Ease and Effort

Last week in a yoga class the teacher said to “find the place between ease and effort” while moving through the poses. I laughed. Does that elusive place even exist? A sweet spot where I’m trying, but not too hard? Where I’m resting, but not too much? 

Denise Levertov’s poem “The Avowal” describes a quality of surrender that offers one glimmer of the ease-effort dance: 

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s embrace
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.

I wonder what it would feel like to write three words on three pieces of paper and tape them to the kitchen wall. Effort. Ease. Grace.

I wonder what it would feel like to live from these three words — to release my white-knuckled grip on my pen . . . on my responsibilities . . . on my life—and to remember the Creator-Spirit’s embrace.