Waiting Out the Storm

As I have mentioned before, yoga has helped put me in touch with nature on a different level. New Zealand was full of nature lessons, especially its healing power. There were also reminders that nature is not always tame -- sea lions like to "play". Here in the desert, there are really three lessons I have learned. First, life exists in places you would never imagine possible. Second, hot has new meaning when you live in the desert. And third, there is such a thing as monsoons! Growing up in California, summer rain was nearly unknown, but here in the desert it is a lovely respite from the heat, but the storm itself is power like nothing else I have ever experienced, and they arrive and depart almost instantaneously. Seven years after moving to the desert, they still amaze me.

This year we have had a lot more rain than normal, so I have been thinking a lot about monsoons, especially after getting caught in one while driving over the weekend. I had to drive over two hours to see a client over the weekend, and the shortest path there includes driving over a road with a lot of dips. It is a beautiful road to drive, but as one of my friends and colleagues reminded me, it is less than safe in a monsoon.  

As I was preparing to head back to Tucson on my drive, I looked out and saw nothing but black clouds on my path ahead. Thinking it would be safer to take the long road back, which traverses highways (and no dips in the road), I turned my car around and headed north. Perhaps I should have consulted the wind; it was blowing north.

The storm I tried to outsmart caught up with me on Interstate 10. The wind put Wellington to shame, and there were moments I could not see the front of my car, let alone any other cars or the lines on the road. All I could do was pull off the side of the road and sit there. Other cars, and some trucks, tried to keep going, and each one that drove by scared me just a little more. It did not help that I actually thought my car was going to blow away in the wind. The fear was palpable, and my heart was racing, yet in the midst of all of it, I found a moment to breathe. After all, what could I do but be grateful I hit the storm in a place where I could find a relatively safe place to stop rather than at the bottom of a dip in the road with my car floating away?

And then it cleared! The skies revealed the post-monsoon desert serenity. There is no beauty quite like it. The air that has been holding its breath (and yours) for hours, perhaps days, is fresh and clear. And it is cool. The clouds that continue to dot the sky look light and refreshed, not bogged down with the weight of their water. But to get to that serenity, you have to wait out the storm, perhaps even with a bit of gratitude knowing you will survive and knowing what awaits you on the other side of it.

I was driving a work car, so I had to take it back to the office. When I got there, I sent a colleague a text message telling her the car survived, and I was just a little worse for wear after the scariest drive of my life. She told me she was in the office “in case I needed a shoulder.” Surprisingly, I did not need a shoulder, but I did need a friendly face. I went up to the office and laughed and chatted with her for awhile. When I left again, the air remained fresh, and the desert was full of peaceful life.

Saturday’s lesson was huge. No matter how much we try to outrun the storms in our lives, they are going to catch up to us, but we can keep them from killing us with a little bit of preparation and perhaps some friendly advice from friends and colleagues. We may freak out in the middle, then remember how to breathe and calm down a bit, and then be rewarded with a deep and true sense of peace. When we are really lucky, someone reaches out and offers us the support we need. But for all these lessons to be learned, we still have to wait out the storms, even when they are monsoons! This is why we do the yoga, this is why we do the breathing. When these storms hit, we can come back from them not too much worse for wear, even if we still need a friendly face.

How do you wait out storms? Have people reached out to you in the midst of them? After them?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

Using All the Tools in our Toolbox

Life has a funny way of forcing us to learn lessons even when we ignore them over and over again. When I was in Yoga Teacher Training, one of our teachers analogized yoga to a toolbox, a toolbox for all sorts of various aspects of life, from the physical to the spiritual. We can choose to access them at various times and places. When confronted with others and their circumstances, we have a toolbox full of ways to help or simply support them.

For those of us who practice yoga, this makes a lot of sense. Asana and meditation and breathing techniques can bring us to new and deeper understandings of a variety of life experiences, if not all of them. But even for devout yogis living at an ashram, there are other tools in the toolbox. For example, when we are meeting up with a friend, we have cell phones. When we have work to accomplish across the Pacific Ocean, we have email. Some of us use hiking or running or boxing to relieve our pent up stress.

The point is that we are not only lawyers or yogis, but we have a diverse set of life experience that can be tools in a variety of new experiences. Whether we are trained as paramedics or Olympic athletes or lawyers, our everyday experiences are understood through whatever experiences we have had until that point in life. When we encounter issues for which we have been specifically trained, our toolbox is there to help us navigate through it.

But we have to use the tools.

That is the lesson the universe seems to be trying to teach me. Over and over again. This past weekend, I finally understood. And it was a moment when so many of the tools in my toolbox could have been utilized and were not.

The short story is that I met a friend, who had no cell phone, in San Francisco. We were having an amazing time, but then we saw a boat coming into the bay, and she got up on a wall to see it, but with my sprained ankle, I could not climb, so I told her I would walk down to the end of the pier to see it. It was on Pier 39, one of the busiest places in San Francisco, over Memorial Day Weekend. What could possibly go wrong? 

Yep, we got separated. I stayed calm for a few minutes, but as the minutes ticked by, the panic sunk in, and I was sure I had lost my friend in San Francisco. I knew we would eventually find each other, but the panic grew and grew. After about 20 minutes of frantically searching (and calling my mommy), I went to the security booth, and as I was describing my missing friend, she walked by.

Of course, the story has a happy ending (and San Francisco showed off its utter beauty the entire time), but the lesson finally hit home. We have our toolboxes for a reason, and we cannot leave out any part of it. As I felt myself getting more and more freaked out, I felt the yoga bucket emptying faster and faster. I felt the downward spiral, but I saw no way around it. That could have been the toolbox lesson enough, but with my current job, I get that lesson on a daily basis. No, this lesson came from a job I had almost 12 years ago.

I have posted before about the divergent course my life has taken, from basketball player, to musician, to lawyer, to yogi. But one piece I left out, which ironically is the reason I wanted to go into lawyering for children, is that I used to be a camp counselor, actually a director of a summer camp with over 150 children in my care each day.

I used to take 150 children to San Francisco in the age before cell phones. And these were children, easily lost, and easily distracted. Yet we managed. We had contingency plan after contingency plan. We knew what to do when something did not go as planned, and the one time we needed it that I can remember vividly, it worked perfectly. So where was my contingency plan with my friend?

The universe has wanted me to check into my toolbox a lot recently. But it seems to be coming so often in the yoga realm. It is so easy to be focused on only one set of tools when our lives are full of so many. The wonderful thing about yoga is that it can help us clear our minds enough to remember all the tools we have, whether they be asana or meeting points. The overwhelm of life can blind us to so much, but we all contain such diverse and bountiful experiences that can guide is in so many aspects of our lives.

We live in a world in which we like to put each other, and ourselves, into boxes. I am a lawyer. I am a yogi. I am a ________. But we are so much more. We are all unique individuals, full of experiences that can guide each and every moment of our lives. The important thing is to remember the tools are there when we need them, and that, for me, is where the yoga comes in. What are your tools? How do you use them in new ways?

Namaste.

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

My Way or the Highway

Law, especially litigation, is a world determined by sides and “facts.” I have mentioned these issues before (here and here), but today I want to focus on something that has come up repeatedly in my life recently, both in my office and on my yoga mat.

Lawyers like to be right. It seems that anyone who likes to argue “will make a good lawyer” to their parents. I guess this is a time for a little self-disclosure – that is what people said about me. So, arguing and holding onto positions is in our blood. In law school, lawyers are taught to see all sides of a situation, but out in the real world, we have to take positions . . . and we have to stick to them. We have to stick to them even when we disagree with them.

In addition to the courtroom, lawyers take positions by writing. We write emails to other lawyers, motions to the court, closing arguments when we have run out of time, and even sometimes articles and books. In all these written communications, we must take a position. The good news is that your thoughts and ideas can be disseminated more widely, but the less than good news is that those thoughts are in ink . . . forever.

At a conference several years ago, I was speaking to a psychologist, and I had made a point of disagreeing with something he had written in my law school note. We were discussing that particular area of disagreement, and he said something that has stuck with me forever. He said, “That is the problem with writing; it is there forever.” In other words, he had begun to disagree with himself. This is a man who is well known throughout the world for his work, and people love him or love to hate him. And here he was saying that he has evolved and changed over the years. For the record, in discussion, we understood one another and agreed on most aspects discussed. I have the utmost respect for him . . . even when we do sometimes continue to disagree.

Constantly being expected to take a particular position and stick to it creates patterns, or samskaras, in the brain. We learn to do nothing but stick to our guns and tell people, “it’s my way or the highway.” It makes it easier, sometimes inevitable, that we become less compromising. It is not necessarily a choice, but over time, it just becomes the way we see the world.

And lawyers are not alone in this. One of my yoga teachers (actually one of my first teachers), on Sunday, asked us all to tune back into that essence of trying to always be “right.” She, too, had such an encounter during the week. She asked us to look at how it impacts our relationships with ourselves and each other. Timing could not have been better in my life. That was a theme of my week this week. Longtime readers will know that I just returned from New Zealand where I wrote a thesis on a new model for representing children. Now I represent children. Anyone else see a potential butting of the proverbial heads?

And this week it happened. The discussion about the proper model came to me front and centre (I take myself back to NZ when I can through spelling). Not surprisingly, someone disagreed with me. My model for representing children is definitely controversial, so this was not entirely unexpected.

And an amazing thing happened for me. I was okay with the disagreement. I was a bit upset. Of course I would like people to agree. But I stepped back, and I learned a lot from the conversation. I felt a little downtrodden – all that work on a thesis for naught? Really? But then I read a blog post that brought me back to my purpose by none other than my cousin writing about her 3-year-old son’s first imaginary friend. And then I went to the yoga class where this ebb and flow of relationships through being “right” was the theme du jour. I still think my model will work, but I do not see it as the only model.

There is no question that I like to be right, and I like when people agree with me. Not only am I a lawyer, but it is ingrained in us in society. But over time, through yoga, it has become easier for me to accept other points of view, to hold them, and to listen to them. Am I perfect at it? Absolutely not! There was some intensity in my discussion earlier in the week. But each encounter where we hold the entire story begins to create a new brain pattern, a new samskara, and we can begin to explore the world from all points of view.

Of course, it can also lead to caving on your position all the time, but that is a post for another day.

Where do you notice your “my way or the highway” approach to life? How do you respond when people disagree with a position you hold and believe is fundamental? Does it matter how much you care about your position?

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. 

The Body as Teacher

I have mentioned before that I went into yoga teacher training hoping to go deeper into yoga teachings. I used to scoff, somewhat, at the role asana plays in yoga. Sure, I thought, postures are important, but the real yoga is meditation and the changes it brings to our spirits, not our bodies.

But yoga teacher training changed all that. Not only did I learn about the koshas, and how yogis have always described how our bodies are one pathway to learning about the deeper aspects of ourselves, but I also experienced it myself. Sure, I always had known that our hips hold our emotions, and working with hips will often bring people to tears of laughter or tears of sorrow, but I had never, somehow, equated this to acknowledging the deepest potential of asana, or the postures.

(Ok, a quick aside – the real reason is because I got caught up in the feeling that the 100% asana-focused practice of modern, American yoga is not real yoga, so I had to rebel against that. I have since softened my belief structure around that, and I know, and have always known, that we can never remove the body from the rest of our being, but yeah, I got caught in that American yoga vs. “real” yoga debate.)

In some ways, it is silly that I never acknowledged this deep connection. After all, I have always understood how the body is one of the first indicators of our deeper sanity and being. I still believe the breath is our greatest teacher, but the body is like its right-hand man. And if you want proof, look at your colleagues. Look at yourself. I would wager a fairly large bet you already know this.

I’m going to use myself as an example these past few weeks. Prior to the past two weeks, the last time I was sick for more than a day, maybe two, was two years ago, and that lasted about three days. It turns out it was a cold or allergies. I cannot remember the last time I got the flu, if ever, and I had not experienced stress-related stomach anxiety since the bar exam. (To be honest, I do not remember that, but someone else does, so knowing what I know about memory, I will go with hers.) Prior to that, the last time I felt it was in college. Growing up, my stomach was a pretty solid indicator of my stress levels. And I had a lot of stomach issues. I was, apparently, a stressed-out kid. I will spare you the details of my last two weeks, but let's just say, my body has informed me that I am a wee bit stressed.

So once again, yoga and the law have taught me the same lessons as two sides of the same coin. Yoga helped me move beyond the stress-response in my body, and I was rarely, if ever, sick, and the law brought me right back to what was always underneath it all. I have learned three things from this, and I think they are worth sharing with anyone out there who notices these issues.

First, I really do love my job. It is difficult, scary, and stressful, but I get to do work I hope is useful, and I work with some of the most amazing people I know. Not only do I like them, but I truly and deeply respect them. I work in a system that needs serious healing, but it is also a system in which everyone there is working to make it better. It may not be perfect yet, and probably never will be, but everyone cares, and that is a huge step in the right direction. Why does loving the work matter? Because I am willing to find ways to work within it rather than run away at 100 miles per hour and never looking back. 

Second, the body is a teacher. Yes, I knew this. Yes, I was listening. And yes, I was also ignoring the signs. I had work to do. And the downward spiral began. It ended in the same stomach anxiety I had not experienced in years. It resulted in headaches and a sore back. These are all the complaints of modern America. But these are complaints I had not been making myself for years. And that brings me to the third lesson.

Yoga works. Yep, it has been all over the news that yoga can cause physical pain. And guess what? I agree 100%!!! There is a reason I never teach headstands in my classes or even shoulderstands unless I know the students and know they are safe doing them. There are many, many days I do not do either because I know my body is not up for it. So, yes, yoga can cause harm . . . when done without care and attention. But when we tune in and listen, yoga works. We can use the body to calm the mind and the mind to ease the body. The back pain, headaches, and anxiety can begin to be calmed. Are they going to disappear forever? Probably not. When I was a camp counselor, our boss once said, we could easily prevent all the children from ever getting hurt by having them sit inside in a circle all day. But would that be camp? Nope. So we had to find a happy medium – keep the kids as safe as possible, but also let them be kids.

Our own lives are the same. We could do nothing and be safe, calm, and pain free. Or we can live life and learn to live it in a way that is as safe and calm and pain-free as possible each moment. The body is a great indicator, and one that yoga can help. When the body is in a state of pain, it is in a state of dis-ease. By learning to recognize the signs early, hopefully we can keep ourselves free of deeper disease.

How have you noticed this in your life?

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 Final Lesson from the New Zealand Bush

I ended my epic adventure around New Zealand’s south island in what is perhaps the least exciting and interesting place on the island – Greymouth. It is the largest city on the West Coast, a part of the country known for rugged beaches and rugged people. It is wet. The weather can change in an instant. And it looks out over the awesome Tasman Sea. And I use the awesome in the sense of awe-inspiring. New Zealand is a place where "least interesting" is still amazing in its own right.

The Great Tasman Sea

I am glad I ended my trip in Greymouth. After the sheer beauty of the rest of the trip, it was a nice reminder that New Zealand is not all gorgeous snow-capped mountains and lakes that defy any definition of blue I had ever before imagined. But even in Greymouth, I was able to see the parts of New Zealand I am going to miss. I think chief among those is the New Zealand bush.

Here in New Zealand, what we Americans would call a forest, they call the bush. It is full of trees and plants found only in New Zealand, birds chirping, and my absolute favorite – the koru (Maori word for the birth of a fern), but that is a topic for another day. Today I want to talk about mud. That’s right – with all the mountains, oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, and forests, I want to talk about mud.

You have to understand, I am not a fan of mud. It’s wet, and I don’t particularly like water. It’s cold, and I don’t like being cold. It’s squishy, and that’s just, well, gross.

It may come as a surprise that I decided to walk into a NZ rainforest, up a big hill, in my non-hiking shoes, especially considering they have holes in them. Let’s just say I did not think this through very well. Back when it snowed in Dunedin, I talked about how we can face anything life throwsour way when we prepare. But what happens when you are stuck walking through mud in a pair of holey shoes? It’s simple, really. You put one foot in front of the other and keep on moving.

With each step into the squishy, wet, cold mud, I cared less and less that my shoes, socks, and even pants were getting dirty. The shoes had been destroyed for awhile, and I was already planning to get rid of them, and socks and pants can be washed. My aversion to the mud lessened, and I was able to enjoy the walk, enjoy being in the NZ bush, and enjoy looking out over an overcast view of the great Tasman Sea.

I told you they were gross

Like many lawyers, I tend to be a bit Type A. Yoga has definitely helped me slow down, relax, and enjoy the world around me a bit more. But as much as I have talked about these lessons off the mat, it took a month without much asana to actually find these lessons all around. It took hiking in rain, walking over swing bridges, and hiking through mud to realize our general aversions matter a lot less than the beauty that surrounds us each day.

I still think it is better to be prepared and ready for what life might throw our way. But I have also learned that when we are not prepared for particulars, the more our reserve bucket is full of internal preparations, the better we really can cope with anything. Sure, all I had to cope with was a bit of rain, a lot of wind, and some nasty mud, but a year ago, these things would have brought me to tears (or at least close). Now they bring a smile to my face and a sigh, “yup, I’m in New Zealand!”

I finished writing this while sitting at the Auckland airport waiting to board my flight back to the United States, and the departure screen listing the flights telling everyone what to do is right in front of me. The flight for San Francisco currently says, “Relax.” Fitting, really. A year of being upside down and trying to find yoga in everyday life on the other side of the world has taught me that we can learn to relax, smile, and remember that we can handle whatever life throws our way.

 Departure Information

Kia Ora, New Zealand! I will be back, but until then . . .

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2011, all rights reserved. 

In Our Element

As I have mentioned many times here before, yoga has helped me tune in with the natural world a bit better. Perhaps it is because I simply pay more attention, but I actually think I understand and feel the natural world more. I also crave it more. If for no other reason, that is one of the best parts of being in New Zealand. The natural world abounds here like nowhere else I have ever been.

Of course, that can have consequences, as I mentioned in thepost describing where I was attacked by a sea lion. But more often, I find I learn something about the world, and about myself without having to fear for my life . . . too much. The other day, I was kayaking in yet another of the beautiful cities in New Zealand, Kaikoura. In Kaikoura, snow-capped mountains meet native bush meet Pacific Ocean.

This was my first time kayaking, and as I mentioned before, swimming is not something I do well, so I guess I was putting myself slightly into harm’s way, but once nice thing about traveling alone is that when you do crazy things like kayaking, you often end up being paired with the guide, as I was. (As a digression, he did almost capsize the boat a few times while looking for paua [abalone] for his dinner that night and when he stood up in the boat to look at a crayfish cage, but we did not capsize, and I got back to shore without getting wet.)

We were hoping to see the orcas that had graced the coastline earlier in the day, but they were nowhere to be seen, even when the seals got in the water. Oh well. But it was from the seals that I learned my lesson. Seals are incredibly playful and with romp and swim with humans while in the water. On land, however, they are aggressive and dangerous and according to several signs around town, they will inflict “infectious bites.”

So what’s the difference?

On land, the seals feel vulnerable. They do not move as quickly as they do in water, and in the very recent past, they were hunted to near extinction while lounging and sunning away on the rocks. In water, however, they are quick, secure, and in their element. It is almost as though they have multiple personality disorder when it comes to interacting with humans, but really, it is about feeling safe.

A seal playing in the water near our kayak (next to some massive kelp)

Humans, and indeed lawyers especially, are no different. When we feel threatened, we become aggressive, inconsiderate, and sometimes vicious. While we will not (hopefully) inflict gangrene on anyone through a nasty bite, our interactions are infectious, and combined with misunderstanding and confusion, lead to the downward spiral of our relationships (and our emailexchanges).

But when we are in our element, when we feel secure and understand ourselves well enough, we can handle the exact same situation with more ease and control. We know that humans are the same whether they are in the water or on land, but to seals, the two experiences are entirely different. Filing a motion, replying to an email, and having a conversation with your boss are all the same situations whether we feel secure or do not, but our responses to them very significantly depending on how secure we feel.

In many ways, yoga and all I have learned from it have helped me find that sense of security more often. I certainly do not feel it always (and I know of no one that does), but the ability to respond rather thanreact becomes easier over time. In that way, yoga has helped me find my element and become more playful rather than aggressive. Apparently, however, I still bring out the aggression in others when they are not in their element (though sea lions are different than seals).

Do you notice a difference in your responses when you are in your element vs. when you are not? What do you do to bring yourself into your element and safety?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2011, all rights reserved.

It’s the little things

I have been traveling a lot recently. Not only have I been taking advantage of my last few weeks in New Zealand, but I attended the NZ Family Law Conference, and I had a final meeting for Fulbright, along with Thanksgiving dinner at the US Ambassador’s Residence. I will continue to travel for the next few weeks until I head back to the United States, and then when I get back to the US, I will be homeless until January 8 even though I start work on December 27.

View of Queen Charlotte Sound with a koru (fern opening). This represents so much of my time in NZ.

I’m sharing this itinerary as a long way of saying there is not a lot of time and space for yoga, especially because I stay at hostels and not hotels when traveling. I am really hoping this is the last trip of my life where I do that, but I digress. All the traveling, lack of personal space, and lack of a quality night sleep can add up. But that is when one of the best lessons I have learned from my yoga teacher here in Dunedin kicks in.

It is the little things that make a huge difference. This is just another of the yoga paradoxes: sometimes the less you do, the more results you see.

My teacher’s favorite example is relieving low back pain by lying on the floor and moving the pelvis forward and back, which is sometimes used as a preparation for bridge pose, but here, it is useful in its own right. It helps relieve the lower back muscles. It is simple, easy, and fairly quick. Plus, it results in massive change in the low back. I have used it a lot since I have been doing 6-hour hikes carrying a heavy pack.

This lesson is, of course, one that translates into life off the mat as well. I hear from people so often that the reason they do not do yoga is because they do not have the time. They often think it takes a huge commitment. In truth, the only commitment necessary is the commitment to take a few moments for yourself . . . even for five minutes per day.

So often we think that only the big things are worth doing. We are only going to go to the gym if we can stay for an hour, we are only going to do yoga if we can go to a class, and we are only going to write to a long-lost friend if we can find the perfect words to say. We feel we must do it all or it is not worth doing. Thus, we end up only doing the things that matter to us when we can “find the time.”

The truth of the matter, however, is that rather than the big moments, our lives are defined by the small ones. Each moment is a choice to do something, and our choices in each moment matter. Especially at this time of year when we are bombarded with mass consumerism, big holidays, and serious gluttony, taking a moment to recognize the little parts of life that matter is especially important. Ironically, it is the holiday season when we are “supposed” to pay attention to the little things that we lose sight of them.

Instead of recognizing gratitude once per year, remember to say thank you every single day. Instead of just sending a card once per year, take a 10 minute walk and call an old friend. Instead of popping the painkiller for the low back pain, lie on the floor and give yourself a 5-minute massage. These little moments add up, and they remind us how deeply connected we are. They also begin to make massive changes in our lives.

What are your favorite little things to keep you going each day?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2011, all rights reserved.

Snow in August

I promise this blog is not going to become a weather report between this post and the one about Frost in June, but these have been big events for me. This time, it is not about respecting our limits (though I still keep saying and thinking that it is December), but actually about seeing our ability to handle what is thrown our way by entering the world as it is rather than what our imaginations make us think it might be.

Yesterday morning I awoke to not only snow-covered Dunedin but “bitter cold southerly gales.” Kiwis know that a “southerly” means the wind is coming straight from Antarctica. There is no land to warm it up between the icy desert and a little town called Dunedin. In other words, it is cold and fierce. But I had to get to town for something. So, I bundled up; I put on my waterproof pants, my hiking shoes, my brand-new thermal jersey, my merino jersey, my awesome winter coat, and I even learned to use the hood on the coat to keep it on even in the crazy wind. In other words, I prepared. But I was nervous.

Before leaving the house, all I had to go by was a weather report online and snow-covered streets and footpaths (sidewalks) as far as the eye could see. I imagined how bad it was out there, how terrible it would feel to be there, and how much I just wanted to stay inside where it was warm(er). (New Zealand is not well known for its indoor heating; that’s my judicious way of saying how obscenely cold it is inside here.) Yup, the imagination is a powerful tool. But I put on the proper clothes and walked out the door.

This is the first hill I walked down. I live just at the top there.

And this is the hill I had to walk down. Beautiful view of snow covered Dunedin, eh? (And no, the buses were not running.)

Guess what? By the time I made it to the university (over an hour later), I was sweating and also had some fun!

Halfway down the hill, I realized something important as I was laughing at myself and enjoying the snow. I realized preparation and mindset make the difference. When we are prepared, we can handle just about anything life throws our way. It means we do not have to let stress and fear determine our lives. Our state of mind allows us to determine our response to our situations rather than allowing the situations to run our lives.

This is never more apparent to me than every six months watching the bar exam ritual. The bar exam is the legal version of hazing. I remember the summer of study when stress took over peoples’ lives, when imaginations ran wild with all sorts of ways to fail. Many people do not sleep the night before the exam. Some people pass out during the exam. People get so worked up and nervous about the exam they forget how much they actually know. They forget how prepared they really are.

Life can throw any number of situations at us. From little quibbles with our friends, families, and colleagues to unprecedented weather situations. We can, of course, ruminate on these situations, think about them and how terrible they could be or could become. But we can also throw on a few layers of preparation and walk out the door.

Yoga is one way to help prepare us for those times in life when simply putting on a few layers and a windproof jacket are not enough. It helps us slow down, take a step back, and meet each situation as it is rather than as we imagine it to be. Yoga, through our breath and attention to our bodies at individual moments, provides us the insight for being with life rather than with our crazy versions of all the ills that might occur.

After all, when you walk out the door, you may just find that things are a lot more enjoyable than you had expected.

Namaste.

Postscript: This post was dually inspired – partly by the snow and also partly by a film I saw. I could not put them in the same post because of a) length and b) the film confronts torture, not snow, and I want to write about it on its own terms. That will be the content of the next post.

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

Coming home to yoga

My life has been unsettled these past few months. I have not had my own place to live since mid-December. I have traversed the date line, spent weeks in hostels and hotels, and eating out, and it has caught up to me. For the first time in years, my back is sore in ways I do not understand, and I am feeling stuffed up for no good reason. In short, I have the effects of not doing yoga.

Longtime readers of this blog know that I often talk about yoga off the mat. The entire point of this blog is about putting yoga in your everyday life. As I said in this post, yoga can and should be done anywhere by anyone. Thus, tree pose around the world was born. On my travels, I found some opportunities.

But as beautiful and fun as those opportunities were, I learned another big lesson. Although yoga can be done anywhere, we still have to make time for it, more than 5 minutes at a time. You do not need 90 minute classes everyday, but truly setting aside time for yourself, to learn the tools that you can use at all times, is essential.

I think the world of yoga, especially for lawyers looking to utilize it throughout the day, is like a bucket. You fill it up, and you continue to top it up when it begins to run low, but if you are not topping it up enough, the reserves run out, and so do its benefits. Thus, if you are doing five-minute yoga every few hours, it stays full. If you go without for a few months, the reserves run out as well.

The good thing about yoga is that you can always go back. You can start easy again, reformulating how you want yoga to look in your life and in your work. Being without for a period of time is a great way to reassess. What was really working? What was not?

As the last two posts (here and here) have discussed, patterns can get in the way of our true growth. Yoga can become a pattern, especially if you are only doing one kind of yoga, with the same teacher, or doing the same five poses at your desk each day. Forcing ourselves out of our patterns is a great way to reassess and determine how best to move forward, how best to use the practice as a benefit in the future.

So, with my sore back and stuffy nose, I am headed to a yoga class tonight with a new kiwi friend. I know nothing of the studio and nothing of the teacher, but yoga is internal. I am going to start creating a new community, something yoga and the law have both taught me is essential to growth. Hopefully, I will find new ways of integrating yoga into my life, my work, and the world.

Namaste and Blessings!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved
This blog is not affiliated with Fulbright or Fulbright New Zealand, and all opinions expressed herein are my own.

Why this Jew Loves Christmas

I have never been a particularly religious person. I have always, however, been fascinated by religion, spirituality, energy, etc. My most recent fascination, once again sparked by my dear brother, is crystals. The Earth has so much to teach, and today I felt its presence once again, but more on that in a moment.

As an American Jew, Christmas meant movies and Chinese food growing up. My family never got into the habit of serving meals to the poor, though I would often feed meals at my mother’s nursing homes on Christmas and/or Thanksgiving every year. Really, Christmas was just like any other day. But then I began searching, and I found that I love Christmas.

Like Thanksgiving with gratitude, the Christmas spirit permeates the air. It is a spirit of joy and togetherness, a time when old wounds can be healed, and the person at the grocery store checkout line can become your new best friend, even if only for the . . . ahem, 30 minutes you are waiting to check out because you go grocery shopping on December 24.

There is no question that consumerism has overtaken much of the Christmas spirit, but underlying it is the desire to bring joy to people. We buy gifts for our friends and family as a way to say we care. Many days, I disagree with the outcome (the consumerist culture), but not with the joy of sharing and giving. The joy on a child’s face when he gets the Superman pajamas from Grandma (my nephew yesterday) is worth every moment. The Christmas spirit is about giving - again, yesterday, a woman at a Tibetan store gave my nephew a pair of gloves because he was so patiently waiting for the rest of us (we were deciding on the perfect Tibetan Singing Bowl for my brother).

Religiously, Christmas is about the birth of the Messiah, if you believe in that. Taking that up the abstraction ladder (as my Torts professor called it), Christmas represents the birth of possibility, of saving ourselves from ourselves, from our own internal hells. To me, and I think to many others, the answer to that is compassion, kindness, working together, sharing, etc. During Christmas, these ideas come together, and we see that in the spirit of the holidays, we can find new ways to interact with each other, through kindness instead of hate, through joy instead of sorrow. I hope this spirit permeates the legal profession. What a way to change the way we do law - through a spirit of joy instead of adversary.

So Christmas has gained new meaning as I have grown up and seen it for what it is. I took a walk this morning, and the air was just full of joy and happiness. The Earth breathes easier when we are all in this spirit. We all breathe easier. My wish/hope/prayer for today is that we continue to find ways to interact like this throughout the entire year. May we all make friends in grocery stores, spread joy, and share love with one another . . . no matter your religion.

Merry Christmas to all, and I hope you still get your movie and Chinese food, if that is your tradition. I know I am still off to a movie today!

Namaste and Blessings!

© 2010 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

Remembering the Tools - A Lesson from 2010

I have been thinking about today’s Reverb10 prompt all day: Lesson Learned What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward?

I do not seem to have an answer. I learned so many things about myself, but perhaps the greatest lesson, and the one that fits into the Is Yoga Legal theme is that talking the talk is not always enough. I have written about this before, but as this year comes to an end, and I am faced leaving my Arizona life behind for a year to pursue an amazing opportunity in New Zealand, this lesson is smacking me in the face . . . constantly.

During these past few months, I have written more than once, even for the Reverb10 prompts, about having found my own path this year, meaning that I have found the courage to take my own path, whatever it is. Guidance from others, especially those who have supported me along the way to get here, is still greatly appreciated, but like all little birds, it is time to spread my own wings and fly.

But with that comes some bumps along the road. Just the other night, I was teaching a yoga class, and one of the women in the class shattered the bones in her toe. Thus, she has been unable to do her yoga practice “correctly” for several months. Although my sprained ankle did not ground me the way her toe has grounded her, I can understand how much it affects her. She asked me what to do about it, how to have her practice without her ego getting in the way.

Is there a good answer?

Yoga, on one level is about letting go of the ego, following your inner voice, ignoring those around you, and finding your own internal strength. I tell everyone who will listen (and many who would choose not to listen) that yoga is for anyone with any body. I believe that.

I also know that we live in the modern era. We are human. We have human emotions. Like so many others, I have pulled muscles, hurt my shoulder, and pushed myself beyond my limits. For what? To prove something to others? To prove something to myself?

On one level, I have gone beyond that - even when teaching, I joke about my limitations, show people bad form in postures, and then come out of going too deep to demonstrate that it is possible to get the same benefits without getting into the full expression of the post. But there are also days when I am a student in class, along with people who often take my classes, ad I find myself pushing myself a little farther . . . after all, I am a teacher, I have to look good in a class, right?

This year’s lesson is learning that as much as I “know” that my ego should not get in the way, sometimes it does, and that is okay!

So, what about lawyers? Talk about a profession of egos! We know that our lawyer egos can get in the way of our clients’ best interests sometimes; we know that being the best in the workplace can get in the way of our home life sometimes; we know that our perfectionist qualities are our biggest weakness (side note: in a mock interview once, the interviewer asked me my biggest weakness, and I was prepared to say, “I’m a perfectionist,” but he completed his question saying, “Don’t say, you’re a perfectionist.” Apparently, that is a common response among lawyers. Who knew?).

We know all this, yet we get tied up in it. As people living in this modern, fast-paced world, our egos drive us. Yoga gives us the tools to transcend the ego, but some days we forget how to use them . . . and that is okay.

So, while it would be great to always turn off the ego, allow our reminders (e.g., shattered toes and sprained ankles and deadlines) to slow us down enough to use those tools, sometimes we forget and we trudge through, and we hurt ourselves, or others, unwittingly. The important thing is that we learn, step back into the game, and remember the tools for the next lesson. After all, it turns out that what does not kill us really does make us stronger.

Where have you forgotten to use your yoga tools? What did you learn?

Namaste and Blessings!

© 2010 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved