“Our inner guidance comes to us through our feelings and body wisdom first – not through intellectual understanding.” Christiane Northrup
I was in my yoga class last week and I’m doing some crazy posture; a posture of which I, of course, cannot pronounce the name. All I knew is that it was really uncomfortable in my body; it hurt. As a matter of fact, I have tried this pose many times before and it hurts every time I do it. I was breathing deeply, trying to stay present but my ego would not let me drop that pose – so I forced myself to stay in it – pain and all.
Even if you’ve never done yoga, you know that forced feeling I’m talking about:
There is a subtle, but important, difference between effort and force:
There’s not a damn thing wrong with effort. Many good things in our lives come with some effort; there’s strength in effort.
Almost nothing good comes from force. It can be painful, grueling and leaves us feeling weak and often, defeated.
But how do we know when we’ve crossed that line from productive effort and stepped into the grueling arena of force?
Our bodies will tell us.
Our bodies are always talking to us, helping us navigate the terrain between effort and force. We just need to listen to its’ wisdom.