Between a Rock and a Hard Place

When I’m caught between a rock and a hard place ~ let me become water. 

- John Roedel

"Go bang your head against the wall,” was my parents’ inane advice when I would complain of boredom. I even tried it once. I guess my little girl brain thought my mom and dad, in all their wisdom, must have the solution to my problem.

While hitting my forehead against my bedroom door did nothing to cure my boredom, it inadvertently taught me something valuable: I could keep futilely complaining or find something to do.

That early lesson in facing reality stayed with me, though it’s deeper meaning emerged only years later, when I began exploring the concept of right effort in yoga through the lens of the water element - a central symbol in Taoist teachings.

The Tao Te Ching says:
Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it.
- Verse 78 (trans. Stephen Mitchell)

In yoga, this principle comes alive in our practice. Our work isn’t to fight reality – whether that’s tight hamstrings in a forward fold or a distracted mind in meditation – but to soften and yield to it.

Just as we learn to breathe through a challenging pose rather than force our way into it, we can learn to move through life's obstacles in the same way – surrendering instead of resisting.

In Tree pose, for example, we can learn to sway into our imbalances rather than rigidly fight against them. This subtle yielding actually helps us find greater stability – another learning that applies equally to navigating uncertain times in our lives.

Consider the situations in your life that feel like being stuck between a rock and a hard place – maybe it’s a strained relationship that resists easy solutions or a career choice with no obvious path forward.

Instead of hitting your head against a proverbial wall, what would it be like to respond more like water? What might change if you approached your challenges the way a flowing river approaches a stone?

Water neither stops when it meets an obstacle, nor it doesn't barrel its way through. Instead, it flows around it, perfectly adapting to circumstances with no resistance whatsoever. Can you imagine meeting your challenges like this?

Like that child who learned that banging her head against the wall solved nothing, we too can discover that our greatest strength often lies not in force but in fluidity. When we stop resisting what is, we might find—as water does—new paths forward that we couldn’t have otherwise imagined.