So this one deserves a little context.

One of the ways I work with my own Shadow material is to work them into characters of myself. By taking impulses, feelings, movements, patterns of relating and seeing them in a crystallized way, as a mere one-side or character of my full self, I am able to add some humor where there is often lots of grief. 

So please don't take offense to the list below. It's in good fun and shadow work should be fun. And its hard and dark because there is truth to it too. It's funny because it's also true. Not the whole truth or only truth, but a truth nonetheless. 

Lately, I've been feeling into all the archetypes, characters and stereotypes the word Mommy comes along with. I had a great laugh last night with Elliot when I described to him All The Mommys I Cannot Be. I put on quite a show. And of course, it was disarming to hear which ones he likes, which ones he hates, and which ones he instigates.

Sometimes I feel like I walk through my day, simply playing out one of these roles. Like the clothes I chose from my closet that day, I choose a mommy to wear that day too. And sometimes, depending on where I am out in the world I feel almost forced to put on one of these outfits. 

Of course, I am none of these and all of these. And I wish to be the me that is the deepest core to all of these. You see, I am not a mommy because I am a woman. I am a mommy because I am in relationship to my daughter. And for her sake, and mine, these are all the mommys I cannot be. 

~~~~

Introducing the newest line of Barbie dolls. Sure to give your children all their cultural introjects for a lifetime of psychological fun. Be sure to mix and match so as to solidify their play as neurotic expressions and idealizations of the feminine.

Perfect Mommy

High-heeled Mommy

Crafty Mommy

Homestead Mommy

Hipster Mommy

Yoga Mommy

Business Mommy

Intellectual Mommy

Sexy Mommy (sometimes also known by her other names as fuckable mommy and MILF)

Frazzled Mommy (comes with a set of talking Kens ensuring the Frazzled Mommy feels extra frazzled with her Emotional Labor and Mental Load tasks.)

Earthy Mommy (you'll love her flowing pants, whimsical hair, and gardening tools)

Cool Mommy (don't be fooled. Cool Mommy fits into your home perfectly. She has learned to morph herself depending on the situation she's in)

Working Mommy

Busy Mommy

Martyr Mommy (Warning: this one appears rather lifeless and comes with a chip on her shoulder, which has been known to be rather sharp.)

Hysterical Mommy (She even cries when you push the button on her butt)

Blaming Mommy

Shaming Mommy

Evil Mommy

Silly Mommy

Gorgeous Mommy

Hygge Mommy (which is actually a combination of several mommys including Crafty, Earthy, Hipster and Perfect. Be sure to get the whole set!)

Jackie O Mommy (Those glasses just never go out of style!)

Exhausted Mommy (complete with dark circles under her eyes)

Do-Everything Mommy

Organized Mommy 

Please note that each of these Mommys is sold separately, though we highly advise buying all the mommys for a complete and long lasting neurotic construct. Does not include matching Ken.  

As we enter this year, let's pick up the thread we had started at the end of 2017, exploring the 12 Principles of the Psychologically Sound Yoga Classroom. 

I ask you consider Safety and Choice as fundamental features to your classes if they are to be "Psychologically Sound". 

Here is why. 

You really can't do much else, learn or engage in a challenge, let alone relax if you do not feel safe. Our brains are wired to assess safety in any given situation and experience. If we deem a lack of safety either consciously or unconsciously, the need for safety remains paramount and forces us to enact defenses to create a sense of safety even if temporary. Even after an event has passed, It can leave the nervous system stuck in patterns of hyper or hypo arousal.

Both a sense of safety and actual safety are foundational to facilitating our basic needs and therefore any other task. If you are on high-alert internally or externally, it is difficult to focus, directions may seem confusing, things can become overwhelming more quickly. 

We live in a world that seems increasingly unsafe in many ways. Some people coming to practice yoga have not had places of safety in their lives. Or are in current situations that are tugging at ties of safety. Some of you as teachers have had to find solace and sanctuary. some of you are learning how to repattern your own nervous systems and find solid ground within. Some of you are teaching in places and situations where the students have zero safety or where there is obvious lack of safety in the environment. 

If you want your students to learn and grow--if you want to learn and grow-- Safety is needed to do so.

I am not talking about creating a utopian environment for your students where they are safe from all triggers and harm. That is impossible and will drive you nuts. In fact, this attitude has in some ways become a shadow within the trauma-sensitive call to action for yoga teachers. Being trauma-sensitive and aware in your classes has in some ways become a drive to protect our students at all costs and often the cost is ourselves. A feeling of entrapment and fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. What I am suggesting is that trauma sensitivity is not the creation of utopian, triggerless environments without mistakes. But rather, an environment where the majority of basic concerns are met and when arousal and triggers occur they are faced, dealt with and repaired as best as possible.

Those of you who are parents know that there is a longing to protect your children from all of life's harms. But you also know that learning to fall and get up builds grit, resilience, and grace. So that is my call to action--to create a safe environment to fall and fail. To get ruffled and find center again. That's training for real life.

So Safety as a "Psychologically Sound" teaching principle is about creating a contained and boundaried environment for experimentation and sometimes repair. 

Safety ranges from the most basic elements, like are the props at risk of falling over on a student's head, and is the floor safe to walk on barefoot? To more broad cultural pieces like an election, world event, natural disaster etc. Safety can be alerting students to protocols and norms so they can be more at ease in the space and group. Safety can be creating a sanctuary in a concrete mess.

Safety also includes a mindset on your part that your students come from different situations and their lives are dynamic and thus the experience of safety can rise and fall. 

The practices of yoga and meditation are intended to provide a sense of inner safety in an ever-changing world. Though we can't change world events once they occur. Though we live in times of great uncertainty (and I believe every generation faces its iteration of this). Though we can't change events of the past that left marks of trauma within, we can reconstruct our relationship to these events and feelings through cultivating a sense of inner resource, ground, and belonging.

As yoga teachers, we have a distinct advantage in reminding and facilitating the direct experience of inner safety. Helping students return to the pulse of their heartbeat and the rise and fall of their breath. Facilitating an inner inquiry into pleasure, power, impulse, strength and rest. Encouraging students to find their own limits and praising not just those who go to the edge but those who stay really contained and close to their center. Providing a place to come and laugh and cry, to be shy and boisterous. 

All of these facilitate Safety. 

Once we have the basic spatial and environmental safety pieces in place we can venture into the land of cultivating inner safety more consistently. Here are some considerations.  

Be clear in your directions. Tell your students the "why" of directions. And give them pros and cons. Be clear about your own biases and opinions.

Contained, boundaried and clear environments yield healthy pressure to against which to push, experiment and make choices to gain feedback.

 Provide and privilege Choice. 

The last one is critical friends. Choice is what gets ripped away from you when you experience trauma. And thus Choice is a huge mitigating factor in healing trauma. Choice is also critical to becoming more skillful as an adult. When too many options are presented it can be easy to feel overwhelmed. And when no choices are given, unnecessary force and power-over come into play in the classroom. 

Being clear and direct does not negate your opportunity to provide and lead with Choice as paramount.

I have seen teachers lead in a way that is bossy, overpowering and fosters situations where students feel like they must obey, do not have a choice, or can't access their healthy no. I have also seen teachers lead in very direct ways within a context that everything happening in the room is a choice. There is a deep encouragement and fostering of the felt experience of healthy willpower and right use of Yes and No. 

I try to do the latter. I encourage you all to as well. 

You see, Safety and Choice go hand in hand. Healthy directives and boundaries can yield the ability to make decisions that are right for each of us. Even if it is not the same choice someone else would have made. It fosters independence and differentiation. 

I am not suggesting you allow your students to do anything they want. It is not a free for all. In fact, if you did allow that, I would wager that sense of safety would go down in your class. When you cultivate safety through clarity, boundaries, understanding, and warmth you can provide the whole class as a choice. They did choose to show up after all. 

I encourage you all to look at all the ways you can provide Choice in your classes, especially if the ask is at all triggering. For example, for more advanced poses, give options. Experiment with invitational language and direct language, tracking the impact it has. Ask students to commit to their own presence and inner inquiry. Stop taking it personally if someone does not do your direction. 

Also, do a safety assessment. Scan the environment in which you teach. Assess your cultural climate. Inquire about what's happening in the neighborhood.

The Psychologically Sound Yoga Classroom is infused with a sense of Safety and provides access to Choice. We all need those in our lives for health and balance. 

To all the good work we can do for eachother....
Onward my friends.

Most of my life I believed I was bad at math. I excelled at things like art and creative projects. I excelled at discussion and writing of ideas. I made people laugh. But math, no math was not for me. Algebra was confusing and I could never understand why if Nancy has 8 apples on the train leaving at 9am, and Susie has 4 pears in the car leaving at 10am and running adjacent to the train, how they were to magically have a pound of blueberries to give to Carl at the bus stop at 6pm. and what was the qoutiant I was finding again? 

Teaching me math must have been deeply frustrating for my teachers. The amount of patience and understanding they had to have just for me to earn a C was immense. But somewhere in the space created between my challenge in understanding and their frustration in teaching, they stopped seeing me as who I was and became focused on the task. I learned I must be bad and stupid if I couldn't do the math. I can't tell you how many times I came home crying or feeling totally ashamed that I couldn't do the thing they were asking. I even had one teacher tell me I was stupid at math. And my parents paid top dollar for that education. 

Now, as luck would have it I got a math teacher in high school who, to this day, is one of the best teachers of any subject matter I have ever had. What makes her special is that she was able to sit in the frustration and fury with me as I painfully made my attempts to learn math at the high school level. She sat with me for hours after school some days and helped me understand my own problem-solving skills and where the errors were. She never saw my worth connected to the outcomes of class. She always maintained her presence with the young girl across from her. I'm sure she got frustrated, but I never felt stupid learning from her. She managed to maintain what we call Unconditional Positive Regard with me, and as a result, I actually learned and grew. Her teachings have made a lasting impact two decades later. 

It may sound rather obvious, but one of the most Psychologically Sound ways you can build and teach your classes is to provide your students with reverence and respect. One of the most healing things you can do is hold a space of what we call Unconditional Positive Regard. Without this lens, a lot falls flat and you can become embroiled in unconscious games and patterns of will. 

Unconditional Positive Regard is a concept in clinical work referencing the way the clinician respects and honors both their client and themselves. It is this positive regard for the Other that potentiates relational healing and healing around one's sense of self and being.

Ultimately it is the fertile soil for growth, development and any healing. It is the essential space we all long to gestate in, be birthed through, and the arms of holding and nourishment that lends all the rest. As children and young adults, we encounter an unsavory and unfair world and we learn that not all spaces are safe. We learn to feel the disdain of others and sadly, set up barriers to prevent that pain. We also lose sight of the goodness in others especially as we face our adulthood, raise our families, do our work and look at the realities of the Other part of our countries party lines. 

Now, don't misconstrue this. This perspective doesn't condone evil actions of any kind, and it doesn't demand idiot-compassion and forgiveness. 

It actually asks us to see how disappointed we can be in another person's behavior and the harsh reckoning and in some cases irreconcilable differences that emerge when abuse and love get entangled. Sometimes, in holding our selves in Unconditional Positive Regard we gather the resources and courage to leave the abusive relationship or family. Or to say, "No, not this." Or to start over. Or to forgive the other person so that we can be set free from the bondage of resentment. 

But I wax poetic here, let me return to the classroom.

When you are held in the context Unconditional Positive Regard, your personhood is distinct from your actions. You can be deeply good and have made mistakes. You can have intrinsic worth and be messy. So, Unconditional Positive Regard is a perspective that aks the person in the seat of teacher/leader to hold those in their classes and under their tutelage with a kind of Light and reverence. The students or clients goodness is not attached to if you are annoyed by them. They are entitled to respect, reverence and the benefit of the doubt. Even if they do not do what you say in class. Even if they look angry or bored. Even if they seem confused.

Practically speaking, what Unconditional Positive Regard means for you and your students is that you honor where they are in the moment. You surrender the need to fix them or heal them. Positive regard means believing in someones potential and respecting their past so you can honor and accept their present. You are no longer the expert over them, but a person in relation to them that helps new experiences and learning emerge. You are fostering the context for learning to happen not through demands of facts, but through the presence of personhood.

Committing to hold students under the light of Unconditional Positive Regard is also a commitment to inclusion. When we offer this kind of high regard, we are taking the risk to look at our unconscious biases of race, gender, orientation, size, age, political views etc.. I might even go so far as to suggest that practicing Unconditional Positive Regard for self and Other as you work through these biases in practice, might be a deep skill set to building inclusivity.

Furthermore, when we attempt to hold this vision of Unconditional Positive Regard for students, we are also accepting that there may be certain tricky instances where a threshold is crossed and we can no longer hold them in that light we respect. In these times, it might ultimately be unethical to continue work with them since at some level they too deserve that spacious honoring of intrinsic goodness. Refer them to a colleague who has the bandwidth to hold that loving and present space if you cannot.

I am not talking about refusing to teach someone based on race, gender, ethnicity etc.. I think we all agree that's discrimination.

I am asking you to investigate your threshold. At what point does someones "misconduct" in your eyes limit your capacity to work with them. An example might be, you are working with a student who divulges information that they once sexually abused someone. What would you do? How triggered would you be? You would likely face fear, rage, and anger. Would this all cloud your capacity to hold them in a teachable light? If so, I would suggest not only seeking counsel on the issue but referring them to someone who you know who could be a better fit.

Essentially the threshold to this is: At what point does Unconditional Positive Regard become Conditional Positive Regard. 

These are honestly, the kinds of really hard questions I want us all to wake up to as teachers and leaders. And these are what deeply investigating the center and the fray of what it means to lead with Unconditional Positive Regard. 

What a gift, to acknowledge your own boundaries and hold yourself in high regard while also acknowledging the Others intrinsic value. 

Unconditional Positive Regard also asks us to trust the students and trust ourselves. If trust is broken and the regard is tainted we either repair or refer. With this kind of lens in place, you can let go of shame, blame and guilt towards yourself and towards the Other. If your demo didn't work. You are still good. If you the student fell, you aren't terrible. If the student isn't understanding, it is not their fault. Do not be fooled and allured into the traps of this ego phenomena. The student is still worthy of Unconditional Positive Regard and so are you. 

All learning comes out of this place. Without this high regard for the Other we lose sight of why this yoga matters in the first place. We lose sight of the growing edges of our own vulnerable desire. And when we are pushed so far to our capacity that this birthright of human decency and regard falls between us, let us commit to repairing or referring.

As well-meaning teachers, we sometimes stay when we should often let the student go or find them someone better equipped. We stay in schools and styles or with teachers who have lost integrity for us. You may never get an apology from the teacher who betrayed you. But you may find solace in holding yourself in Positive Regard. So much so you take a stand or change teachers.

Our students deserve our positive regard and our teachers deserve our positive regard. Let that human need be a guide to your teaching and relating. 

Because yoga is about being deeply radical and practical.

Human decency and Unconditional Positive Regard ask us to embark on that journey of the radical and practical. 

Go for it. 

Fill your classes with this Light. Watch how it changes your interactions with students. Track closely when it gets lost in your sensory awareness. 

Let us align towards the Good. And be fierce about it all. 

The world needs our Unconditional Positive Regard. 

I see you and believe in you.
Livia