and watching some fish swimming. I decided to join them and jumped in the river. I first swamupstream against the swift current. After using up a lot of energy and making little progress, I tired and started swimming downstream, carried by the current. I decided to relax completely, to surrender to current and let it take me. It wasn’t long till I was nearly crashed on some rocks. So I started controlling and swimming strongly, but again this was crashing me into the rocks. Soon I discovered what the fish were doing. I found an exhilarating balance of control and surrender, constantly adjusting my efforts on this interface so that I could jet down the river, riding the current and darting around the boulders. I then turned upstream and experimented swimming in different intensities of the current and finding eddies to help me travel back up to my starting point. I spent the afternoon playing on this edge of control and surrender and the lessons learned changed my yoga practice, even my life.
    Great athletes and great dancers seem to glide effortlessly through their movements. We know how much work and effort they must have gone through to reach the place of flowing in effortlessness. To become a great runner, swimmer, dancer, or yogi, we must cross the threshold between the mechanical action of effort to the realm of flow and grace. We must first learn the mechanical movements, then later let go of them. At the level of flow, the body seems to move freely and gracefully by itself, out of its own intelligence. The flow itself dances, swims, or does yoga.
    We often start out in a new physical endeavor with struggle, strain, awkwardness, and tightness—we are fighting to gain and learn control. When we reach a level of mastery and effortless flow, it is no longer control or surrender, but the birth of a new expression born of these two. Flow is an interplay of pushing through and backing off, of holding on and letting go, of upward moving energy and downward moving energy, and of structure and free form. When all of these polarities come into play, they yield a fruit that is beyond any one of them. The word Hatha points to these poles.
Ha
reminds us of the sun, of structure and control.
Tha
reminds us to let go, back off, to surrender. Howdo we attain the balance of the two? It is not attained; rather, it is discovered. If we explain in too much detail about how to attain a balance of control and surrender, it eludes us and becomes only control. If we surrender too much trying to give up control, we are dashed on the rocks. I learned this lesson the hard way in the mountains. I was skiing down a steeper hill than I usually attempted, behind a friend who was an Olympic skier. He suggested I follow him and glean something from his movements. He seemed to float gracefully, effortlessly down the hill, dancing from side to side. I followed him and picked it up, flowing and dancing my way behind him. Then I thought, “Great, now I know how to do this, I just balance control and surrender!” But when I started to think and analyze, I had moved out of the flow and back in to the rigidity of control. The next thing I knew I was flying through the air and I landed on my head, my body in a knot. Fortunately, I had done yoga that day and didn’t get injured like I might have had I been too stiff or tight. My body said, “I’m glad that I’ve been in this position before.” We can learn about the interplay of control and surrender in asana by experimenting with pushing through and letting go, with tightening and softening, holding poses dynamically and actively, or passively. We can emphasize the control side of the equation by strengthening the lines of energy, actively holding the pose and working nearer our maximum edges. This emphasis will tone and energize the body. Practicing on the surrender side of the equation, we can soften, let go, and let gravity do the work, easing our emphasis on alignment and letting the stretch go deeper into the muscles. Become aware of these polarities and the dance will lead to their