The Ahimsa Challenge

Years ago on this blog, I wrote about the yamas and niyamas. They are the first and second limbs of yoga, or the complete yoga path. My first post on ahimsa, the yama of nonviolence, focused on how we can be nonviolent with ourselves. The second post on ahimsa focused on the overabundance of violence in our world (and it has only gotten worse in the past two years).  But I find myself coming back to this topic. I find myself struggling with ahimsa on a daily basis, both internally and externally.

Certainly, the legal profession does not put Ahimsa as its pinnacle. Unlike doctors, whose oath states, “do no harm,” lawyers are asked to litigate. Sometimes it feels as though the lawyer’s job is to make the other party look bad. Certainly that is not the actual job, but unfortunately, some lawyers take on their clients and stories so intensely, that this is what ends up happening.

I see the opposite of ahimsa, however, in other places in life as well. There is little that bothers me more than speaking badly about people behind their backs. I am not going to try to say I have never done it. I probably do it on a daily basis. Somehow this has bothered me from long before my yoga practice, but it has been yoga that has taught me why it is so damaging to myself and the universe.

The energy we put into the world is the energy we receive. When we put out negative energy statements about others, we are only harming ourselves. We are harming the people who hear them. It creates a violent atmosphere. The violence is not with guns and rockets, but it is violence nonetheless. I look at so much of the larger violence happening in the world today (Ferguson, Gaza, Iraq), and I try to make sense of it. I try to understand how humans can be so awful to other humans.

And then I realize, war happens when we do not understand one another. I have been incredibly blessed to have traveled in many parts of the world. I have lived in two foreign countries, one of which I did not speak the language fluently (France), and one of which arguably does not speak the same language as me (New Zealand – I still sometimes don’t understand Kiwis). But all my traveling has made me believe one simple truth:

If everyone in the world lived in a country where they do not speak the language natively for six months, war might disappear. There is nothing more humbling than having to trust the people around you with them knowing you are not from there. I have been welcomed into peoples’ homes, provided directions, showed amazing places, and treated wonderfully everywhere I have been. And yes, I was an American living in France when the United States went to war against Irag in 2002.

There are other ways to reach this without actually living in a foreign country (though I highly recommend it). I think the first way is to do our best not to belittle others. It sounds cliché, but clichés exist for a reason – they are often correct. I will not say it is easy, but I do know it is possible. I work in a field where it is easy to be judgmental. Children’s lives are at stake every single day. People make decisions with which I do not agree every single day. I make decisions with which other people do not agree every single day.

None of that means, however, that we have to be cruel to one another. The idea that sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me is not actually accurate. Not only can words harm, they bring a lack of understanding for others, which can lead to physical violence in the future. In the world of domestic violence, we do not differentiate between emotional and physical abuse. I have actually heard victims say the emotional abuse was worse than the physical abuse. This is not something I understand personally, but the sentiment is not lost on me. Thus, our words are just as violent as our weapons even if they result in fewer immediate deaths. Words also have the power to bring positive change. What if instead of belittling others we attempted to understand them? What if we took the time to stop and think about the words we speak?

To be clear, venting is different than what I am talking about. We can vent and be frustrated, even angry, about situations and what happened, but we do not need to belittle people in the process. We do not need to, for lack of a more mature way of saying it, call people names. When I was a camp counselor, we were adamant that the children in our care were not bad even if at times their actions were bad. When we disciplined, we were sure to make that distinction. That distinction matters. It matters to the person making the distinction, the person about whom the distinction is made, and to the energy of the universe.

I have come to realize there is little I can do in my current circumstances to stop the Israeli-Hamas war or to stop the riots in Ferguson short of offering prayer/light/healing/etc. But there is a lot I can do to change my own way of bringing violence into the world in the form of words. This takes a lot of strength, and sometimes, frankly, it is strength I do not think I have. It is easier to follow the crowd and poke fun at the target who is not there. But I started practicing yoga to find a new way of living, and this is a very important step. It is taught that ahimsa is the very first step on the 8-limbed yoga path because it is the foundation. How can we proceed along a path when we constantly bring negative energy into our lives and the world?

As a positive affirmation, nonviolence means compassion. It means understanding, or at least attempting to understand. That means stopping and thinking – an act that is often lost on us in the digital age. But I am challenging myself, and those who wish to join me, to go one day without speaking unkindly about someone. Our words matter.  How can we use them to be compassionate instead of violent? And after that one day, try one day more. Start small and see how the changes affect you. 

There are so many ways to bring ahimsa into our lives, but this is one small step that can make a huge difference.

Are you willing to take this ahimsa challenge?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2014, all rights reserved.

The post, The Ahimsa Challenge, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

“We Are All Damaged Goods”

My uncle, who also has his own blog, made this statement once: “We’re all damaged goods.” It just sort of came to him. And right he was.

I work with the people we traditionally think of as damaged – abused and neglected children. And they are very often damaged. But interestingly I wanted to be a lawyer because I saw harmed children in another context. I grew up in an upper middle class neighborhood in northern California, and I worked in a city even wealthier than the one in which I grew up. I was a camp counselor and worked in an after school program as well.

There were very few times I suspected “traditional” child abuse was occurring in these families, and the times I did suspect it, those suspicions tore me apart. I still wonder, more than ten years later, whether I made the right calls in certain situations. But traditional physical abuse is actually not as common as people think when people think of child abuse. Although I see it more now than even 2.5 years ago when I started my current job, the real issue remains neglect.

When neglect gets really bad, children do not develop properly. Children often have speech delays, and research tells us their brains actually develop less fully. There are physical symptoms of physical neglect. I do not want to minimize physical abuse or physical neglect. They are awful and horrible. I wish there were more media coverage of just how bad these issues affect the children in our communities. But here I want to talk about something else.

What I saw all too often where I worked was children dropped off at 7am and picked up at 6pm. I expect children would have been dropped off earlier and picked up later, but those were the hours we were open. I saw, and had to administer, a growing amount of medication over the course of the 4 years I worked there as families decided it was too difficult to deal with children who acted like children. As cars got bigger parents and children were more and more separated. Sure, these children could read well, and their speech was perfect, but something major was missing.

I started this post about a week ago, but I guess the universe had other plans for me. Today Robin Williams took his own life. He blessed this world with such humor, grace, and true talent, and yet he was depressed. There is nothing wrong with being depressed, but society asks us to hide it, to put on a happy face. Instead of getting help, Robin Williams became Mork and Mrs. Doubtfire and my personal favorite – O Captain My Captain, the great Mr. Keating. Interestingly, I watched that movie this past week, and it touched me as much now as it did nearly 15 years ago when I first saw it.

But the truth is that all of us have experienced some sense of loss in our lives. No one had a perfect childhood, and our pain is what helps us grow. These are clichés, but they also miss part of the point. The damage is real. The damage is scary. And we are all looking for how to heal that damage. I have written often about community on this blog. For awhile it became one of my favorite themes. Although I did not know it at the time, research tells us that having people, even one person, helps us recover from trauma.

What I see is that we are unable to respond to trauma and damage the way our bodies were intended to respond. Instead of allowing ourselves to cry, we hide our tears for fear of looking weak. Instead of allowing our muscles to shake, we hold ourselves stiff until our bodies give out. Instead of reaching out for support, we put on a happy face and act our ways through life.

But we are all damaged at some level. This is not a nihilistic approach. It is a heartfelt approach to life.  And we all need each other. Yet we do the very things that make it so much harder to recover. For me, yoga was my way out. Some might say I have become too sensitive since starting yoga. The truth, however, is just that now I know the importance of touching base with others and reaching out.

Yoga has been that path for me. It has allowed me to notice when something is not right and to feel the damage. That does not mean it needs to linger. Sometimes that allows it to go away faster. But my uncle’s realization is huge and important. When we finally realize we are all damaged goods, we no longer have to hide our own damage. What kind of amazing world would it be if we showed our true selves and helped each other out instead of hiding behind our different masks all the time?

It is this recognition that we are all damaged that helps us learn compassion. And compassion helps us actually feel more loved. It is, therefore, our damage that allows us to heal, but first we have to recognize there is damage. And that comes in so many forms. This is not to say we are all horribly damaged, only to recognize that when we notice we are damaged, it is actually incredibly freeing, and we can then learn to reach out to one another, and ourselves, with love in our hearts rather than expecting everyone to be strong all the time. 

Are you able to share your heart with others? Are you able to see their damage, and yours, without judgment? 

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2014, all rights resered.

The post, We Are All Damaged Goods, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal. 

Compassion in the Law

I have been reading a lot of Lissa Rankin’s writing recently. You may remember me discussing her before. She is the one who wrote Mind Over Medicine, the book I wrote about back in June (has it really been that long?).

Her most recent writing to inspire me is a blog post called, “A Call for Greater Compassion.” Read it. You will thank me. Her main point is that we all have our faults, we all have our sins, and that is what makes us able to share our compassion with each other. She even asks, “Who are we to judge?” And she ends with a challenge:

Think of one person you’re judging today, one person who isn’t living up to your standards, one person who is disappointing you or doing something you don’t like. Would it be possible for you to tune into the part of that person that is hurting? Can you see that part as a little child who just needs love? Can you open your heart to that little child and reach out to that person with that kind of love?

It is not an easy challenge, for sure. We live in a world where we are taught to judge, even if we are not lawyers. At some level it is biological – we need to be able to tell safety from danger if we are going to survive as a species. But the judgment she discusses, and I think is the bigger issue, is the judgment we place on our fellow human beings for being human, for struggling with life, for making mistakes.

I notice this most in myself when I’m driving. When people do things I am not expecting on the road, I get really riled up. If they slow down to turn without a signal, cut me off, or anything really that does not fit with my ideal of how they should be driving in that moment, I freak out. Guess what? I do all of those things as well. Probably more than I would like to admit, in fact.

This sort of judgment does not serve us at all. But even that judgment can leave us quickly. It is judgment almost more at a situation than at an individual person. After all, we rarely know who cuts us off in traffic, and short of breaking into serious road rage, none of us then go discover their identity. But what about when we judge our friends for their choice in partner, or we judge our parents for how they eat, or we judge our neighbors for struggling with drug addiction, or we judge our soldiers for their mental health issues? What happens to these people when we judge instead of offer compassion? The best-case scenario is we lose someone close to us. The worst-case scenario is that we end up with something similar to the shooting this week at Ft. Hood.

And yet, lawyers are asked to judge all day, every day. It is, literally, in the job description (whether or not you are actually a judge). And think of the people the law judges – rapists, murderers, child molesters and abusers, and thieves. But as odd as it sounds in modern America, these are the people who need our compassion the most. And so do their victims. In parts of the world, the rape victim is the one put to death while the rapist walks free. I think I can say this pretty freely – that does not fit within this picture of compassion either. But I think I have more people on my side for that one. What about the perpetrators of these horrific crimes? Can we find compassion for them while still finding a way to keep other members of society safe from their actions?

When I was a camp counselor, we were taught two things that have stayed with me for the past 17 years: 1) we do not punish, only discipline, and 2) the child is not bad, only their actions are a problem. While my camp did not use the word compassion, we did talk about respect and caring. I have carried these ideas with me, and I try every day to separate the person from the person’s actions. After all, I work with the children who usually love their parents regardless of what they did to them.

But there are days when it is really difficult. There are days the lies become too much, the pain the children face becomes too much, and it is just easier to judge. After all, that is our learned response from a young age. But my yogi heart knows differently. My yogi heart says to ask the questions Dr. Rankin suggests. One day in particular I vividly remember offering compassion to someone who was screaming at me. It was not the first time he did it. The next day he wrote me an email apologizing for his actions. My compassion toward him was silent, but it worked. Never before had he written such an email.

There is no question the legal system is leaps and bounds ahead in terms of compassion than where we were even 20 years ago. We talk about rehabilitative courts, and we utilize alternative dispute resolution where available. We offer people services to help them on their way. But we still have so far to go. The big step, the really difficult step, is changing the attitudes of those of us who work there. The big step is changing the attitudes of society from judgment to compassion.

So, my fellow lawyers, can we find compassion in the law? Can we bring a lens of compassion to our work and still protect society from actions that harm? I had a conversation today with someone whose initial response to my discussion of being a lawyer was saying that the law teaches us not to be compassionate. I disagree. I believe we can do both, and I know so many people who do so on a daily basis. But can we do it all the time? Can we take judgment out of the picture? Can we come to the law with compassion for the people who sit across from us? Are you willing to take Dr. Rankin's challenge?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2014, all rights reserved.

The post, Compassion in the Law, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

The Heart and the Head

A friend of mine posted a great article on Facebook called, “The Downside to Down Dog” asking the question, “what is Yoga?” Her answer is that it is the path of the heart. Then I was reading a blog post by Lissa Rankin entitled, “Can You Hear the Voice of Your Soul?” And next weekend, I am going to see a teacher who starts his teachings by bringing people into their heart.

I think the universe is trying to tell me something.

The very first “alternative” medicine person I saw (actually, he was not the first, but the first who made any sort of impression and really started me on whatever path I am currently on) told me I am 97% in my head and 3% in my body, and that it should be the opposite. Yoga has helped draw me down from my head, but at the end of the day, I spend a lot more time being a lawyer than I do practicing yoga. Thus, I spend a lot more time in my head than my heart.

But what would the legal profession look like if more lawyers lived from their hearts? I am not even talking about doing more heart-centered work. I mean connecting to the heart in any capacity. Lissa Rankin, the blogger above, is a doctor. I mentioned her book, Mind Over Medicine, in the post, The Power to Heal (I find it hard to believe that post was from July).

In law school, lawyers are taught to “think like a lawyer.” I am sure this means something different for everyone, but the Dean of my law school at that time said it meant to her that we should be the last people in a room to make up our mind about something. But she did not tell us whether that should come from the head or the heart. Law school, for me, was amazing. I loved it. But one piece of it always bothered me. We read cases in a textbook, and we discussed the legal issues involved. That was great. But there was always something missing, and I noticed it most often in my Torts class.

These were real people. These were real cases. Whether they happened in 2003 or 1893, these people were harmed. We once read a case about a man who was turned into, “a human cannonball” because of an explosion at a construction site. But we discussed the negligence, not the person what was seriously injured as a result. I know doctors have to go through similar training. Instead of discussing the person, they discuss the symptoms. A person becomes a diagnosis. In the psychological realm, people talk about someone being depressed, not having depression, but otherwise someone has a mental illness, such as schizophrenia.

I do not want this to sound like I prefer people to BE their diagnoses. I am just pointing out how we talk about issues and people in professions. So, in physical medicine, psychological medicine, and the legal profession, we talk about criteria and elements. There are elements to a crime just like there are criteria for diagnosis. But we never look past those definitions to the person. We live in our heads and ask whether someone meets that definition for, and then we act accordingly.

There is a pull between the legal world and the yoga world I have never discussed. In some ways, it is the most difficult one to address. On one hand, I live in the world of lawyers where everything needs to be relevant, and nothing is true unless you can prove it. On the other hand, I live in the world of yogis, in the heart, where we know something is true because we feel it. At some level, this represents the ongoing battles between political and religious foes.

But when I say “feel it,” I mean the deepest sense of knowing. I cannot think of anyone I have met who would deny that intuition exists. We all get “ick” feelings from certain people and situations. It is those ick factors that sometimes save our lives. We sidestep situations that just feel wrong. Although the 1990s were called “the decade of the brain,” we still know next to nothing about how it works. Science has not yet helped us understand this head we live in and the intuition that we cannot deny.

And I certainly do not claim to have all the answers. What I do know is that this push and pull between head and heart is really a non-dichotomy. They are really one and the same. The separation we pretend exists simply does not. Reading those cases in law school, although we never discussed the fact that people were hurt and maimed and harmed, our hearts saw it and knew it, and it affected all of us. There is no way to separate. We can listen more strongly to one or the other, but at the end of the day, they are the same Being.

And so, I continue to wonder – how can we be more explicit about the heart in more professional settings? There are so many ways, but I have heard before that the first step is admitting there is a problem. If we could recognize there is a lack of heart speak and understanding, perhaps we could begin to see a way to acknowledge what is already there.

What about you? Do you listen more to your head or your heart? Do you believe there is a difference?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2014, all rights reserved.

The post, The Heart and the Head, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

The Subtleties of the Bigger Picture

Yoga teaches us to trust our intuition. Some days it is a really good idea to go to a vinyasa class and move. Some days it is a really good idea to relax into a calming, restorative class. But every day is going to be different, no matter who you are. One of the only parts of each of us that is the same is that we change on a daily basis.

And yoga not only allows this, but it encourages these differences. It encourages us to look at our subtleties and understand them more fully. We can move into our bodies each and every day and understand its needs that day. We can use different modalities to calm our minds and calm our nerves every minute. We live in an age where there are thousands of modalities, and we just need to find the one that works for us.

The “real” world, however, still has not quite caught on. Law schools still seem to think the right answer for every student is a law firm life, the bigger the better (and yes, I know not all schools do this, but the underlying culture still does). Professionals specialize more and more such that simple answers outside their specialty evade their understanding. We live in a world where we try to make every situation the same because then it fits a pattern that is familiar to us.

When I was studying in New Zealand, there had recently been a change in New Zealand requiring lawyers who represented children to actually see their child clients in person. Prior to that, many lawyers just assumed all children were the same, so they did not actually have to meet their particular client in this case. And that was in family law, where seeing the child with each of the parents and more fully understanding that child’s relationship with each child was even more important.

I do not mention this to say these lawyers did not care. They simply did not think through the fact that every single person is unique and has individual qualities. When I went to see a surgeon, he really only looked at my MRI. The physical therapist and another doctor said, “I want to see you before I look at the images.” When we get into too much specialization, we lose subtleties of each and every person.

And this does not only affect the professional world. It affects our everyday lives. If we stop expecting people and situations to be different, we start making assumptions about how certain situations are going to happen. And with that, we have the potential to stop trusting ourselves in the moment of those situations. But yoga helps us tap back into that intuition in the moment. It helps us see that each and every day our body and mind are different.

For example, we learn to tap into the subtleties that make up our every day lives. We learn to find new meaning in what we might have otherwise thought would be a mundane situation. This is really the next step in gratitude. Not only can we be grateful for what we have, but we can start to see how nothing is really as it seems, and our lives are richer and more interesting than we might otherwise imagine.  But first, we have to learn to look. We have to learn to step outside of our focused vision and see the bigger picture. But in order to see that bigger picture, we have to learn to notice the small differences in each and every person, encounter, and situation.

I guess the big question is, “so what?” My 8^th grade English teacher used to ask us that on our writing assignments. Why am I mentioning this? How does this affect our daily lives? Some people believe that one of the underlying reasons for unhappiness in our world is when people believe they are not fully seen for who they are. If we believe that everyone of a certain characteristic (whether race, occupation, age, etc.) is the same, we fail to see the person before us. It is not easy to do. It is much easier to put everyone in a box and go from there. It takes less mental effort . . . on the surface.

But in the long term, what takes less mental effort is not keeping people in those boxes, whatever they are, but allowing yourself to fully experience life. Just like we do not usually need the fight or flight response in our daily lives, though it is great when we do, we do not need to box people into categories anymore. We live in a different world than we did 10,000 years ago when there were reasons not to trust anyone but our clan.  Now our world will be better served by tuning into the subtle differences of each and every person and situation. For me, I have found the ability to start doing that through yoga.

Do you find yourself caught up in assumptions? How do you get out of that mindset? How do you see each person as an individual?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

The post, The Subtleties of the Bigger Picture, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

Good Guy Bad Guy

I just returned from attending another conference, and this one was focused almost exclusively on child abuse and maltreatment. It took place in Las Vegas. Let me just say that a conference with a focus on such difficult and heart wrenching topics really needs to be in a place where people can escape for some quiet time. Vegas is not that place. They blast music onto the streets. There were so many people we had to wait in line to get out of the Bellagio. It was an incredible conference, but I’m happy to be home!

On the last day of the conference, I attended a 3-hour presentation on child sex trafficking. Of course, as the speaker reminded us, we should really be calling it child prostitution. That is what it is. Trafficking sounds less bad, but it’s child prostitution, and yes it happens in the United States. And there is nothing ok about child prostitution. But something struck me during the presentation that made my yoga mind hesitate.

The speaker continuously referred to the perpetrators as bad guys. He often referred to himself as the good guy.

I want to reiterate that I find nothing good about child prostitution. But I also cannot wrap my head around this good guy vs. bad guy scenario. We all know it is child abusers who get treated the worst in prisons. There is something different about child abuse, particularly about child sexual abuse, than just about any other crime.

I have written about this issue before – “When we Dehumanize the Dehumanizer.” That post was also written after attending a conference about child abuse (a different conference, but both were great). And 1.5 years later I still find myself struggling with this issue. I still cannot find myself buying into the good guy vs. bad guy mentality.

Last time I mentioned Gandhi’s quote, “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” But I think there is more to it than that, something deeper and more profound. We are all connected. I have known this my entire life. It was not until I started doing yoga, however, that I realized there were other people who realized it as well. Thus, if I consider someone else a bad guy, what does that make my connection to him or her? Because whether I like it or not, I am connected to that person even if we are never in the same room.

I still think we do better by addressing the actions as the problem rather than the person as the problem. We may be able to make the actions stop. But if instead we speak ill of people, then we begin to say there are people who are less than. That is dangerous because it has no end. At what point does our judgment stop? Perhaps child sexual abuse is the “easy” example, but if we start there, where does it stop?

I still do not have the complete answers to this. I struggle with seeing the way humans treat other humans, whether as child abuse, war, or bigotry. It hurts to see on any level. But I wonder whether we accomplish any good, or whether we create far more harm, when we talk about good guys and bad guys.

When I was a camp counselor many years ago, I remember in our training on discipline, we were told never to tell a child he or she was bad. We could say the action was not right or even bad, but the child never was. I know there are a lot of people who think that sort of parenting/discipline is not strong enough, but I can say I never had to call parents on my campers. It worked. I do not know if it works everywhere, but it worked for me there. I see no difference with any action, no matter how abhorrent.

And now, because of my yoga training, I can understand why. As soon as I begin to judge others, I judge myself. We are deeply connected, and whatever I say and do will definitely come back.

What do you think? Do you talk about people as good or bad? What are the repercussions if we do?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

The post, Good Guy Bad Guy, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

Finding our Light

I have been a bit quiet recently, but there is a reason. And I have to say, Chanukah could not have come at a better time for me. These past few weeks have been intensely painful for me, and I have not been sure how to write about them. My hip pain became debilitating sciatica essentially overnight. A trip to Urgent Care, a failed MRI, medication, yoga, breathing, stretching, relaxing, chiropractic care, acupuncture, and massage all ensued. The pain just got worse.

And all I keep thinking is, “I’m a yoga teacher!!! How am I in this much pain?!”

But then this beautiful and deeply personal post arrived from Roseanne at It’s All Yoga Baby. In it she describes her own recent depression and writes:

Underneath it all, however, is a vague sense that I’m failing at my practice, that I’m as broken and f[‘]d up as I was before I committed to yoga (chronic and clinical depression was what drove me to practice in the first place), that the practice isn’t working. There’s also the vague sense that I’m not allowed to be feeling this way – there are many stories of miraculous healing from depression (and everything else) through yoga, but nobody talks about the relapses. I feel like I’m doing something wrong.

While my issue has been more physical (though I fully believe physical pain can and does stem from emotional pain), I fully understand her sentiment here. I have been feeling embarrassed about the pain on several fronts, but mostly because I’m 30 years old, and I’m a yoga teacher. How can I be in such debilitating pain, especially from what appears to be really, really tight muscles.

It is extremely easy to get caught up in the pain and ignore the lessons. I would say I sort of have been living in that space. But there are brief reprises, brief moments where I can take the time and not only cognitively, but energetically and emotionally, see the gifts and lessons the pain has to offer. And the Festival of Lights has helped me see that.

First, as discussed before, our darkest places bring us closer to compassion and connection with others. I never fully understood how debilitating physical pain can be until the past two weeks. As a yoga teacher and a lawyer, I deal with people suffering from all varieties of pain. Having had an experience to relate to that pain changes not only how I interact with the person, but how they respond to what I say. It is very easy to stand on the outside, look at someone, and give them all sorts of ideas of how to make their lives “better.” It is quite different to look at them and say, “I feel what you are experiencing. I experienced something similar myself, and you are right. It is debilitating.”

This pain has taught me a different level of compassion as well. I often get upset with people who turn everything into a story about themselves and their own experiences. But these past two weeks, it has been comforting to hear from people who understand how painful sciatica is. I get a bit overwhelmed with everyone offering different advice, but the sympathy and understanding has been greatly beneficial. As a result, I have learned the importance of connecting with others through our own stories. We can offer our stories less as a way to say, “Look at me and my suffering” and more of a way to say, “I understand, and I know you can get better.”

And of course, this pain has been the universe’s way of telling me to slow down. That is a lesson I am not heeding so well. But I have learned where I feel comfortable letting go and where I still need to work. I have said it before, and I believe it even more today, meditation and yoga are “easy” at an ashram. I put easy in quotes because they are never actually easy, but they fit a structure and their lessons come more quickly. But try meditating in Times Square. Try meditating when the pain is searing through your leg. Try just breathing when you feel like all hope is lost.

And amazingly, in those moments, sometimes the breath does come. And for a brief glimpse of relief, the breath softens whatever is currently hardening us. It may be one breath in a hundred, but that one breath can be what keeps us going. And that has been the greatest lesson so far. Even when I feel as divorced from my practice as ever, something (or someone) always manages to bring me back.

It may feel like it needs a miracle similar to the miracle of Chanukah, but the holiday can help remind us that we all have that light within, and even when it feels impossible to reach, we can turn to it, and it can offer us a little hope that things can get better.

What lessons have you learned from stress, pain, depression, etc.? Are you able to find those brief glimpses of coming back to yourself? What helps?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

Thanksgiving Year to Year

One year ago, I was at the US Ambassador’s house in New Zealand celebrating Thanksgiving in summer. And without realizing it, I actually put the same clothes on today that I was wearing then (I looked at photos). And yes, this should tell you how a summer in NZ is very similar to a winter in Arizona, but I digress. One year ago, I was grateful for the 10 months I had spent in New Zealand, from an earthquake, to new friends, to beautiful adventures, to finishing a thesis.

And that thesis looked forward to this year. The thesis was all about representing children, and that is what I currently do, though I do it in a slightly different context than addressed in the thesis. But this year has been about integrating my years digging deep into yoga and the law and emerging with some semblance of a future. And this year has been hard. It has been a struggle to finally integrate theory and practice, in law, but also on and off the yogamat.

Law school is an interesting theoretical adventure. Traditionally, law school is learning the theory of the law, and some would argue we spend too much time on that in school. We spend our time reading cases of situations gone awry, and sometimes tragically so, but cases become stories, and the people are safely behind the pages. We are protected from their stories similarly to how we are protected from the stories of the protagonists in a movie. 

But the practice of law is anything but peoples’ lives on a page. Instead, the practice of law is about peoples’ lives in your face. Crisis after crisis arises, and lawyers are expected to stay rational and calm. Human nature wants to send us into screaming fits of rage and fear, but that is not our role. Instead, we are asked to answer with calm rationality and turn the theory into practice – look at the situation from a purely legal standpoint. There are, of course, advantages to this. But it throws our systems off if we do not pay attention.

Yoga is quite the opposite. Most people in the modern world come to yoga through the practice first. In fact few of them have any idea about the theory behind it. Some want some exercise, while others want to stretch after their own exercise. But the theory creeps in. Yogis begin to act with more compassion towards others after learning to act with more compassion for themselves. Yogis learn to respond rather than react to the crises that inevitably arise in their lives.

But that flow from theory to practice and back is anything but smooth. The day after Thanksgiving last year I was not at a Black Friday Sale. Instead, I was on a boat between the north and south islands of New Zealand and who should I see but the Ambassador? I said hello to him and then sat back down. Then I started crying. I was so grateful for all that had transpired that year in New Zealand. And I knew I was coming back to the United States to a job I had, in many ways, worked my entire life to have. How amazingly lucky could one person be?

And here we are at another Thanksgiving. I have spent this month finding things for which I am grateful, from my breath to the wonderful people with whom I get to work. Being a first year lawyer is one of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life. But it is also one of the most enlightening and inspiring.

And while I was doing tree pose from the tops of mountains in New Zealand last year, this year, my yoga practice has struggled through a sprained ankle, hip pain, and simply too little time. But I have started attending classes again, meditating in the mornings, doing some asana, and even teaching once per week at the courthouse.

But just yesterday, the week of Thanksgiving, I saw it shine through like never before. Someone decided to yell at me about something, and in the midst of the yelling, I sent him a little compassion and thought to myself, “may you be free of suffering and the root of suffering.” That particular phrase is more Buddhist than Yogic, but it was a moment of reflection rather than reaction. And then I walked away from the conversation and did something else. The yoga crept out from where it was hiding and offered me a little solace in the moment - and hopefully the person yelling at me, though the thought was silent.

Theory and practice. Back and forth.

It is tomorrow in New Zealand, which means it is already Thanksgiving. So I am going to celebrate two this year. Today is a deep sense of gratitude for all I have learned this year, the people who have inspired me whether a “difficult” teacher or a friend with a shoulder, and the amazing opportunities to understand the ebb and flow between theory and practice in law and yoga.

Whether celebrating Thanksgiving in a country far away from the United States at the US Ambassador’s residence or in central Tucson in the midst of being a first year lawyer, the sentiment is the same. I think Lionel Hampton said it best, “Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.”

Our hearts go with us wherever we are, and gratitude can arise in any moment. We can find all the quotes on the internet we want about gratitude, and learn all there is to know, but then it is about practicing that gratitude and feeling it deeply in the heart. That is the moment when theory meets practice. Can we take the sentiment of this day, this week, this month and carry it forward into our daily lives?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

Compassion, Gratitude, and Vulnerability

I have to tell you about two amazing people. One is seven years old, and the other is her mom. They live in New York. And not too long ago the 7-year-old had to stay home for a while because she was sick. Her mom stayed with her, and together they started Lovey Repair. Their “business” was recently featured on a NYTimes blog post. The title of the post is, “A Repaired Lovey, and a Debt Unrepaid.” So what is the business? They sew up old Loveys, or stuffed animals, pillows, etc. that have been a little too well loved and send them back to their owners all better and refreshed.

The catch? Their service is free. Mom tells daughter, “It’s a priceless business, lovey repair.” Wow! How awesome is that? Just a kind gesture to anyone who needs some extra love returned to their lives.

But it seems this may be also difficult for some people to accept. Perhaps most of us even? The author of the post was worried the duo would be inundated with requests, but Mom replied, “It always seems to work itself out.. The not charging thing actually can freak people out — I think there’s a security in the quid pro quo of capitalism that some people need.” The author wrote:

I think I would have been that person: if I had realized I was asking a total stranger for a favor, would I have really asked? It’s difficult enough to ask a friend for a favor. When I realized I couldn’t “repay” little pillow’s rescuers, I didn’t know how to feel. Gratitude, completely without connection, is an unfamiliar emotion, a little uncomfortable, and a little freeing.

Why is it so hard for us to accept favors? Why are we so afraid to allow people into our lives? Why does it matter that the people are friends or strangers?

I firmly believe that every person in the world should be required to live in a country where they do not speak the language as their primary language for a minimum of 3 months. And no, I do not actually think there is any entity in the world that could, or should, enforce this, but it is a dream nonetheless. Why? Part of the reason is so that we better understand one another. But more and more I have come to realize that one of the greatest benefits I gained from living abroad was the ability to be vulnerable, ask for help, and accept a welcoming gesture.

My first week living in France, I had just turned 21 (literally, I turned 21 exactly one week after arriving in the country), and I was going to Marseille from Aix-en-Provence with some new friends who were also in France on an educational exchange. I was a bit late, and of course I could not find the bus stop. I had spent years learning French and two years practicing it fairly intensely in college. I was scared to death to ask someone for directions. But eventually I did. And I found my bus, went to Marseille, and I had a lovely day. Taking that first step to open my mouth, unsure of whether someone else would understand me and unsure whether I would understand the response was one of the hardest things I did while living there. 

We put up barriers to other people for a variety of reasons. I can think of a few, and maybe you can think of plenty more. I think we do it because we are scared they will let us down, we are scared we will look weak, because we think we live in a zero-sum world where if we admit weakness everything is over, or because we are taught to do everything on our own. But with those barriers comes a sense of being stuck. Those barriers prevent us from our full potential. It is part of of many yoga paradoxes that giving ourselves support actually helps us go deeper into asanas.

These barriers we erect, whether a fear of accepting a gift or something else, stop us from connecting with one another, asking for help, and ultimately reaching our fullest and deepest selves. We cannot move beyond these barriers until we let ourselves be vulnerable. Sometimes we do that on purpose by going to a foreign country and looking for a bus, and other times that vulnerability falls in our lap by a 7-year-old girl and her mother repairing a loved and cherished friend without asking for anything in return.

And when we finally let others in, we find a deep sense of gratitude, which, as the blogger wrote, is ultimately freeing. As Pema Chodron said in the quote at the top of the last post, “Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.” But our shared humanity is lost when we keep up the barriers. Lovey Repair is an example of compassion in action. Without regard to the recipient’s state in any way, the two of them just offer a little needed love. It is the acceptance of that love that seems to be difficult for people. Why should I accept something that is free? Doesn’t everything come with a cost? If I get something for free, am I going to have to repay it later at a higher cost?

Perhaps the cost here is the vulnerability. In many ways, it is easier to hand over cash than to let go of a little piece of ourselves. That is a huge step for many of us. But it is also a vital step. We are so good at hiding behind emails that get inappropriate and out of control, our own beliefs about why we are right, and all the other ways we block ourselves from connecting to others. But as the blogger noted, allowing that vulnerability in is “refreshing.” It can wake us up to our humanity in ways we simply cannot access elsewhere.

And yes, yoga is another perfect opportunity to find this sense of vulnerability. There are so many practices for opening up our compassion and our shared humanity. Those are posts for another day. But the first step is letting go of our ingrained views about how things should be. Instead, accept a helping hand when it is offered. Sometimes, all we need to do is say thank you. And sometimes that is the most difficult step.

Thank you, Lovey Repair, not only for the repairs, but for bringing a little slice of true compassion and gratitude into the world.

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

That Which is Hidden is Our Greatest Treasure

"Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity." -- Pema Chodron

People come to yoga for a lot of reasons. Exercise, flexibility, stress management, and relaxation tend to dominate the list. Finding our darkness is not usually at the top of the list. Ironically this may be one of the most important ways yoga and law are connected, or at least one of the best ways yoga can inform the law and so many other aspects of modern life. That which is hidden in yoga is perhaps its greatest treasure.

Pema Chodron is an American Buddhist nun living in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. She has written several books, including The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times, the book from which the above quote is taken. I was reading it the other day, and this quote struck me as something I had to hear (or read, but you get the idea). I realized this is at the heart of what we do in helping professions, and probably a big piece of why they lead to so much vicarious trauma for so many.

I think about this issue a lot, but I have never really had the ability, or perhaps the courage, to fully express it on this blog. I tried here but stopped at a more superficial level (a bit ironic considering the title of the post). Yoga has the potential, perhaps the inevitability, to bring us to the deepest places within us. In words, this is the body holding onto our emotions, which is why some people burst into laughter in yoga classes and some people burst into tears. That happens spontaneously when we tap those places within us holding those emotions.

When we make the commitment to look inside, we will probably learn to be more flexible and relaxed, and we will probably notice we handle stress better. But we may also notice the darkness. We may come face-to-face with everything we have been hiding from ourselves for years.

At first glimpse, this seems like a reason to not go so deep. It seems like a reason to get off the mat and into busyness. After all, busy is safe in this world. But even when we think we are running away, we cannot. It always comes back to get us. We have all experienced the vacation sicknesses. You know, the times you get sick on your vacation because you are finally allowing all those stress hormones to let go. It is no fun when we hide from what is inside only to have it come back unexpectedly.

Yoga gives us the opportunity to get there first. It gives us the opportunity to be (somewhat) in charge of facing what is beneath the surface. At one level, it helps us face our fears. We learn to be stronger people everyday. That does not seem to be a secret among the yoga world. I feel this gets simplified, as though this process is easy. “Of course, just learning to do a balance posture will bring us into balance in life.” It certainly gives us the tools to see it is possible, but yoga takes us deeper when we allow it.

And that deeper level is to finding our truest sense. As in the quote above, it can be our darkness. It can be that place within us we have done everything to hide. One of my fellow students in teacher training said she would go home from yoga classes yelling at her family, and she did not understand why. She had touched that place, but did not yet have the tools to move through it.

And yoga takes us there as well. When we hit those moments, whether our deepest darkness or our greatest lights, we keep moving, we keep breathing, we keep being. We can bring compassion to those moments (or years) and just let them be as they are. We can use certain asanas and breathing techniques to move through them, but and eventually they shift. But once we see ourselves for who we are, we see the greatest gift of all. We can then begin to connect with others and find compassion for them wherever they are.

And that is a lesson for all of us, especially for lawyers dealing with people in crisis.

I was having a conversation with someone the other day in which she said to me, “you’re a lawyer, you live in your head.” I laughed and said, “I think it is the other way around. I live in my head, so I’m a lawyer.” And that is exactly why yoga is so important in the legal profession. The law pretends to be rational, but the problem is that people are not. We need to be able to experience both in order to be able to best serve our clients.

As friends and family, we can best help our loved ones by understanding our deepest selves. And the truth is that can sometimes be very, very scary. It can also be very, very exciting. We have no idea what we may learn when we step onto the mat or sit on the cushion. What we do know is that this seemingly solitary practice is our best learning tool for connecting with our “shared humanity.” And while Pema’s quote only talks about finding our darkness to connect with the darkness in others, her point can be expanded. When we fully understand ourselves and our humanity, we can better understand others.

And that is true compassion. That allows us to connect with people and recognize we are all in this together no matter how different we may appear superficially. There may be two sides to a story or to a lawsuit, but underlying all of that is our humanity.  Our work on the mat is a personal practice, but it can help us give ourselves to the world. Of course, I love the feeling of relaxation at the end of a yoga class, but more and more every day I am learning to be grateful for the depths of the practice, the ones I always knew were there, but also knew would take time to reach.  

How has yoga helped you connect with yourself? How has it helped you connect with others? 

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.