A Western Yogi?

I have finally begun reading “Light on Life” by BKS Iyengar. Iyengar is the man who brought yoga to the West about 50 years ago. His first book, “Light on Yoga” is often called the Yoga Bible, for it contains pictures and explanations of nearly every asana. It is both intimidating and awe-inspiring. Flipping through it, you see a man in positions that appear to be possible only if you remove your spine and perhaps a few other bones along the way. But this new book sheds a different light – Iyengar was born sickly and spent so much of his early years sick that this son-of-a-school teacher fell behind in his studies in school because he could never attend.

Today, he is considered the father of yoga in the west.

I have a feeling that many of my next posts will focus on what he discusses in this book - I have just finished the introduction – but today I want to focus on the relief this introduction has granted me.

Iyengar writes: “Most of those who begin to practice yogasana, the poses of yoga, do so for practical and often physical reasons. . . . Very few people begin yoga because they believe it will be a way to achieve spiritual enlightenment, and indeed a good number may be quite skeptical about the whole idea of spiritual realization. Actually, this is not a bad thing because it means most of the people who come to yoga are practical people who have practical problems and aims – people who are grounded in the ways and means of life, people who are sensible.”

I have struggled, from writing this blog to teaching yoga to presenting workshops to even chatting with friends, about how best to describe that which “is” yoga. How do I bring this practice that changes lives to the practical lives of lawyers and others? Reading that BKS Iyengar started yoga purely for its physical benefits removes some of that pressure. We all come to yoga for different reasons. Personally, I was looking for a way to relieve stress and anxiety, but most people in the West consider yoga a physical practice. This past year, I have learned the power of that physical practice to influence everything in life.

A mere five pages after opening the door to the practical yogi, Iyengar reminds us, “Yoga releases the creative potential of Life.”

For thousands of years, spiritual teachings were hidden away in caves, to be passed from guru to student, hidden from regular people, but the generation of teachers who consist of BKS Iyengar, the Dalai Lama, and Trungpa Rinpoche (Shambhala Buddhism), knew that if we are to survive this crazy time in the world, the speed with which we obtain information and the ability to travel the world in 24 hours, we would have to have a foundation. So, they brought the teachings out of hiding, and they gave us ways to use them in everyday life.

We are the beneficiaries of their courage. We may get it wrong, not go as deep, not fully understand everything those teachings contain, but it is a path, it is a practice. And it is the practical aspect of yoga that this blog is aiming to pass on. How can we learn from the body what we can do in our lives? How can we learn from the breath whether we are stressed? How can we learn from our inner selves what we need to do each moment? These are what make yoga so powerful, and it need not matter why we begin to practice or even how we begin to practice, only that we do begin to practice. The rest will take care of itself.

I hope that Iyengar’s words can inspire you to begin somewhere and allow yourself to open up to the creative potential of your life and our shared Life. Why did you start yoga? What did you originally want to gain? How has it transformed you in ways you never expected?

Thank you for being part of this community.

Namaste and Blessings!

© 2010 Rebecca Stahl, 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

Making the Connection

These past few weeks have been super busy; I have been learning how to be self-employed. For weeks, I called it unemployed or “in transition.” I am, after all, leaving for New Zealand in January, so I know that whatever happens, it is short term. But making the semantic transition has helped me move beyond a rut - the rut of inactivity. This same rut is why I have not posted in so long.

But what of the title? What connection? Well, Is Yoga Legal finally went public. This blog began as a way to connect my two seemingly polar opposite worlds. This past Saturday, I offered the first of what I hope to be many Stress Management Workshops for lawyers. They, of course, focus on yoga and meditation techniques for the office. And they do not stop at desk-asana and meditation and breathing. They focus on all the areas this blog has covered, from reaction vs. responses to topics we have yet to cover on the blog.

What have I learned? This workshop is not only necessary for the legal profession - talk about stressed-out professionals - but lawyers like yoga! It felt like I found a home teaching these workshops. Certainly, I need to make adjustments to them, but I was able to talk about all aspects of yoga, far beyond the physical postures, and people responded.

It felt so wonderful to see a group of people whose lives are usually so full of stress take a moment to breathe, talk about meditation, and recognize that we can help each other. It was great to see people in the room who make yoga a daily part of their lives right next to people who have never considered ever practicing before. Both were willing to stop for a moment and be present.

I hope these workshops continue to provide people tools for the workplace. I hope they also provide lawyers a place where they can see that stress is not always bad, it is when the stress becomes uncontrollable that the problems arise. Most importantly, I want people to know that their lives need not be disasters. There are simple tools that can help make each day easier.

Of course, this does not mean that each day is easy. I am a perfect example. The few days before the first workshop I was a complete ball of stress. But then someone reminded me that fear and excitement are the same energy. I changed (mostly) my interpretation of the balls of energy to excitement from fear, and I went to a restorative yoga class Friday night. Saturday went great! Then I collapsed.

As I continue to navigate this path of being a lawyer-yogi, I hope to bring others along and create a community of people who can help each other when the going gets tough. I hope this blog can be a start of that community. Share your comments on your favorite stress management techniques. After all, making the connection is the first step.

Namaste and Blessings!

© 2010 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

Our own point of view . . .

“Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” - Obi Wan Kenobi

Yes, I just quoted Star Wars, but I told you before that I’m a Star Wars geek. But really, I can think of no better way of saying what Obi Wan makes so clear here. Did Darth Vader kill Luke’s father, or was he Luke’s father? Well, both. It depends on Luke’s point of view.

Lawyers get paid to have a point of view and to stick with it. After all, we must protect our clients’ position, and our clients’ positions become our own. Yoga, on the other hand, teaches us to see life from many points of view. Inversions literally force us to look at the world upside down. In my second post, I talked about the need to let go and see the argument from the other side, to let go of only one way of seeing the world in order to see the full picture.

But how does our perspective change our own outlooks? As of August 20, I no longer work at the court. My job was only scheduled to last one year, and that is when it ended. So, for two weeks now, I have been “unemployed.” Sure, I have found some contract work, and I have been teaching yoga, but without full-time employment, I was feeling a bit rejected, even having the time to attend 1-2 yoga classes per day.

This morning, my perspective changed.

While taking a walk this morning (another benefit of being without full-time employment), I realized that this unemployment has allowed me to reach out to people I would not have otherwise met. I have sent 100 or so emails to various people asking for work. Through those emails I have talked to several people, and I have some more meetings set up. I have also set up my first Stress Management for Lawyers through Yoga and Meditation workshop, which is exactly what I want to be doing.

It is an old mantra - bad situations are just blessings in disguise; we should see the opportunity even in difficult situations; when life throws you lemons, make lemonade. But cliches become cliches for a reason - they are true. And yes, it is true that each situation, even if it looks terrible, has the potential to be an amazing opportunity with a little change in perspective.

Of course, this is not always the case. Some situations are truly difficult, but as I said in the last post, learning to respond, rather than react, allows us to change our perspective and confront situations with all of the necessary information. Yoga gives us the strength and courage to allow our points of views to be dismantled. It can be scary and hard, but in the end, it could just lead to the winning argument.

Namaste!

But I cannot control that . . . on well-being

Over the weekend, I attended an attorney wellness study. There were five lawyers there, all women. The first question we were asked was to rate our level of well-being on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being low and 5 being high. One of the women there rated her well-being as a 4. That in itself is not that interesting, but what I found most interesting was her reason. She said that her own life was great, and would have rated it a 5, but because of the outside forces she cannot control, she had to lower it to a 4. Interestingly, this woman also said that she does not do yoga or meditate.

This, of course, got me thinking. To some extent, she is right; we have little to no control over how other people act. (There are many who would argue, and I would agree, that we do actually have the power to change how others act, but we can explore that in another post.) Assuming we cannot control others, or external forces generally, what can we do? We can learn to change how we react to these forces beyond our control.

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are considered by many to be the beginning of yoga philosophy and ideas. One of the many translations of the first sutra is, “Yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind.” It is when we learn to still the mind that we can change our reactions to the external forces at work in our lives.

When all we do is react to the external world, then we lose conntrol. Reactions take place from our fight-or-flight response, which is activated when we are stressed. Its purpose is to keep us alive, to ensure our survival. Its purpose is not to provide us with well-being. When we still the mind, we can learn to take ourselves out of fight-or-flight. We can learn to respond instead of react.

Responding takes more control. It requires that moment of reflection before survival. It also allows us to feel differently about how the world “treats” us; instead, we get to decide consciously how we are going to interact with the world. The legal profession, with its billable hours, hierarchy set-up, and faceless clients creates an opportunity for reaction instead of reflection. Even in the grocery store, however, we encounter people who act rudely and who make it very easy to react and be angry, perhaps even justifiably so.

But to what end?

Yoga helps us see that reactions rather than responses do not serve us. Reactions are prime space for misunderstanding and miscommunication and the paths they forge. Responses mean that we take in the entire situation, see it from all sides and determine how best to act . . . or not act. Then, when the external world “forces something upon us,” like an angry boss, we can let it slide, knowing that the person is merely reacting, not responding. By not giving in to their anger by reacting, more often than not, it dissipates. Like fire, anger needs oxygen to grow, and when we strip it of its power/force, it can no longer exist.

But what about the billable hour? What about the fact that lines are long at the grocery store? What about traffic? These are life’s annoyances, and our reactions or responses cannot change them. But we can change how we feel about them. We can use the waiting as a time to reflect, to breathe, to be still. We can let the billable hour be what it is and still serve our clients well because that is why we become lawyers. We can find our own internal force and motivation rather than relying on the external motivation of the ubiquitous bottom line.

Responding rather than reacting is no easy task. But as we take the time to slow down and learn it, it becomes easier. And then we can have control over our own well-being, rather than allowing the external world define it for us.

Namaste and blessings!

The power of community - again

This week I learned another important lesson about community and shared energy. It was more like a review session, actually, because I knew it could happen, but never had I experienced it as a yoga teacher.

I have spoken before about the community of energy, why we might choose to go to a yoga class instead of having an exclusively home practice. (In no way do I want to diminish the power of a home practice; I practice at home most days, or so I would like to think..) That post was about what we gain as students when we practice together. It is rare that we get to see the practice’s effect on the one person in the room not participating in the same way - the teacher.

As I mentioned in my last post, this week was tough. Sunday, I was standing and cooking for about 6+ hours. The only break I took was to eat. Monday morning, when I awoke, I was sore. Not just kind of sore, but very, very sore. I would like to think it is because I went to a yoga class on Sunday, but the soreness was more from stress and working. It was not bad, but it hurt. Then I taught a class yesterday evening.

Yesterday’s class was a yin/restorative class (for many reasons, it was more restorative than yin). But I did not do any of the postures; I did teacher things, such as adjustments, moving props, talking. One of the students, who at first seemed hard to please and forceful, was the last one out of the room. She thanked me for the class and said her lower back was singing. It was not until I got home that I realized what had happened. My lower back was singing as well.

Massage therapists and body workers know that they benefit from working with others. We all know that we gain more than we lose when we give. Therefore, this realization is not so much shocking as a wonderful reminder of the power of community and the power that a strong community can have on those nearby, the gentle onlookers among us. This is also a reminder that your strength and centered focus can rub off on others and make their days less stressful.

Lawyers and others who deal with a lot of people can help those other people as much by changing their energy as by changing their words. Simply holding a space of calm reduces the tension of everyone in the room. In a legal setting, where good people are often at their worst, the change in energy can be the most important dynamic. And remember, it can come back to heal you as well as the "teacher" in the room, you gain that which your students, clients, colleagues, and even adversaries gain.

So, I invite you to share your energy and grow your community. You never know whose life it may change. Have you noticed this in the past? Have you noticed how your staying calm changes other peoples’ dynamics? 

Namaste and Blessings!

Wit's End

This week has been busy and stressful. From working to looking for a job to driving over 8 hours to teaching three yoga classes, I have not had a lot of time to just chill. I have not had a lot of time to do my own practice. And each day missed makes it easier to miss the next day.

Like so many people, I am a creature of habit, and when that habit gets interrupted, it is difficult to get back into the swing of things. It is easier to be tired, to be cranky. It is easier to allow external inconveniences dictate how my day comes and goes. This is where the yoga becomes extra necessary.

Today was the last straw. I sat in my car for 4 of those 8 hours this week, plus more just getting around town. I had no alone time today. I was trying to figure out logistics for a big meal tomorrow. And I was hungry. (The irony of that combination cannot go unrecognized.) When I got home, I mindlessly started eating and cooking. I walked over to my computer to read something, trying to do 4 different things at once.

Then I just stopped. It was as if the universe smacked me over the head and said, “you need to take a breath.”

So I did.

I am blessed to live alone in a two-bedroom apartment. The second bedroom is my yoga room (ready to start offering private yoga sessions). I went in there, and I sat . . . and I breathed. My mind was whipping around, but the breath began to take over. I began to slow down. Five minutes later, I felt better. Everything, as usual, was working just fine.

This crazed situation is not uncommon. The habit of frenzy takes over easily, and it is difficult to break away. When I see other people having days like this, I can be a voice of reason. I can, and often do, look at people and say, “take a breath.” The faster people are moving, the slower I usually say it. But when it is me, not always so easy.

The breath, as we know, is always there. We forget about it, but it does not fail us. And when we remember it, we are ripped out of whatever frenzy, and even for just a moment, we can stop. We can put life into perspective. Breaking that habit, stopping it, literally confuses us enough to force us to stop and reevaluate. When we cannot run on auto-pilot, we must stop and think, and usually we realize how caught up and distracted we were.

It really is that simple . . . and it is really, really hard to do. There are so many stimuli, be them family, friends, electronics, driving, plans, fears, hopes, everything.  Why pay attention to the breath? It is always there. It will exist even if we ignore it, so what is the point of paying attention? All those other “things” require our attention, or they disappear, right?

But can we pay full attention to any of them in our frenzied state? Can we experience them? Can we enjoy them? When we learn to appreciate the breath, we learn to appreciate all of life. Appreciating all that life has to offer, from an inhale to winning the lottery to children to whatever makes each moment special.

And then when we are at our wit’s end, we can always come back to the breath and remember that we can always appreciate that moment. For when we breathe, and consciously breathe, everything else simply falls away. Then we can reenter life more focused, more open, and more prepared.

I usually like to finish a post with a question of sorts, but instead, I am going to end this one with a dedication. May all of you who have crazy days allow the universe to smack you and wake you up. May you find the joy in your breath to bring some peace and calm to your frenzied days.

Namaste and blessings!