Thick Skin

We hear it a lot. It is supposed to be a sign of strength. Someone has a thick skin. But what does that really mean? We think it means they can handle whatever is thrown at them. We think it means words do not harm them. We think it means people do not take things personally.

But what does it really mean? What does it mean not to have thick skin?

Lawyers are simply expected to have a thick skin. Although all professionals have to learn some level of objectivity in their work, somehow lawyers are expected to be more stoic about it. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of types of law, but lawyers are often lumped into one category in terms of personality. We're supposed to be Type A, ruthless fighters who, by the way, have a thick skin. Lawyer ads exemplify this when lawyers are  compared to eagles and sharks and tigers. We are tough and often ruthless and definitely fight for our clients.

But that sort of mentality also comes with a price.

I know a lot of lawyers, and very few of them actually meet that description. But somehow deep down, I see a lot of lawyers think they have to meet that description. They feel they have to pretend to be strong even when the work is incredibly hard. They feel they have to push through pain, stress, fear, etc., just to show they are good enough to practice. They have to ignore the pain their clients feel because the law is reason devoid of emotion. That charade causes some people to disconnect from their true nature and forget that it is okay to be vulnerable. A thick skin is supposed to protect our inside from the harsh realities of the outside. 

And how do we show thick skin? Does it mean that we never sleep? Never take care of ourselves? Never show that we are upset? Never show that we need help? If we believe as a society that thick skin equals strength, does that mean those who do not have a thick skin are weak? 

At times, it seems as though that is exactly what the legal profession suggests. More than once, I have overheard lawyers telling stories - and laughing - about the person who cried on the witness stand. But when they tell those stories, I realize they are talking about the people I find the strongest in what they do. They are the ones I admire. I do not necessarily admire them because of their tears, but I know who they are discussing, and inevitably, it is the people I trust. Of course I trust people who do not cry, but tears are rarely a reason not to trust someone, particularly in certain types of work.

There is another aspect to a thick skin that involves not taking care of ourselves as we should. I have seen several articles floating around facebook about the vacation time Americans leave unused while the rest of the world uses every last day of it. And I have heard Americans call those people lazy. Interestingly, more and more people around the world are starting to follow the American model, which I do not understand, but it is happening nonetheless. Why do we feel this need to push ourselves and show everyone else how pushed we are? Why do we feel the need to never look "weak" in public? What part of taking a break, showing emotions, or even being vulnerable makes us so afraid?

I actually do not believe the biggest reason has to do with showing others how strong we are. It is that in some ways we actually feel less when we put on the thick skin charade, and in this world, that can have its advantages . . . in the short term. The world can be difficult to see. As news comes at us from all sides, we see the atrocities of the world from which we were able to hide only a generation ago. Being vulnerable to it is scary because it is scary to see the pain that others experience. When the Buddha first left his palace, he could not believe the horrors he saw. But then he decided to do something about it. He decided to show his followers a way through.

Similarly, yoga teaches us another way than believing we always need to have a thick skin. Yoga teaches us to be softer and more open to the possibility of feeling. And sometimes that can be scary. But arguably, in the long run, it also makes us stronger. Instead of hiding from the world in which we live, we learn to live within it and connect to people on deep levels.

And yoga shows us what strength is from a different point of view. We can be strong when we are vulnerable and scared and unsure. In fact, that is where our true strength lies. Our thick skin is no match to a yoga mat. On the mat, we cannot hide from ourselves, but it is the fact that we see everything about ourselves that makes us stronger. It often does not feel that way, but as we go deeper into our practice, we find a sense of strength we didn't know we had.

All too often, however, we think the true sign of strength is a thick skin. But that can cut us off from feeling anything at all. It can cut us off from the world around us. It can be important not to take what happens in our lives too personally, but the concept of a thick skin has moved us out of ourselves and into a world where the only way to be strong is to hide from what we are truly feeling. And that only leads to more dis-ease and distress later.

How often do you find yourself saying you have a thick skin? Has it served you? Are you willing to break it down and see something different?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2013, all rights reserved.

The Post, Thick Skin, first appeared on Is Yoga Legal.

Taking the Practice Deeper

I attended a yoga class over the weekend where the teacher asked us what it means to us to “take the practice deeper.” As she said, to a lot of people, the answer often revolves around getting into more “advanced” postures. But regular readers of this blog know that asana (postures) are just a part of yoga. They are necessary to the deeper practices, but they are not the only deeper practices.So what does it mean to take the practice deeper? It often means looking deeper inside ourselves. It can mean facing our fears.

So much of our lives are external. There was a very interesting article about busyness in the New York Times over the weekend. We live in a world of busy where we never have to look inside. In fact, taking the time to look inside is seen as an indulgence, not a necessity. The article says that all this busyness is a way for people to feel important. After all, if we never have time for people, they will know how much other people want our time.

But I think it might be more than that. And it has something to do with taking our practice deeper. Staying busy all the time protects us from having to look inside. Most of us have a lot of emotional buildup buried deep within us, and staying busy means we never have to acknowledge it. Even our body reflects how we hide from it. Our muscles tense, our jaw tightens, and sometimes we even get physically ill. These are the issues that often bring people to a yoga mat.

Therefore, a purely asana-focused practice can help us reach into some of these issues. We may notice that the emotional baggage we hold in our hips begins to release when doing hip openers. Some people spontaneously cry or laugh while doing asana. Some people love the endorphins. As we begin to move through the holding patterns in our musculature, we begin to face the rest of our lives as well. 

Going deeper means taking the asana practice and using it to really understand what we are holding, and how we can release it. Taking our practice there is where the real healing begins. Yoga becomes more than a strong core and some breathing exercises. It becomes truly therapeutic.

But it also means entering that space of fear. It means facing the world we hide from ourselves through our busyness. The universe will never throw anything at us we are unable to handle at that time, but it may not always feel that way. Yoga, for all its great healing attributes, makes us vulnerable. Muscles that were tight expand and make us open. With all the traumatic stories and news we hear, from a friend’s divorce, to our clients’ tragedy, to wars raging across the globe, sometimes it is easier to stay closed.

But yoga opens us up. It opens us by asking us to go deeper than those surface pains and tightness in our muscles and our minds. It allows us to turn inward and see what we have been hiding from ourselves and the world. And when we can learn to be with our own inner being, we can learn to be with each other more solidly.

Easy? Absolutely not! Some days it keeps people off the mat entirely. But the healing is at that deep level as well, which is why we also come back to the mat or the cushion. The physical pains that brought us to the mat at the beginning are our reminders that overall it is safe to return to the mat when our practice deepens. It is when we go deeper into our practices that not only can we heal our aches and pains but our sorrows as well. We learn to tune into the strength that is our body and the strength that is our soul.

Maybe going deeper also means “finally” bringing your hands to the floor in a forward fold, but really it is about being with ourselves completely. Rather than blocking out parts of ourselves, we look at them squarely and feel all they have to offer. And at that moment we breathe.

So, perhaps our obsession with busyness is about proving that we have the best business, as suggested by the New York Times article. Or perhaps it is a way to hide. I actually think it is both. Yoga automatically removes us from this busyness, even if only for five minutes. It takes us away from proving to each other we matter. It takes us away from needing to prove we are better. And it certainly takes us away from hiding from ourselves.

Going deeper. What does that mean? Ironically, as my practice has deepened, I cannot get as deep into certain postures on certain days. But I know that where my practice is each day is where it needs to be. At times it is frustrating, but I learn something new from it every single time.

What does going deeper mean for you? Do you use busyness as a distraction? What happens to your mind when you let it settle?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, 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

Let it go and start afresh

Modern life, especially modern life in an office, means detachment from nature and its cycles. We wake up in a house, walk into a car, walk into an office, then back into the car and back into the house. Sunshine, rain, and wind fail to change how our days progress. Weather and changing seasons matter little from the 20^th floor of an office building. Working in Phoenix in the summer, I had to carry a winter coat to work because it was so cold inside the building even though it was 110 degrees outside. But the Earth shifts and changes, and it has a lot to teach us if we tune in.

This week, however, we had an equinox, one of the four times a year when the seasons officially change, and for a brief moment, we think about the earth and its cycles. Generally, I think only of the seasons changing in the northern hemisphere. From my brief internet research, about 90% of the world’s population lives in the northern hemisphere. Here in New Zealand, however, we just celebrated the fall equinox. As the world’s bloggers were talking about rebirth, I am watching the sky turn gray and the weather turn cold. It does not feel like the rebirth the rest of the world is experiencing.

But yoga provides another perspective. The equinoxes are the points of transition for the Earth. They are our reminders that as one part of the world is in a state of rebirth, the other is in a state of shedding that which does not support it. As the leaves fall off the trees and the wind starts to blow stronger, we know that on the other side of winter, we will be experiencing the rebirth that we see in the northern hemisphere. In other words, we notice the cycle, the same cycle that affects us whether we pay attention or not.

But this recognition that the Earth goes through both stages at once is our reminder that so do we, as individuals. We can get stuck in our northern hemisphere view that it is spring, or we can open up and feel that at all moments, we are struggling to find the balance between letting go and rebirth. The image that keeps coming to mind is the phoenix, who must burn into ashes and from those ashes is reborn into a strong bird once again.

So, even though we see and experience only one or the other at a time, either spring or fall, both are impacting the Earth at the same time, and therefore both are affecting each and every one of us. Yoga is a reminder to tune back into the changing patterns of the Earth and ourselves. As we take the time to notice our own bodies, our own breath, and our own reactions to life, we can learn to tune into the way the Earth’s cycles affect us.

Yoga also teaches us about balance. There are particular balance postures, where you are standing on one foot, but there is also the balance between strength and flexibility, the balance between responding and reacting, and the balance between tuning in to our internal awareness and being affected by that which hits us externally.

Thus, it may be easy to ignore the cycles of the Earth, to go from the house to the car to the office where you need a winter coat even though it is sauna-like outside. But for a moment, tune in and notice that the Earth is able to hold letting go and rebirth together, as it transitions to fall down below and spring up above. What areas of your life do you want to allow to fall off, burn to ashes, so you can allow them to rebirth into something stronger and more useful to you?

Happy Fall and Happy Spring.

Namaste! 

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

This blog is not affiliated with Fulbright or Fulbright New Zealand, and all opinions expressed herein are my own.

Flexible or vulnerable?

I want to keep exploring this idea of flexbility that I began in my last post. My conclusion there was, “just start.” Start moving, and eventually the flexibility will start to arise. But the question is how did we get unflexible? (Yes, I know that is not a word, but hopefully you get the idea.) It is (almost) cliche to say that children are flexible, and we lose that flexibility over time. But why? How? Does knowing the genesis of that loss give us some insight into how to fix it? I think it does.

Physically, what does it mean to not be flexible? We lose our physical flexibility when our muscles get too stiff, when they constrict and hold their shape. Certainly, one cause is repetitive motions that are “not good” for our bodies; my favorite culprit is the chair. Oh, the modern chair, in which we constrict our hips, crunch our low backs, round our shoulders, and when the computer is added, jut out our jaws. And many of us spend hours upon hours a day in a chair.

But what are we holding in those constricted muscles? Our muscles hold our past. They are havens of our emotions, our memories, and our thoughts. People talk of bursting out crying or laughing in particular postures. Sometimes, I will have the most random thought pop into my head of a distant memory during yoga. That is usually when the lawyer in me takes over, and I start wondering what it is about that posture, that muscle, which causes me to remember one moment over another. Oh well.

Perhaps the greatest gift children can give us is openness. Certainly I am not going to glorify childhood. It has its downsides for sure, but the open eyes with which children see the world is awe inspiring. Have you ever been with a group of people when a baby or toddler arrives? Every one's eyes turn to the child; we yearn to be back in that space where life was exhilarating, and where each moment was an opportunity to learn something new.

How do we lose that? Shall I call it innocence? Openness? Spaciousness? Acceptance? Dare I call it flexibility? In some sense, we must lose it. After all, a baby would be lucky to last two days without an adult taking care of it, and toddlers not much longer. Why? They are too vulnerable. Animals must protect their young from predators, and humans had to as well until civilization. But today, a baby could walk into the street, or not be able to reach the food in the cupboard. They are vulnerable and need the support of adults. Eventually, they become those adults who then long for their lost flexibility and gawk and laugh as children go by.

Yoga helps us find that inner child. We begin to open our stiff muscles, go deep into our memories, and start to see the world through children’s eyes again. After all, “child’s pose” and “happy baby” are both hip openers. But just as children are vulnerable, so too, can we become vulnerable as we begin to open. Some are not quite ready to face that past and may have held it deep for a long, long time. That is why yoga is a practice, a process. It gives us time to open slowly and carefully.

I am quite scared by people who want to get flexible overnight. Instead, I hope that people, especially those who are extremely stiff, both physically and perhaps mentally, to take time in yoga. It takes a long time to become the people we are as adults, and we cannot go back immediately. More importantly, if we give up too much, we lose our ability to care for ourselves. We lose our personal strength . . . but that is a post for another day.

So, I hope to encourage people to get started, but be careful and give yourself the time and space to grow and open safely.

Namaste and Blessings!

© Copyright 2010. Rebecca Stahl.