A New Beginning

Welcome to 2012! I am still a bit in shock that this year has arrived. It feels like only yesterday I was writing a post about my intention (rather than resolution) to stay open to all the possibilities New Zealand held in store. Now, back in the United States, it is time to reflect on that and set a new intention for 2012, a new chapter for sure.

I wrote in the 2011 New Year’s post about not knowing where I would be living 5 days after arriving in New Zealand. I ended up being invited to stay where I lived the first four nights, and that home turned into a friendship and eventually a house-sitting opportunity. I tell this story not because it matters to anyone where I lived while in New Zealand, but it perfectly illustrates what being open to new possibilities brings into life. It brings us opportunities we never imagined possible, but that open doors to places the universe wants us to go. My 10.5 months in New Zealand was opportunity after opportunity like that. 

For me, 2012 is full of new adventures, the most obvious, of course, being the new job. As I mentioned in the first post about the new job, I have no idea how this is going to go. The first week was rough, really rough, but it was only the first week. Going forward, however, seems scary and unknowable, and not in the exciting way that was the new possibilities of a new country, especially one as beautiful as New Zealand. But there is a different kind of excitement and opportunity that comes with doing the work I have been preparing to do for nearly half of my life.

So this year’s intention is to trust myself. It was difficult to even type that. It was difficult to trust myself enough to think it possible to trust myself going forward.

But this is where the practice, the yoga, becomes the most important. For years, I have been growing the yoga bucket, filling it with tools that can hopefully work when it really matters. The real test is not whether we can practice when the going is easy. The real test is not whether we can meditate at a retreat or on a mountain top away from life. The real question is whether we can remember to respond rather than react when we feel like life is beating us over the head with a baseball bat. It is in those moments that it is most necessary to have a full yoga bucket.

And as we learn to live in a state of composure in the most difficult circumstances, we learn to trust ourselves. In many ways, learning to trust ourselves is learning to be open to internal possibilities rather than external possibilities. Rather than trusting the external world to present opportunities, we trust ourselves to know what needs to be done. So, I guess this year's intention is not so different from last year's, but the focus, the nexus is slightly different. 

For me, yoga has made trusting myself (and the universe) easier, but certainly not easy. Prior to leaving New Zealand, I had started a daily meditation practice. It was just ten minutes per day, but I can feel a huge difference having let it slide these past three weeks. That is part of my necessary yoga bucket, the refill I need to go inside enough to trust myself. So, while I do not want to make a resolution to meditate every day, I put forward this intention: to trust myself and the path I am on. I'm going to stay open to trusting the universe to present the how. 

What is your intention for this new year? Happy 2012! May the year be full of love and peace.

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2011, all rights reserved. 

The life and work of Transitions

When I stop to consider how yoga has affected my daily life, how it affects each action, two thoughts come to mind - intention and transition. As this period of my life is a long-winded transition, that has been my focus these past few weeks.

Yoga is the perfect opportunity to notice those moments that we often ignore, and when we ignore, can lead to physical and emotional turmoil, or in the case of the workplace, stress. Yoga, when viewed as meditation in motion, brings us back to the present moment, each moment. Our breath is our reminder that we are here now, and we can focus on now. While this is a wonderful meditation, and one I will explore more fully another day, there is a more physical way that yoga teaches us to transition gracefully and with strength - vinyasa.

Vinyasa literally means breath synchronized with flow. When broken down into its roots, however, it means “to place in a special way.” So, when we are flowing between poses in a yoga class, we are being asked to place each movement in a special way, to notice each movement between the postures.

As a yoga student, I have had days where I move through the transition poses without any thought, other days where they are the focus of my practice. On the latter days, I leave class feeling more connected, more focused, and more centered. Noticing the transitions allows each moment, each asana, to be strong and steady. It also helps bring me to the more esoteric place of being in the now - the eventual “goal.” Those days, I see that every moment is special, just not the moments during the day that we think are supposed to be special.

As a yoga teacher, I see students who practice without the conscious awareness on the transitions. Between plank (push-up) and chataranga (bottom of a push-up), their hearts literally collapse, with no awareness to hold them up. Often, this is because people in a yoga class do not want to put their knees down to provide the strength for that transition, but want to prove to themselves that they can move without that aid. I did it for years. But as a teacher, it looks painful, and that moment of awareness is lost. I know that without proper alignment, these students can hurt themselves physically, and that physical pain can lead to emotional and psychological pain and stress. I see people rush through transitions to get somewhere, but the next posture is not the goal - the goal is awareness.

It has taken me years to fully grasp the importance of transitions in the physical asana practice. I “got it” intellectually. That’s the lawyer in me. I never understood is physiologically. But the day I got it, my practice changed; my life changed.

During a day at work, we can have 15 things to do. If we refuse to take the time to transition between them, our brain never gets a break, and each item on our to-do list becomes one confusing mess. Those moments of transition are moments to reset, to acknowledge that one item has ended, and it is time to move onto the next one. For lawyers, this can help us remember that each client is different. We stop putting Bob’s name where Jane’s should be. (After reading what some lawyers write, I know that this is a common problem.)

Outside the workplace, learning to transition with awareness reminds us that nothing in life is permanent. We are constantly in a state of change, and that is nothing to be feared, but rather revered. Benjamin Franklin once said, “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.” It can be easy to get caught up in the big moments in life, the phone calls, the memos, the clients, the vacations, the school day, whatever those big moments are, but it is the awareness we bring to the moments in between that define the strength with which we can move into, and be fully present with, those big moments.

Transitions are where we create the strength and the awareness that can make the big moments in our lives full and unique. How do you transition between tasks and daily actions?

Namaste!

Ⓒ 2010 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved