#291: When Yoga Means Rest

When I was about 35, I visited one of my hometowns growing up.  This one in Brecksville, Ohio.  I lived there during 8th and 9th grade.  

I woke up at the crack of dawn and left the Holiday Inn for what I thought would be a long peaceful meandering run.  It seemed like just a wonderful way for re-connecting with memories and space.

It was horrible.

I decided to run up past the school.

As I ran the exact route the bus would take each day leading up to the high school doors, fears of many years before arose instantly and consumed me. 

I became in touch with the daily effort it took each day to fit in, to be liked, to hide what went on with me and the deep pressure to attempt to be in the popular group and sometimes succeed and in terrible ways also fail.  The immense pressure I was never ever conscious of as a 9th grader was all consuming on this morning.  I can still feel it when I think of it.  Super scary.   All the energy working so so so so hard sub-consciously to not be myself or even have a clue as to who I was.  To have no base.

And I would have been thought to be one of the lucky ones with “so much going for me”!!!

From that mini scary experience, I can’t even pretend to fully imagine the immense positive benefit that Jaime had with the teen-agers she taught in Costa Rica who perhaps faced far far greater daily challenges.

- Pip

When Yoga Means Rest

I’m a certified yoga teacher.

I feel so blessed to have taught in so many settings.

I have taught children. I have taught strangers in a community garden. I have taught kids in low-income communities without mats. I have taught fellow friends and activists committed to community change. 

And, maybe my favorite of all, I taught teen aged boys when I lived in Costa Rica. 

I never intended to teach teenage boys. It was never a job I specifically applied for and it was never something I would have signed up for if you asked me. But, as the Universe often delivers with her divine timing and perfect imaginings, in 2015 I found myself teaching yoga to teen aged boys within an all boys therapeutic boarding school. And it is something that gave me life. And that I still think about today, years later. 

The school was a US accredited high school located in Costa Rica, the country I’d been living in for almost three years. I was working with the school’s food system and experiential education department, so part of my work included teaching yoga. 

I’ve always been very committed and intentional with everything I do, so, I dove in deep to try to make the most out of my time there.

I would wake up in the morning and practice my own practice. This usually looked like me on my mat surrounded by candles burning, my journal and coffee nearby, music blasting and my body free flowing. I knew that I had to connect to my self first, in order to show up authentically. 

Occasionally I would stop my flow to jot down something I liked that I felt the “kids” would like. After I finished my personal flow and scribbles of a plan, I would sit and I would imagine the guys that would be in my class. I would try to feel what they were going through at the moment in their lives. And I would let that guide me. I would let that dictate the music I chose and how much deep movement there was in the class I was envisioning and how much rest and how fast and how slow I thought we should move together. 

After all, that was kinda the bigger purpose for me of group yoga classes: moving together to move through our things together. 

So, there I was spending all this time and energy to come up with “the perfect” class for my teen aged students. The time for class would arrive: I’d look out at their faces, which often looked a bit skeptical or resigned or well, like they were really just there to avoid PE/running or a teacher or. . . life.

And, I think they WERE there for those reasons.

And, I didn’t judge them for it.

I had no attachments to why they were there and if they worked their asses off in that class or if they were there for the completely wrong reasons.

I was just glad they were there.

Because I knew that yoga gave me answers in life, even when I wasn’t looking. Because I knew that even on the days I didn't want to practice yoga, it did something for me. 

Because it’s not really about “yoga” at all, as it is about taking a pause. It’s about breathing, even if I only notice 1 inhale and 1 exhale. It’s about paying attention. Or, at the very least, it’s about rest. 

So, we’d start with skeptic faces. We’d move. (some of us). There would be periods of moans and groans and periods of laughter and smiles. I tried to include some challenging poses and some fun ones - everyone knows a teen ager loves a good ego boost. And by the end, we’d wind down to some reclined stretches and then a final resting pose.

I’d be sitting with my own eyes closed and they would all be lying down on their backs. I would lead them through some visualizations of relaxing the whole body, hoping too, to relax their minds and nervous systems. I would say some things that I thought they might need hearing. I thought that even if they weren’t listening, maybe they might be absorbing on some subconscious level. I’d encourage some cleansing breaths. 

And, then, when it was time to come out of the pose of deep rest and back to this world, about 75% of them were

sleeping. 

Like, snoring sleeping.

 My initial reaction was, "Oh, great. They just slept through all that good stuff. And now I have to wake them up.” 

 But, one day, I had an overwhelming urge to cry when I opened my eyes and I saw the majority of them snoozing. 

I had this visceral surge of anxiety. . . not my own. . . but something remembered from my past or something borrowed from one of them. I felt the pressure. I felt the pressure of parents and teen aged friends and teachers expecting me to do and be things I often didn’t feel connected to. I felt confused. I felt the confusion of not knowing who I am or what I wanted. I felt tired. Not the sleepless kind of tired but tired of trying so hard and failing over and over. 

And then I remembered what it felt like to let that all go. To have some experience or some person be with me in a way that made me take the backpack of BS off my shoulders. And to just feel like me for a minute. 

So, when I saw all these boys’ bodies just resting, I felt so grateful that I could offer them this space for a minute or two. 

Or maybe they were just bored out of their minds.

Either way, rest is rest. 

I want to teach yoga again. But mostly I just want to create a space where we can feel free to move together and maybe bring some of our problems or celebrations to light (and maybe laugh) and be with those things together until we all feel a bit more connected to our selves and to one another.