Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher

89. Effort and Ease—The Balancing Act You’re Already In

• Sage Rountree • Episode 89

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You’ve cued it a thousand times: “Find the balance between effort and ease.” In this episode I take Patanjali’s sthira sukham asanam (Yoga Sutra 2.46) off the mat and show you how it runs underneath every cue you give, every class you plan, and every decision you make about your teaching career.

You’ll learn what sthira (steady, firm, structured) and sukha (literally “good axle space”—smooth, well-fitted, easeful) really mean, and how to spot when you’re gripping or collapsing on the mat, in your planning, and in your career as a yoga teacher. I name two common defaults—the teacher who over-plans and over-grips, and the teacher who under-plans and coasts—and offer a One-Degree Practice for moving toward the middle in whichever area needs it most this week.

This episode is drawn from Chapter 32 of Yoga Off the Mat, my new book with Alexandra DeSiato. Yoga Off the Mat is a book about taking what yoga does to your attention on the mat and letting it shape the rest of your life—work, relationships, parenting, hard conversations, the inside of your own head on a Sunday afternoon. Pre-order links are below.

If class planning is where your sthira-sukha ratio feels most out of balance, that’s the work of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing. The next cohort runs July through December, and enrollment opens Monday, June 22nd. The waitlist is open now—get on it before Monday and you’ll hear from me first.

Resources mentioned

Join the waitlist for the July cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing: A Mentorship Membership (MMM): sagerountree.com/mentorship

Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Get in the Zone at Comfort Zone Yoga, my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you—let's chat there!

For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential, check out my YouTube channel, and follow me on socials:

And come explore my mentorship program, my Yoga Class Prep Station membership, continuing education workshops and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers. It's all at sagerountree.com.

Can I tell you something? There's a yoga teacher I used to watch years ago, before I owned a studio, who had this quality I couldn't name. Her classes weren't flashy. She didn't demo advanced poses or play a hyper-curated playlist, but she really held the room. There was a steadiness to her that made you feel safe, paired with an ease that made you feel welcome. Not rigid, not loose, somehow both at the right ratio. I spent years trying to figure out what that was, and then one day I realized yoga philosophy had already named it 2,500 years ago. Sthira sukham asanam, Sutra 2.46. The posture should be steady and comfortable with the right balance of effort and ease. If you are a yoga teacher, you've probably said some version of this in class 1,000 times. Find the balance between effort and ease. I bet it's one of the most cued phrases in modern yoga, and if it isn't, it should be. Today, I want to take it off the mat, far off the mat, and show you what this framework of sthira and sukha really is. It runs underneath every physical cue you will ever give, every class you will ever plan, and most of the decisions you will make in your yoga teaching career. I cover this in chapter 32 of my new book, co-written with my friend Alexandra DeSiato. It's called Yoga Off the Mat. I'm Sage Rountree, and this is Yoga Teacher Confidential. Let's unpack the Sanskrit because those two words carry more than most teachers might realize. Sthira means steady, firm, stable, resolute. It's the quality of effort, structure, engagement. Sthira is a cognate of strong, stiff, steady. Sthira is what keeps you in any pose, the muscular effort, the focused attention, the commitment to stay. Sukha means comfortable, easeful, spacious, and the root has a fun layer to it. If you listen to episode 86 on the two arrows, you'll recognize this word. Su means good. Kha means the space in the center of a wheel where the axle sits. Sukha is literally good axle space. Smooth, well-fitted, giving a ride without friction. So sthira sukha asanam says more than be steady and comfortable. Engage fully and let the engagement be smooth. Hold the structure and let it breathe. Commit without gripping. Kenny Rogers had it right when he sang, "You've got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them." Sthira and sukha in a country song. The reason this sutra travels so well is that it applies to just about everything. On the mat, sthira is the engagement in your quads during warrior two. Sukha is the ease in your shoulders. Too much sthira and you're rigid, white-knuckling the pose, holding your breath, grinding through it. Too much sukha and you're collapsed. No structure, no engagement, maybe hanging out in your joints. For us as yoga teachers, this ratio isn't fixed. It shifts moment to moment, pose to pose, and class to class, life season to life season. The skill for us is constant recalibration, finding the balance between sthira and sukha again and again. Never just once. It's not even any place we actually arrive at, but finding that balance, that is the craft of teaching yoga. Let me show you how sthira and sukha play out in the three places

yoga teachers live:

in the body, in the classroom, and in your career. In the body, you'll find sthira and sukha in your cues. Every physical cue you give is a sthira-sukha calibration. Engage your core is sthira. Soften your jaw is sukha. Root down through your feet is sthira. Let your breath be easy is sukha. When a student is shaking in chair pose and you say, "Can you find one thing to soften?" That's you helping them adjust the ratio. You're asking them to find sukha inside the sthira. You're not telling them to give up. This is the framework that underlies every physical cue you'll ever give. Once you can name it, your cueing gets sharper because you'll stop saying words for the sake of saying words, and you'll start consciously moving the dial between effort and ease. This also shows up in your planning for your classroom. Think about class structure. A class that's all sthira, all effort, all intensity, no rest, no counter poses, no breathing room is exhausting. Not challenging in a good way, but exhausting and relentless. Your students leave wrung out, and they don't come back next week. On the other hand, a class that's all sukha, all restorative, all ease, no progression, no challenge, no growth zone is very pleasant, but pleasant doesn't change anyone. Your students leave relaxed but maybe not transformed, depending on the population, and over time they might drift. The classes that build a wait list typically hold both sthira and sukha, structure with space, challenge with rest, progression with breath. Sthira sukham asanam can apply to 60 minutes of teaching. Here's what I see in the yoga teachers I work with. Newer teachers tend to default to one side. Now some of you are all sthira in your planning. You're over-structured, over-prepared. Every second is accounted for. You're terrified of dead air. I have talked to teachers who literally spend three hours planning a single class because they're so afraid of running out of material. That is sthira, and that is a death grip. Others default to all sukha. You walk in with a vague idea. You wing it. You call it intuitive teaching, and then you hope for the best, and some days that works beautifully, but other days you find yourself scrambling mid-class, and your students can feel it. That's drift. The craft lives in the middle. You want a clear, repeatable structure that you trust enough to let it breathe. You need enough preparation that you feel grounded and enough flexibility so that you can respond to the room. That's the work. This also plays out, this balance of sthira and sukha, across your career, across your whole teaching life. And this one's bigger, and it might be the one that most of us miss. All sthira in your career looks like taking every class, saying yes to every sub request, hustling for workshops, grinding towards some imaginary version of making it as a yoga teacher. It's the rajasic teacher from our episode on the gunas seen through a different lens. You're applying so much effort, you have squeezed out all the ease, and you're wondering why you don't enjoy teaching anymore. On the other hand, all sukha in your career looks like being passive, waiting for opportunities to come to you, not investing in your professional development, teaching the exact same material year after year because it's comfortable. That looks like coasting, and you would wonder then why your classes aren't growing. I bet you are already identifying where you are on this spectrum, and if you're watching on YouTube or listening on Spotify, please let me know in the comments, or come to the zone at Comfort Zone Yoga and share your reflections in our free community there. Now, the teachers that I watch build long, sustainable, fulfilling careers are good at holding both sthira and sukha. They have standards, and they give themselves grace. They invest in their craft, and they take real rest. They plan with intention, and they leave room for intuition and surprise. They push into the growth zone, just enough discomfort to stimulate real adaptation, and then they rest and return stronger. That is sthira sukha asanam applied to a teaching career. Now what? For you, the practitioner, here's a practice from the book Yoga Off the Mat. Pick one area of your life this week, it can be just one, and notice where you are all sthira or all sukha. Then find one degree of movement toward the middle. It's only one degree. It's a little ask. If you are over-planning your classes, if you're spending hours on a single session, if you're rehearsing every transition in your lesson plan, if you're agonizing over whether to put half moon before or after triangle pose, your one degree might be to plan the arc and then leave the transitions to the moment. Trust that you know enough to fill in the blanks. Step one degree toward sukha. If you're under-planning, if you're type B, if you're showing up with a vague theme and hoping inspiration will strike, your one degree might be to write down five poses before class, or check your lesson plan against my six-four-two framework, the six moves of the spine, the four lines of the legs, the two core modes, so that you know you're serving a nutritionally balanced movement diet. Then decide on a clear beginning to class and a clear end, and that may be all the structure you need to move yourself one degree towards sthira. If your career is all hustle, teaching 12 or more classes a week, never saying no, running on caffeine and adrenaline, your one degree might be to drop one class this month. Just one. See what happens when you create a little space and move one degree towards sukha. If your career is all coast, teaching the same three sequences on rotation, avoiding workshops or continuing education, waiting for the studio to hand you more classes, your one degree might be to sign up for one thing that puts you in the growth zone. Not maybe a whole continuing education binge, just one thing, one degree toward sthira. The beauty of the one degree is that it's manageable. It doesn't require a life overhaul, but those one degrees, they compound. One degree this week leads to another one degree next month, and over time, you find yourself in a fundamentally different place. Sthira begets sukha, begets sthira, begets sukha. It's the dance of balance. Now, for you, the teacher, let's talk about how to bring this into your yoga classroom. You're probably already teaching this. The question is whether you're teaching it with conscious awareness. Next time your class is in warrior two and you see a student gripping, jaw clenched, shoulders at their ears, breath held, try a cue like this,"You have all the effort you need here. Now find one thing to soften." That's a sthira-sukha recalibration in just one sentence. Or in a restorative pose when someone is checked out or potentially even snoring, try saying something like,"Even in rest, can you stay present? Not applying major effort, but staying with awareness here." That's inviting sthira back into the sukha. You can also name the framework explicitly. You don't need to use the Sanskrit, though it's beautiful if you want it, but you could just say, "In every pose, we're looking for two things, enough effort to hold the shape and enough ease to breathe inside it. The ratio changes, but your job is to keep finding it." That cue works in chair pose, it works in shavasana, and it works off the mat, which is where your students need it most. For a deeper, fuller class theme, try building a class around the

question:

where are you gripping and where are you collapsing? Open with the question, cue toward it throughout, close with, "This is the practice, not perfection, but recalibration both on the mat and off it." That's a class your students will think about all week. And if you've read Teaching Yoga Beyond the Poses or Teaching Yoga Beyond the Poses Volume 2, two other books I co-wrote with Alexandra, you will be familiar with this class theme. If building classes like this, classes that carry a philosophical thread from opening to close, classes that hold poses inside an experience with a clear arc is the work you want to get better at, of course you can read Teaching Yoga Beyond the Poses, but this is also exactly what we do in the Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing mentorship. We practice the craft of creating classes worth coming back to. Visit sagerountree.com/mentorship to learn more. Now, on Monday, June 22nd, six days after this episode drops, I'm opening enrollment for a July through December cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing. It's a six-month mentorship, and it'll be a group of yoga teachers moving through the curriculum together with my personal review on your lesson plans, your sequencing questions, and whatever else comes up in your teaching life. This is the work I described a minute ago, learning to plan classes that hold their shape, that have sthira, and that still leave room to breathe. You'll get enough sthira to trust your structure and enough sukha to teach from a relaxed, grounded, and present place. Six months is enough time for it to actually become how you plan instead of just something that you tried once. The wait list is open right now at sagerountree.com/mentorship. Get on it before Monday, and when doors open, you will hear from me first. And if you're hearing this later, reach out because we can talk about the right time for you to join. Now, here's what I want you to take away from this episode. Sthira sukham asanam is the operating system. It's the question you will keep asking through every pose, every class, and every season of your teaching career. Am I gripping? Am I collapsing? Is this effort? Is this ease? Or am I finding myself somewhere, some balance in that beautiful shifting middle? You won't always get it right. Nobody does. We all have our tendencies and our habits that we fall into. The wobble is always going to be part of it. Remember the axle, the image of the axle space in the wheel. A perfectly smooth ride is never the goal. The goal is to notice when the wheel is grinding so you can make one small adjustment, that one degree toward the middle. That's the practice, and it is enough. Alexandra and I go deeper into this in Yoga Off the Mat. Chapter 32 unpacks sthira and sukha fully, and we give you actions with a focused week of practice in these principles. Pre-order links are in the show notes. I would be so grateful for your pre-order because pre-orders send a signal to booksellers that this is a book people will want to read. If you want to keep refining your craft alongside other teachers who care about this work, teachers who hold themselves to high professional standards while giving themselves room to grow, you can join us in The Zone. It's my free community at comfortzoneyoga.com. And as always, if you found this episode useful, please rate and review the show. Every review helps another yoga teacher find us. For now, thank you so much for joining me. This is Yoga Teacher Confidential. I'm Sage Rountree, and I'll see you next time.

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Sage Rountree

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