In the Face of Tragedy

I do not usually post about man-made tragedies. I have certainly posted before about natural disasters (Christchurch and the Japan earthquake), but I never feel like I have a good response to shootings and bombings and the like. I do not, in any way, want this blog to become political, and these issues are usually so wrapped up in politics (perhaps as they should be) that I just feel uncomfortable.

And yet, the bombing at the Boston Marathon seems exactly like what needs to be addressed here.

If I have learned one thing from a yoga practice, it is how connected we really are. There is a lot of talk about oneness in yoga (and other spiritual disciplines), and yoga gave me the opportunity to experience that and know I was experiencing it. It is a concept the legal community would do well to understand a bit better. There is simply no escaping that what happens to one person happens to us all.

And it need not be next door. I am not a runner. Never have been. To be honest, I did not even know the Boston Marathon was happening yesterday. I have only been to Boston once. I loved it, but it is not a place with years of nostalgic memories for me. For all the ostensible lack of interest in the event and even the place, the tragedy touched humans and, therefore, touched me.

A tragedy such as this is an opportunity to remember that what we do to each other matters. How we treat each other affects the entire world. And I have lamented before about how it takes a tragedy or a disaster to remind us of these truths, but sadly we seem to forget in our everyday life.

The people at the Boston Marathon finish line experienced firsthand trauma. Whether they were physically injured or not, they experienced the shock and horror themselves. Those of us watching from afar had to experience the secondhand trauma, the vicarious trauma. And this is why these moments shock us into paying attention. All of a sudden, we all need to be comforted at some level. For anyone on facebook, I am sure you saw, as I did, the number of prayers sent out. And then there was the Mr. Rogers quote reminding us to “look for the helpers.” In the internet age, it takes only seconds for there to be an iconic image of an event, and the ones emerging from Boston always seem to have people helping out. The favorite story was of people who had finished the marathon running to the hospital to give blood.

We reach out together to find the people that make us feel better about the moment. After the Christchurch earthquake hit, I remember people in suits helping dig people out of rubble. In Boston, police ran into the street unsure of whether more bombs would explode and others helping those who were wounded. Mr. Rogers’s quote reminds us we need those stories because we need to feel a sense of calm. We need to see that not all of humanity is set on destruction. That is how we shake the trauma.

As people start saying Boston will never be forgotten, just like 9-11 and the Holocaust, I ask you, again, what that means. Does it mean we just remember these awful tragedies? Does it mean we expand our knowledge and remember other bombings and genocides? Or does it mean we remember the lessons of these tragedies?

Can we remember every single day how precious life is? Can we remember every single day how precious our friends and family are? Can we remember every single day how precious the stranger on the street is? Can we remember every single day how precious even those we do not like are?

That is what we learn in the face of tragedy, and hopefully that is what we can remember going forward. 

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl, 2013, all rights reserved. 

Two Years Away

Two years ago, I was in Christchurch, New Zealand on the day the city was leveled by an earthquake. It was one of the most unsettling experiences of my life. As I mentioned last year on the earthquake anniversary, it took me almost a month to realize the earthquake left me in some sort of shock. But what I did not realize then is that the shock, in many ways, remains.

Just yesterday, I was at work, and I heard a crash. I live in Tucson. There are no earthquakes here (though we did have snow yesterday, so perhaps anything is possible these days). But when I heard that crash, I jumped inside. There is a bridge in Tucson that always shakes when you drive on it, and I drive over it nearly every single day. Sometimes I still flinch when I feel it shaking. I am starting to realize that earthquake has never left me.

We live in a world where we are told to just get over it. When something does not go our way, we are expected to just move right along as though nothing happened. But our bodies respond differently. Our bodies remember. This is why yoga is such a powerful tool. It reaches into our bodies and exposes that which we have been holding for days, months, or even years at a time.

Consciously I do not live in fear of another earthquake hitting, certainly not in Tucson. But those moments when I jump from a shake are reminders of how deeply embedded memories are in our bodies. While we can consciously attempt to forget certain things that happen in our lives, we cannot escape them fully until we go into the body.

The last post talked about support. An earthquake is the antithesis of support. Earthquakes shake us to our very core. But we all get shaken like that even when we are not experiencing the Earth below us moving. And those crises, or traumas, stay with us. But something as simple as a child’s pose, as discussed in the last post, can be a start to overcoming that trauma.

And then, of course, the breath. In those moments when we are reminded of whatever shook us, we can always come back to the breath and remember that the trauma is not reoccurring. Instead, it is our memory of it. And we can breathe through those moments.

Today, my heart goes out to Christchurch. I learned so much from that city, from that experience. And if my infrequent, unconscious reactions are any indication, the city has not left me yet. The theme in Christchurch after the earthquake was, “Rise up Christchurch.” I know it still has a long way to go, but that theme is an inspiration. From the depths of destruction, the people of Christchurch decided to come together and create a new and evolved city. I am forever grateful to the lessons I learned in Christchurch, even when they take me a bit by surprise.

Have you noticed how you hold memories in your body? What do you do about them?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

The Body as Storage, or Confronting Trauma

My travels have finally stopped for a bit, and I have found a few yoga classes I like. It feels good to be getting back into the groove of a more “normal” life. By normal, I mostly mean that I stay at home on the weekends and can actually do some errands. It also means I can start attending yoga classes more regularly. My daily practice has, once again, become daily, and it feels wonderful. But there is something differently wonderful about attending a class. Sometimes they are not everything I hope they will be, but sometimes they hit me just where I need. This Sunday’s class was one such class.

The teacher started class by reminding us that we hold emotions in our bodies. She said, and I am paraphrasing to the best of my memory, “Each traumatic experience we have is stored in our body, and it can come back to us at any moment.” Think muscle memory and brain patterns. The body literally holds onto experiences until we let them go. Of course, this is just as true for joyful memories as it is for traumatic ones. People have been known to laugh or cry hysterically in yoga “for no reason.” The reason, however, is the body remembering the occasion and bringing it back to the surface.

This is something I think about all the time on my own (some would, perhaps, say too often). In the class, however, we went together into the pain we hold in our bodies. The teacher asked us to face the fear we hold in our bodies. Generally, the only classes I attend where we consciously go deep into long-held postures and really confront the body’s depths are restorative and yin classes. I love both those types of classes. In Sunday’s class, however, we held Warrior 1 and Triangle for long periods. We did not hold them for five minutes, but we definitely held them for longer than is generally typical.

While I certainly have my own hip / low-back issues to address, I found myself thinking throughout class about my clients. With the reminder that every traumatic experience we have is stored in our body’s muscle memory, my mind turned to my clients who, by definition, have experienced some sense of trauma, and many of them have experienced a significant amount of it. My clients range in age from 17 days to 17 years. All of them have trauma.

And then my mind turned to the lawyers with whom I work, and the rest of the people who work within the legal system generally, whether lawyers, staff, social workers, psychologists. More and more people recently have become aware of the concept known as Secondary Shock or Vicarious Trauma, in which people in helping professions experience the trauma of their clients vicariously through them. The only difference is that when trauma is experienced secondhand, we do not always recognize it for what it is. The body can tell no difference, but our minds, for whatever reason, think there is one.  

I asked myself what I can do to help these people who hold so much in their bodies and have no idea. My mind wandered to my infant clients born into this world in even more trauma than typical of birth (birth, of course, being a traumatic experience for everyone). It then wandered to my clients who have chosen life on the streets because, as they say in their own words, they don’t know any different.

Of course, this blog is the step I took to try to bring awareness to these issues. I do not see this being my only confrontation of this topic on this blog. It is not only important; it is vital that we learn about it and talk about it. But what about today? What about the people who have no internet access or the people who know nothing about yoga. I take my yoga-ness with me everywhere, on some level. I have talked to clients and others about breathing and walking away at times.

But then I remember the trauma. I remember all they have experienced. All I can do in those moments is hope, pray, and believe that the human spirit and consciousness is greater than the sum of its parts, and that everyone and anyone is capable of overcoming anything they have experienced in life.

I have said before that I believe yoga is for everyone. It does not take a particular level of fitness, calm, flexibility, or even time. It does, however, take a desire to start. Sometimes living life through a yoga lens means seeing all the people who have not yet seen its beauty. I do not think yoga is the answer for everyone, but I wish more people were able to find their answer.

Where do you notice the tension being stored? Have you ever experienced unannounced emotion in a yoga class?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

One Year Later: A Lesson on Stability

Longtime readers of this blog may remember that one year ago today, I was in Christchurch New Zealand and at 12:51pm an earthquake struck that devastated the city, killed over 180 people, and from which I was evacuated to the US Ambassador’s home in Wellington aboard a New Zealand Air Force jet.

For much of my time in New Zealand, I felt a day ahead, yet somehow behind because I woke up around the time the news day ended on the east coast of the United States. Today, I feel a day behind. February 21 means nothing in New Zealand other than the day before tragedy struck. And yet it is today, the 21^st, that I must realize that one year ago I was in that earthquake.

Many people I admire and respect are writing about their memories and sharing the memories of others on that tragic day. Other than restating my immense and continuing gratitude to the people in Christchurch who helped us get out safely and quickly (with only immense guilt to follow) and the US Embassy for ensuring all of us were accounted for, and our Kiwi companions were not forgotten, I have little to add to the memories. I honestly feel like I had a different experience than most people. I was never in any physical danger, I saw no people in physical pain, or worse, and I was out of the city less than 6 hours after the earthquake struck.

But it was not until about a month after the earthquake that I realized I had been in shock for that month. When I felt normal again, I realized something had been abnormal. But looking back on that moment, day, and shared experience over time, I am reminded of the hardest realization I had about earthquakes – they are an unannounced event that literally shakes the very foundation upon which we stand and rely for support throughout our day. For that reason, they shock us to the core, and they force us to reevaluate the steadiness we thought we had.

It may seem trite to compare this to lawyering, but I have done it before in an “Expecting Disaster” context. But as a practicing lawyer, I see it happening around me all the time. I start most days having a decent idea of what I am to expect . . . or so I think. Rarely have my days ended as I expected they would at 6am in the morning. We can be prepared, but something unexpected and new sometimes pops up.

The question is how should we respond? In Christchurch, I saw the best of people. Everyone I saw, and all the stories I heard, were of people forgetting their own needs and helping each other. People in suits rescued folks from burning rubble, and a waitress told an ex-Congressman fromTucson to be sure to take his lunch with him as it might be the last meal hewould have for a wee while. People responded as they had to because their common goodness kicked in.

What if we responded that way to the “crises” we face each and every day? I lamented for weeks after the earthquake, and again after the terrible tragedy in Japan, that it should not take a crisis of unspeakable tragedy to bring people together in such profound and deep ways. I still wonder what would happen if our response to each unsettling moment that we view as the crisis du jour (or worse, du moment), were seen instead as an opportunity to see the good in each other and to make the best of each and every circumstance.

There is no question that some of the unexpected moments of my first two months at a new job have thrown me for a loop . . . or several. But something interesting happened to me the other day. I was in a yoga class, and for the first time since stepping back onto American soil on December 11, I truly felt like I was back in the United States. It was as though the confusion of living in two time zones, two worlds, and two mindsets had finally lifted. I felt connected to the Earth and felt it solidly beneath me.

That was just over one week ago. The earthquake anniversary is a reminder that such a connection may not always be there. Craziness will continue to ensue in my life and at work. Unexpected moments will continue to arise, and each one will present the opportunity to respond. No matter what your life entails, I can almost guarantee you will face such moments as well. I ask us all, myself absolutely included, to respond with the same humanity, dignity, and oneness I witnessed in Christchurch.

I would like to revise my laments from last year. Perhaps it does take a crisis to bring out these moments within us, but perhaps the crisis is something we initially believe is one until we realize that we are all in this together. As we held each other through each aftershock, we knew the shaking would continue, but we also knew we were all there for each other. Some of those people I have not seen since that day, and some of them will be friends for life.

How would the world be different if we all reached out to each other in our moments of shakiness and unexpected crises?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved. 

When the Truth gets Lost

I am currently at a conference unlike any I have ever attended. As I have mentioned on numerous occasions before, I love conferences. Not only are they a plethora of information, but they are a way to meet the experts, network, and see what people around the world are doing in the work I do. I also love interdisciplinary conferences to learn about other fields. But they also can provide so much information and bring up issues we have in our practice that we did not even know existed. This conference took that issue to a completely new level for me. 

Lawyers are expected to find the “right” answer, the “truth.” I have struggled with these issues on this blog before, but this conference is throwing them in my face like never before. The conference is called the “San Diego International Conference on Child and Family Maltreatment.” The participants include lawyers, law enforcement, doctors, forensic interviewers, social workers, etc. My first day consisted of presentations on differentiating birth trauma from abuse, the importance of acknowledging bruises, and learning about methamphetamine’s effects on the brain. I never thought learning about meth would be the easy part of my day.

This morning started with suggestibility and recantation during forensic interviews about sexual abuse. Good morning to you, too! What are we expected to do with this information when there is no physical evidence? How are we supposed to make sense of it? How do we hear everyone's story and find "the truth?"

The lawyer in me wants to know “the truth.” The yogi in me knows we all see the world through our own truths. The lawyer in me knows that child sexual abuse happens, and it must be taken seriously. So, what do we do in this situation? How do we hold the entire story and follow the law?

For the past decade, my yoga path has encouraged me to see and hold the entire picture and to understand people from their points of views. At the plenary session today, the speaker said she has discovered over her career that when we truly listen, we find there are truthS, not one single truth. That can be very liberating, but it can also be paralyzing to the person listening.

What do we do with that? What does the law do with that?

I try to always have some sort of answer in these posts, some lesson I have learned from yoga or law that concludes. Today, I simply do not have that. I refuse to let go of the years of yoga that have opened my eyes to trusting people, humanizing people, and seeing the entire picture from everyone’s point of view. I cannot do this perfectly; I doubt anyone can, but the yoga makes it easier each and every day.

But we (the system) have to make decisions. We have to determine what is in the best interests of children. And this is not just true of child welfare lawyers. All lawyers, and anyone who sees trauma, disaster, etc. on a daily basis, must find a way to hear it, make some sense of it, and find a way to move forward.

At the beginning of law school, we were told that there may never be an answer in certain law school scenarios. We were asked to “embrace the ambiguity.” When discussing abstract situations involving constitutional law principles, I not only can accept that, I enjoy it. But when we are talking about real life and real decisions, especially those that involve families and children, that ambiguity becomes painful.

But the good news is that people are talking about these issues. People are trying to find some answers, even if we cannot always have the “right” answers. That gives me hope. And the yoga, most days, keeps me grounded. Right now, that is where I am. I look around this conference and see people who have been doing this work for years, and I wonder whether they think they know the answer every time. My guess is not, or they would not be here. That also gives me hope. Knowing we do not have all the answers is the first step. We just keep moving along and hope each day we are doing our best. 

How do you notice these ambiguities in your life? What do you do to respond to them? Do you ever feel like you can know the truth?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl, 2012. All Rights Reserved.

Crisis Management: A Changing Perspective

While many of the recent posts have focused on the similarities between yoga and the law, today’s is about one of the biggest opposites. As I have mentioned before, lawyers live in a world defined by disaster. Whether in litigation and responding to the disaster at hand or in transactional work preparing for or trying to avoid disasters, the legal world moves among disasters.

Yoga, by contrast, is about simply preparing ourselves. While disasters are about the external world, or our definition of the external world, yoga is about preparing our internal selves for anything that happens in the external world. This is, of course, much easier to do when the external world in which we find ourselves is fairly simple and not one disaster after another.

So what do we do when we find ourselves surviving in crisis management? What do we do when we feel as though we are barely staying afloat, and if one more event occurs that requires our attention, our entire being is going to explode? That is when the yoga bucket is so vital. That is when the five minutes per day of internal practice help give us the strength to respond with our full awareness to these external forces rather than react with our immediate reactions, unsure of whether we are actually doing what is necessary.

Living in crisis management is dangerous on many levels. We harm ourselves because we live in a state of constant stress. The physiological effects of long term stress are well documented and include the inability to sleep, inability to digest, decreased immunity, etc. In addition to our own physical health, we harm our relationships because we are less capable of interacting with people from a place of heart. How often have you snapped at someone you love simply because you were too tired and stressed to speak to them differently?

Finally, living in that state of crisis management means we can never be in control of our professional lives. The irony, of course, is that we become less effective lawyers (or whatever) because our jobs require us to live in that constant state of managing the crisis du jour rather than preparing ourselves internally sufficiently to respond from a place of compassion and understanding each time an issue arises.

I think there is more to doing this than just having the de-stress bucket filled by doing a practice. I think it also requires a shift in perspective. The reason so many of us believe we live in crisis management is because we view so many parts of our lives as crises. What if we changed that perspective? What if we saw these moments as just another step along the path? What if we saw them as opportunities?

In my personal life, I have seen crises become the greatest moments in peoples’ lives. In my cases, I have seen what I thought were crises become non-issues simply by getting all the facts. And when I change my initial perspective, I find that I have a lot more to give to the situations that truly are crises because I have no used all my energy on the parts of my life that do not require such an intense response.

Unlike finding five minutes a day for a practice, which is simple but not easy, this change in perspective is not very simple either. At some level it requires a complete reprogramming of our responses to what we see as our external world. That takes time. But if I found one thing in New Zealand, it is also possible. I have been back in the United States now for just over a month, and I still find myself “looking right” half the time before I cross the street.

We do not have to choose to be in crisis management mode at all times. Sometimes it feels as though the world has not given us the choice to step back and step out of it, but with each new “crisis,” stop and take a breath. What would happen if you chose to stop and evaluate before going into crisis management immediately? How would that look different?

Do you find yourself living in crisis management? What tools have helped you?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl, 2012, all rights reserved.

Doing Something “Special”

I am back in the United States. It feels strange, but not as strange as I expected, but that is not where I want to focus today’s post. Instead, I want to look back at a conversation I had in Greymouth, the last city I visited on my final trip around the South Island.

By that point in my trip I had already reflected personally and reflected with my fellow Fulbrighters on our experience. For all of us, it was life changing. But something was nagging at me. Something deeper than the experiences, amazing as they were. Why do we need to go to the other side of the world as part of an incredible honor in order to feel our lives have changed?

I am in a unique situation because I am going to the same job I would have started 15 months ago if I had not spent 10 months in New Zealand. But of course our lives are not determined solely by how we earn a living. I could write a book on the ways this experience changed my life. I could write a book on why this entire experience was “special.”

But the nagging feeling remained, and it came into clarity while talking to a fellow traveler in Greymouth. I was talking to a fellow traveler who was less than enthralled by New Zealand (that shocked me enough, but is also not the point of the post). She was traveling as part of a bus tour, and as she reflected on each of the places she had visited, she asked out loud, “what did I do special there?”

Each city in New Zealand is known for something. Waitomo is known for black water rafting and glow worm caves, Rotorua is known for sulphur pools and Maori cultural shows, and Dunedin is known for penguins and sea lions (among other things). And don’t ask about Queenstown, the “adventure capital of the world!” So my fellow traveler was trying to remember what she had done unique in each city, what had been special.

Then the yogi in me came out, and it explains the nagging feeling I have had about the issue whether the Fulbright experience changed my life. Should not every moment, every day be special? Why must we do something in order for it to be special?

Mt. Cook - one of the many places that reminded me how special each moment is.

Each day, each interaction, each moment represents an opportunity to be special and meaningful. We can hold out waiting for something special to occur and define our lives by those events, or we can attempt to make each moment special and unique. Usually we think about these issues after major disasters or when someone is dying or has died. But why wait for those moments? Do we really need death and destruction to remind us how valuable each moment in our lives really is?

There is no question that my 10.5 months in New Zealand changed who I am. I had an amazing time and saw unparalleled beauty in both nature and people. Being part of the Fulbright program was one of the greatest honors of my life, and I plan to go forward constantly asking myself if I can live up to the vision Senator William Fulbright had for people who travel the world because of his vision. It absolutely changed my life. But I also know that the people who spent the last year working where I would have worked also saw their lives change in dramatic ways. Our experiences were different, but neither was more or less change-worthy than the other.

I do not see this as downplaying how meaningful the Fulbright experience was for me, and I would like to share more about that (and encourage more lawyers to apply), but it is to say that I hope to continue to look at each day as significant, just like spending time reflecting in the New Zealand bush and along the western side of the Pacific Ocean.

How about a new question? How about instead of asking ourselves what we did that was special in a special place, we ask ourselves how we can ensure that we notice the unique specialness of each and every moment?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2011, all rights reserved.

A year of gratitude

If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice. 

– Meister Eckhart

I wanted to write this post after Thanksgiving because as much as I love Thanksgiving, I would prefer to see the same type of gratitude fill our lives each day, rather than one particular day per year. Just before I came to New Zealand, I read a book called, 365 Thank Yous. It is a book written by a judge in CA about a year of writing thank you notes. While I had begun to focus on gratitude before reading the book, reading it sufficiently focused my attention for the entire time I have been in New Zealand. Gratitude became the foundation for my thoughts, rather than an afterthought. After nearly a year here, I can say it has made all the difference.

There are few things as important as saying thank you and recognizing all we have in life for which we can be grateful. My list from my time in New Zealand could fill a book, so I will spare you all the details, but I can tell you it runs the gamut from the random people who have offered me rides without my even knowing them when the walking conditions were long and difficult (and it happened again after writing this but before posting it), to a supervisor whose vision for my thesis exceeded anything I ever dreamed possible, to friends and family new and old who made the lonely times on the other side of the world far less lonely, to everyone who reads this blog, to Kiwi hospitality, to Fulbright New Zealand and the US Embassy for keeping me safe post-earthquake. I am grateful for all the people who helped me get here and all the people who have made my stay here not only informative but amazing beyond words. Oh, the list could go on and on . . .

But why does it matter if we feel gratitude? Why does it matter if we remember to say thank you to the people who help us out along the way? The second question may be easier to answer, and it is very, very simple. Saying thank you when someone offers you a kindness is simple respect and good manners. A bit silly to say, perhaps, but how often do we forget to do it? How often do we just expect that someone, or an organization, is there to provide for us, and we forget that there are still people involved in the process?

Do you thank bus drivers? Waiters? Janitorial staff? Do you thank people for gifts? Kind words? An ear when you need someone to listen? Do you thank other lawyers when they pick up the phone to let you know you made a mistake instead of filing a motion? Two simple words, maybe a quick email, or maybe even a short card are all it takes, but the act of saying thank you helps the person notice you took a moment to care and acknowledge that they did something for you. It helps them see that they matter to you.

But what about the first question? Why does it matter to us if we feel gratitude? That goes back to the power of positivity, the power ofthe mind. There is no question that if you want to see unhappiness and destruction in the world, you can find it. We can also choose to focus on it. But then we just start seeing only that bitterness. If, however, we focus on the gratitude, we start to see just how amazing life really is.

I cannot tell you the number of times people have offered to give me a hand (or a lift) when I needed it. People have taken time from their incredibly busy schedules to explain the NZ family law system to me, helped me send out surveys to the lawyers for children, helped me get ethics approval, asked me tough questions about my thesis, given me a bed or a meal, or just offered a smile and a bit of old-fashioned Kiwi friendliness.

I’m going to need these memories going forward. At the end of this month, I start my new job representing children who have been removed from their parents by the government because of abuse and/or neglect. Words cannot express how grateful I am for the job and the people with whom I will be working, but there is no denying that working in that field can make me question humanity at times (and not always because of the parents’ actions).

All lawyers live in a mindset of disaster cleanup and disaster prevention. We are trained to expect the worst. Perhaps, therefore, it is even more necessary for lawyers to take a moment to reflect on gratitude and remember the good that does exist in the world. But really, for everyone, as the news gets more dramatic and depressing, remembering all the reasons we have to be grateful is not only good, but vital, to our survival.

So, outside of the week of Thanksgiving, for what are you grateful? What little moments, events, and people remind you of the good in the world?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2011, all rights reserved.

The News Dilemma

I used to be woefully ignorant of current events. I wanted to care about the world, but I did not particularly want to care about scandal and politics. When I got to college, there were plenty of late nights discussing issues, but I rarely went out of my way to read a newspaper, and I stopped watching television, so unless it reached me some other way, the news of the day passed me by.

All of that slowly began to change the first time I lived abroad in France. That was, after all, when the United States invaded Iraq. When my friend told me about “Freedom Fries,” I thought it was an Onion article, until I saw the French newscaster explain it on television that evening. Upon heading back to the United States, I paid a little more attention than before, but life got in the way, and then I was back in France without good internet and without a television. Other parts of life were more important – such as learning to speak French.

Law school changed all of that for me. I remember my first year of law school listening to a conversation about the Enron scandal and having almost no conception of what people were discussing. I had heard the names before, and I knew something big had happened, but somehow, I had missed the specifics. I felt woefully inadequate. I decided lawyers should understand the issues of the day; we need to know what is happening. We need to be “informed.”

I am now at the other end of the extreme. My RSS feed and facebook feed are full of news organizations and legal blogs. Even though, because of the time difference to New Zealand, I wake up around the time the news day ends on the east coast, I read the feeds from earliest to latest. I like to know how the news develops. I read stories about Herman Cain knowing that he will never be the Republican nominee. I just want to be “informed.”

So, what have I learned? The news is depressing. The news is mightily depressing.

The yoga and meditation community have a different take on “being informed” by news. DO NOT DO IT!!! Generally, the advice is to purposefully ignore it. Knowing all of the heartache, pain, destruction, and ridiculousness of the world is only a drain on your system. All that negative information causes your own body, mind, and soul to react negatively. I went to a Laughter Yoga Seminar yesterday evening (more on laughter yoga in another post), and one of the facilitators said she has consciously stopped watching and reading the news. She does not want the negativity. One of the participants added, “if you cannot change it, why let yourself be depressed by it?”

I felt my insides tighten. I know it is true that the depressing news just makes us more depressed. But at the same time, I refuse to by into the notion that we should shut it out completely. There are people who take news vacations, a day per week or a week per month where they tune out. That makes some sense, but what if there is another huge earthquake during that break? I do not want to not be able to reach out to friends and family anywhere in the world because I did not know about the news. I cannot imagine missing it, even for a day. 

But I also know how horrible, difficult, and depressing the news can be to read and see. From stories about war and famine, to stories about racial profiling and tea partiers cheering death, the media is not good about sharing the uplifting stories. It is easy to wonder if there are uplifting stories left.

I have waffled with these issues for years, wondering why I get more and more drawn in when I know it would be healthier to let go. Then last night I got an answer, and it was (perhaps ironically) from the person suggesting we should all just turn it off. Her statement, “ if you cannot change it, why let yourself be depressed by it?” made me realize that is why I watch the news. I may not be able to end poverty in Somalia, solve the middle east conflict (though I have an incredibly inspirational cousin working to do just that), or prevent racial profiling on planes in the United States. Chances are even better I cannot stop earthquakes, floods, and tornadoes.

But I can have compassion. I can tell hear and see their stories, share them with the world, and send metta, lovingkindness their way. I can ask that others do as well. The Quebecois have “Je me souviens (I remember)” on their licence plates, Jews say “Never Forget” about the Holocaust, and Hamlet’s Father’s Ghost begged Hamlet to never forget his story. This need to be heard, seen, and understood is deep.

That is why I read the news. That is why I share the stories. That is how we can hopefully all begin to understand one another. What began as a need to feel "informed" in order to be able to keep up with conversations among lawyers has become a need to feel connected to the world, connected to the people within it, and connected to their stories. Might it be possible for all these tragedies and wars and disasters bring us together enough to understand? I simply do not know. But I am going to continue trying to share stories and bring these issues to light. The more we see, the more we awaken to our deepest connections of humanity.

And just for my own sanity, one of these days, I may take up that idea of a news vacation.

What do you think? Have you given up the news? Do you seek it out? Why? Why not?

Namaste!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

Ten Years On . . . Holding Community

I know the internet is full of commentary about September 11, and the 10-year anniversary. To be honest, I did not want to add to it. But then my heart told me I must. On my blog about my life in New Zealand, I wrote about the odd feeling of the world coming together for the Rugby World Cup, yet feeling like an outsider as an American in New Zealand on the anniversary of that day. Ironically, the United States Eagles Rugby team plays its first match on 9/11, though I guess it will only be 9/10 back in the United States. Still, something does not feel right about that. Here is an interesting link to two of the players discussing playing on the anniversary.

Ten years ago, I was a sophomore in college. I had never done yoga. I swore I would never be a lawyer. I embodied everything about stress and had not experienced the world outside US borders for more than three weeks. Since that day, yoga and the law have come to dominate my life, and I have lived abroad for nearly two years. I spent 6 months in Aix-en-Provence, France (during which time the United States invaded Iraq) and 7 months in Dreux, France (during which time the United States reelected President Bush), and now eight months and counting in New Zealand (during which time the United States killed Osama Bin Laden).  

So what, you ask? What does all of this have to do with yoga? What does it have to do with law? What does it have to do with living a more balanced life in the modern world? Everything!

The attacks on September 11, 2001 have defined the vast majority of my adult life. The death of Osama Bin Laden showed me just how tense and scared that time has been. Yoga has taught me much over the past 9+ years, but one of the most profound lessons has been that we must recognize the interconnectedness of humanity. On this blog, I have discussed this as community. Ironically, on this 9/11 anniversary I feel more alone than I have ever felt (this is the first time I have been away from the United States on 9/11).

A part of me yearns to be among many other Americans, rather than 2 or 3, who remember that day. A part of me yearns to tell my friends here, whether Kiwi, Malaysian, English, or Argentinean, how confused and vulnerable I felt, we all felt. A part of me yearns to explain how that fear became misguided arrogance, but that I also felt relief, sadness, and again confusion, when Osama Bin Laden was killed.

But I hear the responses before I open my mouth. I hear people remind me about Guantanamo. I hear people remind me about the drone attacks in Pakistan. I hear people remind me about the tens of thousands of civilians (and military) that have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. I do not know how to express that I see both visions to people in each camp. 

I do not know if people are willing to accept that there are layers and layers to these stories and that sharing them does not mean that any other layer is less important. Few people seem willing to hold the many layers. Few people are willing to struggle and see that no single vision is “right.”

I do not remember if I cried on September 11, 2001. I would like to think I did, but shock and confusion may have prevented it. But yoga has also taught me to open, and trust, my heart. It has taught me to truly feel what others feel, from the jubilation of the Rugby World Cup opening to the pain and horror that people describe in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. I have learned to see fear spiral into its own unimaginable consequences of war and destruction. But that does not mean the fear is not palpable and real. The vision of the planes flying into the Twin Towers now brings tears nearly every time. But so does the vision of Iraqis. So does the thought of the soldiers who have died. All of these events are tragic in their own right.

This theme of being “right” has made its way onto this blog before, as a play on words about being careful before crossing the street in New Zealand where they drive on the “wrong” side of the road. But this time the stakes are higher. This time it means understanding that September 11, 2001 was an awful day. It means understanding that other countries experience their own horrors and war on a daily basis. It means understanding that the United States has made many mistakes over the past 10 years.

Recognizing all of these does not undermine any of them. Disaster breeds community. We saw it on 9/11/2001. We saw it after the Christchurch and Japanese earthquakes. We see it anytime some event shocks us out of our sleep and reminds us that we are connected and together. I hope that this anniversary can remind us of the next step in that process. There is no single story to explain who we are and no single story to explain any event.

Some days it is nearly impossible to hold all these stories, to hold onto so many different visions of the world. But that is when yoga provides its most important, and simplest lesson; come back to the breath. Come back to the breath and let the thoughts and craziness swirl around the head for a moment. Then let it settle. At the end of the day, we do not need to make sense of it all. We simply need to remember that we are all in this together, ready to share our stories.

I hope this time of reflection provides you with a feeling of community and a little bit of peace. I hope we can hear each others’ stories and hold them all with a sense of togetherness and comfort. I hope we can remember that when we think we cannot hear another layer that we remember to come back to the breath and remember that we can, and will, grow together.

Namaste!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

Playing by the Rules

Rules. Law. Some people might argue they are synonymous. Lawyers, therefore, are usually really good at playing by the rules. The more attention I pay, however, the more I realize how all of us follow the rules, often without even realizing it. This unconscious affinity for the rules that run our lives interferes with our ability to connect to our fellow human beings and causes us to go down the spirals that result from believing in “the otherness” of those outside our “in” crowd.

Recently, I went on a weekend vacation. The thesis writing was getting difficult, and I just needed to get away from my desk. So, I booked a bus ticket and headed an hour north to Oamaru. This post is not about the penguins who restored my sanity; it is about the rules I noticed and what they signify to our lives.

Before I get there, though, let us travel together – in an elevator. How many times have you been in an elevator alone with just one other person? How many times have you talked to that person? Chances are, at least from my experience, that instead of talking to that person, you stand together in that awkward silence, one of you pushing the “Door Close” button hoping to end the awkwardness that much faster. Rule for elevator: no talking to those you do not know.

So what does a weekend bus trip have to do with rules of small talk in an elevator? The bus driver. I booked with one of the smaller bus companies in New Zealand, and along with that came a really chatty and friendly bus driver. As we were driving along, I noticed that there were certain people he acknowledged, those to whom he waved. I also noticed the people he seemed to ignore. So, who was in the “in” crowd? Two main groups: other buses and truckers. Cars got ignored. Rules on the road: acknowledge those whose job it is to drive but not those who are just driving to get from point A to point B.

I have noticed this phenomenon before. My first experience living abroad was in Aix-en-Provence, France. A group of 10 Americans were placed on the other side of the world together. One day, while I (the band geek) and the “other” (a sorority sister) were chatting, we joked that we were like a bunch of kids thrown into a room together; we just got along because there was more that connected us in that foreign place than made us feel different. At home, we would have ignored each other, but on the other side of the world, when we were lonely Americans, we got along great.

While living in France, if I heard anyone speaking English, I would start a conversation. It seemed like a connection, so why not? We could create our own club in an environment where we felt “outside.” Here in New Zealand, almost everyone speaks English, yet I still find myself attracted to the North American accent, or even sometimes any non-Kiwi accent. Over the weekend, I stayed at a hostel, and there I interacted with all sorts of people, including some random French people. Everyone can talk together in a hostel; everyone is officially an outsider in the country. Rule in a foreign country: find other foreigners with whom you can connect, regardless of their home.

After the February earthquake in Christchurch, I was hugging people I had never met. With each aftershock, we held each other closer. Disaster was at hand, and we had little to make us feel steady. Just yesterday, Christchurch suffered another terrible jolt (another 6.3, the same magnitude as the one in February), which I felt over 200 miles away in Dunedin. I was in a room full of people. We all looked at each other, discovered there had been another terrible blow to Christchurch . . . and then went back to our desks, to our work. Rule for non-disaster situation: get back to business as usual.

So, what are the rules? Where can we engage people and where can we not? Where can we look to each other for stability, and where do we push people away? Where do you let yourself interact with strangers? Supermarket? On a plane? Walking down the street? In traffic? Have you ever hugged a stranger?

But, if all these “rules” tell us anything, it should be that the divisions we create are arbitrary. What if we chose to break them? What if we chose to make everyone an insider? What if we consciously chose to find our common similarities rather than awkwardly push the “Door Close” button on our interactions with others? What if we made these decisions before disaster strikes? After all, lawyers prepare for disaster.

Are you willing to break the rules? Are you willing to push “Door Open”? Are you willing to engage with "the other"?

Namaste!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

Beyond Disaster: Opening to Gratitude

As I mentioned before, lawyers live in a world of disaster. Either our clients come to us in the middle of their disasters asking us to save them, or we spend our time imagining disasters and finding ways to avert them before they occur. Living in this state cannot be good for the psyche. In fact, research is beginning to show that it is actually very bad for the psyche, but we will leave the doom and gloom for another day.

Living in this place of disaster is another word for living in a place of fear, living in a world where we expect something, perhaps everything, to go wrong. Luckily, there is a simple antidote – gratitude. We have explored gratitude before on this blog – unsurprisingly the week of Thanksgiving, but I think it deserves more attention, perhaps a lot more attention.

On the Is Yoga Legal facebook page, there is a weekly intention, and this week’s intention is gratitude. There were more than the usual number of comments, and I realized that people want a reason to think about gratitude. For just a moment it pulls us out of our disaster-prone lives and allows us to focus on the good that surrounds us.

There are many studies highlighting the advantages of being grateful, including being happier, less stressed, more satisfied with life, less likely to turn to substance abuse, and better able to sleep. (May I just say that I love that this is a blog and I can cite to Wikipedia? To be honest, I have read these studies elsewhere, but Wikipedia has done a wonderful job of putting them all in one place, so I am using it.) What these studies and findings tell us is that gratitude helps lift us from our downward spirals.

I can hear some of you now saying, “it is really hard to find aspects of my life for which I am grateful.” That is understandable. We have not been taught to find gratitude. We have been taught to find disaster. Even if you are not a lawyer, we live in a world where we are constantly barraged with images of how to make our lives better – cuter clothes, sexier cars, bigger houses, and hi-definition televisions that will show us these images of our terrible lives in better quality. Media and advertisement agencies want us to be ungrateful; we spend more money because we are depressed and think that buying something new will cure that depression.

How about taking another approach? How about intentionally choosing to be grateful? Yoga teaches us that we can be intentional about any aspect of our lives. There is a difference between savasana and just lying on your back. One has the intent to truly relax and to rise up a new person, the other is just lying on your back. As with savasana, so with gratitude. We can say thank you, or we can intend gratitude.

A great book on this subject (ironically written by a lawyer) is called 365 Thank Yous, and no, I do not know the author, but he has become an inspiration to me. The author chose to write one thank-you card per day, and the book details his life transformation as a result.

Have no fear. I am not suggesting you write a thank-you card per day as wonderful as it would be. Instead, if intentionally being grateful is new to you, start small. Start your day by sharing one thing for which you are grateful. Share it with yourself, with facebook, with your dog, or find a friend to share your gratitude together. It can be anything, from waking up healthy to having a roof over your head. Then, before bed each night share again one thing from your day about which you are grateful.

I will start, and let us see if we can start the gratitude train moving.

I wrote this post at night, so I am going to share one thing from my day about which I am grateful. I have been struggling with what to do next on my thesis, and I knew I needed some information about statutes in the United States regarding lawyers who represent children. I was reading an article by a dear friend and past professor in which all those statutes were listed. Not only will this make my work much easier, but it gave me back the motivation and excitement for my project.

What about you? Let us get beyond disaster and move into a world where we find thanks instead of fear. I would love to hear about your gratitude for anything in the comments.

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved