“I made that,” I marveled, not for the first time, as I watched Jake at school this morning. He was banging two farm animal puzzle pieces together, making a loud clacking noise appreciated by no one but himself. His eyes were clear and as blue as his shirt, which hung over the top of his baggy little jeans, which collapsed on top of his miniature cool shoes. His smile was as big and pure as only a toddler’s smile can be. I was stunned by his beauty, unable to stand up and get on with my day.
Part of the reason Jake seems like a bit of a miracle to me is that he came so easily after so much anguish. I spent over a year having early miscarriages and being told by a well-regarded “specialist” that it was nothing more than a symptom of my age. Turns out when you trust your own sense of your body and see a doctor who actually — get this — listens to you you might be lucky enough to be diagnosed with a mild case of an easily treatable condition. One hysteroscopy later, I got pregnant. It was almost enough to forget how having difficulty conceiving infuses your entire life for the year, two years, five years you work at it.
Now I’m having the symptoms again, and even though I know I can be treated and I already have this crazy beautiful boy and one day we will have a crazy beautiful daughter from China, I can’t help wishing that having a child could, just once, be effortless.
When You’re Not in Control of Your Body
Control is a freaky thing. On the one hand, yoga tells us we’re not in control, we need to surrender, we only make ourselves unhappy if we try to wrest control from the Universe.
On the other hand, we’re mothers. We have to impose a little bit of order where it wouldn’t otherwise exist. We have to maintain a touch of control over what our child eats, what soaps and lotions and sunblocks touch his skin, when he sleeps and where and on what kind of sheets. We spend inordinate amounts of time researching rugs that won’t cause allergies and baby bottles that won’t cause cancer. We don’t control everything (and by “everything,” I especially mean our little angels who refuse to eat the food we put in front of them and wriggle away when we try to douse them with sunblock), but damn it if we don’t control an awful lot.
It’s the same way with asanas. We have to surrender to our body’s limitations. But we also take control over the mind that exaggerates them. The ability to bind in a twisting pose, for example, is largely a function of how long our arms are, something over which we surely have no control; but we do have control over the integrity of the pose and the way we approach it so that one day, if our arms are long enough, we might be able to bind.
Every day we have to figure out a way to get across the valley between the what-I-know-I-can’t-control’s and the what-I-know-I-can-control’s. Most of the time we don’t even notice we’re doing it. But every so often, we hit a big, deep valley of Grand Canyon proportions. That is the terrain where fertility issues lie.
Here’s what I can control: what I eat, how rested and cared-for my body is, my knowledge about my cycles and fertile periods, what doctors I trust and how much I will let them do. I also have some control over the things my limbs can do — the strength and flexibility I build through my asana practice, the amount of walking I do, the number of times I embrace my husband and my child and even — researchers have shown this to be beneficial — my dogs.
What I can’t control is what’s going on internally. And that, as anyone who’s experienced it knows, is a mighty frustrating thing.
Some of us turn to doctors who can get inside and give them the power to help us get pregnant. Others of us turn to acupuncturists, herbalists, ayurvedic practitioners. Many turn to their god. But the one thing we can’t do is make those eggs viable, that uterus receptive, those sperm swim a little more strongly. We have to walk the line between what we can control and what we can’t. And we have to learn to surrender to the things we can’t control with grace.
Here’s why that sounds a lot prettier than it is. Because it’s hard to be graceful when you have a mess of hormones traipsing through your body like a bunch of eighth graders released by the bell on the last day of school before summer vacation. Because nothing feels less graceful than breaking down in tears at something as meaningless as a bathroom strewn with the detritus of a poopy diaper the dogs found. Because there’s nothing graceful at all about blaming yourself. But when it’s your own body that’s tripping you up, it’s pretty hard not to.
I realize I’m sounding a little dire right now. But why not introduce a really juicy challenge into the discussion every so often? I mean, how to feel like a young, sexy chick again when you have applesauce stains on all your clothes is important and everything. And yoga can help you come to terms with the applesauce. It’s just that it can also help you wend your way through the big issues life throws at you.
Besides, a kind of dark posting every so often might help make the other things I write seem a whole lot more amusing by contrast. So if you’re hating this discussion, go back and read something else I’ve written and see just how funny and light-hearted I can be.
Effort Begets Effortlessness
In yoga class yesterday, my teacher reminded us about effortlessness. She encouraged us — a packed room of sweaty, determined practitioners — to stop putting so much effort into every pose. She told us that there is a point at which you let the pose do its own work.
It was, I considered, a lovely metaphor for tackling the big issues. You work hard to get yourself into the right pose — stretching, working, opening your heart, balancing — and then, at some point, you surrender. Because — need I say it again? — you can’t control everything.
What this means to me right now is that I am working hard so that I can surrender later. I’m researching doctors in our new home far away from the beloved doctor at UCLA who diagnosed and treated me when others wouldn’t listen. I’m taking Chinese herbs and seeing an acupuncturist who makes me feel balanced and worthy and healthy. I’m trying not to share too much of my angst with Mike and to work out a plan with him.
At some point, though, I’m going to have to let go. I’m going to have to remind myself that there is a part of yoga that requires effortlessness, and what a beautiful concept that is. What a gift to know that your work pays off, no matter what. No need to second guess yourself as you do it. No worries that you are wasting your time. All that is required of you is to let go of attachment to any particular outcome.
We do it every day when we have children. Let go of your hope that you have found a way to make vegetables a tasty treat because chances are your angel will throw them across the table. Let go of your desire to keep Blankie soft and clean and pretty because it will be dragged through mud and leaves and many a messy dinner eaten by hand. Get too attached to any outcome, and you will only feel drained and impatient; let go and you will be able to laugh and buy fortified cereal or do an extra load of laundry.
So I pledge to do my best to let go of my attachment to any concept of what my family will look like in five years. Like Jake with his Blankie, I’ll cling to what makes me feel good, give it up if that’s what it takes to be given something else I want (say, a little vanilla yogurt), and let it go when I open my eyes to what is so wonderful right now, whether that is a bouncy ball to be thrown at the dogs or the sight of my beautiful child doing the throwing.
Active Effort and Effortlessness — Virabhadrasana II (Warrior II)
There seem to be two ways to approach the Warrior poses. Either you’re having a high energy day and you think, “Yah! Warrior! I am strong!” and you careen into the pose, every muscle aquiver, ready to leap across the room. Or your energy is not-so-much, and you lazily bend a knee a little bit, raise some noodly arms, and pray for the teacher to release you into a different asana.
The great thing about Virabhadrasana II is that it offers you a physical space to find the middle ground. The valley between too much effort and too little (which is not, by the way, the same thing as effortlessness) becomes a bridge. Approach it from the side of effort, and you ease into effortlessness. Approach it from the side of not really making an effort, and all you have to do is walk a little ways toward effort, and you’ll find the right amount of effortlessness for even your low energy day.
Hence, for the purposes of experiencing effortlessness, I suggest approaching this Virabhadrasana II with a visual picture of what the pose looks like: arms and legs pointing in two different directions, body straight and proud with lifted heart right between them. You neither lean back, dragged down by past events, nor lean forward, thrusting yourself into a future that isn’t happening yet. Once you undertake the effort that gets you planted firmly in the present, you can begin to practice effortlessness.