What it Means to Relax Part 1

The internet and blogs and books are full of information about the fight, flight, or freeze response and the sympathetic nervous system. My favorite personal writing about it was in response to getting chased by a sea lion in New Zealand. It was a perfect example of the fight, flight, or freeze response done right . . . and for the reason we have the response in the first place. I was being chased by a wild animal, and I had to get away. I got away. What happens, though, when that threat is gone? Can our body go back to its resting state?

The sympathetic nervous system is the part of the nervous system that activates when we are in fight, flight, or freeze. The parasympathetic nervous system is what allows us to relax and heal. It is the “rest and digest” part of the nervous system. It is what allows our body to go into its healing place. As I have mentioned before, the body is capable of healing itself, but in order to do that, it must be in a state of rest.

Chronic stress (of all varieties) has a tendency to keep our bodies in a constant state of the fight, flight, or freeze response without an opportunity to get into the parasympathetic “rest and digest” and heal mode. This, of course, can wreck havoc on our health. And look around at the world and notice how many people deal with chronic dis-ease. Many of us are not living in our parasympathetic state most of the time.

But what does it mean to truly rest? How many of us are able to get into that space? How many of us know what it really feels like to allow the body to release its tension patterns?

Most of us get so used to our tension patterns we do not even realize when we are holding them. Yoga is one of the ways we learn how to go into our bodies and learn to listen to them and find our patterns. The patterns in our body are similar to our mental patterns, called samskaras. Undoing a samskara is not an easy task. It requires knowing it and wanting it to change. But then it also requires unwinding the pattern itself, a task that can seem daunting when we have lived with the samskara longer than we have not. Imagine taking a hike and ask yourself which is easier – the pre-made path or the path never before taken? Imagine cutting down a path to hike, and that is what it takes to release a long-held samskara.

Releasing a tension pattern in the body is no different. We have to first feel the tension patterns and then be willing to release them. But then we have to understand what it takes to relax. We have to trust that when we release the tension, something else will continue to hold our body up.

Tension patterns exist for a reason. Some are there because of how we sit at a desk or in a car. Some are there, however, as a response to the traumas we have faced in our lives. Trauma can come in many forms – childhood abuse, relationship abuse, earthquakes, floods, and even vicarious trauma. When we experience trauma, we tense up to protect ourselves and never let go for fear of not having the strength to stay upright. But those patterns then begin to cause their own problems. Long after they have stopped protecting us from a trauma, they wreck havoc on our bodies and make it difficult to allow the body to relax.

And then we have a three-fold problem. The mental samskaras are the thoughts we hold as a result of our childhood and events in our lives, and they hold the body in tension. Together, they inhibit our parasympathetic nervous system from activating, and we end up with a downward spiral of tension and mental patterns that becomes more and more difficult to overcome, and at the end of the day it is our health (mental, physical, and spiritual) that suffers. Our ability to heal is diminished until we learn to bypass these tension patterns.

I want to be clear. We never lose the ability to heal. We inhibit our body’s access to its healing capabilities. And it is because we are literally stuck in a rut and trying to pull ourselves out. But this can be overcome, and deep within us we never lose the ability to heal ourselves. The parasympathetic nervous system is always there, and it is always able to function if we give it the time and quiet to do it.

But instead we hold our tension patterns. We live in a world with nearly constant overwhelm. There are more forms of pollution today than ever before. We have chemical pollutions, of course, but we also have noise, news, and phone pollution. We have stress of constantly being connected, and we have the stress of trying to keep up as the world moves faster and faster and faster.

But amidst it all, relaxation is still possible. We can find a way to release the tension in the body and allow our body to enter its natural healing state. But we have to be willing to surrender. We have to be willing to trust that when we let go, the body, and therefore ourselves, will be safe. We hear so often how the body and the mind are connected. I do not actually subscribe to that mentality. In my worldview, they are simply the same thing. The more I read in scientific, not new age, literature, the more true that statement is.

So tension is tension, whether mental or physical. They are one and the same. Our brains run our bodies, and together they create health or dis-ease. So, today I ask you to notice your mental patterns. Notice your physical tension patterns. Where are they? What do they mean? And then ask yourself the all-important question. In this world of constant overwhelm, are you willing to release these patterns to find calm and health? Part 2 will have some ideas for learning these techniques.

Namaste!

©Rebecca Stahl 2014, all rights reserved

The post, What it Means to Relax Part 1, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

Cleansing Samskaras

I am currently doing an ayurvedic cleanse. It consists of two weeks of eating simply, participating in ayurvedic rituals to cleanse and heal, and steering clear of some of the most difficult foods for us to handle – coffee, alcohol, and dairy. Ayurveda is often called Yoga’s sister science because it is the ancient healing modality from India. There is so much to Ayurveda, and perhaps my next post will cover those issues, but today I want to focus on what it means to cleanse and let go.

This is the beginning of autumn in the northern hemisphere. Here in the United States, we often call this season fall. It gets that name because it is when all the leaves fall off the trees. Of course, that barely happens here in the Tucson desert, but it is my favorite time of year and one thing I miss from living in places that actually have four seasons. (Of course, come January, when I’m not wearing a parka, I stop my whining.)

But the point is that autumn is a time to let go of that which no longer serves us. It is a time to slow down as the heat of the summer begins to dissipate. We begin to crave warming and grounding foods. And this is the reason to cleanse in autumn. It is a time to reset after the summer and move forward into simpler times. It is also one of the two times of year where we are closest to equal parts light and dark in our days because it is right after the equinox. This major shift in the Earth allows us to make major shift within ourselves.

Certainly the cleanse is about releasing internal, physical toxins and calming the digestive tract to help it better digest our food. And as Hippocrates said, “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be they food.” Food has the power to harm and to heal and be a beacon for our overall health. But there is something more to this cleanse than simply cleansing physically.

Cleansing is an opportunity to release old patterns that no longer serve us. I have written before about samskaras. A samskara, while it sometimes has a negative connotation as a “bad” pattern we hold, is nothing more than a pattern. The word itself is neutral. If we act in a certain way often enough, it simply becomes a pattern, and we no longer have to think about what we are doing. It simply comes naturally.

To be clear, this is required in life. We have to be able to turn off our brains at times and run on autopilot. If we had to think about everything every time we tried to do something, we would get very little done. And we know physiologically, this is how the brain is set up. Babies are born with many more neurons than adults have. As time goes on, they go through a process called “pruning,” whereby they create synapses, or pathways in the brain, that lead to modes of being. This is why it is so much easier for babies to learn than adults. Their brains are more malleable because they have very few synapses but a lot of neurons to create them (though new research suggests adult brains are more malleable than previously thought). 

Therefore, patterns we develop in childhood lead to the patterns many of us carry into adulthood. These can include anything from good study habits to driving on the left side of the road to craving unhealthy foods to negative self-talk. While the neurosciences call these synapses, yoga philosophy calls them samskaras, and Buddhism calls them samsaras. So, some samskaras are uplifting and help us get through our days, while others of them bog us down and can eventually create dis-ease.

And as fall begins and we think about letting go and slowing down for winter, it is important to notice the patterns we hold that no longer serve us or might be causing us some disease. Louise Hay, who wrote, “You Can Heal Your Life,” talks about the power of affirmations to overcome all disease. And as I mentioned a few months ago, the medical literature is beginning to agree. What we think matters to our health, and what we think can shape our health perhaps more than some of us would like to admit.

So, what are some negative samskaras some of us hold? Simply read these statements and ask yourself if any of them resonate with you.

I’m not good enough.

I’m not loveable.

I deserve to suffer.

I will not succeed, so I will not even try.

I do not deserve happiness.

There is no joy in my life.

I am scared.

Can you think of others you bring into your life? There are so many ways we inhibit our greatest good from coming forward. But we can begin to overcome these negative patterns. There are several emerging psychological techniques specifically designed to reframe these negative patterns, including Somatic Experiencing, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Tapping/Emotional Freedom Technique.

But the first step is simply noticing what we do to create this self harm. I see it so often in the work I do. It comes up everywhere to people in healing professions. It is so much easier to see when other people do it than when we do it ourselves. But I know very few people who do not do this, and therefore noticing is the first step.

The next step is to reframe the pattern. As Robert Frost said, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” When we leave our old patterns behind, we can begin to create new patterns. We have to make the choice to do that. And we begin to create new patterns by reframing our self-talk. When we notice a negative statement coming, state a positive one. There are literally thousands of affirmations we could say, but I want to leave you with one in particular.

No single blog post is going to help you overcome all your negative samskaras.  But a friend of mine gave me one of my favorites, “I love myself. I forgive myself.” And I add to that, “I am safe.” I figure this covers the vast majority of negative self-talk so many of us use. So I hope you are able to look in a mirror every day and say to yourself, "I love myself. I forgive myself. I am safe." 

How do you notice your self-talk? Is it causing you dis- ease? What helps you reframe the talk?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

The post, Cleansing Samskaras, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

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.

The Hard Drive Effect

I have never lived a day without a computer. I am probably one of the oldest people who can say that (and yes, I’m only 30), and I feel pretty spoiled saying it, but I’m saying it to make a deeper point. Our very first family computer was an Apple IIe Plus. That was back when Apple was cool before it was not cool before it became the coolest thing ever. That’s societally speaking. My personal views of Apple are not necessary to the larger point.

That original computer had no hard drive on which to add information. None. There was absolutely no way to store information on the computer. (As I have mentioned before, my memory is terrible. I could be totally wrong about this, and if I am, I apologize.) The only way to store information was on a floppy disk. They were called that because they were actually floppy. I do not remember how much information they held, but it was around 1-2 megabytes, I think. The little floppy disks, which were no longer floppy, held around 3 megabytes, if I remember correctly, and they appeared shortly after the original floppy disks. Today, you can buy a thumb drive that holds 128 gigabytes. I am terrible at math, but I can feel pretty confident that is a lot more than 3 megabytes. And hard drives? They are measured in terabytes. I did not even know tera was a measurable unit until those hard drives came out.

And hard drive storage is not the only exponential increase. Gmail changed the face of email when it started offering 1gigabyte of storage with a free account. That was around 2004. Today, I am using 3 gigabytes of my 10.1 gigabyte account. That is a lot of emails, even if they have attachments. I am not a computer scientist, and hard drives rarely have anything to do with yoga, so what is the point?

We hold onto stuff. We hold onto a lot of stuff, even when we do not realize we are doing it.

We keep making more and more space to hold onto more and more stuff. I like to tell people that one of the things I like about moving so much is that I get to clean out my stuff once in awhile. But the truth is that electronically, I hold onto everything. Now that we can hold onto these items, we never have to let go. We can look through old emails and remind ourselves of our “justified” anger at someone about something that happened years ago. We can also look through old documents and photos to remind us where we have been. But all this space leaves us little incentive to delete items that no longer serve us.

And that’s energy. That’s energy we could let go but instead hold, even if we do not see it. It is the same energy we store in our bodies when we do not let go of that which no longer serves us. As we get more and more used to never letting go, our bodies think it is normal and continue to hold old energies. And our bodies can hold a lot more information than a terabyte or two (however much that actually is). 

These held energies do to us just what junk does to a hard drive. They create clutter. And clutter creates heaviness and pain. Pain and disease are often a result of stuck energy. When prana, the life force, does not freely flow through us, it creates pain. That pain can be a sore neck from jutting the neck out while looking at a computer screen, or it can be years of pent up emotions getting stuck in the hips until we have sciatica.

Clutter also creates confusion. When there is clutter in our energies, it is more difficult to think clearly. It is more difficult to respond rather than react. It is more difficult to be creative and innovative. We have to clear out these old patterns in order to make space for something new.

And yes, this is where yoga can help. Yoga gives us the opportunity to tune into our bodies and minds and let go of the clutter. It also gives us a chance to see what and where we have held our energies. When we sit in meditation, we can watch our thoughts race by and just let them be. When we let them come and go without getting caught up in them, over time, it becomes easier just to let them arise and then disappear. When we tune into the pain and stuck energy in our bodies, over time, we can learn to breathe into it, soften into it, and let it start moving again. Eventually, the pain begins to dissipate.

But this does not happen overnight. We are hardwiring ourselves to hold onto energy, to hold onto clutter. We are creating samskaras of holding energy. As our hard drives get bigger, and we take less time in quiet solitude, we create holding patterns rather than releasing patterns. These patterns are difficult to break. But it can be done. And over time, releasing these patterns, and releasing these energies can only open us up to bigger opportunities going forward.

This does not mean I am deleting my hard drive. But I may start deleting more emails. I also may start deleting the photos I do not like. Just because I can save them does not mean I should. But most importantly, it is time to notice the holding patterns within ourselves. How does our excessive ability to never let go inhibit our ability to let go of that which no longer serves us? 

How do you notice yourself holding onto energy? What do you do to release it?

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.

Slavery, Freedom, Death, and Rebirth

This is an intense weekend. Good Friday, the Friday before Easter, marks the day Jesus died on the cross. Friday night is the first night of Passover, the Jewish holiday during which we remember the Exodus from Egypt, from slavery to freedom. Sunday is Easter, that when divorced from bunnies and chocolates, is a celebration of Jesus rising from death.

When a large number of people think about the same ideas, those ideas permeate the world in which we live. I discussed this before in regards to the Christmas spirit.  Passover has always been one of my favorite holidays. In part, it was because it was our “family” holiday, the time we all got together. But it also symbolizes an escape from slavery and the jubilation that comes with freedom. 

Exodus is a big word. It is not just an escape. It is a grand departure. Death and rebirth are not small topics. They are, perhaps, the deepest conversations we can have. It is not chronologically a coincidence that Passover and Easter are usually close together; Jesus’ last supper was a Passover Seder. It is also not a coincidence these events happen in spring, the season of renewal, the reminder that there will be sun and warmth ahead (even with a little wind and imbalance) after the cold, dark winter (unless you live in Arizona in which case it was a mild, sunny winter).

But more importantly, it is not a coincidence with their themes. In order to break free from slavery, we have to let our old selves die, and wake up to a new world and to new possibilities. We have to be willing to see the world through beginner’s eyes. But that is a scary prospect. Letting go of who we are today, even if we know that tomorrow will be better, can paralyze us with fear. And yet, at this time of year, we hold these themes in our collective consciousness, and we ask ourselves how we can make them part of our daily lives.

Today, we hear the slavery metaphor a lot. We talk about being enslaved by work, addicted to our electronic devices (crackberry, anyone?), and torn between time for ourselves and time for other people. But we only have to see it as enslavement if we choose. What if we were able to see our freedom of choice in every single moment? What if we decided to start today?

Yoga gives us the perfect opportunity to teach ourselves how to wake up as new people. At the end of a yoga practice, we do savasana, corpse pose (apparently this Easter/Passover theme about savasana has appeared before on this blog). That prior post does not, however, get into what savasana really is. It is meant to be a death. It is called corpse pose for a reason. It is where our old self dies, and we can be reborn. We can come out of savasana a new person, open to possibilities. We can have an empty mind.

Savasana is the reminder that we will wake back up after the fear of letting our old selves go. We can let go of beliefs about ourselves and others. We can let go of our fears and hindrances. We can let our old selves disapear knowing that we will emerge. Passover, of course, ends with the jubilation of the escape. It leaves out the next 40 years wandering in the desert. It is a brief moment in time to be thankful for the freedom, but it leaves out the fear that comes next, sometimes immediately. Each moment we overcome a particular individual enslavement, we feel a moment of jubilation . . . and then the fear sets in, and we remember we have to wander the desert, whatever that is in our life.

Yoga is the foundation to remind us that we can continuously come back to our practice and make our choice each and every day. We can let it got, we can wake back up, and we can find our own freedom in each moment. While Passover and Easter teach us the big themes and bring them into our collective consciousness, yoga gives us the day-to-day tools to remember that each moment is a choice, and we can carry these themes with us throughout our days, weeks, and months. I hope you all have a happy and healthy holiday weekend, whether you celebrate or not. 

How do you carry these themes with you throughout your daily lives?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved. 

When We Dehumanize Ourselves

The last post discussed what happens to us when we dehumanize other people. This post is going to focus on how often we choose to dehumanize ourselves. There are a couple of reasons I chose to write them in this order even though so much of this blog has focused on the need to care for ourselves first and foremost. After all, as I was reminded at the MindfulLawyer Conference, “the heart pumps blood to itself first.”

I chose to write about dehumanizing others first because honestly, it has been more in my face, so to speak. Daily I have witnessed people who ostensibly care deeply about others speaking in awful ways about people because of those peoples’ actions. But then I realized that we can only begin to dehumanize others when we have learned to do it to ourselves just like we can only truly care about others once we have learned to care for ourselves.

So, why do we dehumanize ourselves? It is a coping mechanism. It allows us to not endure the full impact of the emotional world in which we find ourselves. On many levels this is necessary. At the most recent conference I attended this past weekend, a lawyer stood up in the room and said his job is to be a lawyer, not his client’s bff (and yes, he said b-f-f). And he is right; we need to step off the emotional roller coaster that clients (or friends and family) want us to ride.

But it can also cause us pain. When we dehumanize ourselves and turn off our emotional centers, we train ourselves to do just that. When we tune out the pain, we are also training ourselves to tune out the joy and happiness. We are creating new samskaras, or patterns, of how to interact with people. This time, however, they are about tuning people out, so we can protect ourselves.

It can be scary to meet your clients, or anyone, where they are emotionally. It means being vulnerable. It means sometimes feeling their pain. But it also means that we remember how to emotionally connect to ourselves as well. Bringing ourselves back to this state of humanization reminds us how to humanize others. It helps us empathize with them and not be dull to their pain.

At the end of the day, we are all in this world together. Thus, dehumanizing ourselves and dehumanizing others are, in many ways, the same. They are defenses to protect us for recognizing that people we think are awful are also human, and to protect ourselves from feeling the pain that others experience. But these mechanisms also keep us apart from people and ourselves. We are less able to experience joy and happiness, less able to laugh, and less able to fully experience all that life has to offer.

There are certainly days where tuning out is necessary. But when we make it a practice, we only bring long-term harm to ourselves. I cannot claim to be an expert in dealing with this. My new job forces me to confront this not on a daily basis, but on an hourly one. But what I have realized, in this job and before, is that when we choose to separate consciously, we can consciously return, as long as sometimes we are willing to go to the place of connection, even when painful. I notice my life start to become a crazy mess when I tune out and dehumanize myself without realizing it. When I finally do realize that I have done it, I realize how difficult it is to come back to a place of joy. But the realization helps, and each time it gets easier. It is about creating the patterns of humanization.

Do you notice when you do this? What do you do about it?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

Back to Basics

“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” – John Wooden

It is sort of hard for the current me to believe, but there was a time when I wanted to go to Stanford for college to play basketball. Sadly, I stopped growing at about 5’6” (167 cm), and more importantly, I was never very good. But that did not mean I did not try, and I went to a basketball camp a couple of times, which was run by Steve Lavin, an assistant coach for UCLA, where John Wooden’s legacy has lived for years. So this is how a lawyer-yogi quotes John Wooden and knows what it means. The man was, and remains, inspiring. I went looking for him (specifically the quote above) when I wanted to write this post, and I found several gems. Expect him to grace the pages of this blog over the next several weeks.

But today’s topic is “back to basics.” I have talked about this before (here and here), but I have also been thinking about it a lot this week.  All of the yoga teachers whose classes I attend know that I am also a teacher. So do many of the other people in the classes. But many people in the class are “better” at asana than I am. I have very problematic hips and a serious fear of handstands, so my asana practice comes and goes. Some days (ok, most days), I think I have more to learn than the first time I stepped on a mat.

And that’s the best part! 

It is very easy to get complacent in life. It is very easy to think, “I have done this before, so I can let my mind wander as I do it again.” It is really easy to fall into our patterns and samskaras. To be honest, driving on the left side of the road is starting to feel natural now, and I find myself being less and less conscious as I make wide right turns.

But yoga is about noticing the subtleties and noticing how each day is different. Sure, you can “do” vrksasana (tree pose), but how is it different today than yesterday? What muscles need to work differently now to hold you in space? Is today a day where I feel balanced and comfortable in the pose, or is today a difficult day where I wobble back and forth?

I have taken a couple of meditation classes here over the past few months, and one of the yoga teachers asked me, “do you not have a practice already?” To be honest, I have never meditated every day in the past. I start and stop. But that was not the reason I took the classes. The woman who taught the first class said it best, “you can never take too many introduction classes.” That was her way of saying, “it’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”

Going back to basics keeps us honest in everything we do. We learn to be better lawyers, librarians, psychologists, athletes, and people when we constantly forego what we “know” and remember that we always have a long way to go. This is not a nihilistic view that we can never be good enough at anything. Instead, it is a recognition that we can always engage more deeply with ourselves and learn to do things better. The more we learn, the more we can tune into the subtleties. After all, we know “the devil is in the details,” so when we take the time to tune into those details, by continuously going back to the basics, that’s when we do our best.

John Wooden was right. We may think we know it all, but that’s when the going gets great! That’s when we can let go of trying to do it, and actually begin to understand. Where do you go back to basics?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2011, all rights reserved.

In the Face of Fear, or Finding Yoga

I hate swimming. There, I said it. Yes, I know hate is a strong word, and I am really trying to take it out of my vocabulary, but there are few things that prompt such a visceral reaction in me as swimming in a pool. Perhaps the only other one, especially since being in New Zealand, is constantly being cold. I don’t mind cold outside, but when cold is everywhere, when you can never warm up, cold gets to me. I am not the only American in New Zealand who has been brought to the verge of tears because it is just so cold inside!

So it might come as a surprise that I volunteered to participate in a swim study, especially one that tested the effects of cold-water immersion. That’s right. I willingly entered 10 degree (50 degrees Fahrenheit) water 4 times, and 15 degree (about 60 degree) water about 10 times. Two reasons: 1) I had just sent out a survey hoping for a great response and got a dismal response rate, so I am on a kick to help others who are doing research; and 2) I wanted to face my fears.

Yes, it is a cliché – the only way to overcome your fears is to face them. But most cliché’s get there because they are true. Want proof that I was nervous? My resting heart rate before getting in the cold water the first time was 87 beats per minute (as a comparison, it was later 65 bpm while just sitting in a room, at least according to my count). I do a lot of yoga. I meditate. I know the power of breath. I know the power of the mind. I ignored all of that and freaked out.

The study worked fairly simply. They hooked me into a harness, hung me over a pool treadmill and dropped me in the water. Luckily, my head never went under. I had to do various trials, including treading water, swimming, mental tasks, etc. They did these first tests over two days while measuring my brain oxygen levels and my heart rate. Then a group of us non-swimmers received some “mental skills training” and a video on good water treading techniques. Then we practiced. Once or twice a day, I got into a tank of 15-degree water and treaded water for 3 minutes. After all the training, they did the same tests again to see if there was a difference.

I learned, or remembered, a few things. First, 10 degrees is really, really cold. Second, the mind is a powerful tool. Third, yoga off the mat really works . . . when we remember to use it.

So what was this mental skills training? It started with a video. The video was a man who swims in 1-2 degree water for fun and sits in industrial fridges to prove that he can. Most of us would die in either setting, but he is not only alive, but perfectly fine. His body temperature is no different than others when he is in the cold (a friend sat with him in the fridge for an hour), but his mind is different. His story reminded me of a story of monks who meditate in little clothing while sitting atop snowy mountains, the snow melting below them. The mind is a powerful tool.

Just like any tool, we can learn to use it. That’s the yoga off the mat. The mental skills training also included discussion about how to “handle” the cold. We learned breathing techniques (the subject of the next post), imagery techniques, and positive thinking techniques. Thus, we learned to relax, imagine the situation to reduce fear, reframe the concept of cold to “invigorating” rather than “bloody hell!,” and practiced to train the body to get used to the cold.

So, what’s the verdict? Well, I do not know my resting heart rate before being dropped in that water after all the training. But I do know how I felt. Was I nervous? Yeah, I was still nervous. But I was less nervous. Do I want to join the Polar Swim Club? Nope. Do I want to join any swim club? Nope, not really.

But guess what? The visceral reaction is gone. The thought of water no longer sends shivers down my spine. 

The mind is powerful. It can convince us of anything if we let it have the power. But we can also learn to control it. And with control of the mind, we can begin to control our fears. It will not happen overnight, but for nearly 30 years, I have hated water, and in a few short weeks, I can look at a pool with no emotion.

It just requires taking a bit of my own medicine.

What fears do you have? What would it take to face them? The next post will be a discussion of the specific breathing technique we learned. Teaser: yoga from a sports psychologist – have I entered the Twilight Zone?

Namaste!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved 

The fallible mind

As I mentioned in the last post about where we store our memories, today I want to explore the reliability of our memories. Does anyone remember the beginning of thefacebook.com? Remember the days when you not only had to have a college email address to use it, but only certain universities were eligible? It was a big deal to have an account on thefacebook.com. I distinctly remember being a little sad that I could not get an account because I had let my University of Michigan email address lapse after graduation, and the University of Arizona (where I attended law school) was not one of the “elite” universities. Bummer. Yep, I remember being at the University of Arizona without a facebook account. I remember it like it was yesterday.

Of course, this memory is factually incorrect. My friend remembers using facebook with me when I lived in France, which was before I went to Arizona. She was so certain that she went all the way back to 2004 on her wall to make sure. She was right; she found a post from me while I was in France.

But what about that memory of mine? It may seem trite to use a memory about facebook on a blog post about the fallibility of memory, but unfortunately it is my clearest “incorrect” memory.

Can our memories be so fallible? Are we really unable to trust what we “know” to be true? The answer is a perfect lawyer answer – it depends. We have known for years that eyewitness testimony can be very unreliable, but few of us have turned that knowledge on ourselves to ask whether our own memories are true.

One psychologist who has studied the fallibility of memory for decades had the table turned when her uncle informed her that it was she who discovered her mother dead in a pool when she was a child. The death, which she had repressed for years, started to come back, the memories of finding her mother floating in the pool, began to flood her daily thoughts, but then her brother called to say their uncle had been mistaken; someone else had found her mother. So where had the “memories” of finding her mother originated? If this can happen to a woman who studies these issues, it could happen to any of us.

Think about your memories from childhood. Do you remember them, or has the story become family lore, and with the story, the memory embeds itself into your mind? Think about the stories you tell over and over again. Has anyone ever told you that you used to tell it differently, that you now embellish it?

But then the question becomes – does it even matter? What is true for you remains true for you. I still remember not having a facebook account until I was in law school. But now I’m starting to second guess it . . .

Certainly this is an issue when we talk about repressed memories and whether they are real, but that is not the point of this post. Memory is our definition of our Self. It is our history. It is what we think makes us . . . well, us. To think that our memory might be incorrect is to think that we are not who we think we are. That is a big suggestion and one that many of us are not willing to accept, even if there is evidence “proving” us wrong.

This is where yoga can help. What is another perspective of memory? What if we look at it as a pattern? It is a story we tell ourselves, a story that is sometimes grounded in fact, sometimes grounded in other peoples’ stories about a fact, and sometimes factually incorrect on all accounts. Yoga, as we have seen before, helps us recognize our patterns for what they are. Patterns, like memories, are neither good nor bad. They are simply our patterns. Memories are neither necessarily factual nor false. They are simply our memories. And as memories, they help make us who we are.

And just as some patterns can lead to destructive behaviors over time, holding onto memories that may not be based in reality can be harmful. This does not mean that we need to start distrusting our every thought and our happy memories of childhood Thanksgivings spent with our family. But it is important to understand that they might be false, and that if someone has a different narrative of the same event, that their story might also be true. And yoga helps give us the ability to reflect. It gives us the tools for learning how to question our past, and recognize that what we remember is our own reality, but it may not be based in an external reality. The awareness of our bodies, our breath, and our mind, that come from yoga is the first step to seeing our memories as something that may be just a pattern.

Once we begin to recognize this in ourselves, we can use it as a path for empathy and compassion for others, but that is a topic to be explored in the next post.

How about you? Do you have any memories that you have since learned are false? Do you have any memories that are the result of family lore or a family photo? Are you willing to believe that what you believe may not be fact? Do you think it matters?

Namaste!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

Frost in June?

I have written before about patterns and samskaras and about the differences about living on the underside of the Earth. I am pleased to report that I have learned to look right before crossing the street, and I almost always walk on the left side of the sidewalk. I would like to say that I am adapting fairly well, and to be honest, I worked hard at both of these upon arrival. I wanted to overcome the neural connections and create new neural pathways.

But there seems to be one difference to which my subconscious simply has not yet adapted. The seasons. On the spring/autumn equinox, I mentioned how weird it was that most of the world is celebrating moving into spring, as we are celebrating moving into Autumn. I thought I got it. I thought it was inside of me, but time and time again it catches me off guard. The first time I noticed it was when I started reading all the graduation speeches, and my gut reaction was, “but it’s fall, how are people graduating?”

Then this morning, on my walk down a very steep hill, I almost slipped . . . on frost. Yes, there is frost in June. There is nothing odd about frost in late autumn, but in my worldview, there is something that is strange about frost in June. I am starting to realize this samskara is deeper than I thought.

Then I realized that it is okay.

This is not the only brick wall I seem to have hit here. For the first time in five years, I have a flatmate (of course, in my prior life, this person would have been referred to as a housemate or roommate). I was not looking forward to sharing space with someone when I moved here, but I knew I would be able to do it. I was adamant, however, that I did not want to share groceries. This may seem odd to many people; I have a friend who tells me how much she wishes her housemates would share groceries, at least some of them. It may seem silly and a bit juvenile, and I can share the house and adapt to her cleaning schedule, but my food and cooking are personal and mean a lot to me, so I drew the line there.

Yoga teaches us to find our edge, but to not exceed it until we can do so safely. We also can learn that some bodies simply are not designed to move in particular ways, and the edge may take years to move, or it may never get surpassed. Generally, though with breath and time, our edge moves. We gain flexibility and strength, not only on the mat, but also in our lives. We learn that we can handle it better when the boss yells or the clients call complaining or there is an emergency hearing scheduled for the next day. We learn that the breath and time provide us the tools to move beyond our edge safely and effectively.

And then sometimes we cannot. That is okay . . . with a caveat.

My friend made a good point to me when we were discussing the groceries issue. She said, “part of being on a Fulbright is testing your boundaries.” Of course, our mutual friend in Kenya on her Fulbright is probably testing her boundaries a bit more than I am here in New Zealand, but the point is that my friend is right; expanding your horizons really is part of being on a Fulbright. So, does this mean that I am going to start sharing my groceries?

Not this week. Instead, I realized that I am already so far outside of my comfort zone by living with someone again, by having to look right, and by looking up to see a constellation that does not exist in the northern hemisphere, that my food, my comfort, needs to be mine.

Part of why I prefer not to share groceries is because I eat a bit differently than other people, and I worry that others will not like what I eat. So, I prefer to cook myself. But I took a first step – I made dinner for my flatmate and a friend one night. That dinner went well. It is a nice first step, but it was just that, a first step. I have not evolved into a grocery-sharing, flat dinners sort of person. At least not yet.

So why do I share all of this? Is it just so you think that you can know about my weird habits? No. The point is that recognizing we each have our limits is important, but so is recognizing that part of what keeps us from getting trapped and controlled by those limits is consciously choosing how to respond to those limits. Recognition is great, but then what do you do once you know? Do you want to stay there forever?

First, ask yourself why it is a limit. What is holding you back from moving past it? Be conscious about the reason. On the mat, this might be simple – you need to engage your core. Off the mat, it might take some more introspection. Second, ask whether it is supporting you or hindering you? Is it truly something you need at this moment, or is it something getting in the way of your growth? Third, if it is in the way, ask yourself if you are ready to move past it now. Even if you know you want to move beyond it, today might not be the right day. There may be other issues you need to address first. If not today, what you might need to do to make yourself ready? When might you be ready? Next week? Next month? Next year?

Then keep breathing. When you are ready, the breath will guide you to the next step of working through the samskara.

But most importantly, we have to recognize that just because we have our edge, our limits, and sometimes our brick walls, does not mean that our way is right and those who think otherwise are necessarily wrong. It may make for a difficult living situation, but it is not because either party is doing something bad or trying to hurt the other person. Instead, when we recognize that we have our edges and limits, it is vital that we recognize that others do as well.  Someone else might be struggling just as much as you are.

This means consciousness. It means consciously deciding whether we need our limits to keep us in some semblance of safety or if we can let them go and grow some more. Most importantly, the point is to see our patterns for what they are and to work with them without judging – not judging ourselves or others.

You never know, one day you might just wake up and find that frost in June is normal.

What are your limits? Do you consciously decide whether to hold them or let go of them?

Namaste! 

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

Bouncing Foot Syndrome

I first noticed it in law school. One of my professors could not sit without bouncing her foot or shaking her leg. During my summer clerkship I noticed it again with a couple of lawyers at the law firm. As we got close to graduation, my fellow students began to bounce their feet. Then I became a judicial clerk, and daily I saw lawyers come into court, sit down, and legs start to bounce. Perhaps this is just an American thing? Nope, first day sitting in court in New Zealand, and one of the lawyer’s feet were bouncing along.

So what is this cross-cultural foot bounce infusing the legal profession? Absent-minded stress!

Stress is a lot of things, but one of those is a release of hormones, a release of energy. In evolutionary terms, stress is what allows us to run away from the lion that is attacking us – the fight-or-flight response. Thus, when our stress response kicks in, we are ready to run. The problem is that we are forced to sit. We are forced to sit in long meetings, forced to sit at a desk, or forced to sit in court. As much fun as it might be, and probably good for everyone, to have a little stretch or a short walk, it is probably frowned upon to stand up in the middle of a court hearing and walk around the room. Thus, the energy has to get out another way.

Imagine one of those squishy toys, where if you squish one part, it pops out in another area. Our stress is the same way. If we do not release it the “normal” way, by running away from an attacker, it must come out another way – by tapping the foot. We become prisoners to our stress and its need to release while we try to force it to stay inside by sitting and not moving. It finds a way to move, and most of the time, we do not even notice.

Thus, it becomes absent-minded stress. We are so used to being under the stress, so used to living in a state of chronic stress, that it just becomes normal to need to get out the energy. So while we are exhausted from the overexertion, the stress hormones continue to release, and we continue to need to release them. It becomes second nature to the point where we can sit right next to someone and not even realize that we are tapping our foot at them.

Luckily, there is a way to stop this cycle, and it is actually fairly simple, though not necessarily easy. The first step is awareness or mindfulness. Ask yourself, what are your stress-induced habits? What are your nervous habits? What do you do to let out the energy when it would be uncouth to run around in circles? Once you notice the habits, notice how often you do them. Is it every time you sit down? Just in particularly stressful situations? Just when you are around one particular person?

The next step is a bit more difficult, and it involves beginning to change patterns. But if my ability to look right before I cross the street is any indication, changing patterns can be done. Once you know how and when your stress response kicks in, the next time you notice it, stop and take a deep breath. The breath moves energy, and it has the added benefit of counteracting the stress hormones and beginning to slow them down. Thus, the necessary energy is moved, and the need to continue moving energy is reduced.

This will, of course, take time to begin to change. You may find yourself taking a deep breath and tapping your foot at the same time. Most importantly here is to not stress yourself out more by getting upset. Forgive yourself and take another deep breath. Allow yourself to feel the stress reducing, and see what possibilities open. 

What stress responses do you want to change?

© 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.

All the difference . . .

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

-- Robert Frost

Growing up, this was one of my favorite quotes from any poem. It meant I could live my life the way I wanted to live it, not the path that had been previously laid out for me. Here was one of the most beloved American poets giving me permission to venture forth on an unbeaten path.

I did not understand then how much it relates to our brains, to being a good lawyer, to being a good person, and to yoga. On one level, Frost is talking about our samskaras, our habitual patterns that drive our lives and cause us to drive to a location without even thinking about it.

In the last post, we talked about how we get so involved in our patterns, our samskaras, that we believe it is the only way to see the world, our way is the “right” way. But learning to “look right” before crossing the street is a great reminder that there is no right or wrong in so many of our patterns, only adaptations to the environment in which we live. Learning to diverge from this path of habituation can make “all the difference” in our lives, and the lives of those we encounter, especially our clients and other lawyers.

First, what is a habitual pattern in the brain? As a lay person, I know very little about science and the brain, but I do understand very, very basically how patterns are formed, and Frost’s poem is the perfect metaphor. Every movement, every thought, creates an electrical impulse in the brain, which fires from the synapses. The more often we fire the same synapse, the stronger the connection gets. It becomes a strong path, easy to find again because like the path in Frost’s poem, it has been differentiated from the other paths through use. Thus, altering this pattern, these synaptic links, requires forging a new path.

Forging a new path is not easy, but it is simple. It is simple because the individual steps required are not difficult to do. It is not easy, however, because it takes time and commitment to stick to the steps. The good news is that no machetes and axes are required as we might imagine they would be in Frost’s poem. Instead, some simple techniques can help us forge new pathways in the brain, and as the brain becomes more adept at forging particular new pathways, it becomes more adept at forging all new pathways, just like flexibility in one area leads to flexibility in others.

So what are the steps? Try to start walking with the opposite foot. I was in marching band for seven years, and now, seven years later, I still automatically start walking with my left foot. Making a conscientious effort to start walking with my right foot is difficult, but over time, it becomes easier as a new pathway is formed. Another easy technique is to clasp your fingers so the opposite index finger is on top. Clasp your fingers together – everyone has their “preferred” way – and notice the order of the fingers. Now switch the order, so the other index finger is on top and the opposite pinky finger is on the bottom (all the fingers change position). Notice how weird it feels. That is a new pathway being formed. Try taking a different route to work in the morning, even changing one road.

The best way is to notice your habits, notice what you do unconsciously, and then try to do that same action differently, but consciously. I have a new one coming up for me on Monday – driving on the left side of the road. I will report back soon. ;)

What are some of your favorite ways to change habits? Have you noticed it making “all the difference” in your life?

Namaste and Blessings!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved