I often tell students during class ”Listen to your body and not to push yourself too hard”. But many people tend to listen to the voice of their lazy mind. The mind is a genius at making excuses and will somehow invent excuses to skip out.
I could have a tendency to push myself too much if I really like it, and when I was studying Kung Fu and Zen Buddhism at a Zen temple, the master would sometimes stop me to practice too hard and convince me to take a rest more. The practice was really hard, but I couldn’t stop, like an addiction, because every day I improved and the more I practised, the better I got. I did not see myself as pushing, I just loved it simply, so I practiced. However, I think I practised too much or pushed myself too hard, I got a serious injury on my leg and eventually shifted from martial arts to yoga, which I think was painful at the time, but at some point I came to think that it was all a good experience.
I trained for three years at a Zen temple and three years at a martial arts school, all the monks at the temple looked lazy at the time when I was, and at the martial arts school there were about 1,000 students, but many of them are lazy, some of them are talented, and very few of them are at ridiculously high levels. And the very few of them massively more practiced than others obviously, and they were becoming better and better. As long as you think it’s an effort, you can’t surpass them. They practise because they love it and they love it. It’s a blessing to find something they love that much.
Some people tend to go from one side extreme to the other side extreme. Actually it was very interesting to go to the extreme side for me, but in the end, Buddha’s teaching says to take the middle way. And now I wonder if the monks at the temple were not lazy, they just tried to take the middle way. I don’t know.
Don’t skip out too much, but don’t push too hard, it’s difficult to find the right amount and the middle way, so listen to your body more carefully.