Holding the Stretch

Since coming back to Singapore, I've been slowly restarting some of my old routines.

One of them is yoga.

I've noticed there is a choice in almost every stretch. I can do what's comfortable, or I can push myself that little bit further.

No one really knows the difference except me.

But pushing further isn't necessarily the hardest part. Holding the pose for those extra few seconds is.

Those last five counts somehow feel much longer than the first five. Your body wants you to release. You know you can.

And then you try to stay.

The other day, while holding a pose, something I had written recently came back to me.

Lingering.

I had been thinking about how quickly we move from one thing to another today, and whether we're giving ourselves enough time to sit with a thought before moving on.

Yoga suddenly made me see that a little differently.

Stretching the body is one thing. Staying in the stretch is another.

Perhaps the mind works that way too.

We can expose ourselves to new ideas, different arguments, things that challenge what we believe. But maybe the real work happens in what comes next.

Can I stay with an uncomfortable thought without immediately dismissing it?

Can I hold the uncertainty without reaching for an answer?

When I keep doing this with the body for a few days, something changes. A stretch that was difficult starts becoming easier. The body seems to create a little more space.

I wonder if the mind works that way too.

One idea from a Public Policy class at UCLA has stayed with me: learning to hold multiple complex truths at the same time.

I like that idea because holding two truths doesn't mean we never form a view. It means we give ourselves enough space to understand the tension between them before we do.

Perhaps the mind needs that space too.

With the body, we call it holding the pose.

With the mind, perhaps it's lingering.

I'm finding I need to practice both.