Most Difficult for Us

I told someone the other day that prior to going to New Zealand, I used to teach Stress Management for Lawyers (and other professionals) workshops. I sort of laughed considering how difficult stress management has been for me recently. He very kindly said, “we are often drawn to that which is most difficult for us.” How right he is. My response to him was, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

There is no question that growing up I was full of stress. I first went to a chiropractor for intense neck pain when I was 15. I could barely move my neck at the time. College was sort of ridiculous for me when it came to stress, but that is also when I discovered yoga.

But my yoga bucket takes a lot to fill. The summer I was studying for the bar exam, I did two things – study and yoga. I was at yoga classes 4-5 times per week. It helped, and I think yoga was the only thing that got me through three days of the California bar exam, which feels like more of a marathon exercise than an actual examination of your understanding of legal material. But it required that amount of yoga just to keep me somewhat sane, and I am sure if you ask the people around me, they thought I was still a stress bucket. (Of course, they did not see everyone else studying with me.)

But some of us are patterned to be high anxiety. We could argue ad nauseam about whether it is our biology or our environment, but whichever it is, it goes deep into our bones. I think the legal profession attracts these types of people. We thrive on stress, and we understand it. But it takes its toll, and as a society we are learning that we have to counteract it, or we are going to kill ourselves. 

This blog is full of tools to do at the desk and more reminders to breathe than we know what to do with. But all of that is for naught if we do not actually do it. It is easy to know what we have to do. It is quite another story to step up and actually do it, especially when society tells us we should be “working” not managing stress. Even with the societal changes happening toward more understanding and acceptance of yoga and other stress management techniques, there is still the underlying assumption that those activities are not work, regardless of how good, and necessary, they are for us.

I found yoga because I needed it. I was at a point in my life where I knew I had to make some changes. Luckily for me, this realization happened when I was 19 years old. It was many more years, however, before yoga became an everyday part of my life. But when push comes to shove, the underlying patterns of stress return, and the yoga bucket empties fast.

But that is exactly what drew me to yoga in the first place. That is exactly what drew me to teaching yoga and teaching workshops. Staying in the yoga zone is difficult. I know what it is like to revert to the stress and all its underlying issues. Getting out of that mindset is never easy; it exists in our cells and our samskaras (patterns). It becomes our default even when we know how harmful it can be.

Teaching yoga forced me to do more yoga. It allowed me to start this blog and put my yoga practice front and center in my life. It allowed me to be honst about yoga even within the legal profession, something I was nervous about doing until I realized I am not, by any means, the only one. Plus, knowing how hard it was for me for years to reduce my stress, I knew I needed to do something drastic to ensure I would actually follow through.

But even that was not a panacea. There were moments, days, and even weeks of stress. I knew I had missed the mark when I told someone to breathe, and my colleague said, “look who’s talking” with a wee tone of sarcasm in her voice. But I may be the perfect proof of what happens when we ignore those lessons we know we need to learn. There could be any number of reasons I had a herniated disc, including the many times I have fallen down. But there is no question stress had something to do with it, and that stress is internal (a post for another day).

I know how powerful yoga, in all its forms, can be. But I also know that we have to follow through. And that can be extremely difficult at times. But perhaps the greatest lesson of these past few months is that there is no end point. Yoga is not something with a pass or fail. You are not graded on it. No one except you is keeping score. So even when it is extremely difficult, you can set the intention to start anew tomorrow. Better yet, you can set the intention to start anew right now. Yoga is about presence, no matter how difficult, and being present is one antidote to all the stress, anxiety, etc. that permeates so much of our lives today.

So, why was I drawn to yoga all those years ago? It was the answer to something that has always been extremely difficult for me. But with anything in life, that relief ebbs and flows. And so I share this post as a way to reach out and say that the best way to learn is to teach someone else. And sometimes the most important lessons are the ones most difficult for us to learn.

Do you have moments when you feel like you walk the yoga path? Do you have moments when you take a step to the side? Do you have moments where you feel like you cannot even see the path anymore? What do you do?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

Willing to "Fail"

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

Ironically, I learned an important lesson similar to Mark Twain’s quote about twenty years ago. It was shortly after Ricky Henderson broke the record for most stolen bases in baseball. I lived near Oakland, and at the time, he was something of a hero to me.

I loved baseball so much as a kid that I attended a baseball camp. I was one of about three girls there. Every morning was trivia time where if you answered a question correctly, you got a pack of baseball cards. The question was, “who has been thrown out more times than anyone stealing bases?” I raised my hand, sure I knew the answer, and (I think because I was one of so few girls) was called on first. My answer was simple – Ricky Henderson.

All the boys laughed at me. How could I be so stupid?!?! The guy asking the question gave me a look and asked something similar to, “is that your final answer?” I remember shaking, but sticking to my convictions and saying yes.

I got a new pack of baseball cards!

Today, all my baseball cards are in my mom’s attic, only because they are so worthless I cannot sell them, and I know nothing about the current state of baseball, though I learned a lot on my recent vacation with my cousins. But obviously that lesson about trying has always stuck with me. Those who succeed in what they do will only get there by “failing” many, many times. We have to be willing to risk something in order to make it somewhere. And as Mark Twain reminds us, looking back on our lives we are going to be a lot more frustrated by what we chose not to do than any of the mistakes we made.

But the bigger question is, “what does it mean to fail?” In sales, it means you are willing to hear no many, many times. In stealing bases, it means you will be thrown out many, many times. In lawyering, it means losing an argument in front of a judge. But those are the nouns, what people think of as failures. They are not. They are truly teachers and opportunities to learn to listen more, tune in to how to do it better, and make another attempt.

In other words, what we think of as “failing” is really a moment to reflect and learn. And that is the yoga.

Asanas (yoga postures) are great reminders of this. What better example than Vrksasana (tree pose)? Asanas mimick life, and vrksasana mimics trees. One leg is rooted firmly into the ground, and the arms lift up to the sky. At times it feels solid, at times it feels as though you are swaying in the wind, and at other times it feels as though you are in Windy Welly, and you will be uprooted at any moment. It just depends on the day. But none of those are failures and none of them are right. They are all moments to reflect and moments to be conscious.

On the days when I feel solid in balance poses such as tree, I try to make them more difficult by closing my eyes (try it, it is fun!). On the days when I just cannot keep one leg lifted I try to laugh. But some days it is frustrating! Why is it on some days the pose is not steady? Why can I not be steady every day? That moment of frustration, of feeling like a failure, comes in. And that is the moment of reflection.

At least I tried!

It is those moments when we learn the most about ourselves. If we were always steady on the mat, we would not learn that it is ok to falter. If we could do every posture the first time we tried, we would learn nothing about our bodies and through our bodies about our deepest selves. If the first time we sat to meditate, our minds emptied fully we would never learn to watch our thoughts and recognize them as simply thoughts and not as what define us.

It is these moments of what we sometimes see as failures that truly teach us who we are and give us our strength to move forward. And it is these moments of what we see as failure that make us break records.  And it is these moments of what we see as failures upon which we look twenty years later and think, “I am glad I gave it a shot and learned something.”

Perhaps our "failures" are really our moments of perfection and yoga.

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.