7 Self-Help Tips From My Yoga Practice

I'm never quite sure if yoga imitates life, or vice versa. I am sure the lessons I learn from my yoga practice are the same lessons my clients and friends often struggle with.

Certainly, yoga reduces anxiety and improves mood, but the practice is compelling for its subtle teachings. Whether it's recovering from the breakup, improving your health and wellness, or trying to balance work, family and life, applying these principles will help you grow.

1.      No one is perfect. In yoga, the pose that was so accessible yesterday may feel impossible today. Our bodies are different each day. So are our minds. While yesterday you worked, got the kid to soccer, got your steps in, made dinner and it all felt seamless, tomorrow is a different animal. One hiccup can throw everything off. The angry boss, the veggies you thought you had ready for that healthy meal, or the back pain you woke up with, each can undermine our best laid plans. No one can do it all, all the time. Stop beating yourself up and just order the pizza.         

2.      How you do one thing is how you do everything. My elbows are almost always sticking out, when they should be drawn in. No matter what the pose, this is an adjustment I can almost always make. If I'm honest, I can almost always be kinder, gentler and more present. What do you need to work on each and every day? It probably comes up at work and at home, with strangers and with friends. Start by noticing it.

3.      Practice makes perfect. Did I say perfect? Practice does not make us perfect, but it does make us better. I don't despair about my elbows. Slowly but surely, when I practice with an intention to keep them drawn in, I find it's happening with increasing frequency. If I begin my day with an intention to be that kinder, gentler, more present soul I aspire to be, slowly but surely, I come closer to that goal. Set your intention for the day and work on it.

4.      It's the journey. Some days I find myself ticking through the upcoming poses to see how many more I have until my practice is finished. Have I reached the halfway point? Of course, that's not the point! This is challenging because some days the practice seems so much easier than others, making the journey a lot easier. Counting the days until your child's departure for college or a job far away, you'll find that some days are a lot easier than others. Whether easy or difficult, it's your journey, and your only journey. How can you make the most of each day?

5.      Go with the flow. Some days I'm focused on improving my poses, other days on my breathing, still other days I'm moving effortlessly, feeling the flow. I don't decide in advance. It's just what feels right at that particular time. Recovering from something like a breakup, you might try just doing what you feel. Some days are more productive in one way, some days in another. You might spend a day on your garden, or another with friends. Do what you feel that day. Trust your intuition.

6.      Challenges are a gift. Whether it's a thunderstorm, car backfiring or cat trying to topple me as I practice, each is an opportunity to work on focus and concentration. Distraction gives me the chance to work on heightened control and awareness. You've planned a workout and it's hot, you're tired and you ate too much last night. It's time to focus on your plan and work your way through it the best way you can. Recognizing that you can do more than you thought, or that you really don't want to keep overeating, would each be a good result of facing your challenge.

7.      We're all in the same boat. Sometimes my teacher says plant your left heel or bring your shoulders down--I do it and realize she's actually talking to another student. These little fixes apply to all of us. Some days I'm telling everyone (including myself) the same thing, whether it's to concentrate on keeping your side of the street clean, or to look at the silver lining, or to just experience the bad feeling and allow it to pass. Groups of people with similar issues are powerful because we like to know we're not suffering alone. Remind yourself that you're not the only one. Others have been down this road before and have thrived.

So whatever your struggle, view it as a practice. Each challenge in life is something you face, work through and try to understand. Over time you improve in some ways and find yourself lacking in others. Maybe you worry less and enjoy more. Like yoga, there is no finish line. There's always room to grow.

 Judith Tutin, PhD, ACC, is a licensed psychologist and certified life coach. Connect with her at drjudithtutin.com where you can request a free coaching call to bring more passion, fun and wellness to your life.

Will You Turn Up Today with Emotional Intelligence?

Whether at work or at home, EI, emotional intelligence (not to be confused with AI, IQ or ET), may determine how you turn up today.

Will you be present or absent? Empathetic or insensitive? Authentic or phony? Centered or reactive? Empowering or disempowering? Resilient or fragile?

EI is a set of skills that defines how effectively an individual perceives, understands, uses and manages their emotions and the emotions of others. It includes abilities in the areas of self-management and self-awareness, social awareness and relationship management.

Calming down when upset, understanding what you feel (and by extension, what others feel), expressing that emotion to others (verbally or nonverbally) and dealing effectively (with empathy and humor) with conflict in relationships are all byproducts of EI skills.

If this sounds a lot like being mindful and communicating nonviolently, you’re right. To those skills add some tools for managing emotions and stress, managing tasks and choosing goals in alignment with your values, and you’re well on the road to turning up with lots of EI.

Just for fun, take an EI test here. And listen to Emotional Rescue, Rolling Stones (with an incredibly young Mick Jagger).

Yoga and the 23 Steps to Contentment

I talk a lot about yoga as a great form of stress management. Of course yoga is more than just that. It’s more than just the physical stretching. Not to get to woo woo, it’s a way to bring the mind, body and spirit together on a quest for inner peace and tranquility, contentment, or something like that.

Claire Dederer did a great interview about her book, Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses. She points out that yoga helped her get away from her perfectionism. All yoga instructors teach you that you’re not competing with others in the room, or even with yourself. You are told to notice your body and feelings, not to change them and certainly not to fix them. Dederer notes that yoga helped her become more content with what she had, instead of looking for the path to something different, and presumably better.

I couldn’t agree more. Yoga helps with the acceptance and mindfulness that I find can be so useful for people who want to be more content and less stressed out. And it’s a good way to work on your breathing. Yet, as someone pointed out to me just today, it’s not for everyone. But what is?

Read the first highly amusing and entertaining chapter of Dederer’s book here.

Set Intentions Mindfully

The practice of mindfulness often refers to intentions. For example, I’m working on my meditation practice, so I start the week with an intention to mediate earlier in the day. Is that different than my intention to go to the supermarket after work? Is it the same as my intention not to yell at my child? How does the intention affect my behavior? Is it even worth setting an intention?

There’s evidence that setting an intention and making it public do help with behavior change. You set your quit date (cigarettes, chocolate cake, whatever your poison) and start telling people and it improves your outcome. Intentions are good for all sorts of changes we desire. Think about what you’d like to be doing differently and consider how you might set an intention for yourself.

A few suggestions on intentions.

* Becoming aware our intentions is a start. Although I wanted to write a blog for the past week, I did not set a specific intention to do so until today. Think about it. Do you ever do anything without first intending to? If you do, I challenge you to go back and try to identify whether there was really a little bit of an intention, even if unacknowledged. If you really can’t identify your intention, that’s okay, you can set an intention to notice your intentions. No, I’m not kidding. And you can always just go on to the next step, which is setting an intention.

* Make a conscious choice about your intention. What is it you want? And how do you intend to get it? Do you want to notice every time you go into the kitchen to get something to eat and ask yourself the 3 mindful eating questions? Do you want to stop yelling at your kids and become more mindful? Do you want to get your expenses handed in on time?

* Remind yourself about the intention. How will you do it? You can write down your intention for the day or week in a lovely journal. That’s great, but if you do be sure to decide when you’ll refer to that lovely journal, lest it just gather dust on the shelf with your other new year’s resolutions. You can leave yourself little sticky notes in prominent places to remind you. You can set your phone to remind you. You get the idea.

* Continuing the work without judgment. In other words, work on your intention, notice if you’re sticking to it, but don’t start telling yourself your bad, lazy or a slacker if you don’t get it done as often as you’d like. Just notice, and remind yourself again of what the intention is. Keep at it.

Mindful Parenting

I'm aspiring to be more mindful every day.  I’ve written about mindfulness in general. I’ve just focused on mindful parenting. I’m anticipating the reactions.

You make it sound so easy. To which I reply, I don’t mean to. It’s called a mindfulness practice. Which is no accident and not a misnomer. You have to really practice things like being, non-judging and letting go, in addition to the other skills. Some will come more easily to you than others.

But what about getting my kids to do the right thing? Good luck with that. Mindful parenting doesn’t mean hands off parenting. You teach, inspire, model and do whatever else you believe in order to instill values and morals. But at some point, your kids have to start making their own choices. See Do Kids Get to Make Choices?

Trust my kids! How can I when they do stupid stuff? I have to ask in response, And you didn’t? We all know on some level that making mistakes is the best way to learn. I may threaten and explain why he shouldn’t speed, but see those blue lights coming up on you for the first time...there's no explanation that can match that experience.

It’s like the three mindful eating questions. You may ask them a dozen times before finally, one day, you decide not toeat the thing you’ve pondered eating for all the wrong reasons.

So yes, the principles which also include acceptance, letting go, beginner’s mind and patience, are simply understood, yet difficult to put into action at times. But they don’t say practice makes perfect (or at least good enough) for nothing.

Reduce Change Blindness with Awareness

I love this experiment investigating change blindness, unfortunately not available on-line. So I’ll explain. A confederate of the experimenter is asking the subject questions. Two people walk between the confederate and subject carrying a door, briefly blocking the subject’s view of the confederate. When the door passes, a different confederate is asking the questions. Change blindness refers to the incredible fact that a large percentage of subjects did not notice that they were talking to a different confederate. In other words, imagine you’re talking to your friend John, two people walk between you and John with a door so you can’t see John, and Ralph replaces John. You don’t notice that instead of talking to John, you’re now talking to Ralph. Pretty weird, huh?

We do this all the time with the people in our lives. We go from one dysfunctional relationship to another—different person, same issues.

We feel angry with one person, then the next and the next, never seeing how our own reactions trigger our anger. It’s not really the other person. They’re interchangeable. We don’t seem them. We mindlessly go through the same motions getting the same results.

It’s like smoking. You’re already on your next cigarette before you’ve enjoyed the first. Sometimes you don’t even realize you’ve lit another one up. Eating is also very much like this for most of us.

Awareness refers to just the opposite attitude. Awareness is about really noticing the things in our lives. That includes our own behavior as well as that of others. It is about paying attention with curiosity. It is about being deliberate in our actions. It is about noticing what’s in front of us, be it door, person or different person.

          Oh yes, you’re a different person, Ralph not John. I don’t have to expect the same from you.

          I just finished smoking a cigarette, do I really want another?

          This pasta is good, do I want more or have I had enough?

If we try to see and not allow ourselves to be blind to what’s in front of us, we’d notice when we’re talking to a different person. We’d care to hear what they’re really saying, and what we’re really saying and doing.

To reduce change blindness for yourself, practice being more aware by really paying attention while you go about one of your routine activities, like brushing your teeth, eating or walking. See how much you can notice about a routine behavior.

         •  Find out more about mindful awareness is in my newsletter.

         • You don’t have to be depressed to get a lot of good ideas from
            The Mindful Way through Depression, by Williams, Teasdale, Segal & Kabat-Zinn.
            I love the CDs.

          • Listen to Kabat-Zinn free

To Balance or Not to Balance

We all strive for life balance. I offer help to achieve life balance. People come saying they want more life balance. So what's the problem, right?

Secretly, I wonder if it is always the best course. The issue is simple: if high achievers who make major contributions to the universe tend to be highly focused in one area of excellence, what sense does it make to try to get them, or others, more balanced?

Take your most brilliant professor, coach, team leader, etc. Were they well-rounded individuals who spent time in their busy weeks on physical activities, personal development, relationship nurturing, fun activities, family activities, socially conscious contributions AND work? Or did they spend a lot of time on work and some small amount of time on the rest?

As usual, I conclude that what might work for me might not work for you, and vice versa. One tip I've found useful is the idea that we must focus mindfully on what we're doing at any given time. If you're spending family time, spend the time with family. Don't spent the family time on your cell phone or lap top multi-tasking.

And I don't mean a rigid adherence to these separations, necessarily. But in general, be where you are, not one foot in and one foot out. It's always interesting to me when a friend has to take a cell call during my lunch with them. I find that most "emergencies" can wait an hour until I finish what I'm doing.

Give it a try. Be in the moment. Put 100% on what you're doing or who you're with. Then, when it's time to shift, put 100 into the next endeavor. You might find that each experience is enhanced the more attention you can shine on it. So I say, to balance by being in each moment is the way to go.