A Simple Child’s Pose

“No bending, twisting, or lifting anything more than 3-5 pounds.” Those were the instructions when I left the hospital from the surgery. There were no outside time limits on how long that would last. But finally, I got the approval from the physical therapist. I can do a child’s pose.

Child’s pose is considered a “resting” pose in yoga. Many people, though not everyone, love it. Yoga teachers often invite people to rest in child’s pose if they are tired or lose their breath during a class. It can be a calming way to find the breath, open the hips, and turn inward.

It is a simple pose. There are no difficult explanations. Child’s pose is a chance to settle. It is not for everyone, but for those who want it or need it, it is the perfect way to calm and breathe.

I am one of the people for whom child’s pose has historically been a difficult pose. I often get headaches when I am in it. But over the past few weeks, child’s pose has been what I feel like I want and need – only I did not think I could do it. Until I could.

It is amazing how wonderful a simple child’s pose can feel. For one thing, it felt great to be doing asana at all. It has been months since I have been able to do any postures. Being able to be in a posture means I can feel my breath in a new way. It is not the first time I have been in child’s pose, but it is the first time since a major trauma to my body. And it feels different. It feels like something new and exciting.

So much of yoga today in the west is about exercise, going into more “advanced” poses, and pushing ourselves, even when we think we are not. I have written about this numerous times before, but of course even I would find myself getting upset on days I could not balance or upset that I was still too scared to try a handstand (after a really bad injury from one a few years ago). But now I am excited and moved by child’s pose, perhaps the simplest, though not easiest, pose there is.

And child’s pose is an interesting pose to come back to. It leaves the back completely and utterly vulnerable. It also, however, teaches us to breathe into the back and soften through the spine, which in turn helps us soften through the belly. The belly is totally supported by the knees (unless doing a wide-legged child’s pose, but that is not what I have been doing), and the body can simply let go. It is the yoga paradox at work – the more support you have, the more you can let go.

Support is a key word for child’s pose. Even though the back body is vulnerable, which for many people is a very scary concept, the front body is so well supported that the pose can be one of letting go and serenity. But because the back is so vulnerable, it can also be a very unnerving pose. When it is fully supported, however, the feeling of being unnerved lessens, and we can get deeper into the therapeutic benefits of child’s pose.

I know very few professionals who never complain of back pain. Actually, I know only one. Child’s pose is one of the best way to relieve that pain. And yes, it can be done anywhere. I was doing child’s pose on the floor of my office the other day. Luckily I work in an office that often has children coming in and out, so it works out well. But seriously, I would rather look a little silly on my floor for a few minutes and be out of pain than writhe in pain until I get home. If nothing else, child’s pose helps us breathe, something that we discussed last time is sometimes easier said than done. It may not look like much, but there is a lot going on, and there is a lot to help us come back to our breath, and back to our health. Child's pose is an entirely new world for me these days.

Have you ever tried to rediscover child’s pose? Does it feel different in the morning than in the evening? Has it ever helped you get out of acute back pain?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

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.

Navigating Out: Overcoming Vicarious Trauma

The last post was a bit of doom and gloom. I apologize. I wanted to write this post the very next day, so the doom and gloom would not last too long. This post is, therefore, the opposite – tools for overcoming vicarious trauma. Not surprisingly, a few of them, ok a lot of them, have graced these posts before, and many of them are related to yoga in some way.

Once again, vicarious trauma stems from experiencing other peoples’ trauma day-in and day-out, without the ability to come down from the physiological response. That physiological response is the fight-or-flight response caused by increased cortisol and adrenaline with the added benefit of the hyperarousal associated with PTSD. Thus, the ways to overcome vicarious trauma include ways to release those hormones and ways to create boundaries in ourselves to decrease the effect the repeated trauma has on us.

The first step, of course, is the intention to move beyond the stronghold it has on our lives.

The number one way to reduce adrenaline and cortisol in the body is to get oxygen to the brain. As discussed before, one symptom of vicarious trauma and long-term stress is shallow, quick breathing. The opposite is, of course, deep and slow breaths. Therefore, one of the simplest and most effective ways to calm the physiological response is deep breathing - calm and cool breathing. Here is a link to all the posts here that have discussed breath (including this one).  The other way to get oxygen into the brain is through aerobic exercise. We all know how good exercise is for us, but some people still do not know how effective it is for overcoming stress responses and even vicarious trauma. It is great! Take a walk. Go for a run! Go swimming! Just make sure to get the heart rate up and oxygen into the brain.

And while we are on the topic of “what your doctor would tell you to do even if you were not overly stressed and suffering from vicarious trauma,” we can talk about diet. I try to keep discussions about diet off this blog. People who know me in “real life” are tired of me talking about food, but here it is very important. What is the last thing people who live off adrenaline and cortisol need in their diets? Stimulants! What is in every office breakroom? Coffee and sugar – stimulants!

I drink too much coffee. I try not to eat sugar. But when I feel my body getting tired and overrun, the need for both kicks in. I know they will only make the problem worse, but the body craves energy when we refuse it the rest and calm it deserves. But remember that when the body is in fight-or-flight mode, digestion is the first thing to shut down. Even reducing the coffee and sugar intake can help the body relax, especially if you reduce them in the afternoons and evenings. Instead, try for some fresh fruit, vegetables, or nuts. Nuts have fat the brain needs to function, and when we provide the body with complete nutrition, the cravings diminish. They may not go away, but nuts, whole grains, fruit, and vegetables will keep the body moving without the constant need for stimulants.

The next step is balance and boundaries. One of the indicators of someone who will suffer from vicarious trauma is a lack of boundaries. We take work home with us. We take peoples’ problems home with us. Setting up boundaries to give work its time will open up space for our own personal time. And that leads to the rest of the steps.

It is vitally important to have hobbies. I know someone who has been working with children and families for almost 30 years, and guess what she talks about most? Her craft projects. As a mentor, she teaches many of us young lawyers to have a hobby. She calls it therapy. And she is absolutely right! What do you love to do? Is it knitting? Gardening? Running? Going to the movies? Going out to eat? Reading? Playing video games? Going to a religious or spiritual place? Yoga? Whatever it is, follow Nike’s advice – just do it!

And enjoy your activities with a friend. Humans are social creatures. Again, we would not be here as a species if not for our social interactions. We need them. We crave them. And the surest sign that vicarious trauma has overtaken your life is when you start pushing away the people you love. So bring them back. They may be a bit upset about your recent irritability, but let them know you need their help. Let them know you want them around you for something fun. And make a promise – do not talk about the trauma. At least not at the beginning. Just have fun! Do what you love! And do it with someone you love!

There are other steps and stages and ideas. But these are the big ones. Oxygenate the brain, decrease the stimulants in the body, increase boundaries and social interactions, and find something you love to do and do it. But try not to do them all at once. Pick one. Right now. Before you close this page. Are you going to take a 15-minute walk each day with a friend? Are you going to drink one less cup of coffee? Are you going to start doing photography again? Are you going to sit and breathe for five minutes each day?

Do you intend to overcome vicarious trauma? What are you going to do to start the upward spiral?

"Navigating Out: Overcoming Vicarious Trauma" is part of the series, "Overcoming Crisis Mode," in which we discuss the second-hand trauma associated with being a lawyer and specific ways to overcome it.

© 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. 

Filling the Yoga Bucket

I have talked about the yoga bucket before (here, here, and here), so I thought it might be a good idea to actually explain what I mean, and there is no better time than the beginning of the year to think about refilling the yoga bucket.

I like to think of my yoga practice as a way to create a nice reserve of sanity when things get too difficult. It serves other purposes, for sure, but when the insanity of the outside world hits, it is nice to have had a solid yoga practice. When the outside world is not too hectic, it is easier to find time to do a practice, whatever your practice is. Thus, you can enter the world that a practice makes easier, a calmer, less stressful world. When the stress hits, you have some reserves on which to fall back before the stress overtakes your life.

Of course, the bucket is only so big, and eventually, if you are not refilling it, the bucket empties out, and the stress can overtake your once peaceful existence. Many of us live in this state constantly. Instead of our bodies and minds entering the world of stress and then coming out of it, the cortisone keeps pumping, and we stay in the stress response. Once the bucket is empty and the stress response keeps coming, we enter a state of dis-ease. Sure enough, that state eventually leads to disease.

So what can we do about this before the disease hits and while we still have one or two little drops of sanity left in the bucket? The signs are usually there. Does your body hurt more than usual? Are you yelling at loved ones more than usual? Are you getting emotional more than usual? Do you feel like you are just trying to live moment to moment and day to day seems like too much? Those are just some of the warning signs.

You probably know them, so what do we do about them? How can we refill the bucket when there is no time for retreats and vacations? How can we refill the bucket when there is no time to breathe let alone think?

Take five minutes and sit. Seriously!

Five minutes seems like a lot of time and not a lot of time. When we have a deadline, five minutes feels like an instant. When we sit to do nothing, it feels like an eternity. It seems like a lot of time you could be doing work, stressing about the family issues, or reorganizing the to-do list. But those five minutes might just gain you twenty later on. Five minutes per day begins to refill the bucket. Even one minute at the moment when the stress feels the heaviest can be the minute that brings us twenty later on.

But we have to listen.

I could be the poster child for the empty bucket this week. Although I was essentially on vacation for 4 weeks at the end of my time in New Zealand, I was living in dorm rooms and not doing my practice as much as I would have liked. My daily meditation practice had become a sporadic, and often spastic, affair. Upon my return to the United States on December 11, I had little time to acclimate before driving from Northern California to Phoenix and then heading to Tucson to start work.

And work has been stress central. The job is great, but the learning curve is not just steep, it feels like Baldwin Street in Dunedin (where I was living in New Zealand), the steepest street in the world. I have been running in all directions, attempting to meet dozens of new clients, attend hearings, prepare for trials, and still acclimate to being back in Tucson, a place I have not lived for 2.5 years. On top of all that, I have not been living in my own place. I am incredibly lucky to be living with wonderful family, but the lack of “me”-time is taking its toll. I even started to feel a wee bit sick, and I cannot remember the last time I got sick.

Luckily, I recognized this a few days ago and made “refilling the yoga bucket” the theme on the Is Yoga Legal Facebook page. This week, I have restarted, very slowly, my home asana practice, restarted my meditation practice, and tried to use the hours of driving between home visits as an opportunity for pranayama and reflection. I feel like I’m back to bottom, and now it is time to start refilling the reserves. One very slow step at a time.

I guess this post is partially to say that it is easier to talk the talk than walk the walk. My reserves dried out. There is no question about that. But even writing this gives me hope and faith that they will slowly start to refill.

The next post will talk about how to start a daily meditation practice as a way to refill your yoga bucket, but in the meantime, what is your favorite way to refill your bucket and stay sane?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

The First Day

Tomorrow, I start a new job in which I will be representing children who have been removed from their parents because of abuse or neglect. 

During law school, I participated in a law school clinic focused on representing children in abuse and neglect cases. Since then, I have worked for the presiding family court judge who became the presiding juvenile court judge while I worked for her, another judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals, and done contract work for several family law lawyers. In addition, I just spent a year studying the role of lawyers for children and written a thesis about the topic.

I have been doing yoga for almost 10 years and seriously for more than five. I graduated from Yoga Teacher Training in April 2010, and I have been teaching fairly consistently since then. If it is not abundantly obvious from this blog, yoga means far more to me than asana and breathing. It is a way of life, and my years of practice have fundamentally redefined how I view each and every day. In the most general and superficial sense, yoga has helped me see life through a sense of adventure rather than a sense of fear.

So why am I so afraid to start work as a children’s lawyer? After all, as everyone keeps reminding me, “it’s the perfect job for me.”

Energetically, fear and excitement are the same. We do, however, interpret them differently. In many ways, for me, my first day doing this work is the first day I have to walk the walk rather than just talk the talk. More importantly, I have been studying and learning about children, families, abuse, and neglect for so long that now I know just how much damage can be done to a family by the lawyer taking a wrong step. I don’t want to be that lawyer.

So yes, I’m nervous. But I’m also excited. I get to work with some of my favorite people in Tucson. I get to live back in Tucson, a city I took a few years to love, and then missed terribly for the past two years. I get to be back with some of my favorite yoga people, those who first introduced me to the holistic world it has created for me. And in this economy, I get to work at all. I seem to have hit the jackpot.

This job means seeing some of the most down-and-out people in society, but it also means getting to work with them to better understand their situation and how to break free of it. This is when the yoga becomes most important. It is through yoga that I have learned to stop and notice the everyday beauty in the world, to not take anything for granted, and to be grateful each and every moment. Remembering to refill the yoga bucket is essential when so much of the non-yoga bucket will be full of discussions about abuse and neglect.

The yoga bucket will also be there to remind me that some days there is no right answer. There is, however, always a way to care. There is always a way to share your heart with a child. There is always a way to smile. Some days, that is the best we have to give, and often, that is exactly what is most necessary.

New Zealand was an amazing opportunity to learn about lawyers for children, to see a new system, and to talk to people who have done this work in one of the most progressive systems in the world for years. It was also an opportunity to see unmatched, and often untouched, beauty. Now it is time to put all these years of study and watching to the test. It is time to walk the walk.

So with fear and excitement bubbling together within me, I start a new job. I have a feeling there will be a lot of posts to come about the need for yoga in law.

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2011, all rights reserved.

A Web of Support

Moving to a new place means being alone. No matter how good you are at making friends and reaching out to people, there will be a few hours, days, perhaps weeks and months before you find a community. And this phenomenon does not only occur when you move to the other side of the world. It can happen when you move to a new community or even a new job. 

It can also happen when you start a new project. As much as I would love to think that my time here in New Zealand is all fun and games, I am officially here to write a thesis. I have written a long paper before, but never one this long; it is officially supposed to be about 45,000 words, which is approximately 150 pages. During my first meeting with my advisor, he suggested I include a survey. Lawyers, however, are not trained researchers. Finally, my advisor is awesome, but he is also incredibly busy, so asking loads of questions along the way is sort of out of the question.

This was not going to be easy.

But then I remembered all the yoga training, all the posts about community building, practicing together so we do not feel alone, and learning from teachers and each other along the way. While traditional yogis learned from one teacher, today people often go to yoga classes with many different teachers, sometimes choosing them simply based on the best time slot (or was that just me?). Eventually, you find the teachers that speak to you most profoundly, but it does not mean you stop going to other classes.

There are advantages to this approach. It results in a web of support rather than one person upon whom you always rely. I have learned so much from a variety of yoga teachers, from Tucson Yoga, where I first started attending classes, to Southwest Institute of Healing Arts, where I did my teacher training, to the Dunedin Yoga Studio, where I have found a lovely and amazing yoga community here in New Zealand. Each place has offered its teachers, its classes, and its support. Instead of a specific “brand” of yoga, I took bits and pieces along the way that worked for me.

But a thesis is not yoga, or is it? If there is one constant about doing research and writing long papers, it is that it is a lonely, lonely process. I spend most of my day with my back to a window staring at a computer screen. The survey had hiccups along the way, but several people, including lawyers, professors, and judges helped ensure it was possible. I began to understand the need for a vast network of support in this process, but it became even more clear last week.

Last Friday I presented a short seminar on my research during which it became abundantly clear that somewhere along the way, I had missed something. In many ways, I had missed the core of the thesis, the thread to hold it all together.

Did I mention that I need to submit in about 2 months?

But that is when the universe reminded me of the support structures I have built here, and many of those people offered their help and support. By Monday, not only had I found that thread, but I became confident that this thesis can get done, and it might just be worthwhile.

There is no way it could have been done without the support. I got to thinking about all the people who have helped me along the way this year, just writing the thesis, other than my advisor. The list was over 20 people long. I am grateful to each and every one of them.

Life in the modern world is often lonely. We think we have to “do it all” alone, whether at our jobs or in our lives. We think that if we just work harder, push a little bit more, or stay awake just a little bit later, everything can get done. But deep down we know that is not true. Here, the legal profession agrees with the modern approach to yoga; we call this vast array of teachers mentors. Finding a mentor is the surest way to know that you have support whenever you need it, for those moments when you think you have completely lost your way.

There will be times when we feel like we cannot keep going, and our primary support may not be available, but if we have a web, if we have that community, we can find the strength, and the inspiration, to keep on going. We need to reach out and build that support network early.

I have a long list of people to thank right now for helping me find my path again. I have only been in New Zealand for seven months, and I have made a lot of mistakes here, but one thing I know I did right was building the support network.

Have you built yours? Have you thanked the people in it? 

Namaste!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved