What Does Bullying Have To Do With Ahimsa? Everything.

I saw the movie Bully this weekend. It was very tough to watch. I left the movie feeling frustrated as I didn’t feel the movie’s conclusion left the audience with a great deal of  hope.

The next day I got onto my mat and practiced and I didn’t think about the movie. I moved and breathed and I listened to the messages of tuning in and being present shared by my teacher. Soon after, I realized that yoga is part of the solution. The yogic principle of Ahimsa, compassion or doing no harm, teaches us that we must first find compassion for ourselves before we spread that compassion to those around us. As I am about to embark on teaching middle school aged girls to find their power and to find their voice, it occurred to me that underneath all of that is teaching them how to treat themselves with compassion.  At a certain age self-judgement begins to increase as fitting in with the group begins to take priority. Judging oneself becomes judging others. Being untrue to our authentic self becomes not respecting differences in others. Talking about our different bodies and our different strengths and weaknesses, demonstrating that we practice yoga to accept how our bodies and minds are different every time we get on the mat and sharing that these differences are OK, that these differences are what make us unique and special and powerful happen so naturally on the mat. I don’t know where else this message of self-acceptance occurs in a child’s life. When is the message that you are perfect just the way you are taught outside of the home? Even within the home most of us expect our children to get great grades, excel in sports and have many friends—we expect our kids to fit in a box of “the typical child”.

Until kids accept their differences, they won’t accept others. Until kids realize that happiness lies not with fitting in but with tuning in and self-love, there will always be judgement and cruelty.

The blog Pigtail Pals reminds us that we start life believing that we are awesome. We need to find ways to keep that belief alive. And for those who sadly start life with a different message, through the practice of yoga they too can find peace, self-acceptance and self-compassion. Spreading compassion will remove the problem of bullying. I believe that yoga is key.

Heavy Baggage—Yoga Lightens the Load

It occurred to me while I was participating in my Baron Baptiste Level 1 Teacher Training that everyone there arrived with baggage and not just the obvious duffle bags and suitcases. We all came with stories from our past that we’ve taken for truths that create limiting thoughts and don’t serve us on our life’s journey. In truth, this may just be part of life and growing up. But what if there was a way to prevent some of that baggage? Instead of seeking therapy, hiding in destructive behaviors such as eating disorders, drugs and alcohol use or risky sexual behavior to flee from our feelings, what if we learned to tune in and understand our feelings and our inner voice? If given the skills at an early age to help us tune in to our true self instead of tuning out by escaping through texting, music, tv, Facebook and video games, might we avoid the adult versions of feeling avoidance?

Thankfully I don’t have to recreate the wheel. A friend and fellow yogi, Dr. Catherine Cook-Cottone,  that I met during my teacher training developed a program for 5th-7th grade girls to teach them skills to help them navigate through life’s ups and downs. I am fortunate to be able to bring the program to life this spring in my home town. Dr. Cook-Cottone tested her program through the University of Buffalo where she teaches psychology for effectiveness in preventing destructive behavior in this population (specifically eating disorders). The program never focuses on a specific destructive behavior as it uses positive psychology and active learning techniques. The results were positive. By teaching teens awareness of their feelings and how they create thoughts and actions, the girls learn that they have opportunities to make good choices. Using yoga, discussion, journal writing and art, the girls explore who they are, what they feel and what their inner voice has to say. They leave empowered and with real skills and tools to help them through their life’s journey. Maybe these girls will avoid some of the pitfalls that my generation fell into or maybe they will fall too but with a greater understanding of themselves to be able to pick themselves, dust themselves off and leave the baggage behind.

Perceptions: Truth or Fiction

What is a perception? A belief. A thought that something is true. But is a perception the truth or fiction? A recent experience helped me answer this question.

A few summers ago I taught a Mom and Baby class. It was the second class of this type that I had ever taught. I was used to teaching children and was just getting comfortable teaching adults. I loved teaching these women at this very special time of their lives with their babies knowing how much yoga helped me when I was a new mother.

One of the moms who had signed up was a well known yogi in my community. She had studied with John Friend during the time he was creating Anusara yoga, owned her own studio and has an incredible depth of yogic knowledge. I was intimidated by the thought of teaching her. She came to a few of the classes and then disappeared. I was sure that my class wasn’t enough for her, that she found me a novice and didn’t think it was worth her time. Though the other participants continued to come to class, a part of me began to feel like I was not good enough.

We now teach at the same studio, and though she is incredibly sweet and helpful, I have carried this feeling of embarrassment (unworthiness) with me around her though I feel otherwise confident in my teaching abilities. Before her class, we were talking about my kids yoga classes. She then admitted that my Mom and Baby yoga class helped her connect back with her body, that she hadn’t been doing yoga for a while and she was grateful for that class. She had been having nursing difficulties and was sorry to have missed many classes. I was astounded.

My perceptions were absolutely wrong.

Believing thoughts (perceptions) as truths is what creates a lot of the baggage that we carry around with us our entire lives. To learn to distinguish feelings and thoughts for what they are is freeing. This connection between feelings and thoughts and what we say and what we do is tightly wound. Yoga is a great tool to help untangle fact from fiction. Through meditation and asana, we begin to free the mind to feel and think without it effecting our selves or our truth.

What self-perceptions do you carry with you? Can you figure out when you began to believe them? Was there an exact moment when fiction became truth?

It is time to break free from the thoughts that bind and hold us back. Now is the time to shatter the misconceptions that our mind creates and begin to reclaim our awesomeness.

Impermanence and Detachment

When I was little, I believed things became constant and that all of the whirlwind changes of growing up stilled once you became an adult. I thought life would have less surprises, that relationships stayed the same, that when you chose a way to make a living you stuck with that choice, that adulthood would have the answers and would be easier. What a shock to discover that life is constant in its ability to continue to change every year, every day and every moment. Once I came to accept that life is about impermanence and is ever in flux and changing, it did, in fact, get easier.

Have you accepted life’s perpetual changes or do you still hold hope for the elements to settle?

Once I fully owned that life would consist of ups and downs, have its happy moments along with stressful and that relationships change, I was able to detach myself and more easily “go with the flow” of the moment. If all things change, than banking on something or attaching myself to an idea, person or thing was pointless. Instead it requires a finer awareness of what matters which is this very moment.

Accepting impermanence and detachment creates an inner peace that does become a new constant. I find that when I begin to get into my head with worry or fear or self doubt that I have fallen out of the moment and attached myself to an idea of what life should be. Realizing that this too will change brings me back to now.

100 Percent or Bust

It is no small feat to give 100%. It takes real effort to put full effort into a task. But without trying your absolute best, you are cheating yourself out of true accomplishment.

How often do we miss opportunities by only half trying? When communicating with loved ones, how often is there full eye contact? I’m not pointing fingers. Really I’m not. I’m sometimes guilty of typing or reading the paper or looking at email while having a conversation. It’s easy to multitask but while doing so I miss the feeling of really connecting.

I recently read in an insightful book called The Game of You that every time we cut corners, give up, put something off or show up late we start to lose trust in ourselves and decrease our self-esteem. These lack luster attempts add up to feelings of dissatisfaction and stagnation.

To move forward we must believe and trust ourselves which we can only do if we know we are trying our hardest at everything we say we are going to do. Follow through until the end. When we consistently miss the mark by not putting forth the effort we begin to create and reinforce a false story about ourselves that we can’t achieve. However, when we follow through until the end we reinforce our ability to take the steps to fulfill both the little and big dreams we have in life.

I took a yoga class today from the amazing Aimee Bohn who talked about the 90 degree knee in standing poses. She said that often people don’t trust their quads and hold the pose midway which doesn’t allow the body to strengthen and doesn’t allow progress. It is better to get fully into the asana and come out and go back then go half way. You only get stronger by giving it your all.

Are there places in your life where you take short cuts or avoid a task or don’t show up? Pick one of these moments and show up fully today. Then tackle another task and another with full attention and effort until you are living your life as the 10 that you are.

Sitting in Discomfort

One of the hardest things for me to do is to sit in that awful place of discomfort. Life is chock full of these moments. I get to practice being in this place more times than I’d like. I think I am getting better at it but then all of a sudden I’m back in deep and it seems so overwhelming. For me these moments are usually found in times of confrontation, uncertainty or conflict. I know now to take time to concentrate on my breath. I try not to get to caught up with thoughts as those just seem a method that my brain uses to make sense out of the situation and may just be stories created that hold no real truth. So what do you do if you can’t think your way out? Breathe. Concentrating on the moment at hand through breath is the only truth when things are not clear. It is so simple. Breath can dissipate these uncomfortable feelings of anxiety, anger and stress. Inhale 1. Exhale 2. Inhale 1. Exhale 2. It is as easy as… taking a breath.

Taking Risks

Photo by Joe Philpson

Do one thing a day that scares you.

I think about these words of wisdom taken from a Lululemon advertisement often. As a yoga teacher for kids, I see how young children approach new ideas and challenges. They tend to go for it without thinking of being judged or making mistakes or the need to think things through. You show kids an inversion and they are flying in the air without a doubt to hold them back.

As we get older the fear of what people think begins to take hold. Usually this begins around 5th grade and accelerates through middle school. We place self-judgment before action and it stifles growth and living authentically.

Growth occurs in times of discomfort. Allow yourself to stretch into that discomfort and see how you can begin to set yourself free. Learn something new. Be vulnerable in relationships. Tap into your creativity. Push yourself physically. There are many ways that you can spread your wings and take flight in your own life.

When we take a step into risk, whether we succeed or fail, we learn more about who we really are. Jump into risk and find your true self. Take a risk and live life big.

Wake Up and Listen

Being both a yogi and runner has been enlightening this last year. As I recovered from a six month-long achilles injury, I increased my yoga practice. As I increased my yoga practice, I corrected a lot of misalignment and weakness in my feet and legs caused by running and increased my hip and hamstring flexibility tremendously. As my flexibility increased, my injury began to heal. Finally I was able to run again pain and shoe insert free!

But something had changed inside me besides my healed achilles tendon.

In the six months of waiting desperately to run, I began to really listen to my body. I realized that for years my body had been telling me things which I refused to hear. The constant pain I lived in from compacting my muscles from running long distances accentuated by stretching these tight muscles with yoga seemed normal. A runner is conditioned to push through pain and disassociate the messages our brain is telling us to run longer or faster because the body will.

The practice of yoga is called a practice because everyday we come to the mat and listen to what our body needs. Yoga helps us become mindful of what our mind and body is saying. We learn to turn off our mind of needless thoughts not as a way to push our body past a point of pain. Yoga helps us be comfortable in our bodies and minds.

I have started running again on trails and for short distances. I walk up hills sometimes instead of charging up them as if my life depends upon it and I really listen to my legs and bring awareness to my stride. I have woken up to what a body free of pain feels like and I can’t go back to punishing my body in the name of a PR. Marathons are still in my dreams but I have woken up and will approach my running with a new mindfulness and gratefulness. I have woken up and I have no choice but to listen.

One Last Resolution

On the way to teach yoga, I was thinking about the coming year 2012 and how we are bombarded with so many messages about making New Year’s resolutions in the media. I too have a resolution to add to your list. In fact, put this resolution right at the top.

I will find complete self-acceptance in 2012.

Now erase all resolutions that follow. Ah. Doesn’t that feel like freedom!

I completed my Baron Baptiste teacher training this past summer. Baron Baptiste strives to create teachers that come from a true and authentic place. To accomplish this we worked on ridding ourselves of the garbage that we carry—the stories that we believe about being unworthy, unlovable and just not enough. We worked to get to the place where we had 100% self-acceptance. We had to stand in front of 150 other teachers in training and declare that we were 10s. We had to do this with certainty and belief. It was hard.

Our society is accustomed to thinking that we will be a 10 if we lose those last 5 pounds, get that better job, nicer house, faster car or fill in the blank. We need to erase the wrinkles on our aging faces and tighten our sagging bottoms and have washboard abs to be our best.

But it is just not true.

We are all 10s—right here and right now. You do not have to do a single thing but arrive and approach everything that you do as the 10 that you are.

Try on the resolution of self-acceptance. See what the possibilities of believing yourself a 10 bring this 2012.  Treat everyday this year as the special gift that it is and have a very Happy New Year.

Growing Up—It’s Not Just for the Kids

Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt

E.E. Cummings once wrote,”It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.” That quote has hit home hard.

It probably started with my planning to attend a week-long yoga teacher training this summer. Making that week happen took a lot of planning, coordinating and a huge amount of fear facing. I was very present to my fears during training. I made myself get up to speak at the mic the first day knowing that if I didn’t, I never would. Then I made myself go up again. Facing my fear of what other people thought of me, possible rejection and potential embarrassment was a huge step toward being the kind of teacher I want to be.

I was and wasn’t surprised to find so many fellow teachers in the midst of personal crises. I think yoga teachers are a thoughtful and soulful bunch looking to better themselves and others so it was somewhat obvious that many would be searching and evolving. Being very content and grateful for what my life is I really didn’t think that I would have a huge AHA! moment as many around me did. I did have a small ahhh moment however when I discovered that I was a pleaser when looking for an archetype that describes me. I was so disappointed in myself! I wanted something romantic like a dreamer or explorer or someone thought highly of like a pillar or adviser. But pleaser it is. I had been in total denial. It makes sense to me upon reflection. Now that I am aware, I find myself in that role all over the place. The thing about being a pleaser is that I tend to find myself in the middle a lot. The uncomfortable middle place between wanting to please two groups with differing view points. Yoga is great for learning to sit with those uncomfortable moments. But, until I realized that I was a pleaser, I didn’t realize that I had a real say. I reacted without really knowing to sit in the discomfort for a bit to figure out my voice.

All of this leads to my latest uncomfortable middle place. I have recently gone against the wishes of my parental units when they didn’t approve of some personal choices. Don’t most people do this in their teens! Either I never had a need to or never noticed that I pleased without listening to my voice. It has not been easy standing up for my beliefs. I have had to fight through a lot of pleaser guilt to find the strength in my convictions.

I recently read that growth only comes in times of discomfort, and so it seems, that at 42 years old I might have just finally grown up.