Short practice: Glide like an eagle
In yoga, we are always looking for the balance between effort and surrender. How much effort is enough? And at what point do you stop trying and go with the flow?
In any yoga pose, effort is required to arrange the body parts and hold the position. We work to find our way into the shape of the pose and use strength to maintain it. But once we are there, something else has to happen. We have to stop pushing and let our breath move us in subtle ways to embody the pose, which takes us to a place where sheer effort cannot. To get the most out of any pose, we need a perfect balance between effort and surrender.
This same balance shows up everywhere in life, not just on the mat. Sometimes we need effort: going out into the world, taking up space, dealing with what is in front of us, spreading our wings. Other times we need respite, which means conserving our resources, folding in, giving ourselves time to recharge. Both are necessary. And when we get stuck in one mode or the other for too long, pushing forward when we need to be resting, or withdrawing when we need to be engaging, we lose the balance that keeps us well.
For inspiration, let’s look to an eagle. The eagle puts in effort to rise up high, working its wings to climb into open sky. And then, at a certain point, it stops. It finds a rising current, a thermal, and surrenders to its lift. From there it glides, wings spread wide, with barely any effort at all. It has already done the work, and now it rides supported by other forces.
But the eagle doesn’t stay aloft forever. On cold nights, it joins others at a sheltered roost, becomes compact and still, and conserves its energy until it’s time to rise again. The eagle knows when to work hard and when to let go. That is what we are practicing when we come to the mat, and it is what we are practicing every day, consciously or not.
In this 15-minute practice we try to find balance between effort and surrender. We follow the example of an eagle and spread our wings wide to glide in some poses and fold our limbs tight to perch in others. We use the breath itself as the current we glide on, and introduce slight pauses after inhalation and exhalation to highlight the expansion and repose. We finish with Garuda mudra and a short visualization of riding air currents.
A note on the breath holds: keep retention and suspension subtle and brief. If you feel your breath becoming strained at any point, skip them and breathe comfortably at your own pace.
Channel your inner eagle and see how it feels!
