I was in my yoga class and the teacher said, “If you are not resting deeply in savasana (corpse pose), then you are probably not working hard enough in your postures.”

Hmmm…I turned this idea over and over after I left class. I felt like I was killing myself in the postures but I also wasn’t recovering in between the postures during savasana. I was breathless and dragging myself from posture to posture. Hmmm…

I went back to class. I worked harder, went deeper in the postures. I dropped into savasana more quickly. More profoundly. I didn’t drag myself through the postures. What was different? My focus. My mind chatter was less. I didn’t have a lot of “This is hard” and “I can’t” going on in my head.

Hmmm…because everything leads back to my fingers tapping away at this keyboard, I thought how the yogi’s advice applied to this part of my life. At the very simplest level, if I work hard during the day, I will sleep better at night. But that’s not quite it. When we drag ourselves to the computer, when spend most of our energy flogging ourselves and doing battle with thoughts like: “This is hard.” or I can’t,” then we can’t drop into the scene we’re writing. We can’t focus and work deeply. And if we don’t focus and work deeply, then we don’t take a break and really rest. Instead, we walk away from the work reluctantly. We don’t feel satisfaction. We don’t let it go. Instead we pant and gnash our teeth and feel guilty. We say to ourselves: “I didn’t work hard enough. I didn’t make enough progress. I should do some more (half-focused) work.”

Feel familiar?

Work hard. Go deep. Then rest.