It's All In Your Head

JUST IN YOUR HEAD
There are some of us who heard our whole lives "it is just in your head", meaning that what ever we were feeling was an illusion or delusional thought. The implication was that we were not in reality, our responses and reactions were based on ... nothing. IN FACT we were responding (with more or less skill) to what was going on around us. Sometimes said, sometimes unsaid, but we KNEW what was going on. As a child of an alcoholic I learned well how to gauge my environment. I developed coping mechanisms solely upon the criteria of staying safe. But that phrase "it is all in your head" frightened me away from believing in my mind.

THE POOR BRAIN!
Imagine my delight when I discovered that they were right (to a degree) - but not in "that" way. Trauma of a chaotic and unsettled household and my later active addiction did, indeed, change my brain. The chemistry was certainly affected by ingested drugs and alcohol but more important is the fact that my life long experiences had changed the functioning of my brain.

THE GOOD NEWS
Just as sensory inputs had harmed the brain; wise and healing sensory inputs can restore the brain. YES! The brain can be healed.

THE QUESTION IS HOW
The tools we can use to restore us are simple. With breath, meditation and mindful awareness, as well as intentional movement - the damaged brain centers can be brought back on-line. The hemispheres can re-establish a relationship - right brain and left brain can unite. You can re-integrate the "dis"-integration of the brain, your being and your sense of self. Yoga combines these three modalities and that is why the impact is so tremendous - a brief consistent practice, over a relatively short period of time shows results. The word "results" referring to the fact that the brain heals. The trauma that turned off functioning in the brain can be repaired. Trauma exists at other levels: it is also in the body, and we can address it with the movement. The trauma is also in the self, and we can love that back to health.

THE YOGA SERVICE COUNCIL CONFERENCE
The talented, compassionate and passionate yogis who attended YSC the conference this year at Omega have been serving communities who need to heal. All forms of trauma; illness, poverty, abandonment, disease, neglect, marginalization and harm affect the populations that these yogis have decided to serve. The service means offering the tools for self care that yoga provides in an appropriate and inviting venue. Kelly McGonigal, B.K.Bose, Bessel van der Kolk (among others) gave group talks that amazed and inspired us. Sharing the results of their research freely with us, inviting us all to be part of the remedy, they explained how, what we were doing, had such a profound positive impact on the populations we served. It was a delicious affirmation of our efforts. It was grace.

Their documented research shows exactly this- that the brain, carefully and lovingly attended to, can reframe, reform and remap itself bringing integrated vitality and a wholesome life back to a once damaged being.

Remember - breath awareness, mindful meditation, and yoga. Now let the phrase "it's all in your head" be empowering and remind you, you have the solution.

Kyczy Hawk E-RYT200 is the author of "Yoga and the Twelve Step Path", a leader of Y12SR classes, and the creator of SOAR(tm) (Success Over Addiction and Relapse) a teacher certification training she holds with her good friend Kent Bond E-RYT500. Find out more about her, her classes and the training at www.yogarecovery.com

Yoga Service Council - Many Ways to Give

June 7 to 9 2013 - a weekend of amazing grace, companionship, networking and growth. Graced to be a scholarship recipient, and humble to be among such phenomenal people. This will be a series of what I heard, what I learned, and what it meant to me and the trajectory of my mission.

I found myself taking notes constantly. I knew my mind could not hold it all: the wisdom, the knowledge, the understanding and the passion. Every presentation was meaty and full of ah ha moments, and times when I was reassured ("I do that!", "I have felt that way." and "I am inspired; I know I am going in the right direction!"). There are times when my mind exploded with the realities that were being shared. And we had opportunities to walk and talk with one another - debriefing and knitting together our community. We had moments to be alone and contemplate.

Beryl Binder Birch started us off with a "lovely" talk. Weaving together the duties of a benevolent social activist with the meaning of true compassion, she set the tone for the whole weekend.

Nikki Myers led the morning practice, exposing many to recovery infused yoga for the first time . Slow, definitive movement performed contemplatively prepared us for the day. She also presented a workshop "The Issues Live in the Tissues: Addiction Recovery, Trauma Healing and Yoga." She has phenomenal command of the information. She has touched so many with her work, and here at the conference it was no different. I am proud to have her as a friend.

The schedule from the 2013 Yoga Service Council conference will show you everything that was available. The breakout sessions, the group presentations and the panel discussion were phenomenal. There was room for questions, room for discussions and room for true dialoge - with differences of opinions thoughtfully and skillfully expressed. This was a conference of true learning and knowledge exchange.
Scientific data, both from experiencially based research as well as from brain imaging studies validated what we knew to be true. Yoga changes lives. Yoga changes your body, it changes your emotions, your energy, it can have an impact on your spiritual life AND it changes your MIND.
I tell you that to tell you this: it is all in your head. Not in the way you might think - but it is all in your head.

I will explain this in my next entry.

Kyczy Hawk E-RYT200 is the author of "Yoga and the Twelve Step Path", a leader of Y12SR classes, and the creator of SOAR(tm) (Success Over Addiction and Relapse) a teacher certification training she holds with her good friend Kent Bond E-RYT500. Find out more about her, her classes and the training at www.yogarecovery.com

Is Anonymity the Final Secret we need to let go of?

"We are only as sick as our secrets." This is a phrase used in my anonymous program to encourage us to let go (in an appropriate and confidential manner) those things that fester inside, preventing us from feeling free and growing. Guilt, shame and lies will erode my recovery and can bring me to the verge of, if not actually into, relapse. Identifying these secret and sharing them with another can relieve me of the isolation of shame, keep me on the path of recovery and help me take steps to remediate problems from the past.

LAYERS AND LAYERS
Seeing the movie "The Anonymous People" got me to thinking about the FINAL SECRET - anonymity. I am a woman in long term recovery. When working I didn't tell my bosses, I was afraid to have that known to my insurance company, and only in the quiet in a lunchroom would I share the information with a colleague in confidence. I wouldn't tell anyone about my destination when I would go to a lunchtime recovery meeting. To do so would bring confusion, fear and concern. And, I feared, disdain.
The shame of having this disease was still a constant undercurrent, kept alive by the fear that I would no longer be trusted by my workmates, that there would be fear about my reliability and potential of relapse.

Addiction is not treated as a disease like diabetes or heart disease or HIV infection. A contributing factor may be our tradition of anonymity. While anonymity is critical in terms of revealing one another's membership in a program of recovery, and anonymity may be critical in the sense of one being seen as a representative for a particular program of recovery; we seem to use it keep ourselves in the dark. When we do that we also keep our successes in the dark.



ANOTHER HUGE ASPECT OF THE SECRET
We in recovery force our families, the co-addicts, to maintain a secret. Yet again, even in recovery,they have to learn to stuff a shame in order to protect their family member of friend; their loved one who suffers from a disease. Is this healthy? The pain around being an adult child of and alcoholic, the spouse of an alcoholic or other addict), the parent of a child with the disease of addiction is enormous. There is a built in layer of guilt and shame, the unending mental repetitions of "if only". The phrase "if only" implies that you could have stopped the process of the illness as if you could think your way out of kidney disease. You can't. They can't. Does keeping this one last secret underscore the misguided conception of control? If we TOLD they would drink or use again? How does this shielding contribute to ideas that that this is not an illness? By protecting the identity of a family member with a disease, are we not contributing to the negative perception of this disease? What do you think?

The movie pointed out that we are also not able to celebrate our recovery and rebirth to health as we stay in the shadows.

This is the Voldemort of illnesses - the disease that cannot be named, and what do we want to do about that?

Kyczy Hawk E-RYT200 is the author of "Yoga and the Twelve Step Path", a leader of Y12SR classes, and the creator of SOAR(tm) (Success Over Addiction and Relapse) a teacher certification training she holds with her good friend Kent Bond E-RYT500. Find out more about her, her classes and the training at www.yogarecovery.com

Losses and Pain to the Heart

My heart hurts.

Tomorrow I go to the memorial service for a strong, indefatigable woman who knew how to enjoy life. She also lived life fully, edge to edge, even in the toughest times. And she had them, she had challenges of all types and she felt them. One of her gifts was in sharing the good times and the bad times, as they occurred, in the moment. She drew on the past as a measure of change not as a place to languish. She didn't hoard the delights of the past, nor did she wallow in the difficulties.

She knitted as a hobby. She liked to knit, she loved the color and the feel of yarn, but she didn't like patterns so much. She made scarves and hats and neck warmers. She participated in a couple of art shows with me; the first year selling dozens of pieces to her delight. I got a few myself I will treasure them even more, now.


I got to celebrate achievements and mourn losses with her, as did many others. This is a loss I will have to process alone.



My heart was still hurting from memorial two weekends ago. Another dear friend had died. He was a support, a help, and a resource for both me and my family, including my mom when she was frail and I was out of town.


He would check on the house, be sure all was well and act like it was no big deal. It was a big deal to me. His attention brought us all comfort. He was like that. He helped countless people and acted as if it were no big deal. The photo here is of him in Mexico. He went with the Lion's to distribute glasses to underserved people in rural areas of Mexico. He did that for everyone - brought sight and insight to the "underserved" areas of their life.

He was also a golfer - and had a great sense of humor. For many duffers this is a critical element for enjoyment; he was devoted to the game and allowed himself to enjoy it.

Did I mention my heart hurts? Not four months ago a third friend passed. He was the first of these three. A motorcycle lover, a gentleman in all senses of the word and a pie aficionado.

He was kind to people in pain, welcoming to people who were uncertain and new; he was a family man; he loved his kids. He shared his feelings and was not shy about that- he was a fine example of what it is to be a man. And he is gone.


It has been a rough start to the year. Beacons of light and understanding have gone out. They have gone out in the physical world but remain here, in my tender heart, that hurts just a little right now; but is grateful to have known them all.

Kyczy Hawk E-RYT200 is the author of "Yoga and the Twelve Step Path" and the creator of SOAR(tm) (Success Over Addiction and Relapse) a teacher certification training she holds with her good friend Kent Bond E-RYT500. Find out more about her and the training at www.yogarecovery.com

Using Yoga to Handle Fear - My Ocean Kayaking Experience Part Two

Fear and Kayaking- Part Two



Sea Kayaking in Hawai'i: a day that gave me lessons about myself dressed in the mantle of panic. In the solution.

I moved into my yoga practices. First- breathe. Then be sure you are rowing effectively, find your balance, engage your core, use all your muscles; not just the easy to get to ones- save your shoulders, your back and your hips from harm. Concentrate on integration. Feel your feelings. Ooops! My feeling is PANIC!!!! No! No! No! Back to breathing. Breathe in, exhale slowly, you are safe, you are strong, you can make it.

Next in my yoga practice is to work through the restraints and the observances; the yamas and the niyamas. First is non-harming; quit yelling at your husband. In spite of the fear you made the choice. He isn't having the same reactions you are. Leave him be. What is the truth? Am I really afraid of dying, or is it just fear of in-ability and weakness? No, I just don't want to be UNDER the kayak and I don't want salt water in my nose. I can deal with that. Breathe. Stealing - nope, clear on that one. Attachment? YES I am attached to bliss and being calm and I don't like this anxiety masking as excitement. I am also attached with my ego to being "one of the guys" and "doing what I committed to" regardless of my concerns. That is on me. Excess? Yes, I am indulging in my excess of fear and I am closely in danger of blaming others for my choices. The anger is becoming intoxicating. Am I holding on to the anger to energize me?



I am acting like a baby. Looking at the observances - how can I find contentment? I look around me; without the lens of fear there is some beauty. The water is so rough that the waves have waves. And these wavelets over the reef reflect the sun and there is gold, blue, aqua, white and brown all together creating a beautiful dappled look such as one might find in beautifully craft diachroic glass beads. The sun is warm, the islands off the shore are... not close enough! The shore is too far away as well! Back to the sun on the water and the colors of nature.

Breathe. I look to my practices of cleanliness: am I clear in my relationships with my husband and with our friend? I am still teetering on the edge of blame. That is not where I want to be. Feel it. Self study will reveal more on this. Consider discipline and transformational change. The discipline I am practicing is inward looking, breathing and rowing. Contemplate and practice. Don't give up on any of these.

The self investigation reveals that I do not trust. I do not trust my guides to have correctly assessed my abilities. (I am weak, I will not be able to handle an emergency, I would not know how to get back into my kayak in this kind of water, and so on.) I dont' trust them to find the right path between the shoals and avoid the worst of the waves and currents. They are "guys" and a suggestion made is one to be challenged. Never mind the warnings or the dangers. Do I have a flaw in my trust of MEN? This needs further examination, truly. I love my husband. I really like my friends. But this is all too much! My fear is covering my faith.

Surrender- yes... this is all I can do. I surrender, to the internal journey as well as the external journey. The breath is my charriot and I ride to peace. It helps that we have made it to the island. I breath and re-set. I walk on the small beach. The waves are so mighty that the path around the island is blocked. So we kind of wander around, eat snacks, and I get some nice photos of nesting birds.


We get back in the boats after 20 short minutes and head back to shore. No, the way back is not much easier than the way out, but like a trail horse I head back home with renewed vigor, heading for the beach like my life depended on it.


We get back, relatively unscathed. What I have learned is that I am not a person who takes challenge for pleasure. I enjoy the quiet, the silence, the ease of communing with nature. I am not one to try and conquer or challenge her. This is the big lesson; that breath, awareness, feeling my feelings and using my physical cues to investigate and understand. And that I have a big ego that will get me into trouble if I let it.

Using Yoga to Handle Fear - My Ocean Kayaking Experience Part One

I was recently on vacation in Hawai'i. We went with some friends who had organized some absolutely wonderful day trips. Snorkeling, beach walks, hikes to waterfalls, swimming and a day in the ocean on a kayak.

I love to canoe, I love to kayak. I enjoy the quiet lapping of the water against the boat. The silence of cruising down a stream allows me to see the wildlife without disturbing it. I experience calm and have the composure to be able to take nice photos. Even on an estuary with small waves bobbing us I have been able to see baby sea lions and their mom's in Moss Beach with my grandkids. The biggest mental challenge on that trip was not getting too close to them; their cuteness and mews were like sirens to me and my g-kids. We resisted.

This is what sea kayaking in O'ahu was like for me:

I looked out to those waves and my blood ran cold. I had committed to going. The guys were ready. The kayaks were on the shore, the snacks tucked safely away in the water proof bag; my stomach not so much. I was trying to balance my fearful expectations of disaster with the likelihood of an "unlikely event". Regular people were getting into their boats. Tour groups with people of apparently all manner of physical aptitude were embarking on the few mile row to the island. They did not look terrified. Now I have learned over the years not to "judge my insides by other people's outsides" so is is possible their guts were roiling as powerfully as mine, as powerfully as the sea. I do not know this to be true or not. They did not appear to be jabbering on about their terror as I was.

I was ready, took a deep breath and got in. I promptly flipped, was dunked and got bruised along the right side of my body in several place. I took another deep breath and got in again. I was nearly hysterical. Deep breathing: yoga 101. My husband then got in after a lot of twists and turns, chasing the boat through the wake and we were off. Well, we paddled into the oncoming waves, and my heart rate shot through the roof.

I was trying to keep it together as we faced rolling seas. I really am not exaggerating here; the waves came over us pretty regularly. We were cautioned to go out a far ways (but not too far) ultimately to angle parallel to the beach, overshoot our island by quite a bit and angle back toward it to avoid the undersea reefs and the powerful currents that were created by them. "Do not try to take a shortcut" we were advised. Go the distance and you will have no problems. First thing off was to try for a short cut. I panicked.



(Read on for Part Two- "In the solution".)

Kyczy Hawk E-RYT200 is the author of "Yoga and the Twelve Step Path" and the creator of SOAR (Success Over Addiction and Relapse) a teacher certification training she holds with her good friend Kent Bond E-RYT500. Find out more about her and the training at www.yogarecovery.com

Six Things That Can Happen When You Loose Your Voice

Loosing your voice: you can’t express yourself, people can't hear you, you are stuck in your thoughts, and after a time you may doubt you have anything to offer.

I was on vacation with friends recently and caught a cold; the second one within a month. For a brief time it took both my hearing and my voice away. For a full day I watched peoples' faces closely to gain information about to whom they were talking and trying to figure out if my participation was requested. If I was being addressed I had to measure my response carefully to mete out a loud whisper with the briefest of replies. It was a pain for all.

Aside from the aural and oral challenges I felt mostly fine; slow thoughts and low energy, but otherwise OK.

The next day my hearing improved somewhat but my voice was still limited. This became a less of an amusement as time went on. It was unpleasant for others as they had to speak louder and more directly and they had to listen to my croaky whispery voice.

I learned several things as the laryngitis continued.

1) I contribute a lot to the chatter in my life, I could tell that from the stillness among my friends. There was a lot of gazing and silence when we walked and at meals.
2) When my hearing was limited as well I had to listen and watch people with ferocious and unwavering attention if I was to be included. Adding to conversations was not a spontaneous event, but planned and measured.
3) I lost track of my connection with others and began to feel isolated.
4) I found that meditation and being in silence as a choice is far different than experiencing the quiet through dullness of hearing and inability to communicate at will. This was a different quiet than that of a silent retreat – here a lot was going on and I was unable to include myself easily.
5) My connection to my higher power was impacted due to my thoughts turning inward and sour. I was not as hopeful, not as filled with good humor as I conventionally am. My mind is not the sweetest of partners at times.
6) I even lost my ability or desire to write. The isolation and struggle to remain included got me to a place where I felt I had nothing to offer; my creative voice was stilled as well.

As happens I got better, the fuzzy thinking dissipated and I was included easily once again. I did notice that my attending to thoughts during the days of silence and non-speaking made me more aware of them now that I was jumping into conversations with more ease. Are my thoughts useful? Is expressing them helpful? What are the vocalizations of social interaction and how do I add in a positive way? Before, during the cold imposed silences, if conversations veered to the negative, I could throttle back my attention and cease my participation. Was that honest? If the talk was about subjects I had little interest in I could let my mind wander without seeming to be rude. There were benefits of this experience, yes, I but had to work for them. I really DID have to listen hard to see if this was an opt in or opt out type of discussion. I had time to watch my thinking, and hear, inside my head, what was kind, harmful, useful, or detrimental. I could see where I was being judgmental rather than discerning, and be supportive rather than slanderous.

I also learned a lot about gratitude, about assumptions, and expectations. I am glad it is just a virus and that I will get back to full voice and complete hearing. I realize that when I listen to people I make assumptions about what they are going to say and if I listen, listen just a little longer, they may surprise me. Or at least I will have listened to them rather than run them over with my words. And I had expectations about what life would be like with a hearing deficit or the inability to speak freely. It is not as romantic or unfettered or as carefree as I had thought. Yes, I walked around with a small smile on my lips: I would rather be thought dim than angry. I would look at people with an expectant gaze rather than stare away in disregard. But all and all I am grateful to have “all my faculties intact”.

Until last night; when the cold came back, I have again lost my voice and I have to say: I am not best pleased.

Kyczy Hawk E-RYT200 is the author of "Yoga and the Twelve Step Path" and the creator of SOAR (Success Over Addiction and Relapse) a teacher certification training she holds with her good friend Kent Bond E-RYT500. Find out more about her and the training at www.yogarecovery.com