Managing anxiety: off the yoga mat and onto the stage

Tags

Breathing, The Lady Project, yoga, You Look Like That Girl

I went to Providence, Rhode Island last weekend to speak at Johnson & Wales University and The Lady Project Summit. I did a reading from my book, spoke on a writer’s panel and gave a talk about the rewards and challenges living an authentic life and embracing who you really are.

It was a phenomenal weekend for many reasons. I  had lots of teary-eyed hugs with people who are on their own journeys towards living a life they truly believe in. I also met wonderful people like Maureen Petrosky who took me to Gracie’s, which is a restaurant that not only has unbelievable food, but also shares a name with my dog.

I was also scared out of my mind a lot of the time.

I have structured a pretty quiet little life for myself. I struggle with anxiety and get overwhelmed easily, so I try to keep life as simple as possible. I spend time with my husband, dog, and close friends. I do yoga. I stay home a lot, watching Netflix and reading books and cooking dinner. It’s lovely.

But I’ve started doing these events which thrill and terrify me in equal measure. Sometimes, when I am in a new place, standing at the front of the room with a bunch of people looking at me, I panic and go into fight or flight mode.

This is a pretty typical evolutionary response to fear. When our ancestors had to face down a woolly mammoth, we had a couple of choices. We could try to kill it or we could run away from it.

The thing is, these days, we don’t see many woolly mammoths.

We see public speaking.
Or an uncomfortable conversation.
Or a group of strangers.
Or an opportunity that is unnerving.
Or a situation we can’t control.
Or an outcome that is unknown.

But our minds go back to woolly mammoth territory and we want to either fight it or run from it.

What if there was a third way?

This is the most monumental thing that doing yoga has taught me.

Yoga is hard. It’s 90 minutes in 100 degrees.

But it’s not nearly as hard as life.

So, the yoga studio is my place to practice dealing with the actual hard things in life. Because when I get to a yoga posture that is challenging me – and my instinct is to either run out of the room or walk up and kick the instructor in the shins for making me do this – I hear my teacher’s voice in my head:

Meet resistance with breath.

Maybe I can get beyond my caveman mentality and just stop for a minute. I can realize that I’m stronger than I think I am and I can be still for a moment and stop the spinning of my mind. I can take a breath – then decide how I want to respond.

So, as I stood in a glorious theater in Providence, RI, with a group of strong and interesting women all sitting there, ready to listen to me speak – the spinning started:

What am I doing here? Who the hell am I? What makes me think I have the right to stand here and say anything about anything to anyone? They are going to throw things at me. I need to run out of the room right now.

And then I took a breath. I met that resistance from my inner critic, with my breath. Then I remembered that they actually invited me to come speak. They wanted me to do this. These people had voluntarily signed up for this workshop of mine and no one was tied to their chairs.

So, I said:

“Hi. My name is Lisa. Thanks for being here today. I’m a kind of nervous, but really want to talk to you about something that is important to me. I want to talk about how we can all live a life that feels authentic even if it’s different from what other people expect of us. And the reason that I feel like I can talk to you with some authority about this topic is because I screwed it up so majorly, for such a long time.”

And then they laughed and then I loved them.

That’s what can happen when we don’t operate on automatic pilot and when we are open to options beyond the binary way we are tempted to see the world. It’s not always yes/no, black/white, good/bad, kill/run – the world is nuanced and so are we. When we can still the story line in our minds, a whole beautiful world of middle options become clear.

Sometimes we get a chance to make friends with the woolly mammoth, and we’re rewarded with a fantastic weekend, spectacular people and some really good macarons.

* This was originally posted on my other blog, LisaJakub.net *

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Drop back freak out

Tags

drop backs, Monkey mind, panic attacks, teacher training, trust, Vinyasa, yoga

A bird sitting in a tree is not afraid of the branch breaking because her trust is not in the branch, but in her own wings.

-Anonymous

After years of contemplation, I am finally doing yoga teacher training. It’s training in hot Vinyasa, which I’ve been integrating into my Bikram practice for a while now.

While the training is really wonderful — it’s really freaking me out. That’s also how I know it’s good.

We did assisted drop backs the other day. A drop back is where you stand there and backbend so far that your hands hit the ground and you end up in wheel pose. It looks like this:

via Yoga Journal

It sucks.

It sucks not just because it’s physically hard, it sucks because it’s mentally hard. Really hard. As evidenced by the fact that I kinda had a panic attack and cried when faced with the prospect of doing it.

Now, I’m not one of those people who can cry with any subtlety. If I’m crying, everyone within a half-mile radius knows it. I am without a poker face.

So, I was in class, standing there and crying, with my teacher supporting my hips. I began to bend backwards and my monkey mind took over. And it totally trashed the joint.

All my trust issues and all my fears cozied up to me on that yoga mat. Every person who had ever let me fall came into exquisitely painful focus. I thought of everyone who I expected to be there, everyone I thought could hold me up when I most needed it, everyone who turned away when I needed support.

I remembered every time I felt like I was in free-fall, failing around, disoriented and not sure when I would hit the ground, but knowing that the crash landing would destroy every part of me. I thought of when my back was broken, when my heart was broken, when my soul was broken.

And I froze and cried some more.

I could not do this.

And then, Kelly, my teacher, did what all gifted yoga teachers do. She said the thing that I had no idea that I needed to hear.

“It’s all about trust. And it’s not about trusting me. It’s about trusting you.”

I took a breath. And then I did a drop back.

I decided to trust myself. Which is not easy, since there have been moments when even I didn’t hold myself up in the way that I most needed. But I decided to forgive myself for those past blunders, and trust that in this moment, I was going to support myself fully. I was going to be my own best ally and cheerleader and friend. I was going to trust that I’d be okay. Even if I fell.

But I didn’t fall. I caught myself.

As we moved on to the next postures, Kelly gave us corrections and had a question for me:

“Hey Lisa, do you know you have a giant grin on your face right now?”

I didn’t know. But I wasn’t surprised.

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Judging the judgmental

Tags

judgement, setting an intention, yoga

And may all live in equanimity, without too much attachment and too much aversion,
And live believing in the equality of all that lives.

– traditional Buddhist prayer

When I was in my 20s, there were so many things I knew for sure. I had a whole lot of stuff figured out. There were things I liked (wine) and things I didn’t like (kale) and that was that. Those who disagreed were sorely mistaken.

Now in my mid-30s, I am loving the blissful realization that I know nothing. Because although I was certain those things would never change, there have been some surprising developments. There are new things that I like (kale – if it has enough olive oil and garlic) and don’t like (wine – because it keeps me awake all night).

It’s so easy to label things as good or bad. I was always kind of judgmental of people who had ill-behaved dogs. Oh my God, just train your dog I would think, as some wild pooch strained at a leash attached to an embarrassed owner.

And then I adopted my rescue dog. My sweet, darling girl who, for completely unknown – yet surely justifiable – reasons, HATES other dogs. So, when we walk, I am the embarrassed owner holding back a lunging, snarling beast. While multiple group classes, individualized dog training sessions, bribery with treats and strong coercion have helped a little – my perspective on just train your dog has shifted a little.

I thought of all of this recently when I came upon a group of yoga teachers having a discussion about setting an intention at the beginning of yoga class. Should you ask your students to dedicate the class or not?

There were a wide variety of impassioned answers ranging from “Hell no, it’s gimmicky” to “Yes, always, it’s the heart of the practice.“

My favorite answer is the answer that I am finding that I am using more and more in life.

Sometimes.

Sometimes it makes sense. Other times it doesn’t.

Sometimes I drink wine, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes my dog is well behaved, sometimes she is not. Sometimes I eat kale for dinner, sometimes I eat pecan pie.

And here’s the other big thing I’m realizing – I don’t require anyone else to agree with me.

There are fewer and fewer things in life I’m willing to be judgmental about – either in the negative or positive. Because I’ve seen myself, in the process of changing and growing as a person, flip flop. Then suddenly, I’m on the opposing end of something that I once regarded with distain or worshiped to an absurd degree.

And that just gets embarrassing.

Clearly, I’m not saying never take a stand on anything, I just think that equanimity and an amount of respect and understanding for a different way of doing things can be a very compassionate and freeing thing.

So set an intention or don’t, drink wine, eat kale and love that ill-behaved dog.

It’s all beautiful.

————–

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On letting go: growing pains and book publishing

Tags

acceptance, Book publishing, letting go, memoir, PBS, The Buddha, writing, yoga

Life has been exciting and overwhelming lately, as I get ready to have my memoir published in June by Beaufort Books. I’m beyond thrilled and have been busy learning my way around the publishing industry.

And of course, I’m realizing that my rootedness in yoga and mindfulness are essential in getting through all of it.

I’m at the point with my book where I need to submit the final draft of my manuscript to the publishers. Because then, copyeditors and proofreaders can do their work and try to make some logical sense of the random places where I chose to put commas. Then it will go off to the designers and on to the presses and off the presses and into cardboard boxes to go off to bookstores.

It’s entirely exciting.

And incredibly painful.

Because for the last several years, I’ve been watching this book grow from a crazy idea, into the 275 page manuscript that sits before me. I’ve been getting up in the middle of the night with this book. I’ve been startled awake by the persistent, restless whimpering of a thought or a memory or a funnier word choice – I get out of bed and rush to this computer. I sit in the glow and nurse my book to better health.

And that time is almost over. That part of my job is done.

Now, I have to send this book out into the world.

To be adored or criticized or ignored.

Not to be too dramatic or anthropomorphize too much (who am I kidding, I’m a writer/former actor and my car is named Gwen) but I feel like I’m sending my book off to college to live her own life and I’m not sure if I’ve done enough to prepare her. I’m not sure if she’s strong enough to make it in the real world. I’m worried about where she’s going to sit in the cafeteria.

Why is it that humans have such a hard time letting go? We live in a transient world, full of constant change. Births and deaths and seasons and uncontrollable events. And yet, we always assume that some things, if we hang on tight enough, will last forever.

But let’s face it, that desperate clinging never feels good.

There is such beauty in change. In growth. We see that all around us right now. It’s fall and the trees are turning magenta in preparation to let go of their leaves. It’s the essential nature of life.

One of my favorite Buddhist stories is about a monk and a glass of water. He says, “I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. Yet for me, this glass is already broken. When the wind knocks it over or my elbow knocks it off the shelf and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.” *

I love this idea. This understanding that everything is impermanent, so why not embrace the present moment, with all its joy and discomfort and transformation — right now? Why not surrender to the realities of this world and just choose be happy in the face of it? It’s all temporary. Even you. So have a blast and love wholeheartedly, before it’s gone.

And then let it go with grace.

I want this book to go out in the world. Because I want you to read it. And because I want to sit up at 4 AM in the glow of my computer screen, and nurture another book into existence.

So, now you know where I’m going be the next few nights, until I have to turn my manuscript into an email attachment and push Send. I’ll be sitting right here, enjoying my little baby…while she’s still just mine.

And then I’ll let it all go, and get ready for whatever comes next.

——–

* This version of the quote is from a wonderful PBS documentary called The Buddha. It’s a great introduction to the concepts of Buddhism and it has “Keep Until I Delete” status on my TiVo. Even though “Keep Until I Delete” reflects an amount of permanence and control that is clearly not very Buddhist…

“Other” yoga

Tags

acceptance, Bikram yoga, mindfulness, vinyassa, yoga

At first it felt a little like cheating.

Are you going to Bikram?” They’d ask.

“Umm. No. Other Yoga.” I’d respond, nervously picking at the edge my yoga mat.

It started as a joke. There was “Our Yoga” (Bikram) and then there was “Other Yoga.” That was the yoga that was in other places – the yoga that other people did.

We weren’t disparaging it. We just weren’t into it. It just wasn’t our thing.

But then things changed.

When the studio where I practice moved locations, they started offering Other Yoga (AKA hot Vinyassa) as well as Bikram. Wanting to be supportive of the new endeavor, I went.

And it’s fabulous.

We do Downdog and Child’s pose and Warriors with different numbers. There is music and flow and something I totally can’t do called a bind.

What I love most about this Other Yoga is it’s essential Otherness. It’s just different. I have now been doing Bikram for almost 5 years. It is my heart. It is my home. But this Other Yoga has it’s place, too. There is room in my heart for both.

I now practice Other Yoga once a week, and I’ve been thrilled to realize that it strengthens my Bikram practice. My arms and shoulders are getting more defined. My balance is improving. And because Vinyassa integrates different postures in a different order, it keeps me on my toes. My mind can’t wander, because it’s not like I know we are going from Half-tortoise to Camel to Rabbit. Other Yoga sharpens that muscle of attention, so that when I am back in the Bikram room, I am more focused.

Best of all, Other Yoga has brought me back to the roots of this tradition – I had to return to my beginner’s mind. As I walked into the room, I didn’t even know which direction my mat should face. I struggled to keep up through a basic sun salutation. And with each new posture, each time I fell over trying to attempt it – I learned something new.

I invigorated my capacity for patience and compassion.

It’s so easy to get dogmatic about a specific branch of yoga. Once you’ve found the thing that changes your world and opens your mind, sometimes we narrow our focus too sharply. In doing that, we might close our hearts to something that might help us in a new way as we move along our path. Something that could bring a different glimpse of enlightenment.

Bikram remains my home and my happy place.

But Other Yoga is a pretty nice fling on the side.

————–

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New post at Elephant Journal: Learning to be still

Tags

acceptance, acting, community, life choices, meditation, mindfulness, Monkey mind, yoga

Hello, yogis!

I hope all of you North American readers had a lovely Labor Day weekend.

I wanted to share my brand new article about meditation, which was just published in Elephant Journal!

Learning to be still

“It’s funny,” my therapist said, “most people get panic attacks about things that will never happen. You get panic attacks about something that happens pretty often.”

I didn’t think it was that funny.

Please click here to read more.

And as always, thank you so much for all your support – it’s never easy talking about anxiety and panic attacks in a public forum. But the open-heartedness I’ve felt here has made it possible for me to share and hopefully, be of use to someone who is dealing with similar challenges.

I hope you enjoy the article.

Peace,

Lisa

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Benched: what happens when you can’t do yoga?

Tags

acceptance, Bikram yoga, health, meditation, yoga

You cannot do yoga. Yoga is your natural state. What you can do are yoga exercises, which may reveal to you where you are resisting your natural state.

~ Sharon Gannon

I’m under doctor’s orders to not go to yoga.

This is an unfortunate development.

I mentioned a while ago that my ankle was bothering me. Well, 5 weeks later, it’s not any better, so clearly my strategy of doing yoga and just “going easy” isn’t working.

So, I’m benched for a while.

I need to rest my ankle as much as possible over the next couple of weeks. I thought about being rebellious and ignoring my doctor, but the truth is that I want this ankle thing to be over. It’s better to take a hiatus and let it heal, rather than stubbornly keep going to yoga while I prolong the issue.

But this brings up another matter. I’m kinda hooked on yoga. When I don’t go, of course my body gets stiff but – it’s much more about my mind. A dear friend once told me that Bikram helps her to “sweat out the crazy.” Amen to that.

It’s easy for me to panic about not going to yoga and resign myself to the idea that if I can’t do my regular practice that I’m destined to be stressed and anxious.

But that’s a cop-out.

Peace, compassion and patience are all things that I am capable of — the yoga just helps get me there. Even without the postures or the hot room, I have the capacity for a still mind. I can control the crazy. I just have to work a little harder for it.

So, on my hiatus, I’ll be working on other things that calm my mind and comfort my soul. I’ll be sticking closely to my daily meditation schedule — at least 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes at night. I’ll be trying my best to continue that mindfulness during the day. (And yes, I’m doing a very light home practice that doesn’t put any weight on my ankle, let’s just not mention that to my doctor.)

I miss yoga terribly, but this is one of those things that is annoying in the short term but beneficial in the long term.

I’m working on my acceptance and knowing that my practice will always be there for me. I’m trying to remember that yoga is my natural state.

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The Dalai Lama, compassion and my ankle

Tags

acceptance, Buddhism, Dalai Lama, intelligent selfishness, judgement, yoga

Last week, I had the chance to see His Holiness the Dalai Lama speak at an event. It was wonderful. His topic was “Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World.” Just being in the presence of someone like that is perception-altering.

I’d like to think that I’m a fairly compassionate person, but the Dalai Lama’s emphasis on compassion towards others as the path to not only a more peaceful world, but a happier and more peaceful heart, really got to me. Buddhists refer to it as “intelligent selfishness.”

“Whether or not our kindness brings benefit to others will depend on a great many factors, some of which will be outside our control. But whether we succeed in bringing benefit to others or not, the first beneficiary of compassion is always oneself. When compassion, or warmheartedness, arises in us and shifts our focus away from our own narrow self-interest, it is as if we open an inner door.”

–Beyond Religion by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

I’ve been trying to practice compassion in even deeper ways.

Compassion in the yoga studio is something I want to work on. I struggle with getting frustrated with the yogi who is flopping around, or the newbie who is getting defiant and mad at the teacher. I try to remember that we are all dealing with our own demons in there, but sometimes it’s all I can do to not yell “This is a peaceful place and I’m trying to meditate and be one with the universe, so shut the fuck up!”

Compassion fail.

So clearly that needs some work, but what also deserves some attention is my level of compassion for myself.

My ankle has been bothering me lately. I don’t know what I did to it. I put ice or heat on it – it still hurts. I do lots of yoga or no yoga – it still hurts. I put it up or massage it – it still hurts. My ankle is just tender and there is nothing that seems to make it any better or worse. It just is. It just needs time.

But I catch myself glaring at this ankle. Rolling my eyes at it when those shooting pains come and cursing it when it doesn’t behave like it used to.

This is no way to treat an ankle that has done nothing wrong for the past 33 years.

So, I’m trying a new route of uber-compassion for others, for myself and for my ankle. I’m doing my best to withhold judgment. I’m seeing what it’s like to just flood my world with understanding, patience and gratitude for whatever might come. Bring it on, and I will do my best to welcome it with open arms.

So far, it feels really good. His Holiness might just be on to something here.

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Down dogs in the night: yoga for insomnia

Tags

acceptance, downdog, Monkey mind, sleeplessness, yoga

It was 3 AM and I was doing yoga in my underwear at the foot of my bed.

I would like to think that the whole thing looked just like that Briohny Smith video. While the circumstances might have been similar, I can assure you that there were some significant differences.

Thus, there is no photo for this post.

My bouts with insomnia are rare – I happen to be a world-class sleeper –  but when sleeplessness hits, my mind takes over and things get really ugly.

Like many people, I struggle with the antics of my Monkey Mind; I spend too much time either reenacting the past or anticipating an unlikely future. It gets even worse when I’m still awake at 2 AM. My crazy little Monkey Mind turns into a 800-pound, pissed off, feces-throwing gorilla.

My body scan meditation wasn’t working. (Focus on my toes, breathe, all my attention on my….what was that weird sound….damn…the dog is snoring. Wait, go back, all my attention on my toes…I can’t forget to send that email tomorrow….)

I needed something all-encompassing, to stop the racing thoughts and flip-flopping body. I finally decided to get up and do some yoga.

It totally worked.

It was really simple stuff –  I wasn’t going to attempt Standing Head to Knee or anything that required balancing. I did a few spine twists, downdog, cat/cow, Half Tortoise, some hamstring stretches and child’s pose. Then I crawled back into bed and fell immediately to sleep.

By giving my brain something else to focus on and by moving the energy around in my body, I was able to change up the situation and stop obsessing about the fact I wasn’t sleeping – and finally get to sleep. That gorilla calmed down and left me alone. It was glorious.

Has anyone else tried this? Did it work? Did you placate the gorilla? Did you at least feel a little like Briohny Smith??

Sleep tight, yogis!

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If you’re terrified, you’re doing it right: authenticity

Tags

acceptance, community, Monkey mind, spirituality, yoga

Being your true self can be scary. It requires stripping down, being vulnerable and opening yourself up in a way that can hurt like hell.

I wish that embracing my authenticity always felt empowering and wonderful. But these days I’m not feeling very Norma Rae about it all. It seems downright treacherous.

Some days, I wonder why I try.

I love writing. My soul is a writer. However, the idea of other people reading – and possibly criticizing – my writing makes me want to crawl into a very small cave and stay there forever. I am so grateful for this little community that has gathered around Just here. Just now and I am so thankful for the beautiful support y’all have shown me. But it does terrify me to know that you are out there, reading my words. You people scare me just a little. (But thanks for coming. Seriously.)

I’m writing a book.

There. I said it.

It’s been something of a secret book so far, but over the weekend, I let Husband read a very early pre-first draft. When he was finished he said nice things about it. I responded by yelling at him, calling him a liar and sobbing until I couldn’t breathe.

It was not my prettiest moment.

It’s hard to put yourself out there with something that is precious to you. It’s painful to be that exposed. It’s always at that most tender moment that my relentless Monkey Mind swings on over, gets in my face and says – you’re writing a book?? HA! That’s dumb. You’re dumb.

The trouble is that I believe that very persuasive little monkey and it makes me want to chuck my first 150 pages out the window because I don’t want to be a failure.

If I looked at yoga the same way, I’d never go to class. Because through that obscured lens, I could say that every time I go to yoga I “fail” at certain postures. I can’t do the full expression, or I fall out of the pose seven times in 30 seconds. If I looked at my yoga practice the way I see my writing practice — it seems quite ridiculous.

I try to remember that lovely Bikramism:

As long as you are giving 100% effort, you will receive 100% of the benefit.

So, every day I sit down and tap away at the book, word by word. I am learning and finding my voice and speaking my truth. That growth is worthwhile, even if every publisher in the country tells me my book sucks. Even if this process is just for me — there is value there, if I remember to cherish the present moment and just write. Simply because my soul has to write.

What is it that your authentic self needs to do? Maybe you need to sing. Or move to the front row of your yoga class. Or get your resume together for that new job opening. Or finally get some paint on that canvas.

I don’t know what scares the hell out of you but I’ll bet there is something wonderful, authentic and valuable there.

So, let’s all try to be brave and own our authenticity. Let’s be brave enough to stand up on a table like Norma Rae. Let’s stand there with stillness and confidence and hold up a sign that declares to the world – this is who I am.

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