Can Ease and Difficulty Co-Exist?

Can something be genuinely difficult and still feel easy?

We often assume that challenge requires pushing, straining, or forcing ourselves toward a result. But difficulty and strain are not the same thing.

In this episode, Mary explains how healthy effort, curiosity, and smaller steps can help you stay engaged with a challenge without creating unnecessary tension or overwhelm. She shares examples from Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lessons, as well as experiences working with horses and dogs, engaging in physical activity, recovering from injury, and navigating everyday life.

You’ll learn how breathing, comfort, and the quality of your attention can help you recognize when useful effort has turned into strain. You’ll also discover how attachment to an outcome can create pressure for your horse or dog, and how compassionate curiosity can turn a frustrating situation into an opportunity for learning together.

Ease is not the absence of challenge. It is the absence of unnecessary struggle.

Resources:

Grab your FREE video training to help your dog. 🐕 https://www.marydebono.com/lovedog 💥

Get Mary’s bestselling, award-winning book, “Grow Young with Your Dog,” for a super low price at: https://tinyurl.com/growyoungwithyourdog. Demonstration videos are included at no extra cost. ⬅️⬅️⬅️

💥Learn how the Feldenkrais MethodⓇ can help improve your seat, position, and balance on your horse! Free rider videos masterclass: https://www.marydebono.com/rider 💥

All information is for general educational purposes ONLY and does not constitute medical, veterinary, or training advice. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider if you, your horse, or dog are unwell or injured.  Always use caution when interacting with horses and dogs.

About the Host:

Mary Debono is a pioneer in animal and human wellness, blending her expertise as an international clinician, best-selling author, and certified Feldenkrais Method® practitioner. With over three decades of experience, Mary developed Debono Moves, a groundbreaking approach that enhances the performance, well-being, and partnership of animals and their humans.

Mary's innovative approach draws from the Feldenkrais Method®, tailored specifically for horse and dog enthusiasts.  Her methods have helped animals and humans:

• Improve athletic ability and performance
• Enhance confidence and reduce anxiety
• Reduce physical limitations and discomfort
• Deepen the human-animal bond

Mary's flagship online programs, "Move with Your Horse" and "Easier Movement, Happier Dogs," provide animal enthusiasts with an innovative approach that combines the concepts of Feldenkrais® with her signature hands-on work for horses and dogs (Debono Moves). Through this transformative approach, both people and their animal companions discover greater harmony, ease, and connection.

Transcript

Can ease and difficulty coexist? At first glance, that sounds impossible, right? If something is difficult, how could it also feel easy? But here's the thing. I think we've confused difficulty with strain, and they're not the same thing. So let me give you an example. There's a series of Feldenkrais Awareness through movement lessons that I offer as, like, a bonus in my move with your horse membership. And they're not.

They're not, at first glance, easy lessons. They're kind of hard. They're. They're a bit challenging. Virtually everyone would say that. And. But here's the thing. I challenge my students that when they do them, to do them with a feeling of ease. Whereas now, if they were to just do them without any kind of guidance, without any understanding really of the Feldenkrais method, most people would just put push and try harder, and that would lead to more strain in their body, right?

But if you approach something challenging. Now, these. And I'll give you an explanation a little bit of why these lessons are so challenging. They are challenging because they're complex. Moshe Feldenkrais, when he developed these lessons, which is the Heels under Pelvis Series 1 through 7, which my students dubbed the Magic 7. They ask a lot of you, and so can you change your mindset to, like, from pushing through this, from getting it done, from feeling like you have to achieve a goal, like there's some kind of gold at the end of the rainbow, Right?

But instead of having more of a sense of embodied curiosity about how you do it, so. So look at it this way. Can something be genuinely difficult and still feel easy to do? And it's not easy because the task is simple, like in those lessons I'm talking about. And I'm going to apply this to other things, so just bear with me. But those movements aren't simple, you write, the positions you're in aren't simple.

But it all depends on how you approach it, what your mental frame is. And I think this whole idea has enormous implications, not just for doing Feldenkrais Awareness through movement lessons, but also for every interaction you have with your horse or your dog, and really for life in general. So look at it this way. Difficulty isn't the problem. We often assume that if something feels difficult, we should either push harder, right?

Make it just, ugh, like, I need to get through this. I need to get it done. I need to just push. Or we avoid it. Right? That's another possibility. But what if there is yet another way to approach this, you know, Difficulty may simply mean that you're encountering something that's unfamiliar. And see, here's the thing. Learning often happens right at the edge of what we know. So the goal is not to eliminate challenge.

The goal is to meet challenge in a way that allows learning to continue. And this is where curiosity. You know I'm always talking about curiosity, right? It's like one of your greatest tools. So curiosity creates a different experience than trying to succeed. So when people feel challenged, they often become outcome focused. Like they have, like a set goal in mind, like, boom, I want this. I need this outcome.

It's like, I have to get this, or I should be able to do this. And that's. That's the other part of it. When you approach something like that and you feel like, I should be able to do this, like, why not? Then you go into that judgment zone, right? You start that self criticism. You don't need to get better at that. Trust me. We're all like, really good at criticizing ourselves.

So you don't want to get stronger at doing that. Right, right. That just creates unnecessary pressure that diminishes your ability to learn to do the thing. So instead, you might want to ask questions like this, what am I noticing? What becomes easier if I make the movement smaller? Like in the case of, say, doing a Feldenkrais lesson or some other movement you're doing, where am I holding more effort, more strain than I need to?

You might also ask what surprises me about this? So these questions keep your nervous system engaged instead of defensive so you can feel more, you have more sensory information from which to act upon. So remember that ease doesn't mean that the task is easy. So that's an important distinction. Ease is not the absence of challenge. Ease is the absence of unnecessary struggle, unnecessary tension. Because there's a big difference between what we call healthy effort and strain.

Strain is when you're using effort that's unnecessary. That's actually getting in your way, right? That's. That's reducing your ability to do whatever it is you want to do. You're kind of fighting yourself when you're using strain. It's like two muscles are opposing each other, which is often what we're unconsciously doing. So, but you can use healthy effort, Right. If you're. You're doing any kind of physical activity, there's going to be a certain amount of effort involved, sometimes a lot of effort.

But the idea is we want to refine our movement so that we're using healthy effort, that all our effort is actually going towards the intended goal. And we're reducing or eliminating our unnecessary effort, right? The unnecessary effort is the strain. Now, one of Moshe Feldenkrais pillars of healthy movement was that a movement would feel effortless. Now, he didn't say that the movement was effortless, but that there was a sense of effortlessness.

There's a. There's a difference there. Again, you're going to be using calories, right? You're going to be using effort. But when it's healthy effort, it feels easy, it feels effortless. So that's a big distinction. And sometimes in life, you know, movements are complicated, right? Maybe you're riding your horse and you're. You're doing very specific, you know, seed seat aids, you know, leg aids, reinate, you know, you're doing something, you're really focused on a particular movement.

Maybe you're riding dressage, whatever you happen to be doing. And you can do it in a way that it still can feel easy, right? Or you're running with your dog, you're hiking up a trail or, you know, up a hill or something there. It can be, yes, you're using effort, right? You're using muscles. But can you do it with a certain sense of effortlessness, like a certain sense of lightness, right?

You're breathing in a way that supports the movement. Because sometimes, like, you're doing something and the coordination is unfamiliar, right? So again, it feels hard, it feels challenging. That's totally fine. But the question then becomes, are you're also holding your breath? Are you clenching your jaw? We know that doesn't help, right? Are you trying to force yourself to do it quote unquote correctly, or can you stay comfortable enough to keep exploring, right?

And so just really remember that because there's certainly times, like I said, if you're, if you're hiking up a steep hill with your dog, right, or your horse or whatever you're doing, right, There's a certain amount of effort. Are you going to be breathing hard, right? At the end of the day, your muscles may be tired. Again, that's totally fine. It's the way you approach it. Are you using the right amount of effort for the job at hand, as opposed to bringing in unnecessary strain?

And I want to mention that I consider unnecessary strain, not only physical use of muscles that are not helping, right? Like that unnecessary muscle tension, but also the mental chatter that goes on that's not serving you right. There's both of those come into play. So just remember that complexity doesn't have to become overwhelm, right? And this is again, one reason that Feldenkrais awareness through movement lessons are so effective is that they invite complexity gradually.

It's like you first do this really simple movement, then it gets a little more complicated and a little more complicated and it grows little by little, right? And so your nervous system is getting used to that level of complexity and you, and more importantly, you're learning how to create like a baseline sense of ease and eliminating unnecessary effort. And then you continue that as the complexity grows, as it increases.

So one of the things I often tell my students when we're doing a Feldenkrais lesson is number one, like have breathing is non negotiable, right? So at the beginning of the lesson, we often bring our attention to our breath. That's something, by the way, you can do throughout the day. You don't have to wait till a Feldenkrais lesson to do it, but you bring your attention to how you're breathing and then you kind of make that your non negotiable, like, oh, how am I breathing?

Am I breathing appropriate to the task at hand? Again, if you are running up the side of a mountain, right, you're going to be breathing different, differently than if you are just relaxing, okay? So the idea is, are you breathing in a way that's appropriate for the activity you're doing? And then you make that you're non negotiable. If you find that you're holding your breath, you know you're breathing rapidly, shallow things like that, then, oops, I'm trying too hard to do something, whether it's a mental activity and, or a physical activity, right?

So you want to, to keep that as like a metric, right? It's one of your non negotiables. Like another thing we often do at the beginning of a Feldenkrais lesson is I'll say, slowly roll your head from side to side so people are lying on the floor, right? Slowly roll your head. And I say, just do what's totally, totally easy and then use that sense of ease again as like a certain, like you're getting used to refining the quality of your movement.

And so then when you're doing a complex movement that involves your arms and your legs and your spine and your ribs, can you keep that same quality of ease like you did when you were rolling your head throughout the complex lesson, Right? So that's very, very important. So you know, and this is where the thing too is, if you're doing something complex, giving yourself permission to do less often leads to learning more to Actually improving more rapidly.

So that's super important. Now how does this apply to your horses and dogs? Well, we can unintentionally create pressure for our animals just as we do for ourselves because we start to become super attached to whatever outcome that we're hoping for. So maybe you're schooling your horse, you're training your dog, whatever you're doing. Sometimes we get, or maybe we're doing something like grooming our horse or our dog and we don't like the way our animal is behaving, like how they're responding, like, why don't you stand still?

Why don't you like that? I've had so many people say that to me. Why doesn't my horse and my dog like being groomed? Well, it's how you do it, right? And you can help an animal be more comfortable with grooming. I've had several animals in my life that came to me not wanting to be groomed at all. And by introducing it gradually, making sure it was always a positive experience.

There's lots of ways I could talk to you about how you can do that. They loved it. They loved it. They learned to love it. But again, it's. If I were just to insist from day one that they like being groomed, well, that's, that's going to backfire, right? It's going to make their life miserable and my life miserable. So that doesn't work. But you know, we might, we want, for example, think, oh, I just want my animal to relax more and we get tense about it.

Right. Again, these are things that I've seen over and over again with, with people over the years. So it may sound funny to you, but they're, they're things that, they're actual things that people struggle with and they don't realize that they're, they're putting so much more pressure on themselves and their animal when they're trying to force a situation to be different than what it is. And it just kind of reinforces the animals behavior.

So we don't, we don't want that. We want to think about, you know, again, doing what I call compassionate curiosity. That means curiosity without any judgment attached to it. Right. You can ask like, does my horse and my dog feel more comfortable than they felt a minute ago? What can I do to make this a more pleasant experience for them? Does my horse or dog feel more curious?

How can I get their attention in a positive way, A way that feels good to them? Right. How can I make my requests smaller? How can I provide more support for them. And it becomes really, really fun because it becomes this creative challenge. And now something that may have been like what you would consider a problem, it actually becomes a source of, I'm going to say, like co creative learning.

Like both you and your animal learn together, you both can become curious, you can come up with these creative, you know, solutions, way things to try, and it could be really fun. And now your mood has lightened 100%. Right. And so your animal most likely will feel better about engaging in the activity. So we just have to remember that we don't have to accomplish everything today. Whatever it is you're working with, with your horse or your dog, you don't have to accomplish everything today.

And you know, you find over time that the most meaningful learning often comes from one small improvement that the nervous system can actually use, that can, that can stay with your horse or your dog as a very pleasant, positive experience. And that's worth so much, so much. And then you can build on that, right? The animal can build on that. And so this is so much more than just talking about movement.

Right. It's, it's, you know, you might think about a conversation with someone that you've been avoiding. Right? That's something that you may feel is difficult. Well, how can you approach it With a sense of ease and curiosity and, and learning. Maybe it's about learning a new technology, a new piece of software, a new device. Maybe it's some creative project you want to start. Maybe it's recovering from an injury.

Here's one, and I've actually done a whole podcast episode about this one. I'll give an example. One of my longtime clients, she's just such a wonderful woman. She's unfolding Christ for many years. She's in her mid-70s. She had a very serious leg injury. And instead of, you know, of course, I'm sure beginning, she was bummed out, right? You know, she was bedbound. I mean, it was very serious and she was a super active woman.

And she reframed it and she said, I'm going to think of this as like giving me the opportunity to have a clean slate and just rebuilding my movement as if I was a baby. And I thought that was so beautiful and so profound. And by the way, she made an incredible recovery. She's back to being this athletic, super active woman again. So couldn't be happier for her. But she was a great example of someone who took something like a very serious injury.

Yeah, it set her back, you know, she had to adjust her plans, obviously, and then she had this mental reframe of, I'm gonna make this my clean slate and just build my movement up. And following, you know, her Feldenkrais principles that she knows, working with me and other professionals, she really did a great job. So, you know, it's easy to think it's like that. We need some kind of special confidence or magic skills before we begin something.

But often what we really need is curiosity. Like she had. Curiosity makes room for learning, but when we create pressure on ourselves, we put pressure on ourselves. It narrows it. It's much more difficult to learn. So we want to think about opening up through curiosity. Think of curiosity, too. It's like a youthful state to be in, really, because it's like the fountain of youth. When you're curious, you're like a little kid or a young animal.

You know, you're just curious. You want to learn, you want to explore, you want to experience different things. That's a wonderful state to be in. The nervous system can be, like, more receptive, if you will, because your attention then is on different things. It's all about the quality of your attention. So. So, okay. So I would say, you know, this week, maybe if you find yourself facing something difficult, see if you can notice the difference between the challenge itself and the way you're meeting it.

Can you breathe a little more easily? Can you slow down? Can you become more curious rather than concerned? Can you let the experience teach you instead of trying to force an outcome? So whether you're doing a Feldenkrais lesson, working with your horse or dog, or just simply going through life, you don't have to choose between challenge and ease, because very often they're most valuable when they happen together.

So I hope this episode was valuable to you, and please let me know what challenges you're dealing with. Maybe it's about you, yourself, your horse, your dog. Whatever it is, I want to hear it. Thank you so much for listening. I so appreciate you love sharing this work, and I look forward to talking to you again soon. Bye for now.