3. Reluctance
No matter how much devotion and determination are involved in the commitment to the practices of yoga and writing, the practitioner – sadhaka is the Sanskrit word used in yoga – can find herself reluctant to practice. Why isn't she doing surya namaskar (salute to the sun) the moment she arises? Why isn't she at work writing? Time, space, intention and experience have all been established. What obstacles can there be?
These obstacles are disease, inertia, doubt, heedlessness, laziness, indiscipline of the senses, erroneous views, lack of perseverance, and backsliding. (Iyengar 1996: 78)
So says the ancient sage Patanjali who lived some time between 500 and 200 BC and wrote on grammar, medicine and yoga: works that remain, in India, commentators say, the basis for these knowledge systems. The obstacles are found in physical, mental, intellectual or spiritual infirmities of the sadhaka or would-be sadhaka.
On a good day doing your practice is not an issue. It is what you do. On a bad day...
You feel too sick. You feel too dull. You hate yourself, your best work is behind you, you've lost your way, lost your voice, lost your gift. You're incapacitated by remorse. You'd rather go back to bed or lie dozing in the sun or see if that cute, friendly person wants to suck your toes. Oops, you spent yourself talking, ate too much, drank too much, had the smoke, decided to go out dancing. You don't have to practice today because, just because you don't have to do anything you don't feel like and you don't think you feel like it and also it takes too long to work out what you really feel which you feel you first should do. Plus, once they do suck your toes once, what then? Or now the problem is, you're just not getting anywhere so obviously you're no good, you're stupid, lazy, a fraud. Give up, who cares. You can't do yoga because it stops you from writing; you can't write because it stops you from doing yoga. Or today – what day is it? – what the problem is, if it is a problem, what it is, hang on, you were doing about ten other things.
How, with all these obstacles does the sadhaka get to sit at her desk, stand on her mat?
Practice demands four qualities from the aspirant: dedication, zeal, uninterrupted awareness and long duration. (Iyengar 1996:15)
Dedication. Zeal. Uninterrupted awareness. Long duration. Those four qualities. Obvious. And it is yoga itself that strengthens these qualities. Yoga gives you the discipline to do yoga. It is the routine of writing that makes it impossible not to write. It is the cultivation of habit that ensures these practices as habits.
That's what you have to do: cultivate the habit.
Adherence to single-minded effort prevents these impediments.
It's the practice of practice that makes practice happen.