Each Monday I have the pleasure of teaching yoga to a wonderful group of military veterans at our local VA clinic. I feel so very connected to this group as I too am a veteran. They are a wonderful group of yogis that support each other in ways that are not present outside of shared experience. Each time I leave after teaching, I am inspired and uplifted by their dedication to their yoga practice and their camaraderie with one another. I wrote this after leaving our last meeting and dedicate it to them with all my heart.
A note on anxiety, for my fellow veterans…
Anxiety is something I have dealt with and continue to deal
with on a regular basis. Practicing yoga has helped to manage it and the more I
practice, the more I am able to take little bits of wisdom (wisdom is knowledge
experienced)
off of the mat and apply it to my everyday life.
I find that I experience anxiety when I am trying something
new, doing something I haven’t done before or going somewhere surrounded by
people I don't know. I had an experience just the other day that I would like
to share to expound upon this point.
On the first day of Spring or the Vernal Equinox, I was invited to teach a kids yoga class
at Olmos Basin Park for an LGTBQ Community Easter Egg Hunt. Kids yoga is a
funny thing, you really have to get down on the level of the child to
communicate the teachings. It is not done as an adult yoga class, but
instead there is a larger play aspect to it: crawling around like a lion
or buzzing like a bee, for example. This play aspect serves to teach kids to engage in
deep breathing or getting them to move their body in and out of certain yoga
poses. Perhaps it goes without being said, but you can’t take yourself too
seriously when teaching a kids yoga class, it must be done with a light heart
and your ego must be out of the equation entirely. In other words, comfort
level must be super high.
Headed to Olmos Basin Park, my internal dialogue was non-stop and brutal: "I do not want to go, I do not
want to teach, what would the parents think?, how could I be in control of that
many kids in an outdoor setting, I do not want to go, I DO NOT WANT TO GO!..."
On a side note, this chatter doesn’t only happen when I am teaching
kids yoga, this happens for regular yoga classes, and everyday activities like leaving the
house or keeping plans that I've made that sounded good when I made
them… I call these thoughts resistance. Just like the resistance I encounter when I sit down to do a long breathing practice and feel like I want to wiggle,
check my e-mail, pet my cat, do ANYTHING other than what I have sat down to do:
breathe. The more that I lean into the breathing, the more the resistance
(thoughts/feelings, it’s different for each person) makes itself heard, at first. Once I hit the 5
minute mark (more or less) in my breathing practice, that resistance starts to fall away and
soon enough, the breath becomes my full focus.
Returning to my trip to Olmos Basin Park, I was hearing this relentless internal dialogue (resistance) and this resistance was creating an obstacle. In the past, I may have listened to these thoughts and
relented, going home instead of meeting my obligation. Instead, because of my
work with and through resistance, I was able to see those thoughts as just
that. Knowing these thoughts as resistance, I said thank you for allowing
yourself to be known, Release.
Release.
Release.
Release.
And I continued with
release instead of giving these thoughts energy and following them along their story line of how awful this was going to be, how much I didn’t want to do
it, etc.. At times, my internal dialogue has been so powerful that I say the word Release right out loud, allowing it to be like lightning through the clouds of thought. It may not work right away, but repetition is key.
This isn’t to say the rest of my afternoon went off without
a hitch, I was a big hit and the sun shone upon my brilliant yoga moment. Not at
all. When I arrived at the park, even with my repetition of release, I felt
anxiety in my body: the desire to run, the desire to yell, the pricking on my
skin that makes me feel like my insides are coming out. So I took a long moment
on the outskirts of the crowd, took my shoes off and put my bare feet on Mother
Earth, put my hand over my heart and just began to breathe long and deep.
Crowds overwhelm me. I get into the middle of a big crowd
and I don’t know where I end and someone else begins. I feel so much from those
around me that I don’t know what is mine and what belongs to others. A lot of
the time, I don’t know what to do with myself and I don’t know how to act
because I feel so overwhelmed. This is where grounding comes in and that is
exactly what I created when I took my shoes off and began to breathe. It’s
true that you can’t always take your shoes off (although I take my shoes off
far more than is socially “acceptable”) to feel the Earth under your feet.
Other ways of grounding are to imagine pressing all of your energy into the
Earth (with bent knees), this is called bioenergetic grounding (it’s not just a
hippie yoga thing… there’s a science to it!). Deep breathing and humming are also
good grounding techniques as grounding serves to take you out of your head
(thoughts) and into your body (presence).
I probably stood on the outskirts of the crowd for a good
5-7 minutes before venturing in to find my contact to begin the process of teaching
kids yoga. As I walked through the crowd, engaging with strangers to find my
contact person, I reminded myself that I am the only one who knows I am
freaking out and as long as I was smiling, no one would be any the wiser. I
kept my hand on my heart as a reminder of my body, my breath and my presence.
After that whole (internal) ordeal, I didn’t get the
opportunity to teach kids yoga. The way the scheduling was flowing didn’t allow
for a yoga session and I ended up leaving the park without rolling over the
ground with a bunch of kiddos hissing like a cobra. After all that! I will
share this with you, I left the park feeling like a freaking champion that I
had overcome all of those heavy thoughts and feelings that were trying to
obstruct my experience. I felt like I had overcome myself and I was loving me
and loving my yoga experience to know that I can move through resistance,
whatever it looks like.
This is just one small experience with anxiety that at times, threatens to become crippling. What I hope to highlight by sharing this experience is that my greatest battles are the battles I fight internally, with myself: my thoughts, constant narration, and overwhelming emotions. The tools that I have learned through yoga are my weapons in this battle. I am a warrior and I will overcome. You are a warrior and you too shall overcome.
I am reminded of an old Indian adage that makes a beautiful
conclusive note:
“One evening, an elderly Cherokee brave told his Grandson
about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, ‘my son, the
battle is between two wolves inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, envy,
jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment,
inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other is good, it is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity,
humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and
faith.’
The grandson thought a moment and asked the grandfather,
‘which wolf wins? ‘
The old Cherokee replied, ‘the one that you feed’.”
happy grounding.
