How do you know when to try harder, ease up, or try something else? I explore that question in yoga, but I’ve also spent much of my life working it out with computers, bicycles, and a violin. In each of these domains, I’ve learned something about paying attention and making adjustments. Over time, that process has brought me closer to noticing how I use my own effort, including when I can let something be.
Tune Your Computer
Give me a computer that works and I can still find something to adjust, especially if it uses free and open source software. I’ve worked with computers since childhood, tweaking them to my heart’s desire. And then again when my heart has a new desire. As long as there is a text file I can edit, there is always another setting, another way to make something work more like I want it to.
The appeal goes beyond getting the latest and greatest new whiz-bang thing working. I enjoy figuring out how it works, changing something, and seeing what happens. Sometimes my alterations make me feel like the undisputed Prom King of Nerd Nation. Other times I learn the hard way why the original setting existed.
Except for the feel and sound of my fingers clicking on the keyboard, the computer doesn’t feel connected to my body. I can change a configuration, run something, and inspect the result. I often end up leaning in like a gargoyle, but my screen doesn’t care.
With some changes, another computer can even check the results. In my work for the City of Boston, automated tests check our changes on another server. My body doesn’t need to participate in that testing at all.
Other things I’ve learned to tune require more than checking the results on a screen.
Tune Your Bike
I first learned to work on my bike from Bill Keeler at Area Wide Cycle in Excelsior. Bike maintenance introduced me to another world of small adjustments. A little turn here or there could change the whole experience of riding my bike.
With a bicycle, my body becomes part of the test. An adjustment to the seat changes how pedaling feels. A change at the handlebars changes how I reach or how I distribute my weight. It doesn’t matter how good an adjustment looks while the bike is on my stand in the basement if it doesn’t feel or work right when I’m riding.
But there’s a gap between making the adjustment and feeling its effect. I stop, change something, then ride. Occasionally, I carry my bike stand out to my driveway to reduce the time between tuning and testing. Sometimes I need to ride for a while before I know whether the change helped.
That takes patience that can feel in short supply. It also takes a willingness to revise something I thought I’d already figured out.
Tune Your Instruments
I started playing violin when I was five and have spent decades making teeny-weeny adjustments. I learned the Suzuki method, with colored tape on the fingerboard to show my fingers where to go. I had to learn how firmly to press and how to coordinate those fingers with my other hand holding the bow. I’ve explored different bow speeds, pressures, and angles. Even before playing, I had to sort out the tension of the strings themselves, or get an adult to do it for me.
With practice, the violin started to feel more like an extension of my body. I learned to hear a note and adjust my finger while in the process of making sound. I can change the bow speed and hear the result as I move it. Listening and adjusting are just part of playing.
Compared with a bike, there are more possibilities for tinkering. If I want a different sound, pressing harder might help, or it might make things worse. I might need to change the bow speed or where the bow meets the string. Many of these adjustments can happen while I’m playing. My ability to notice those differences has developed along with my ability to respond.
Tune Your Practice
Yoga brings this process of adjustment into the body itself. There’s no instrument to pick up and no bike to get on. The breath, sensations, and attention I’m working with accompany me everywhere.
In a standing posture, I can feel my legs working and notice whether my jaw has joined in unnecessarily. I can soften my face while keeping my legs engaged. As I move into the next posture, my experience transitions, and I can keep listening.
Sometimes I need more engagement, and other times I need support. Sometimes the adjustment involves giving myself permission to come out of the posture. What helped on the first side might feel different on the second.
The same inquiry continues when I sit to meditate. I can notice attention wandering and return to the breath. I can also notice myself trying so hard to concentrate that I’ve tightened my forehead or cheeks. Returning to the breath and softening my face can happen together.
This is what I mean by tuning your effort: feeling how you’re working, making an adjustment, and remaining curious about what follows. You can explore how much effort you use, where you direct it, and when you let it go.
In Kripalu yoga, we have all sorts of tools for exploring self-observation without judgment, such as “Breathe, Relax, Feel, Watch, Allow” or “Focus, Flow, and Let Go.” We give ourselves time to feel an experience before deciding what to do with it. Sometimes we discover that we can just let it be.
That ongoing study connects with svādhyāya, self-study. We can begin recognizing familiar habits, such as holding our breath when something gets difficult or pushing harder when we’re unsure what else to try. Ahimsa, nonharming, guides how we respond. We can learn from what we notice while respecting our limits and treating ourselves with kindness. Yoga ethics are the building blocks for a skillful practice and life.
Tune Your Life
You can continue the practice after class. During a difficult conversation, you might feel yourself preparing your next response and choose to give more attention to listening. At your desk, you might notice that another hour of pushing needs to give way to being vulnerable and asking for help. Some adjustments involve changing the question or recalling the underlying intention.
You can try it wherever you are:
- Notice where you’re making an effort.
- Change one thing.
- Give yourself time to feel what follows.
Yoga offers a lifetime of this kind of learning. We return to familiar movements and keep discovering something about how we meet them. Our bodies change, sometimes in ways we wouldn’t choose. Our lives change, too. What we can notice, and how we respond, can develop with practice.
You don’t need to wait for the next class to explore it. Feel how you’re sitting as you finish reading. Is there a small adjustment you’d like to try?
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