Courage to Find Sthira Sukham Asanam
There is only one mention of physical practice in the Yoga Sutras. It is sthira sukham asanam, translating to 'Posture should be steady and comfortable'. The various translations of the Sutras agree that Patanjali is stating to balance firmness and comfort in the seat of meditation; and many yoga teachers take it into the asana practice, using the concept of balancing effort and ease in all poses. Most yoga students learn this outlook when they first start practicing. Yoga teachers teach this to new students because most people, from past experience, are used to thinking that exercising is all effort and no ease. If you don't feel it, then it must not be working. What a student may not realize when learning the kind adage of shire sukham asanam is that it takes a lot of courage to live by it.
When you start yoga, you decide to encounter the uncertain. You direct yourself down the dark path of your inner world and walk forward. This in and of itself is scary. In this inner world, there's trial and error in learning when to give effort and when to look for ease. Sometimes we push too hard and find pain. Sometimes we don't push enough and we end up with weakness and disinterest. You try to listen to your body and give it what it needs. But that's hard to navigate. This constant trying, of getting back up on the horse again and again, takes courage. It's easy to always effort and it's easy to always find ease. Though those approaches may bring negative consequences, they are clear and easy to navigate.
It takes courage to keep looking inward and feeling the feelings and being the witness - and attempting to react from a place of (hopefully) knowing. It takes courage to keep at it. It takes courage to love yourself through it. It takes courage to continue through the pain or the disinterest when you get it wrong. But your courage horse is there, waiting for you to hop on his back and get back to work. It's up to you to keep going inward, deeper and deeper through the layers of your Self, shedding here and building there, with the intention of knowing yourself by being okay with not knowing. I suspect that it's in the balance of effort and ease that this intention lives. Rodney Yee says that when you've really found a pose, it doesn't feel like a stretch - it feels like nothing. In my experience, it's in this nothing space that the spirit soars.