Life is a process that goes on between birth, the beginning, and death, the end. What you have today is the beginning of your journey, and what you want to achieve is your goal. And in between the two is the process. To enjoy the process is to be at ease, and to be at ease is to be in the moment, for which the doorway is the breath.
Ease cannot be commanded or demanded. It can only happen when you engage in the process without expectations. As soon as you set a goal, ease disappears, struggle sets in, your fists clench, and the fight starts as a fixed goal looms large.
You gear up to follow a schedule, whether or not your body agrees or mind acquiesces, you still do it.
Ease Saves the Day
Remember Neo in The Matrix as he is about to get into a fight, and all of a sudden absolute calm and quiet descends around him, ease writ large in his body. When the fight starts, his movements are swift, smooth, and sharp. He fights effectively, yet his body language remains unchanged and the undisturbed ease in his eyes remains evident.
When we see someone handling a stressful situation with calm and ease, we might ask, "How did you manage to remain so calm?" And here's the thing: they were not managing their calm, they were calm.
Finding Ease in Flow
When you are at ease, you are in a natural flow state, ready to respond to the moment.
So I go back to the question and ask, how does one find that ease?
There is an old saying that says the answer is always in the question.
Empty the Bowl and Be at Ease
Meditation has caught the fancy of big corporations as a tool to promote mental wellness among their employees.
Why should you meditate? How does it solve your mental issues? Why did those issues arise in the first place? Thousands of years back, mental issues did not exist even though the human race did. In that era yoga was a way of life. Yogis, seers, and wise men observed nature and gave us yoga for our wellbeing. They gave us yoga, but we were too busy in the rat race to practice it. It is only now that yoga is experiencing a revival.
Ease Rests in the Moment
The whole process of yoga has been designed such that practicing it will bring you in to the moment. And what comprised that moment? Absolutely nothing! Neither past nor future, baggage nor expectation. Shunya.
The same essence shines in a person at ease. There is no force, yet they stand strong, much like shunya or zero, which has no value, yet it adds value to everything it stands next to. Yoga works similarly. It enriches everything. It creates that emptiness, shunyata or zero-ness, that encompasses everything and nothing all in the same moment. Yoga brings ease, an emptiness that is free to be whole.
No Time for Disease
For the body to not be at dis-ease, every human organ system (respiratory, nervous, digestive, reproductive, etc.) needs to function with ease. A clever play on words, my master used to say, "What is disease? When you aren't at ease, then it is called dis-ease." Meaning that to be without ease is to be in disease.
Ease Is Built Breath-by-Breath
The practice of yoga has to begin with an understanding that the most important thing that it helps us do is live in the moment, and that our breath is the key to that.
Ask an asthma patient what it feels like to have the dis-ease of breath. Do not take the breath for granted. It is a universal thread given to all living beings to bring themselves to ease.
When you turn your mind to your breath, it gives you a taste of ease. Why, then, should we ask, "How did you manage to remain so calm?"
