The Effort Of Ease at Yoga Six: Chicago, Illinois: August 15, 2019

The tour life resumes! Look at my cute shoes I got on our first stop, Chicago. On our way now to Martha’s Vinyard.

One way to look at life is as a practice, which begs the question, what are you practicing on a daily basis?

I’m out of practice of touring. If the truth be known, I’ve been practicing a lot of loving to stay at home. Fixing little things here, adding a chandelier there, you know, nesting. Making a house a home.

What’s been interesting, for me, in this intersection of touring and homesteading, this pulling together of seemingly opposite aspects, is finding it’s rarely just one thing or another..in practice, which is to say, in day-to-day living.. When I’m home I’m on an adventure, joining friends for coffee, going to yoga, hunting down the perfect sage plant for my garden. And when I’m on tour, it’s about finding the quiet comfort of home inside myself.

In yoga this morning the teacher asked, “what do you want to cultivate?” Dharma rang out loud. Ravi Ravindra describes it as “responsibility for the maintenance of order”. Its one’s path in life, one’s purpose, and while I still can barely believe I spend the better part of a year on a rock tour, I mean, it doesn’t make sense because I’m not a musician, I’m an introvert, and I like things orderly, tidy and quiet. Hilarious cosmic joke I suppose because on the other hand, it feels correct.

The yoga sutras say all postures are a combination of opposites, of effort and ease. Sthira Sukam Asanam (sutra 2.46). It’s a teaching often cited in the west to remember to bring some ease to your efforts, but the opposite lately has been consuming my attention… and that is, can I make the effort to find ease. Certainly while I’m out on tour it’s an obvious practice, but having spent more time off recently, I”ve noticed, even then, my tendency towards anxiety.

Ease is a practice. It’s a way of life. St. Augustine says, “our heart is restless until it rests in you (God)”, and it’s come to mind that perhaps this is the key. The root of my anxiety isn’t the impercttion of my garden in Nevada, or not finding fresh carrot juice when in Pennsylvania, although it sure seems like it when it’s happening. When I strip away surfact details, I see the “fruit” of my actions, to put it in yoga parlance, is a lot of unease because I haven’t bought in, truly , turning my life over to God. I feel like there’s so much I have to do.

Because touring does require an enormous amount of effort; there are several tasks at any moment to be done. Being out of tour again heightens that spicy overwhelm. So if I genuinely want to make an effort to be at ease, maybe, just maybe it’s time to remember who is really in change.

My life is a practice and this is harder than handstand.

Health, love, and Rock N Roll.