Why Yoga Matters

My life has been a bit of a roller coaster these past several weeks. I went to another AFCC conference and taught yoga there. It was my first time teaching a “regular” asana class in over 1.5 years. It was so fitting to be back there teaching again. As very long-time readers may remember, the AFCC conference in 2010 was the first class I taught after teacher training. It is such a special place for me.

And it reminded me, yet again, what I love about yoga, and why it is so important for professionals. It also reminded me some of the problems with the modern yoga culture. For example, there were several people in the class who thought they had to look a certain way to be in the “right” asana. Although I tried to say over and over again how important it is to do each pose with integrity for your own body, so many people just looked uncomfortable in what they were doing. And often, the adjustments fell on deaf ears. That was partly because I was out of practice, but I think it sadly said far more about our culture than my out of practiceness (though there is no doubt that was part of it).

What I see so often both in and outside of yoga classes are people who are completely disconnected from their bodies. I see this in how people sit, stand, and move. I see it in how people talk about breathing. I see it even in how people talk about pain. They push and push and push, take something to intercept the pain, and then they push some more. Then finally the pain or dis-ease is so intense they cannot take anything more. We are asked to ignore the pain and push through it, or there will be no gain. And if there is any sort of pain, for a long time before doing anything serious about it, we are told to just take a pill. We are told to just numb the pain, not heal it.

But yoga can bring us out of that place of numbing before the pain, whatever it is, hits us so hard. Yoga brings us into our bodies. It brings us into our emotions. It brings us into our souls. I was at a yoga class this morning, and at least three lawyers were there. I remember when I started this blog I had no idea how many lawyers actually do practice yoga. But what amazed me even more is that it was a Mindfulness Yoga class.

What I have noticed is that most of the lawyers I know who practice yoga practice styles like Bikram, Ashtanga, and the more intense varieties of asana-focused practice. Some are moving into a more meditative practice, but the truth is that is what so many of us need. We need to slow down. We need to learn to listen to our bodies and what they are telling us.

This need to constantly push ourselves and feel that we need to look a certain way is destroying so many people. We are asked to push and not listen and then to numb away whatever ails us. This is certainly not the only thing happening in the world, but I see it so often I wonder what the antidote can possibly be. I worry that yoga has become as much of the problem as the solution. Today in class, the teacher said he recently read a study where 70% of yoga injuries come from forward folds. This number would have shocked me before, but now that I know more about the body, more about the way people push, and more about the stress the modern world puts on the low back, this number actually now seems low to me.

And yet, as I look to other ways to find solace and peace, I always come back to yoga. I love yoga. It saved me once, and deep down I know it is the answer to my own and so many other peoples’ pain. But that means that we actually have to do yoga as it was intended to be done. The modern asana practice is nothing more than gymnastics. But yoga is an ancient system that heals on every level – physical, emotional, and spiritual. And for that reason, yoga matters. It matters that we learn from its teachings. As I look around and see how depleted society is, how tired everyone I know is, how pained they are (physically or otherwise), I know that yoga may be a path out of their misery.

These thoughts have been percolating for quite some time. As my own practice has ebbed and flowed, I feel this need right now to come back to it with full energy. But the irony, of course, is that full energy means less energy. It means slowing down and tuning in. It means finding the yoga that brought me here originally. And I want to offer that to others. I am finally going to have a regular class – two Sundays per month I will be teaching a Calming and Connecting yoga class. It will not be any specific type of class, but it will focus on breathing, meditation, restorative yoga, and mindful asana practice.

There is no doubt that yoga can heal us from so much. It still matters even when sometimes it feels it has been stolen by the fitness community. That can never diminish that yoga is something far older and something far more powerful. I am curious to know – how has yoga changed you? What has it brought to your life?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2014, all rights reserved.

The post, Why Yoga Matters, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

The Subtlest Movements

I finally attended my first Feldenkrais class last week. For those who do not know, Feldenkrais is a body movement / awareness technique. Really, it is more of an awareness technique. In many ways, the Feldenkrais method is the antithesis to modern culture, and that is its beauty.

We live in a world where bigger is better. Exercise fanatics say, “no pain, no gain.” Feldenkrais is the opposite – how small can the movement get where you still feel a change? Can you simply imagine a movement and notice?

The answer is yes. And therein lies the power.

The human body is incredible. It holds answers to so many of our ailments and protects us from ourselves. We hold our emotions, fears, and excitements in our body. From it, we derive pleasure and pain and everything in between. Our bodies are our greatest tool for understanding. It is through our senses that we understand the outside world, but we have an additional way of understanding called proprioception.  Proprioception is our understanding of how our body fits together and moves relative to itself.

Proprioception is about understanding ourselves so well we can relate better to others. It is the minutest form of understanding, but when we can understand on that deep of a level, the macro understandings become easier. It is similar to how meditation works – if we can slow down the mind enough, we can understand it better, and then the mind becomes an ally instead of an enemy. But as I explore more and more, I am beginning to understand how important the body is to that process. It is, I think, why yoga became such an important part of my life. It became the way I could meditate most easily. But now, with my body not cooperating, I have had to find ways other than through an asana practice . . . and my understanding has grown exponentially.

More and more, doctors of western medicine are realizing how connected the body and mind are. They tell us that stress can cause ailments like ulcers. I believe it will be a long time before the run-of-the-mill MD writes the word disease as dis-ease, but the tide is turning. My yoga/proprioception exploration has shown me a deeper level. The body and mind are not connected – they are the same thing. There is no separateness between them that needs to be connected.

I have known this for years, but I have never been able to articulate it or to fully understand it. I have read countless books about it, but somehow the Knowing did not come until recently. It was not until I opened my mouth and said it one day that I realized how deeply this went.

And it was then that I also realized how deeply this affects our lives. My experience of body therapies has always been my access point to experience the mind and spirit. The concept of proprioception was, in some ways, another way of accessing qi or prana, the life forces of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Yoga. I have come to understand how important it is for us to move slower in life and as we make change to make it in simple and quiet ways. As we notice the body, we notice the world.

We live in a world where Cross Fit and Bikram Yoga dominate our mentality. There is nothing inherently wrong with either, but the more I come to understand, the more I see how important it is to come at change from a different angle, a simpler angle. This is, perhaps, especially important when dealing with the spirit and emotions. Society tells us it is inappropriate to share our emotions with one another, to express true anger and sadness. Even true happiness is considered out of place in expression. So instead of expressing our emotions, we suppress them. We hide them deep within ourselves, and they try to appear, but we hide them more.

This can lead to a variety of types of dis-ease, and sometimes accessing our true emotional and spiritual state helps bring us back to a place of ease. But it is like taking the cork out of a champagne bottle. We can do it quickly and explode the cork across the room, potentially taking out someone’s eye with it. Or we can be calm and slow about it and open the cork in such a way that we can access the goodness inside calmly and safely.

The first step here is just to notice. Notice how moving your head from side to side moves other parts of your body. Notice how you can feel simply by imagining movements. Notice, notice, and then notice some more. The irony, of course, is that the smaller the movement, the greater the shift. It takes incredible conscious awareness to notice the smallest movements, and that consciousness is what shifts. When we get away from momentum and move toward true awareness, the world comes into focus. That does, of course, require slowing down.

Are you willing to give it a try?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2014, all rights reserved.

The post, The Subtlest Movements, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

What it Means to Relax Part 2

Yesterday, we discussed why to relax and the healing power that comes with relaxation, but sometimes I think few of us know how to actually relax, so this post is dedicated to that specifically.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of techniques for relaxation. There are even apps for it. Some of the most popular are: meditation, walking in nature, restorative yoga, yoga nidra, yin yoga, somatic awareness, knitting, exercising, cooking, and vacations. There are even programs designed to change our brain waves to help us relax, including Holothink and Holosync. I could probably go on, but you get the idea. There are ways we have come up with to help us relax.

But how many of us are actually able to relax in these settings? How do you know if you have fully relaxed? Is that even possible in this modern world?

First, there are several reasons it is so incredibly difficult to actually relax. One of the main reasons is the one we all know – the world is moving incredibly fast, and we are inundated with information. We are expected to keep up with everyone all the time. That is a huge problem, but it is only a piece of the problem. The other might be genetic. I’m no scientist, and definitely no geneticist, but there is some new information coming out about epigenetics that helps explain our inability to calm.

Yogis and other mystics (and yes, the New Age folks) have always known that our ancestral lines play a huge part in our lives today. Shamanism has ways to clear and work with our ancestral lineage. Science is finally catching up and explaining how this happens through epigenetics. If you are really interested, here is a link to the Wikipedia article about epigenetics.  Basically, the idea is that our genes activate in different ways based upon what worked for our ancestors. It makes sense. If your ancestors lived in a place where there were lions everywhere, we had to become acutely aware of threats early in life, or we would die. Of course, what this means today is that we have generations upon generations of suffering, depression, fear, anxiety, etc. expressing itself in our genes, and on top of everything else we live in the most overwhelming cultural environment I can imagine.

Are you relaxed yet?

So, in some ways our bodies have become hard wired to not relaxing. This is a perfect week to point this out with Passover and Easter. Passover is about celebrating overcoming hardship . . . but the hardship came first. Easter is about rebirth . . . but the horrific death came first.  And that death and hardship live on in our cells and our gene expression. So, while yoga nidra is lovely, and yes it’s one of my favorite relaxation techniques, it has to overcome a lot of conditioning.

 As I mentioned before, I have been working a lot on somatic awareness. The goal is to begin to pay attention to the signals our bodies send to us. I have been doing this on some level for over a decade. It really has been my entire time practicing yoga. But these days, I am looking at it differently and really trying to understand it differently. I am also finally starting to notice where I hold tension. Everywhere would be an understatement, but it is useful to know.

What I have found over the past few months is just how intensely difficult it is to really, truly, let go and relax. I may be able to relax one part of my body, but then the rest of it tenses up. I have begun to notice what parts of my body tense when I go to move, and they are not the parts of my body needed to move in that moment. One of the relaxation techniques I left off above is biofeedback. The entire goal is to notice where you are tense, so you know to relax there.

Noticing is the first step. We simply cannot relax until we know where we are tense. Meditation helps us do the exact same thing with the mind. It helps us notice where our mind is tense or racing or confused or whatever, and then just let it go. While the body and mind are simply one entity, for some people it is easier to learn to relax the mind first, and for others it is easier to learn to relax the body.

But at the end of the day, relaxation is more difficult for us than it was 1,000 years ago. The techniques have not changed, but we have to learn to use them more effectively.

True relaxation begins with noticing where our tension patterns lie. As you read this, take a moment and stop. Scan your body. Where is there tension? Where is there no tension? For some of us, the only place without tension is the ear lobe. That is okay. I am starting to believe that is more normal than we would like to admit. Then begin to tell the body it is safe to let go. It is safe to relax the shoulders. It is safe to relax the thigh muscles when you are sitting and lying down. It is safe to relax the core muscles. We have ways to hold ourselves up without tension.

As we begin to allow ourselves to relax, relaxation can come. It may not come immediately, but it can begin to sneak in. It can begin to enter our being and our cells. Relaxation can happen when we notice what is stopping it and consciously let that go. But for that we have to stop. We have to notice. We have to take the time and turn inward. It is, at times, very difficult, but the rewards are endless. Eventually, we will begin to notice the tension and let it go even when we are stressed out at the grocery store or in traffic. When we learn to relax, we can live in this world with more ease and comfort. We can begin to heal, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Relaxation is key to everything. It is so, so simple and yet incredibly difficult.

How do you notice if relaxation is working? What techniques work better for you? Do you notice places you find it impossible to relax? What could you do to relax in those spots?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2014, all rights reserved.

The post, What it Means to Relax Part 2, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

Yoga, Pain, and Something Bigger

Over the past year, a lot of people have asked me, “shouldn’t yoga help your pain?” I have learned to try to just smile and nod. But a few times I have responded, “there is a chance yoga caused my pain.” Let me be clear before I go further. I still think yoga is amazing. I am not giving up being a yogi – in fact, I am teaching a restorative class next month. But yoga, as it is taught in the United States, is not the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

This is a shock to some people. William Broad took on the yoga establishment in 2012 with his book The Science of Yoga: The Risks and Rewards. The yoga blogosphere would not stop talking about it for months. And he is back with another article in the New York Times titled, Women’s Flexibility is a Liability (In Yoga). And we can fight and argue until we are blue in the face (very yogic of us, I’m sure), but there is no question we have to be careful.

Let us examine for a minute what yoga is. First, on this blog, I hope I have been clear that yoga is not about asana. It is about a way of life. Yoga is about yamas and niyamas and breathing and meditation. Asana is a piece, but it is nothing more than a piece. And in my life recently, it has become even less of a piece of the yoga bundle. Yoga to many in the West, however, is exercise. When I used to tell people I was not in the best shape (I have never been a runner, for example), people would respond, “But you do yoga.” Sometimes I would get into the discussion about yoga not being exercise, but more often than not, I would simply nod and smile and move along.

Yoga in America and the rest of the Western world has taken on a feeling of gymnastics. It has permeated the gym culture and become a source of sweaty movement. That is fine for what it is, but it is not yoga. Even, or perhaps particularly, in asana, we must be aware and mindful of how we are moving, feeling, and changing. Vinyasa practices, for anyone except the super aware, take us out of that place. And please do not misunderstand. I LOVE vinyasa practices. I just realize now they may not love me.

And why do we love the sweaty movement of yoga? I personally think it has a lot to do with our culture. We like to feel like we are doing something good for ourselves while still “doing” something. I used to fall into that mindset as well – is it really beneficial if I do not move? I knew the answer was yes, but I still gravitated toward classes with vinyasa flows. I also did a lot of yin and restorative, now my only source of asana, but those classes were my dessert, not my daily practice.

People who know me outside of a blogger persona know I need to take a deep breath and calm down. I would expect that many of you reading this are in the same boat. This blog is, after all, for people in high stress places in life. So many of us have spent our lives looking for external gain – the good grades in school, the good university, the good graduate school, the good job, that we forget to stop and breathe, and before we know it we wake up, and we are stressed and sick and in our late 20s. Sound like anyone you know?

And big-money yoga took on this mentality. There is nothing inherently wrong with the yoga dominance. But there is a problem when it is causing harm, and we as yoga teachers ignore it. The yoga teachers I know do not ignore it. The yoga teachers I know tell me to come to class if the only thing I can do is lie in savasana and imagine myself in the various asanas. But I know there is a different culture out there. I see it in the discussions I have with people. I see it in the yoga ads. It is why I stopped my subscription to Yoga Journal.

So before everyone gets all up in arms about William Broad again, I think it is important to see how he ends the article. He does not tell people not to do yoga. In fact, he makes a very yogic statement, “Better to do yoga in moderation and listen carefully to your body. That temple, after all, is your best teacher.” Each and every body is different. We can look at every single skeleton and chart about muscles, ligaments, fascia, etc. we can find. But at the end of the day, those are guides. Incredibly useful guides, without which I would not want to be a yoga teacher, but nothing more than guides.

Some people have livers on the left side of their body. Some people have naturally fused vertebrae. Some people have hip sockets that misalign. Some people walk pigeon-toed. Some people . . .

So can yoga cause pain? Of course it can! Anyone who tells you otherwise is, frankly, dangerous. Can some people have a vinyasa practice for 20 years and feel great? I guess so. I’m skeptical of that, but I know people who have sworn by it for years. But they are also incredibly strong, incredibly attuned to their bodies, and most likely, incredibly lucky.

My yoga practice has taken a strange about-face turn. This year has turned my life upside down. But I’m slowly finding myself again, and moving again. And these days I understand my body better than ever and still do not understand the first thing about it. But that is the point. We have to be slow, understand what we are feeling, and move from there.

Making your first yoga class ever a vinyasa power class is not the way to do that. They may have their place for some people, but at the end of the day, they are simply not the answer for most people. And yes, that can cause pain. And yes, that is something the billion-dollar yoga industry does not want you to know. But guess what? Yoga is so much more. Through yoga, we can calm our nervous systems and begin to respond to life calmly. Through yoga, we can begin to understand ourselves better. Through yoga, we can begin to understand our relationships better. And as a dear friend keeps reminding me, through yoga, we can heal the world.

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

The Post, Yoga, Pain, and Something Bigger, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

Lawyers Type A? Who Knew?

I went to see a doctor earlier this week, and he diagnosed me as Type A. I am actually serious. Ok, maybe not a full diagnosis, but he said it was something he noticed. I sarcastically said to him, “what lawyers do you know that are Type A?” Then I tried to get around it and said, “but I work with kids.” His response was, “That’s a nice façade.” In other words, I could not get past him. I’m Type A.

Do you think lawyers have a reputation? (Of course I refrained from saying it was really a case of it taking one to know one. He is, after all, a neurosurgeon.)

He told me to stretch and relax. I saw another doctor the following day, and she wrote out three parts of a prescription for me: 1) Massage, 2) Yoga?, and 3) Stretch every 2 hours. What happened to the medical profession over night? She even told me to follow my gut.

But I think they were trying to tell me something. And it is partially about lawyers, but mostly it is about people in general who get worked up about a lot. We have to really try to calm down. We have to try to relax. We have to try to let go. Talk about an oxymoron.

What does it mean to be Type A? Well, Wikipedia, of course, has the answer. It was actually originally created as a theory to describe people likely to get coronary heart disease. I never knew that. But the general notion is that people who are Type A are high-strung workaholics. It is not surprising, then, that such people would become lawyers and doctors and other high intensity professionals.

But yes, that is why it is even more important for such people to incorporate yoga and meditation into our lives. But then comes the problem . . . workaholics always feel they have to be doing something. That sort of defeats the purpose of meditation. The point is to do nothing, even though that is sort of something. Sort of.  It certainly does not meet the definition of something for Type A personality folks.

But then there is an underlying problem, should I say, with Type A folks taking up something like yoga, particularly in the United States where yoga is synonymous with putting your foot behind your head and sweating to death on a mat. As the doctor said to me, and what I think prompted the comment about my being Type A in the first place, he was worried I would take his advice too far and push myself too much. The same is true for any asana-focused yoga practice. It can become too much, and even harmful, if not done in a yogic sense, but instead is done in a more Type A sense.

Of course, at its core, yoga is about balance . . . on all levels. It helps us see our limits work within them. But until we gain those tools from the practice, our well-patterned neural pathways run us. And as I have learned these past several months, those come back when the yoga falls away.

So what do we do about it? We learn to watch ourselves. Yoga is an amazing tool, and an amazing way of being. But it can be misconstrued, particularly by certain people, and there is no question lawyers and other professionals more likely than not fall into that category of people. There is nothing wrong with being Type A. One of my dear friends reminded me the world needs people like us. But we also have to be careful. We have to be careful not to hurt ourselves by trying to help ourselves. Most importantly, we have to remember to stop and do nothing sometimes. We have to remember to relax and let go.

Sometimes it is even a literal prescription. And that is where the question mark comes from above. The second doctor says yoga is fine . . . when it is. But be careful. We can benefit from working a lot and taking our work seriously. We can benefit from having order in our lives. But as the Wikipedia article points out, these traits can lead to being hostile and irritated with others. It is how we get to the downward spiral of emails.

So whether it is our bodies or our interactions with others, we need to be careful. And this week I had two doctors prescribe relaxation to me. Go figure. I guess that is why I’m sharing it with the world. It’s a great prescription for anyone, particularly those of us who may take even our need to relax a little too seriously.

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

The post, Lawyers Type A? Who Knew?, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal. 

Proving Meditation Works?

Earlier this week, my uncle sent me the article, “The Morality of Meditation.” Similar to many articles these days, it is too short, and gives nothing but the briefest explanation of the topic, but it is an interesting idea.

The author, along with several colleagues, decided to test whether meditation actually makes people more compassionate towards others. The “test” they used was pretty clever. They had a group of people meditate for 8 weeks and a control group. Then they had people from both groups come back to the office where the waiting room had three chairs, two of which were already occupied. The subject always sat in the open chair, and then a fourth person came into the room on crutches and groaned in pain as he leaned against the wall. The question was whether the subject would give up his/her seat if the other two (who worked for the researchers) did not.

There have been many studies done that people are less likely to help others if they see other people are not offering assistance. Those studies, if you have never read them or heard about them, are actually quite frightening. Peer pressure is a powerful force, even when it is negative – not negative in the sense that you are doing something bad, but negative in the sense you are not acting. So others choosing not to act causes us to be less likely to act even to help someone in obvious distress.

This study found that people who had meditated were 3 times as likely to offer their seat to the guy on crutches. That is the “good” news. The not so good news is that it was still only about 50% of people. But their initial conclusion is that meditation does, or might, help people be more compassionate to others. (HUGE CAVEAT: I’m basing my understanding of this study on an article in the NY Times that was shorter than this post, and I have my own twists.) Also important, only 39 people participated in the study, and only 20 of them were asked to meditate. That is a very small sample.

All of those caveats aside, what does this tell us? First, I think it tells us that we as a society are obsessed with meditation as a fad. We want to know how it can help us. We want proof. I mean, what is the point of meditating if we do not get something out of it? I like science and studies as much as anyone, and I think I have even posted how excited I am about such studies in the past. But I’m getting tired of them. I do not want a scientist telling me meditation works. I just want to meditate. And I think that's my yoga side taking over my lawyer side. Lawyers like evidence. I really do like evidence, but I do not always need it.

But I see two other issues with this study, neither good nor bad, but just interesting. First, the guy who needed help walked into the room on crutches. That is an obvious injury. Of course, it does not appear he was really injured at all, just a research tool told to act in a certain way. I have been living for the past 6 months with the opposite issue. I look fine, but I hurt a lot. I feel terrible when I go to the grocery store and do not help bag my own groceries. I feel terrible when I choose not to sit because it is easier to stand, but then I am towering over people feeling like I am acting superior to them. I would have actually done the exact opposite of all the research subjects. I would not have sat in the empty chair. I would have stood up, and that’s probably true even before I was in pain. And so I wonder, how many of the research subjects had a reason not to get up for the guy on crutches? We do not all wear our lives on our sleeves. 

We all have hidden stories, and far more goes into those stories than whether we meditated that day. I would love to live in a world where we are all better at asking people their stories rather than making assumptions based on what we see only with our eyes.

And that brings me to my final point – what about compassion for self? This research study was conducted because the researchers were tired of all the studies about meditation being great for stress, memory, and intelligence. They wanted to show it helps people act more compassionately towards others. The article ends by saying, “The next time you meditate, know that you’re not just benefiting yourself, you’re also benefiting your neighbors, community members and as-yet-unknown strangers by increasing the odds that you’ll feel their pain when the time comes, and act to lessen it as well.”

But they were comparing this study to studies about performance, not about self compassion. I have never looked for such a study, but I would be surprised if one existed. How do we test that? How do we know if we are treating ourselves as kindly as we should? How do we know when we are offering ourselves the amount of love we all deserve?

There is no question in my mind that compassion for others is a great benefit of meditating. I have meditated specifically to cultivate such compassion. And certainly, it’s great to have a little less stress in life as a result of meditation. And perhaps these are all areas that researchers will continue to study. But we also have to learn to have self compassion. After all, the heart pumps blood to itself first.

So while all these tests and research are happening, I may or may not pay a lot of attention. Interesting to see the proof, but the real magic, no proof needed, happens on the mat/cushion and in how we conduct ourselves to ourselves and in the real world, not how 39 people conducted themselves in an office on one particular day.

What changes have you noticed in yourself if you meditate? What changes have you noticed when you stop? That’s always my big clue to the benefits of meditation, and that has nothing to do with research.

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

The post, Proving Meditation Works?, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

Restorative Bliss . . . Just What the Doctor Ordered

Until yesterday I had not been to a yoga class since the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Thus, it had been nearly 7 months. Yes, SEVEN! I cannot believe it either. That is not to say I have not “done yoga,” whatever that means. But I had not attended a yoga class. Nor had I attended a group meditation. I sort of felt like an appendage was missing. 

But my back is at a place, at least for now, where it is safe to move a bit. I asked my doctor and my physical therapist if it would be safe to go to a restorative yoga class. I even showed the physical therapist some ideas of what that might mean. They both said it should be safe as long as I was careful. So, I waited for a class I had wanted to attend for quite some time, taught by a friend of mine, someone who understands my current physical limitations. It felt like a homecoming when I walked in the door, even though I had never been to that particular class before. It was a familiar world, and a world I had greatly missed. 

Restorative yoga is about turning inward and, well, restoring ourselves. It is aptly named. It nourishes the parasympathetic nervous system in a way that no other form of physical asana, except perhaps yin, can do. With props for support, and holding poses for 3-5 minutes, or longer, the body can surrender and open in ways it never feels safe to do when moving too much. It gives our bodies and minds time to move beyond habits and into resetting our nervous systems and brains to actually relax. 

But for me, it was still a place where old habits came up. There were poses I could not do, and others I had to modify a great deal. Of course I know that the point of yoga in general, and restorative yoga in particular is to meet ourselves where we are, wherever that is, but it is difficult to know what my body was once capable of doing and now knowing it cannot do that right now. I was embarrassed that I could not do one of the poses at all. Even the alternative poses seemed scary for my body. It was difficult not to do them, but I knew it was best.

So instead I just simply lay on my back with my knees bent and imagined I was doing what everyone else was doing. I tuned into their energy and their release, and for a brief moment, I felt a bit of my own. We all absorb the energy of those around us. How many times have you noticed when someone came into a room when you did not hear or see them enter? If we are constantly around people in stress, our bodies and energies respond with like stress. But when we are around people who are coming together simply to let go, surrender, and safely allow their bodies and minds to relax, we can do the same. In fact, we automatically do the same, even when we are programmed to hold the stress in.

And yes, that is exactly what my doctor prescribed. She told me to relax. Of course, about an hour before the class when she called me, I reminded her I was going to a yoga class, and her first reaction was, “be careful.” I had to remind her it was a restorative class, and she sort of laughed and said, “then relax and restore.” So, my doctor stopped short of actually prescribing yoga, but she came close.

And it felt amazing to be back in that space, back in a world where people aim to be calm. And it was a wonderful reminder that yoga has so many different facets and ways of being for us. We all move so much in our lives, almost never stopping. Restorative yoga is the antidote to those physical and mental stressors. It cannot cure all ills. I still hurt. But it cracked the way open into a memory of relaxation and restoration of body, mind, and soul. And that should be what every doctor orders.

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

The post, Restorative Bliss . . . Just What the Doctor Ordered, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

Knowing Anatomy

Yoga teachers, in general, do not know a lot about anatomy. That's a controversial statement, for sure, but hear me out. Many people become certified to teach yoga after a weekend workshop. The vast majority of us become certified after 200 hours, many of which are spent learning how to do asana, and sometimes learning about the other seven limbs. Anatomy may be discussed, but I would doubt even ¼ of yoga teacher training programs have a skeleton in the teaching room and whether there is in-depth discussion about how muscles, bones, ligaments, and fascia interact.

When I was new to yoga, I used to ask my yoga teachers for help before and after class with various injuries. With my current injury, long before it became surgery-worthy, I asked a world-renowned teacher for some ideas. Granted, he spent five minutes with me instead of longer private sessions, but at no point did he say, “you might have a disc issue.” Even after my 20-hour Anatomy for Yoga class, I had no idea what I was facing.

And perhaps that is the lesson.

One of my pet peeves with lawyers who represent children, or do any work with families, is that they often say, “I’m a lawyer not a social worker” when asked to help clients through the mess that is both juvenile and family law (emotional mess, not necessarily system mess). But I remember my great uncle once telling me that, as a lawyer, he had to know his clients’ businesses better than they knew them themselves. How else can you properly advise them? In other words, we lawyers have to understand our clients on the deepest levels. There is no other way to be a proper lawyer.

And perhaps this is the lesson yoga needs to learn from law. Yoga teachers not only have to know asana (the law), they have to know the scientific anatomy as well. We may not be doctors, but we have to know the body incredibly well. As yoga takes the country by storm and becomes a multi-billion dollar industry, there are a lot of discussions we need to have. There is a lot of talk about whether yoga is, at its roots, religious. How much of “true” yoga is lost in the gym culture? Do we really have to chant? Do we really have to know Sanskrit? What about this meditation? And you want me to “live” my yoga off the mat? What does that mean? Those are all really important questions, and I have struggled with all of them myself in my life and on this blog.

But at the end of the day, the vast majority of people at least start with yoga as a physical exercise. I did not, and it took me a long time to recognize that other people do. Most of them.

So perhaps the most important question, if only to keep from hurting people, is “how much should yoga teachers understand about the clients we serve?” I was talking to a fellow yoga teacher friend the other day and opined that perhaps my current injury is really an opportunity to share these issues with others going forward. I will never teach a yoga class the same again. I had a doctor spend two hours with me the other day, and much of that time was an explanation of how and why spines get weak, why discs herniate, and how that affects the rest of the body. Prior to that discussion, I had read a ton on sciatica, studied yoga anatomy, and read my own books, but what she told me was news – a new way to look at this issue. And it made a lot of sense.

So, what are we really doing in yoga? I am not always pleased with the current specialization of professionals in our culture. My spine surgeon cannot explain medications to me. A pain doctor cannot explain anatomy to me. But the bigger issue facing yoga, and perhaps the law, is that we simply are not willing to take the next, and most important step. As yoga teachers, we have to know the body better than anyone. We cannot say, “I’m a yoga teacher not a doctor.” (For the record, I have not heard anyone actually say that except to say they cannot diagnose.)

There is absolutely no question that the huge benefit of yoga is the ability to turn inside and know our bodies intuitively better. That is amazing and wonderful. But it is not the entire picture, certainly not in a 24/7 culture where as soon as class ends people are back on their cell phones. Living in an ashram, we would have the time to truly and fully know our bodies. And for people who choose that path, thank you! But for the rest of us, let’s use the information we can from modern science. We can look at x-rays and MRIs and understand the body on an entirely new level. Together, intuition and science can give us the insight about ourselves to truly heal.

This multi-billion dollar industry has brought us cute pants and cute slogans, but has it brought us health? We can argue ad infinitum about whether yoga has lost its true essence because of this explosion of people participating, and my answer would be yes. But I think there is an area where we can all agree yoga teachers, and the yoga industry, need to step up their game.

If we are going to be sharing this with the masses, we need to understand the masses better. We need to know the bodies first. We need to know them intuitively, as the yoga masters have for centuries, and we need to know them in a way in which we can speak to a modern audience, to the people whose only time to themselves may be on the yoga mat. We need not take out the other seven limbs to do this. This is an addition, not a subtraction. And for the people who take classes, our clients/consumers, whatever word you choose, you need to tell us to step up our game. You need to ask your yoga teachers what they really know about anatomy. It is, after all, your body. 

What do you know about anatomy? How do you share that with yourself and others?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

The post, Knowing Anatomy, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

Remembering the Tools

I remember the moment I decided I needed yoga and meditation in my life. I was 19 years old. It was the summer between my first and second years in university. I was having a rough summer, and I needed a way to relax. I had always been interested in yoga, but I had only tried it once myself. Yoga was becoming a big deal in America, but by no means was it yet the multi-billion dollar industry driving yogurt ads it is today. I just knew I needed something different in my life, and yoga seemed like the way to start.

Soon yoga just took over my life. It kept me sane, or at least saner than without it. Yoga became my refuge, both as a practice and as a way to connect to community. And I found a way to bring it into my world as a lawyer, not as a separate thing I did after work, but as a way to further create a professional community. My first teaching experience was at a family law conference, and for a brief time when I was "self-employed" I taught Stress Management Workshops focusing on yoga and meditation.

I attempted to fill my yoga bucket with practice and various tools, hoping to have a reserve for when the going got tough. And for awhile, I did. But then it got tougher.

For whatever reason, I am not recovering correctly from my surgery four months ago. No one seems to know why that is. But the words have begun to change from recovery to chronic pain. My life has gone from one of hiking the self-proclaimed most beautiful trail in the world to wondering whether I will be able to take a 10-minute walk home from Starbucks. And with the change in life circumstances has come the fear, the panic, etc.

I have said it before, and I will say it probably many more times. Something hit me during yoga teacher training. I was not necessarily destined to be a full-time yoga teacher, but somehow I had to bring yoga into some part of the legal profession, and perhaps to other professionals as well. The reason? Working a lot can be hazardous to your health, but it can also be rewarding. We just have to find the place where those two meet and remain healthy.

I made sure to make yoga a part of my life when I started my job in December 2011. Then there were weeks I did not go to classes, but I (usually) practiced in the mornings. Well, sometimes. And then began the nagging hip pain that eventually traveled down my leg and into my foot. That landed me on an operating table. And now I have an excuse - I cannot do yoga. But what does that mean exactly? I cannot do most asana. That is true. But everyone can do yoga. If you can breathe, you can do yoga. I often write about yoga and meditation, but there is no difference. They are one and the same.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine gave me a CD called Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief by Jon Kabat-Zinn. In it, he reminds us that mindfulness is not something that happens overnight. He reminds us that mindfulness is an ongoing process, a training system really. And something about that is difficult. All the tools in the world but somehow they feel beyond my grasp. I understand stress that comes from work. I have never done anything in my life except school and work. I can work with that stress. I do not understand the stress and fear that comes with a body that seems to be failing. I could always push through the pain before. But now I have to deal with it.

But we all reach these moments in life, these moments we are faced to deal with our lives and not run and hide. For some of us, many of the people I see, these moments happen as a result of work, especially in a stressful profession like law, but not only. For some it is the result of an illness, a divorce, the death of a loved one, but we all know these moments. They bring us to our edge. And if I have learned anything from yoga, it is that the edge can move. We can expand and grow. Sometimes it feels like it is impossible. Sometimes we push too far and cause ourselves more pain and suffering. But we learn to read it and understand it, and when we use the breath and mindfulness and awareness, we slowly begin to see we can handle more.

I would love to say I have had that moment of insight seeing my edge expand. But the truth is that there is not necessarily a moment. As Kabat-Zinn reminds us, it is a process. And no, it is not necessarily an easy one, even when you have all the tools. In that sense, it is sort of like practicing law - law school can only teach you so much, but then you have to practice to learn to really do it.

Practice. That's the word. Practice. No matter the endeavor, practice makes us better at it. And no matter the endeavor, there are days (or months, perhaps years) we do not want to practice. But the difference here is that practicing yoga makes all the other endeavors, including a body that does not work, easier. I am honestly not sure what has kept me off the proverbial mat/cushion. But I know that the only way to handle this is to utilize the tools I began learning when I was 19. Ironically, I'm back in the same location I was that summer, at least for another few days. Perhaps that is just the inspiration I need.

How have you gotten back into practice after a long stint away? How does your life change when you do not practice?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

"Remembering the Tools" first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

Defining Ourselves

In many ways, this post has been years in the making. It sort of sums up why I created Is Yoga Legal. How do I define myself? Am I a lawyer representing children? Am I a researcher trying to find better ways to represent children? Am I a yogi? Am I a yoga teacher? This blog has always been a way to try to be all of these things as well as an attempt to recognize how they can influence each other.

But are any of these characteristics really who we are? Would I still be me if I stopped doing yoga? Would I still be me if I stopped being a lawyer? Someone asked me the other day, “how else do you want to be defined?” I really had no answer.

What I realized is that so many of us define ourselves by what we do. That is the cocktail party question, right? “So, what do you do?” In some ways, this is just an easy way to connect. It is a good way to break the ice in an otherwise super awkward moment. One of the things I have always liked about conferences is that there is an underlying assumption that everyone does the same work, even if it is from a different perspective. But that is not asking the person, "who are you?" It is simply a way to start making small talk. It might lead to interesting conversation, but it does not necessarily set the stage for truly understanding the person.

I have spent a lot of time traveling and getting away from past situations, not necessarily purposefully running, just moving and starting over again. I moved from Michigan to California when I was five (obviously not my choice), from California to Michigan when I was 18, from Michigan to France when I was 21 and again when I was 22, from France to Arizona when I was 23, from Tucson to Phoenix when I was 28, from Arizona to New Zealand when I was 29, and then back to Tucson just before I turned 30. 

I have had new experiences, “done” different things, and met hundreds of people. But I was always there. That person who cannot be defined. The same hopes, fears, relationships, etc. followed me from place to place and from experience to experience. Yoga was always the one aspect that helped me reconnect to my deeper self. It helps that I started doing yoga in college, so it has remained the one constant in my adult life, even if at times it has been more or less a part of my life.

So, how does yoga connect us to our deeper selves, the one who is beyond being defined by what we do? To be clear, this is not a way to define ourselves as yogis. Yoga helps us see beyond the definitions of “doing” rather than “being.” Yoga, through concentration on the breath, helps us step out of this cocktail party world into one where we can see what comes up for us.

We learn to see how we respond and react to difficult situations. We learn to hear our self talk. We learn to see how we connect to other people. On a yoga mat, or a meditation cushion, or even breathing deeply while lying flat on your back on the couch recovering from surgery, it does not matter what you “do” in life. The president of the United States meditating is no different than the janitor in the White House meditating. 

And the more we tap into that inner being, that inner power, the more of what we do in life becomes a manifestation of our inner self. We may not physically change our work, but we are no longer defined by it. We define how we do it. Our identity need not be tied up in what we do, but rather in who we are, and how we share that with the world. 

So, the answer is that the yogi and the lawyer can absolutely coexist when they are both manifestations of the deepest self. The conflict arises when we allow lawyer and yogi to define who we think we are. I think there is more to say on this, but right now, I am not sure what that is. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Do you define yourself by your work? Are you able to take the step to manifest your inner being and let the work flow from there?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

A Future Together

Today is my 31^st birthday.

I say that only because one year ago, I wrote a post on my 30^th birthday, and in it, I promised to live my life for others, to consciously use yoga to refill my reserves to be of service to the world. But as I pointed out in the last post, I had back surgery 2.5 weeks ago, and I have not been this reliant on other people since I was a child. This has gotten me thinking about my post a year ago.

Yoga and the law have something in common I have not really considered until now. In many ways, they are both solitary activities. And yet, I have learned more about community from both of them than anything else in my life. And that is just the point. Both of them could be very isolating unless we consciously open up to the support and encouragement of those around us.

For example, at my job I have my own case load. I meet with my clients, prepare for hearings, and participate in hearings. When emails and phone calls come on a case, I respond. But I work in an office with several other lawyers, and we all help each other. When I have a question, I find someone who might know the answer. If it is one of those situations where there may not be an answer (all too common in the legal profession and the world), we discuss the issue until we figure out how best to move forward. I could choose not to interact on that level, but it is through the interaction with others that I learn so much.

Yoga works similarly. A yoga practice could certainly be on a mat or a meditation cushion in your own home. And as I have learned these past few weeks, it can also be flat on your back on the couch just remembering to breathe and let go. Even in a community class, the practice is internal. No teacher, no matter how great, can know what you are feeling in your own body. And yet the teacher, as well as the other students, can help us learn to understand ourselves on a deeper level. It is the presence of the community that helps us understand and connect.

I wrote last year’s post about dedicating myself to others for a few reasons. First, I realized that my 20’s were a bit self-serving. And second, I firmly believe the legal profession is an opportunity to serve the community, and we should treat it as such.

But the individualism/community aspects of both the legal profession and yoga and great examples of how we need to balance the service to ourselves and the service to others. And sometimes we have to accept the help from others as well.

The world is more interconnected than it has ever been before. We are developing new ways to communicate faster and faster. And yet, somehow, we are more distant from one another. So many of us have our heads in ten, or more, different places at once, that they are rarely with the people around us. We have brief interactions, brief facebook notes, or brief text messages that would make Shakespeare roll over in his grave. But that is not enough to sustain us.

We can turn inward at times and be solitary creatures. We need that time alone to rest and rejuvenate. We can be part of the community just for fun at times and enjoy other human company. And we can serve the community, be there for our friends and family, and support the world. All of these happen together. They are a symbiotic relationship.

Last year’s post was called “A Future for Others.” That is why this year’s post is called “A Future Together.” I have learned this past year how necessary it is, at times, to reach out and ask for help. Sometimes that means help with writing an appeal, and sometimes that means help doing the laundry. And there are plenty of moments to offer a hand when someone is in need. And through it all, there are times we need to retreat from the world for a brief sojourn and refill our yoga buckets to continue being able to be a part of this world together.

How do you connect best with others? Have you had to ask for help recently? Have you had to offer help? How do you restore your sanity?

Namaste.

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.