Lately, in my professional writing, I've been covering how fear and anxiety poison the well for decision making. That research crept into my class the other night as I gave a common instruction:
breathe into the deepest part of your lungs, so that the decision making part of your brain kicks on. In yoga, we seek to stay in that decision-making, in evaluating information and adjusting activity. And my students looked back at me, some taking the information in, others blinking at me as though I had just spoken in Sanskrit: welcome, beautiful, and totally foreign. That made me think... a post on yoga and decision-making might be in order. And, because I write about personal finance (even though I am, admittedly, a dumpster fire of debt), here are a few thoughts on decision-making in personal finance that pretty readily can apply to decision-making in health and wellness. From a great article on Distinction Bias: In comparison mode, we end up spending too much time playing “spot the difference.” This is where we run into trouble and focus too much on inconsequential quantitative differences. To combat this, avoid comparing two options side by side. In regards to why life stress makes horrible retirement savers: When under stress, people will not trust information that could indicate a bad result in the making. And more confusingly, the stress the person is under doesn’t necessarily have to relate to the decision at hand. Anxious brains, those with chronic anxiety and high levels of cortisol have a structure different from others. In other words, it is harder to make good decisions when you have long-term anxiety. And finally, from Money Love author Meadow DeVor: If we want to have a better relationship with money, there’s only one thing we need to do to create lasting change. Change our mind. It’s not more complicated than that. We don’t have to understand investments, banking, real estate, business, dividends, stocks, ROI’s, percentages, budgets, spreadsheets, or exchange rates. We only need to understand the way our mind works. Alright, so the last quote falls into the "cheater cheater" category, because Meadow DeVor is, in addition to being a financial health expert, also the Founder of Yoga Church. But, you can see how enhancing your decision making by learning to be present, and by reducing anxiety is clearly linked to finances. And its also clearly linked to pretty much everything else. So, what do I mean when I say "the decision-making part of the brain?" I mean the parasympathetic system. In most exercise classes, the goal is to respond as quickly as possible. That's the sympathetic system or as I like to call it the "run away from the tiger" part of the brain. If you had to run away from a tiger, your system would be focused on big blunt things - where trees are, how close the tiger is, if there are allies around. In life, when you sit down to write a budget for the year or plan a holiday meal, your parasympathetic system is working (unless you have relatives that are human versions of tigers). Planning a meal involves noting small differences between options, balancing a variety of information and determining a course of action that harmonizes all of that information. It's sensitive, its comparative, and its complex. How and where we breathe affects the two systems. Breathing slower and deeper into the lungs signals to the brain that it can rest and relax. Breathing more shallowly into the top, and smaller, part of the lungs, signals the body that it needs to GO. You can make much better decisions about how you choose to experience your body, what you do with it, and what you allow yourself to put in it (and maybe even on it), if you can learn to move from the shallower breathing into the deeper breathing.
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Mindfulness is definitely having it's moment, and for good reason. We need mindfulness more than ever in our busy too fast lives.
But. But, there is a case to be made for mindfulness's friend Curiosity. Mindfulness is one of several qualities or attributes that Buddhists propose as helpful mindsets. Here's why I think curiosity can be even more helpful than mindfulness. According to psychologists, adopting a mindset of curiosity can foster more inner peace, self-acceptance, kindness and better communication. How? The first is that curiosity can interrupt judgment of any kind, but most importantly, judgment of the self (particularly self criticism). When we get curious, we aren't too far off from how infants (of all species) interact with the world. They are both brave, excited and without expectation. I tell myself to think of curiosity as encountering the world like a kitten, scampering after something. Where will it go? What will it do? In that curiosity, I'm not quite seeking to put it into one category or another (whether it is bad or good) but to get more information. Curiosity isn't the same thing as mindfulness. In fact, I'd argue that learning to adopt a mindset of curiosity first might help with the other great buddhist attributes, like mindfulness, friendliness (metta), and others. Mindfulness asks that you watch your actions. It asks that you notice where you are. The idea of mindfulness is that it brings you to a "present sense awareness." Which, of course, is a fantastic approach. Except if every noticing is accompanied by criticism. Remember that when the Dali Lama was asked about how to improve low self-esteem he was a little perplexed. So, keep mindfulness in context of the culture that created it - one that doesn't trade in the same deluge of negative mind chatter. Imagine the following two scenarios as mindful dialogue. As for the first scenario: I am sitting on my couch. I am feeling how soft my Costco stretchy pants are and my comfy tank from my friend Jen. I am feeling full from my silly dinner of hummus from Zoe's Kitchen and gauc from the back of the fridge. I am looking forward to going to bed in a few minutes, as I have a great day planned for tomorrow. That would be a mindful experience of my present sense. Here's the more likely scenario: I am sitting on my couch (I should have run today, why I am always so lazy?). I am feeling how soft my Costco stretchy pants are (I should really get a better job and afford better clothes) and my comfy tank from my friend Jen (why did I forget to text her this afternoon? Why am I always forgetting things?). I am feeling full from my dinner of hummus from Zoe's kitchen (should I have eaten out?) and gauc from the back of the fridge (I shouldn't have had extra for dinner. I should have planned better). I am looking forward to going to bed in a few minutes. That's a little tiring no? And let's bring that mindfulness into the yoga studio. Imagine one student practicing yoga in a body that society tells, or more properly yells, is not the right size or shape. That student practicing mindfulness is experiencing the criticism over and over. And, that student watching themselves experience is missing the opportunity to be embodied: to have an experience all of their own, of their body's strength and softness. Curiosity can help get around the imbedded judgment and get to that embodied experience. Curiosity in yoga might be as simple as your teacher asking you to see how a pose feels, instead of asking you to take it to the limit or to find your edge. Curiosity may also be to ask you to experiment with two or three options for poses or props and then decide which of the two you prefer. In those moments of play you alone are experiencing the poses. You alone are feeling what works for your body. I liken my morning yoga practice to a morning meeting. Just as a morning huddle might start with a check in, my practice starts with experiencing what is tight, what is hot, what is lose and what needs attention. I sometimes decide when to finish my practice by doing a similar inquiry of each body part: did my feet get to move and stretch enough? Do they need anything else? Did my calves and shins get what they needed in practice? How about my quads and hamstrings? The abductors and adductors? How about my back and core... This mindset of curiosity helps a lot when training for long runs and races. I often ask myself a regular intervals (every half hour or so) if everything feels ok, if anything hurts. I recently read a great Instagram post by a running coach who asks her trainees to walk when they feel like it. It's another great way to ask those runners to stay curious to their experience, and its a cue I work to bring into all my curvy classes. It's been a while. It was a while before that too. I meant to write a post about where I've been, but I'm not even sure, after all that's happened, that I am still the person who wrote the last blog post.
I am still a person who writes. I do that professionally (over at www.andbusinessllc.com) and that's mostly where I've been. That is, since I could type again reliably. I broke both my wrists in December of 2017. Totally unmoveable fingers and wrists make for horrible typing skills. So I learned a lot about pain. And I learned a lot about what other people think about pain (they don't believe you) and a lot about how other people think about how to handle pain. Most of what I uncovered about what people believe is total bullshit. Here's what is true: there is nothing good to be gained from pain. Nothing. Which is why a lot of my yoga classes for the next couple months will focus on the idea of ahimsa - non pushing. Most folks translate ahimsa to mean non-violence. In my life, and practice, non-pushing has made more sense than non-violence. If the idea of the practice of yoga are to become present and clear enough that we can find union/sameness/community with almost anyone (or anything), then the focus of ahimsa would make more sense if we weren't pushing things on others. If, instead were open to receive information. Drilling down to pain, if I push past the pain, I am denying my experience. If I deny the experience of anything, then I am unable to unite with anyone or anything. And what is the extent of non-pushing? I think its both how and why you show up on your mat. Why are you practicing? What is bringing you to your class? If it's something you think you should do, something you are pushing yourself to do, then stop. Miss class; grab a friend or your kid and go do something fun -like dance in the kitchen or run with a dog with floppy ears. And while you are doing that - feel how your body feels when it feels joy. I'm starting a new book of writing prompts for connecting with how your body feels and generating good, positive, centered experiences of being in your body. If you want more info on the book, hit me up through the contact form. A million years ago, in what feels almost like another life, I ran a nonprofit organization. I advocated for connection between the yoga and mindfulness communities and the medical and behavioral health field on the topic of eating disorders. A million years ago, because, now that yoga is more mainstream, it seems so obvious, right?
Back in 2008, according to research my amazing intern did, more than half of all eating disorder treatment facilities did not allow their patients to do yoga. Now, I would be surprised if almost every recovery center didn't have some form of yoga or mindfulness component to it. At the time I wound down Sprout Yoga, I donated the remaining funds we had in our bank account to the National Eating Disorder Association. I intended at that time to publish the manual we had been using for our trainings online and make some of the profits available to NEDA for their amazing work. And then. The trial work I was doing as an attorney caught up with me. My father died. Crystina Bianco, who so loving did the illustrations and graphic design for this book, also died. Last weekend I remembered her in a post on instagram (@centeredmaggieJ) and at the same time, someone asked for a copy of the manual. What better way to honor Crys and her awesome talents than to make this manual available for everyone. Its available in kindle and paperback on amazon now, and I will donate portions of the profits to NEDA, finally fulfilling that promise. Yoga Sutra 1.2
Needs. Desires. Wants. Yoga taught me to listen not only to what my body needs, but also what my spirit needs. My soul in other people's words. But I didn't have a great way of connecting with that daily. I followed a lot of bloggers and thought leaders on how to get better tuned into what you want and need. And especially after I had a period of burn out in 2013, I really needed to step back and learn what I needed and how. I fiddled about with some great journal prompts and read amazing books by Brene Brown and Andrea Owen and others. It took me a few years to get to a point where I could figure out how to listen to what I needed. After tons of reading and thinking and tweeting and instagramming, I found the Desire Map and the Firestarter sessions. Working those systems helped me learn to put what I wanted first, and understand that everything else would fall into place. For my friends who've been through recovery, it was a similar process to the idea of putting your recovery first. I have a friend who once said (of her own sobriety) whatever you put before your sobriety you will lose (job, relationship, etc.). Because YOU are the most important thing in your priority list. But that's a tall order to carry out on the day to day. Enter the Desire Map Planner. It made me constantly put my well being ahead of my to do list. Most yogis know the Desire Map & Danielle LaPorte through her truthbombs - they are all over yoga studios and for good reason: they are effective at snapping your attention straight to what matters: YOU. The Desire Map Planner is similar. And now its really pretty. The team over at the Desire Map Planners have updated the planner. It comes in daily (for me! and folks like me who are slightly type A), weekly and all sorts of other versions. This planner puts your desires on the map, and helps you plan your days and weeks according to how you most want to feel. The way it should be. Where most day planner systems are straight dates and to do’s, this planner is so much more… Based on the wildly popular book and workbook by Danielle LaPorte, The Desire Map, this planner system incorporates your soul and your to-do list; your gratitude and your goals; your deepest desires with your day-to-day. The 2017 planner comes with two versions, the Daily and Weekly edition, for the any type of planner person: The DAILY planner for the highly scheduled, detailed thinkers, and awesome A-types who love keeping track of all the big and little things. This planner takes you through the year day by day, with unique soul prompts to limber up your mind before you write, scheduling space, #Truthbombs, a Stop Doing list (because saying no is revolutionary) and a super condensed list called 3 Things so you can get your most important to-dos done. The WEEKLY planner is for the big dreamers, Creatives, and entrepreneurs — the planner-types who want a bird’s eye view of their week. Sprinkled with prompts for positive declarations and #Truthbombs, the weekly spread also has space for your Core Desired Feelings, daily to-do’s, and a list of 3 Things so you can get your most important to-dos done. This planner also has an End of Week Check-in with unique Soul Prompts from Danielle and space for reflecting on life as you move through it week by week. When you’re clear on how you want to feel, decisions come to you more easily, you’ll know when to say “No” and when to say “Hell, YES!” And then you can put it in writing. That’s what this planner does for me. You can buy yours today and start planning the life you’ve always wanted. Click here to see all the options. I know mine will be this one: It took me 30 seconds to get out of bed to get the laptop to write this post. Part of my yoga story is that I started doing yoga everyday when I had a very bad back injury. At 25, I worked for a firm that gave us recycled desks. Most of those who had the desks ended up with repetitive strains on our backs. The chairs we were given didn't fit with the desks; we had to hunch over the desks to do our work, as we couldn't tuck our lower bodies under the desks. One woman I worked with went out on disability for 6 weeks. One man had his desk raised up inches so he could fit under. In order to get my work situation corrected, I had my orthopedic doc, the one I had to start seeing when my back went out lifting a laundry basket, write in the language from OSHA concerning repetitive stress injuries to the firm's head. While the firm fixed up the desk situation (they raised it as they had with my other friend), the damage was done. Since then, I've had occasional Sacroiliac joint dysfunction. At the time it happened, I had to wear a back brace for weeks. Now, it will occasionally flare up from time to time. Like now. I first tried yoga at age 17, to learn to handle anxiety. I then played with it in my early 20s until the back injury. Then I started everyday. I've had times where I stopped for a few months or longer, but it was part of my life for a long time. Because of the back injury. Yesterday I hurt so badly I could barely walk. Standing at the chiropractor's office, I could barely handle waiting for him to let me in for my appointment. I was nearly in tears trying to fill out paperwork. After a session, he paused to review a plan of treatment and noticed I had moved into sitting half-lotus. He quickly cautioned me about over stretching my hips. All of the yoga was destabilizing my hip joint. I've been thinking lately about yoga. About my own yoga. My own practice has nearly dried up entirely. It's been replaced by deep prayer. It's been replaced by daily meditation. But it's also been edged out by something different. A deeper question. I'm concerned about how we are training our yoga teachers. That concern comes from my own training, and the nearly 1000 hours of teaching I have. The more I teach, the more I realize the inadequacies of my training. I am not concerned about how we are training our teachers because I think I am better than them. I am concerned about how we are training our teachers because I see how much more training I need. When I reflect on my training versus those I know with more extensive training, who have 500 hour level certifications or have gone through multiple trainings on multiple topics, I see the holes in my own knowledge. And I have been struggling recently with this: So much circus. Even I call my headstands and arm balances "tricks." I started a nonprofit about yoga and eating disorders because I knew the research on yoga and addiction and on yoga and trauma and knew those two things were so deeply intertwined with eating disorders. I believed that yoga could help. But I always cautioned: yoga could be part of a bigger picture. Yoga could be part of a variety of therapy - nutritionists, therapists, doctors. But it couldn't be all. Not just only yoga. Yoga can't fix it all. I've started and deleted several posts about the way I see yoga now - how people use it to feel good. "Say something nice to yourself." The idea that you can go to yoga to feel better about yourself. Yoga as a treatment, as a healing mode, as a part of that team of people who can heal you, was about learning to tolerate yourself. To breathe when you were faced with your past, or your shortcomings or your own limitations. I my vernacular, yoga is about learning to see when you are an asshole; and then to stop being an asshole. Its not about feeling good. Its about facing yourself. If you go to yoga to feel better about yourself because your day job involves screwing people out of their pensions, selling a product you don't believe in, or something else that harms your psyche, you are using yoga like wine. Drink up buttercup because you'll still be an asshole in the morning when the wine wears off. Ditto for yoga. Sweat all you want, but if you don't change your behavior, you'll still be an asshole. I know the value of the release valve. I know that a hard practice can help you work out tension, or release pressure that you actually can't do anything about. The sick parent, the really vicious boss, the marriage that is circling the drain that you can't do anything about. I know it. I remember once, finishing an internship and applying for jobs and letting my feet strike a treadmill with an angry word on each footstrike. Perhaps damning particular firms for not employing me. I know in the middle of a rough reprise of eating disordered thinking having a prayer on each movement of a sequence in yoga: "just let me be free of this, just let me be free of this," during a time when I had to force myself to eat to go to yoga, so I wouldn't fall in class. But so much circus. And now, considering that the thing I used to heal my back, might, maybe, be keeping me hurt. There is a way to practice to not hurt; to not overstretch. Just like I know there are loads of yoga communities where they don't drink in the intoxication of sweat and handstands and then drive away towards their greedy jobs. I know it, and I know lots of people have found it. Let me know if you have. You can find me for the next week, here, in bed with my back injury. I recently dropped a bunch of weight. Like dropping it off at the UPS store. "Here's your 30 pounds!" And in doing so, my beautiful friends noted the loss, with concern. Not judgment, but concern. Hearing the love in their words, I looked around and thought to measure myself against my neighbors, my gym friends, my coworkers. Was I too small? Was I the same? How did I measure up against these others?
But the thing is, I now see everyone through different eyes. I see you not as a competitor for love and affection, as if there is a limited amount to go around, a finite pool of that crystal clear stuff we all seek. Instead, I view how your body moves through space. How you hold your shoulders, your belly. I arrived at Yogaville, an ashram to Swami Satchidananda, in 2004 after finishing law school and studying for the bar. My fellow classmates used the last of the savings from their bar exam study loans to travel to beautiful beaches. For me, I came up short. Always one to be miserly, I hadn't overextended that loan. My sister suggested the yoga teacher training program I had turned over and over in my brain for years. And then she said, why not just a week? Why not? The week I stayed at Yogaville coincided with the 2004 Olympics. Perhaps you remember them as the year we all sat around and thought "What in the name of all that's holy is happening with Michael Phelps?" For me, I had the opportunity to sneak into the one room on the ashram that had a TV and watch with the nuns. "Look at that shoulder rotation! Look at that forward torque!" They would say of his swimming. Or of a gymnast, "her quad to hamstring ratio is quite impressive!" Watching those nuns, those dedicated to thoughtful, careful movement, watch the Olympics forever changed my view of the Olympics. And it forever changed my view of human bodies. I now watch the Olympics as a yoga teacher - one who watches how people move, the feats they accomplish with their leg lift in a sprint, or their shoulder rotation in a swim. I see these games as about the beauty of how we are made. The beauty and the complexity of the incredible nature of our design. How careful and precise and yet powerful our bodies are made. Now knowing friends who have designed products, electrical boards, systems, I see the immense thought and planning that goes into the design of a dynamic structure. And I feel the same reverence those nuns felt watching the Olympics. It was not nationalism for them, though most of them were American. It was a celebration of the beauty of our human form. So when I turned those same eyes that watched the Olympics with yoga nuns in 2004, those same eyes who started teaching bodies surviving eating disorders in 2008, and the same eyes who show up for my runners, my rowers and my bikers regularly, towards people on the street I was surprised. I sought to measure whether I had lost too much weight. Too much life stress. Too much complication of trying to understand how different carbohydrates effected my poorly regulated digestive system. Instead, I found this beauty. I found those same eyes that look at my students. I don't judge whether you are small or large. I look instead at how your body is moving. Some of you move with liquidity that frankly makes me jealous - and it's not my younger, fitter, students. More often, its my curvy students who have found a grace, a peace, a love of their bodies that lets them flow into a pose, like rainwater moving into a small depression in the ground. I watched some silly TV show about 90s rockers with a friend recently. While he saw the mascara and T-shirts and lightening and production, I kept asking "What is going on with Bret Michael's lower back?" "Has he had spinal fusion?" "Why is his cervical spine not moving?" You can imagine how annoying this might be to the average person. "Too many women in his 20s." He answered at first. "Too much partying" next. And then finally, "Yah, I see it, I see how he doesn't lift his knees, and how he bends from his upper back." When we, your yoga teacher, look at you, our students, we are looking at your movement. We are looking at the amazing design of your bodies. We are looking with reverence at the thing (Universe, Higher Self, God, etc.) that made this complicated, amazing structure. But we are also looking at you with interest. We are looking at you searching for the place we know has pain or discomfort. We are made beautifully. We are made perfectly. But we also hurt from time to time. You can watch my swagger out of the bar in my cowboy boots and my little cotton skirt and think, "that woman has confidence!" Or you can watch me walk out of the bar noticing my shoulders slowly inching towards each other and think, "that girl is about to cry in her car, as if someone told her the sun won't come and shine for three more months." I watch you, how you move, how you walk into class. And it directs how I teach. Whether we linger with the breath and hold poses or flow more, freeing up energy. Whether we balance and breathe into a steady place or extend beyond a simple pose. I watch you. And when I turned my eyes towards you to see if I had dropped too much weight what I found was your beauty. How you moved your strong thighs through the soft heat of summer. How you reached your beautiful fingers towards your daughter's face. How you stood, solid, while your friend insisted on paying, for your candle, your drinks, your cookie. Your friend who wanted to say "thank you for carrying me across that dark place, please let me care for you." And how your chest moved forward with that offer, as if your heart moved towards your friend. So no. I didn't notice if my thighs were smaller than yours. Or if my arms were bigger or stronger. I only noticed, like those yoga nuns, how beautifully we are made. How much we love. How much we can be loved. As an attorney I used to explain to people my job was to create a competing narrative to the plaintiff's. Same set of facts, different interpretation. This I teach in yoga too. You can always draw a different scene. A situation can wear you down to a nub, to skin and bones, with nothing left. Or it can distill you down to your most essential, most potent, most vital. How you interpret the facts is always up to you, and no one else. You are not stuck with someone else's narrative about your life. So too for things you've tried and not succeeded. Things you put all your effort into, and still flop. We don't fail at a yoga pose. We don't fail at a yoga practice. They wait patiently for us. Like old dogs. Lately I've been teaching crow pose. In places where very few of my students will be able to do it. Because there is a power in knowing that it can take you 10 years to nail a pose. There is a giant permission slip for your entire life waiting to be written by trying a pose you know you can't do, and hearing your teacher say "great job!" A permission slip to try and fail and try and fail and try and try and try. We are, as humans, allowed to do it wrong. And learn. We are allowed to learn that some poses aren't for us. Ever. Or right now. We are allowed to learn that we are allowed to learn. The only part of a yoga practice that can hurt you is trying to force yourself into something that won't work. I pull muscles when on a particular day I force myself into an extreme forward fold, because "that's what I do." I've been doing yoga for 23 years. I have the most flexible hamstrings on the planet. Any time I've had to go to physical therapy on a knee or on my back, the PT person when stretching my hamstrings would suddenly make a face, - "seriously?!" Yes. They are ridiculously loose. But not always. Sometimes they are tight from tensing up in a chair in a meeting where I'm scared. Sometimes they are tight from that super high hike. And when my identity is attached to my extreme forward fold, then I pull a muscle when I try it on days where I shouldn't. I get hurt when I try poses I probably shouldn't because I need to be "good at yoga." Shoulders that are a little off because I can totally kill Scorpion pose, even though I've been working on being open and feel unmoored and am probably too raw to actually nail a hard balancing pose. But my approach to yoga is to learn my body. To learn anything. That's the narrative I choose. I tried. It didn't work today, because.... and I walk away knowing more. I choose to see my practice as one of trial and error, not one of failure. So too can I choose to see my career, my love life, all that I've learned of relationships, as trial and error. Not failure. I can choose to have that stressful situation bring me to my most essential. Just like I can choose to have my practice be one of learning. And also laughing at myself when I fall on my ass for the fifth time. You are not stuck with someone else's narrative about your life.We are, as humans, allowed to do it wrong. And learn. |