Trust
Congruency

These are an elegant and robust pair that asks us to live with an open bridge between the internal and external worlds. Congruency asks us to track and understand what is going on inside and wear it honestly instead of attempting to cover it up in hopes of being something "better". Congruency asks us to look at the ways we dampen, lessen, dismiss or negate our true internal state. It asks us to be present and show up.

And in so doing we model for our children, partners, students and all those around us a depth of honesty. When we are congruent we are modeling for our kids that they can be too. When we are congruent we model for our students the possibility that they can be too. It's deep, actually, this layer of modeling.

Do not underestimate how powerful it can be for a student to see you embody the meaning of your words. 

Perhaps you smile when you tell someone you are angry. Perhaps you put on your game face and tough it out too often in your attempt to be a leader. Perhaps you have trouble letting the joy of your heart crack all the way through your gestures.

As humans beings, we are actually wired to experience congruency as safe. When someone around us is hurting and is able to name that instead of unconsciously asking us to guess and tiptoe, something inside can relax and feels more connected. If we are wearing our emotions on our yoga pants but not naming what it happening we risk unconsciously allowing the students to stay on high alert around what is going on. Sure, some students won't notice. But many will. Some will guess or project. Some will unconsciously caretake. When we are congruent with our words, actions and feelings we take responsibility and stay in relationship.

If Olive hits me, I say "Ouch! That hurts mama if you hit."  with a matching expression on my face. If I were to say the words but smile or laugh instead, that would be confusing. When I match my gesture and my words, Olive learns that hitting hurts mama and that mama has feelings! She learns her actions have consequences. 

Congruency, as you can already tell, yields Trust. It helps us relax enough to settle into the relationship at hand. The more trust we desire, the more the need to be congruent. Think of it this way;

Congruency is a skill that builds Trust. 

Trust is one of those fancy words that everyone wants to use and say is in high presence in their classes. Is it though? Like at every level? I am not talking about expecting, or worse, demanding the students trust you. I am asking how you cultivate and earn your students trust both in the short and long term. Through language, touch, presence, eye contact, clarity of instruction, the ability to refer out when needed. All of it. I am also interested if you trust your students. 

See, Trust (note the capital T) is something earned. It cannot be forced. And it is multidirectional. The Psychologically Sound Yoga Classroom is healthy for the psyche because Trust is earned on the part of the teacher. And as the teacher we can take a stance of trusting our students as collaborative guides in the classroom. We can Trust their bodies have a knowledge worth listening too. We can Trust that the students are there for a reason, even if it's not the reason we go to class. When we Trust our students we do not need to control them. We are left wide open to educate them, an inherently collaborative act. And we become stewards of helping them find congruency and dissonance in what we ask and articulate and their actions in response. 

In an ideal world, we come into being with the capacity to be held, loved and rocked in the safety-net of Trust. But there are many instances where ruptures in Trust were not repaired, or a person might not have had the luck of Trust in their early relationships. Unconsciously, this can play out in the yoga room. While it is not your business as a yoga teacher to repair this per se, you can do enough by earning Trust through consistency, clarity, and presence. and by bestowing reverence and Trust to the students. (And many other ways too).

So, my friends, I give you the ever so elegant couple of Congruency and Trust. They take turns leading on the dance floor. And when in rhythm they inspire all of us. 

Have at it. 

How are you building trust in your classes? How do you earn trust? What are the ways someone has earned your trust? How congruent are you with your gestures and emotions? Practice transparency. 

Deep Bow to all you do and Are,
Livia

11 years ago on this day the car I was driving in went off the road, hit a ditch which flung the car through the air and into what seemed like endless time and space. It narrowly missed a giant poll which probably would have killed us, but instead rolled into a field after it nose-dived back to the ground. 

We landed with my passenger side down. The glass of the windshield fully cracked but not shattered. Somehow my glasses completely intact still on my face. My boyfriend at the time got himself out of the car and was trying to find a way out for me. At first I thought maybe it was a dream or that I had died. Somehow I managed to hear him say that I had to get out because gas was coming out of the car. 

So I did. I pulled myself out of the car through the broken window above me. I pulled myself out of the car not understanding why it felt like my arms would not work. I pulled myself out of the car and the dark night of broken metal with two fractures in my collar bone and six in my sternum-right through the center of what we call the heart space. 

Later, I discovered that those fractures were a result of the way the seatbelt restrained me and the impact of the airbag on my chest, which would have suffocated me had my seat not been reclined because I was falling asleep at the moment we drove off the road. I would also like to say this is not a tale of a drunk driver. He lost sight of the curve of the farmland road. That's it. It was dark. It was chance. 

And we literally walked out of that car alive and to the side of the nearly empty road in the new-moon darkness to meet an ambulance that had been called by two good samaritans who happened to be on the road that night. 

It was the second night of Rosh Hashanah and it was the Fall Equinox and it was Navaratri. 

I have always considered that night a rebirth for me. Though I rarely ever talk about it now. I did recount it for the first few years as I tried to understand the narrative and soothe the PTSD I developed. But over the past few years it has felt less relevant. 

The other day I was getting some bodywork and my Rolfer and dear friend was working on my right arm. She asked if that collar bone had ever been broken. "Yes" I told her. And since then I have been thinking of this night. Not in a bad, traumatic way. But in a deeply reverent way. 

As I write these words I can feel that old familiar painful ache in my chest. The kind of ache I lived with for years. First the intensity of bones healing and regrowing. And then the trapped fear and freezing. And then the old memory that creeps in through feeling when the air is damp and cold. 

I died that night. That night of the new year in 2006 as we turned towards fall, toward the liminal portal of the Days of Awe. But I was also reborn that night. I was reborn by Grace. Thrown into the Book of Life. Durga took away all the ways of being that were slowly sinking my life into a hole and made my life something more whole and holy. She delivered me that night. 

This time of year feels sacred to me not only because my traditional ways mark it so, but because I know with every living cell in my body that veils are thin right now. Prayers matter. And if we are given the chance to live. Let us delight in the moonlight and the royal sun by loving more fiercely than we can ever imagine. 

My relationship with a man I deeply loved also died that night. He was driving us home. It was an accident of no persons fault. We never managed to recover from our fear, pain and overwhelm. We grew apart. We hurt each other deeply. But he did indeed drive us Home that night. We were launched into lives that took us away from one another and towards our own future children and the spouses we deeply adore. We were reborn into the lives and loves waiting for us on this Rosh Hashanah eleven years later. We were initiated. 

This is my Rosh Hashanah prayer and blessing: 

May you be reborn. 

May your broken bones filled with the worlds sorrow heal. And remain achy enough you never loose sight of the worlds need for your healing touch.

May you move towards the sweetness and newness of Life even in the dark shattered and scattered night. 

May you dwell in the deep trust of the Goddess as your guide gently and ferociously surrounding you with Grace. 

May you go forth in this new year and new life and new cycle with a strength and vulnerability on your tongue. 
 

Increasingly so I experience the world as loud. As a mama, I am reawakened in my senses through the eyes of my child. I can see just how big and loud and overstimmulating the world is.  

Yesterday at the toy store I watched Olive find her way over to the wall of plastic music making toys. On the one hand these toys are wonderful. They engage sensory and motor coordination. They focus attention and keep said child entertained. Which is good for mama. But I also watched her increasingly become literally crazed by this toy. It not only captivated her. It consumed her. The louder the toy got, the louder she became. Together they made a cacophony that surpassed the delicate and precious features of delight and entered into some kind of manufactured stimulus-induced mania. 

This is our world. increasingly built less on the natural elements of wood, metal, clay, attention, contact, drum beats, wind rustles, thunder and gesture, and more on silicon, virtuality and synthesized noise. 

I should mention I have also observed Olive be equally as entertained by dirt and rocks. A quiet, present, embodied delight.

The difference?

When she play with a natural material she is in her body. Rhythmically engaged in play.

When she plays with plastic and manufactured noise she leaves her body.

But this is not a post about the toys you choose for your kids. Thats not really my business anyway.

What this is about is our innate sensitivity that is bombarded on a daily basis by a world that is quick, loud and aggressive. A world that people built. And perhaps that is the fundamental distinction. 

The world as it is has us a simple integral feature to the whole picture. We are no less or more important than the willow and the prairie dog. We are equal in importance to the bees and the burdock. And I would even wager we might be less important. We are part of a system that sings and harmonizes because it does. There is nothing virtual about it. But the world we have built is based on buildings and screens and recordings. A masked and mutilated self-important dominance-over instead of that sweet and simple humble cohabiter.

And through the eyes and nervous system of a tiny human being I see just how magnificent what is Natural is and just how self absorbing what is Manufactured is. 

None of us are immune from the addiction of feeling smooth plastic in our hands. Or the pseudo support of the light of a screen.

The world is loud if you listen. The sounds of the wind and the birds and thunder.

Loud. Present. Immediate.

The sound of the grass and the aspen leaves.

Gentle. Subtle. Magic.

The world is fast enough if you witness it.

Rushing waters. Pounding rain.

Sliding Mud.

Flash of lightening. Darting squirrel.

We were designed to move at a pace in step with nature. All rhythms are found in the Earths capacity.

Quick. Slow.

Thumping. Slithering.

All the rhythms of all the beings.

When we reclaim rhythm and movement, we reclaim the pace of nature. We embody the natural world.