Dearest Friends,

How is your Holiday Season 2019 coming along? 

If you read my previous newsletter, you know that I am a huge (HUGE) fan of Brene Brown. In fact, I credit her work for changing my life.

This is a LONG one, (because I care so much and I have a lot to say... ) please bear with me! I hope at least it is entertaining, and gives you something to reflect upon.

A concept in Brene's more recent work that stands out for me is her concept of 
Wholehearted Living.

Whole hearted Living means living from a place of WORTHINESS. This means knowing, deeply and truly, that YOU have value in this life and this world. That you have a place, that you are deserving, and that you are loved. (See Brene's definition in the image below.)

This sounds really nice, and I can almost see all of your heads nodding. We want to agree. We can intellectually get it, of course, amen! yes! That's it! 

But life, as long as you agree to live it, will continue to challenge your ability to actualize Wholehearted Living. There will be challenges and trials, you will experience times of applause and times of shame. Times of celebration and times of sorrow. And through it all, how are you doing with LIVING WHOLEHEARTEDLY?

There is help! Brene offers 10 Guideposts for how to Live Wholeheartedly. Here I wil focus on:
Play and Rest.
Cultivate an Attitude of Play and Rest.
Sounds nice again, and I can almost see your heads nodding in agreement. But are you DOING it? Do you know how to actualize this?

See, Brene says, we need to cultivate an attitude of Play and Rest because our world/ culture/ society is set up to value do-do-doing to the point of exhaustion, and that is where we try to derive our worthiness... our value. "I am valuable because I DO so much. Do you see how much I DO?" And to be quite honest, this cultivates narcissism... see me, I do so much, therefore you should appreciate and yes, value me! (hard to swallow, I know...) 

But flip it around. Play and Rest. Let's break it down:

REST is required... it is a non-negotiable. Every sleep scientist and neuroscientist will tell you, sleep is imperative. Your brain cannot function without sleep. But it goes beyond sleep. Rest. Rest is what happens in the pause between the activity. That moment. 

Try it now:
Sit or stand taller. Take a deep breath in ... exhale fully. Now notice the inhale ... Now notice the exhale ...
Now, notice the PAUSE at the top of the inhale ... Now notice the PAUSE at the bottom of the exhale.

Do this for 3-5 minutes.

That's it! REST. Notice how you feel.

Rest is required in order to PLAY. 
Play requires full, active engagement. This is Presence. 

So now that you have your Rest, Let's break down PLAY:

Play... full, active engagement, presence. Play requires CURIOSITY. Curiosity is interest with openness and kindness. Curiosity is what the child brings to the world, actively engaged in every moment. Indeed, in it's purest form, it is

Wonderment. (pause... how does your body respond to that concept?)

Got that? (Heads nodding...) OK, let's go a bit further.

PLAY (Curiosity) brings us into UNCERTAINTY. Hmmm... how are you with uncertainty? With the gray areas? The things that cannot be explained? 

When curiosity is lacking, we show up as Judge, Teacher, or Adversary.
(???)

Yes, when curiosity is lacking, we show up as Judge, Teacher, or Adversary.

Just think of the last time you had one of THOSE political discussions ... Yes, were you CURIOUS about the other person's stance, and why they needed to hold it so close? Were they curious about yours? NO? Hmmm...

In order to approach the world (life, a situation, a relationship, a person) with PLAY (curiosity, interest with kindness) you must feel secure. You must know your FOUNDATION.

Consider the child running towards the playground to Play. At some point, the child looks back, "is mama still there?" Security. Foundation. They must be there for the child to play.

We as adults are no different. 

The work of the child is PLAY. The PLAY of the adult is work ...

And yet, PLAY allows us that degree of levity, which must be there to move through the challenges of life. Those dark times, when we are afraid it will never end, never change, and the weight is so heavy we can barely open our eyes to see the sunlight. 

Can you be CURIOUS about even these times? Allow yourself to create some degree of PLAY in the darkest of times?

The ticket to Wholehearted Living ... 
Cultivate an attitude of PLAY and REST. 
And, as Brene so knowingly says, "Let go of exhaustion as a status symbol, and productivity as self-worth.

So now, as we enter Holiday Season 2019, how will YOU cultivate PLAY and REST in your life, and discover that your Worthiness not in all that you DO, but in all that you ARE.

I LOVE YOU!

Be Well, in ALL Ways,
Kristen

If you feel compelled, please contact me. I am available in many ways! Just a chat, a bigger conversation, an individual yoga therapy session, a couples therapy session, a public yoga class or a group! I am available because I care.

email: [email protected]
FB: Kristen Boyle
IG: Yoga Therapist and Somatic Life Mentor
www.kristenboyleyoga.com
 



​

Today I heard on the radio that we have a "perception gap" problem in America...
no shit?
And that social media is only furthering this divide.
woah...
ugh.

I rarely turn on the radio. It rattles my system in a way that I dislike. So I tune out most of the time, and tune in only to stay informed. 

​But this is something I could have told you.

What we have lost in the social media shuffle is the ability to see the HUMAN in front of us. We read posts, political views, lifestyles, opinions, and we make judgments. We judge that person as "other" and then when we [wrongly] perceive that person as "extremely other" we tend to become hostile towards them.

We react, rather than respond.

And our world moves so quickly. We are so externally focused. We forget that we ourselves are HUMAN, just like that “other” we are looking at.

And actually, this is the result of being unaware that the way we (you, I) see the world is a combination of our perception of it, which is based on our own unique lifetime of experience, then a projection onto the human in front of us to try to interpret their experience.

Actually, a humanly impossible task to overcome. 

It is NOT about “we are all the same” and it is especially not about “we are all one.” These are the lies that common yoga-speak tell you.

As "positive" as they seem, these phrases are a bypass… avoiding what IS for what we believe will make it so we do not have to deal with it.

And avoidance never solved anything!

What IS the same is our essence… we all need to love and feel loved, we all need to feel safe, to have shelter, food and warmth. We all need to have a sense of belonging, of value and worth in this world. 

And, we all need to be SEEN and ACKNOWLEDGED for our differences. That my experience of this life, and how I engage with it, is different than yours. We both ride a roller coaster, and yet one of us screams in terror while the other screams in joy. Same experience, different way of engaging with it, and different experience of it. And then, one says to the other, "Wasn't that awesome?!?!" We engage through perception and projection. And that is the only way we can understand each other. I understand you from a combination of my perception of reality, and then I project that onto you to try to understand you. And though I try my best, I will never fully understand, know, you. You will never fully understand, know, me.

So what do we do? How do we engage with others?

We practice, learn, develop tools to BE with what IS in each moment. To come to this present moment with as much clarity and neutrality… yes, the blank slate or empty cup analogy… as we can. And doing so allows each of us to remain open, curious, interested, and in wonderment of what is happening as we bump shoulders with another human.

We learn that past is a story that we carry into the present moment. We we develop the tools to discern what in this moment is happening vs what in this moment is from past, and we put them into practice in life. So, what do I need right now, to BE in this moment with what IS?

I need to get present to myself. First. I need to get quiet. First. To shift from reaction into response. This allows me to see the HUMAN in front of me, acknowledging there is a lifetime of experiences that they have had that I will never know. So that I am better able to BE with that person as they show up right now. 

And this is why YOGA, and Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy that I practice, can be a means to cultivating the tools so that we can create a world where we can do just this. So that we can engage with life, and with others, better. So we can respond and not react. Live. Life. Better.

When we can do this, we become better able to see, to sense, to listen. Our world needs this now. And it is up to you, to me, to do the work. Because you are reading this, you are ready. Be that difference. Be the one that closes the "perception gap." Because, the gap was never there to begin with. It is the illusion created by people in reaction to others. The illusion created by fear of the other. And we are all so much stronger than fear.

How am I doing with expressing myself clearly? Am I speaking from head or from heart?
If we speak only from one or the other, something is missing. I listen to all the voice rising up, calling out, asking to be noticed. Sometimes it is overwhelming. I wonder if our social justice movement is at an adolescent stage, which will eventually pass on to wisdom, and we will look back and know the true truth, that which speaks from both heart and head.
The heart, anahata, when supported by strong self, by creative self, by foundation, neither over-gives nor over-takes. Compassion is in balance. When we speak from that space, our words convey a sense of understanding the other, even when we disagree.
The head, ajna, is the seat of intuition. When we communicate from intuition, the sense is different from when we communicate from thinking mind. From ajna we are able to intuit, feel into, the collective. Communication from this space carries a knowing beyond thinking. 
Visuddha connects head and heart. The breath, entering the nose, rises up to almost touch ajna, then descends through visuddha and into the lungs in the space of anahata. When we speak from a connection to these two, our voice, our words, carry an energy, a clarity, a presence, on par with the greatest speakers of freedom of our time. Lincoln, MLK, Nelson Mandela, Maya Anjalou, and so many more. 
This country was founded on Freedom of Speech and on Democracy. Neither can be truly lived unless the head and the heart are connected.
I have so much more to say, but I will pause here. Another story for another day. 

Call me a traditionalist, but I believe in this pose. 

It's a funny thing to feel defensive about a pose.  

And I feel that many poses in yoga are getting a lot of flak these days ... this pose is bad, that pose can hurt you, oh, and this one exceeds normal ROM (range of motion) so therefore don't do it! 

Why? Are we afraid? Snowboarding is dangerous, and yet people less aware of their core do it. You can definitely hurt yourself running, and yet people do it every day, and we don't tell them not to. Does a yoga teacher need a physical therapy certification to teach yoga?  

Is there not a wisdom inherent in the body? Isn't tapping into that wisdom a part of the practice? What is to be learned from these challenges? And aren't we told often enough what to or not to do... literally, prescribed to? Where can I explore my own experience, make my own choices, with some guidance? 

​To me, Yoga Asana is an exploration of Self, with the starting point being the physical experience. From there, deeper layers become more accessible... energy, emotion, intellect (the Koshas). Deepening AWARENESS of all aspects through which we experience this human existence.
 
That means, all poses, all ROM, are on the table to explore! 

Virabhadrasana I... why? 

Well, on a physical and anatomical level, Warrior I offers an opportunity to lengthen the inner thigh on the back leg in one angle of extension and external rotation. Doing so prepares the back leg for Warrior II.  
Crescent lung is often touted as a modification of Warrior I, but I disagree. Crescent, or High Lunge, lengthens mostly the top of the thigh and hip flexors. The leg is not exactly "neutral" and in fact a very slight external rotation of the back thigh is optimal for stability. However, the leg is closer to neutral. Warrior I offers 1 degree of rotation more, and is something in between Crescent Lunge and Warrior II. (I have more to say on Crescent Lunge, but that for another post!) 

Jason Crandall teaches a "Warrior 1.5," which is somewhere between Warrior I and II. I see this as also beneficial, as it is 1 degree of rotation more than Warrior I, again preparing the back leg for Warrior II. 
Beyond the physical, the awareness, strength, and stability that come from engagement in the Warrior I pose are just excellent places to explore the deeper layers of your experience. You can hold the pose for a long enough time to allow the story to play out. It is hard, and it is stable with the right engagement. 
So, I really like Warrior I.  

Virabhadrasana I... why not? 

It's HARD. 

Oh? Yes it is hard! Maybe that is called an "edge?" Mr. Iyengar says, a pose doesn't begin until you want to get out of it. Growth begins at the edge. A good therapist is not there to pat you on the back and tell you good job, rather she is there to support you at the edges.  

What can you learn from your experience of doing something that is "hard?" Can you stay long enough to allow the story of your body to play out? To tap into your inner wisdom? 
Is it a story of frustration? A story of exhaustion? A story of sensing pain, and learning how to negotiate that pain – is it harmful or helpful, and how to move with or around it, depending on what that pain is telling you? 

Guess what, it is ALL welcome. What else? 

I can't square my hips. 

SQUARE your hips? Are hips square? Why are "square" hips the "definition" of the pose? Is it wrong to allow the hips to be not square? What if "squaring" is a direction and not a destination? 
Note: Even Mr. Iyengar says NOTHING about square hips in this pose. 

Let's explore. 

If you WANT to square your hips as a destination, you have to step your back leg really wide, and narrow in terms of the distance from front to back foot. 

This creates a good deal of stability. This is a good pose variation for pregnancy, for larger bodies, or for an older population. It is also a good pose variation for injuries to the knee or the SI joints. At least temporarily, because hopefully your body will heal, as bodies do. At least to an extent. 

Is that what YOU need in your practice? Then do it! And do it with the knowledge of your own body, of your own inner experience, and that overrides anything a teacher might tell you. To me, when practicing with that level of awareness, you are an advanced yogi! 

Now, what about approaching "squaring the hips" as a direction, but not a destination? Then your back hip does not come as far forward, and ideally not far enough forward to put a torque on your back knee. 
Torque on the back knee? Isn't that bad? 

Let's talk about torque on the back knee. You will know there is torque on the back knee by feeling a twinge or pulling on the medial knee (inner knee). If you tend to be quite mobile, it is likely you are doing this without knowing. Muscular engagement is your friend. Muscular engagement supports any shape, when applied. 

If there is a torque, then isn't the pose about figuring out how to NOT torque the back knee? And what is to be learned in that process of discovering how not to do something that causes you harm? 

To address torque, let's go to the foundation of the pose.  

Explore. What if you angle your foot forward more? 45 degrees is an average... again, a direction, not a destination. Go to the point where your toes angle forward and you can still press down through the back heel. Again, this is a direction, not a destination. The back heel may come up, you are just pressing down as best you can. Press through the pinky side of your foot and actively lift the inner arch, engaging the inner leg line. Does the engagement relieve the sensation of torque? (Yes? No? Maybe? All valid answers.) 

How are you doing so far? 

So, are you saying that yoga is an exploration? That all the cues I have learned are a place from which I am to explore my physical self?  

Yes, that's it. Good. Let's go on. 

Now look at the front knee. Is it coming out directly from the hip socket? Is it angled inward or outward? Can you simultaneously press your knee to midline (engage your adductors), and pull your hip back (engage your abductors)? That co-contraction should also aide in this direction of "squaring" the hips, and in stabilizing the front knee. 
Good? Let's keep going. 

Come a little higher, into the torso. What's happening there? There is a slight twist AND a back bend. Are you "dumping" in the low back? (I often joke that this as a "co-dependent relationship with your low back, which WILL take all the curve if asked to do so, it is so accommodating!)  

Try this: Draw the fronts of your ribs in, thereby engaging the support of your abdominals, lengthen your low back, then move from the bottom back ribs forward, and top of shoulders backward. The action is similar to that of Locust pose or Utkatasana. 

What's happening now? 

Is it still hard?  

Yes. 

Is yoga hard? Is life hard? Do you work to figure it out, find your way through, accept what is, let go of wanting what isn't? 

Well, yes. 

Ok then, we're getting somewhere. ​

Upcoming:
April 23rd - Virabhdra: Auspicious Hero @ Kindness Yoga Hilltop
Virabhdra, the auspicious hero, was created from the lord Shiva’s dreadlock when he threw it to the ground in anguish after learning of his love and wife, Sati’s death. Ordered to avenge her death, Virabhdra killed all the guests at the dinner. When Shiva saw the bloody mess, he felt remorse, and miraculously healed all the guests.
Have you wondered why such a peaceful practice includes bloody battles and poses for warriors? What is it we are battling? What are we preparing for, and how can Yoga Asana help us along the way?
In this 90 minute workshop with Kristen Boyle, we explore the three Warrior poses of yoga, cultivating the warrior’s mind in preparation for the battle against ignorance, ego and injustice.