What’s Your Damage, Heather?

Earlier this week, I was honored with a cool invitation: Living Yoga asked me to say a few words at the kick-off to their annual fundraising campaign. Living Yoga is the amazing organization that sends me to Washington County Correction Center twice a month to teach yoga to people incarcerated there. In thinking about what to say at the event, I started retracing my own steps with the organization, and with trauma.

Living Yoga teaches what they call “trauma-informed yoga,” and that’s what I learned when I did my training with them last fall. And while I‘m not sure quite what I was expecting from the training, I was surprised by how straightforward it was, and how it seemed like just a matter of common sense. Things like, you know, don’t touch people without their permission. Avoid words that could be triggering. Don’t make assumptions about any one person’s background. Avoid language that is divisive. All good suggestions, of course, for how to be supportive to people who have experienced some sort of trauma.

But which of us hasn’t experienced some sort of trauma? The people I see at the correctional center… their trauma is easy to see, easy to touch. It’s on the surface, and obvious by their presence there. They have drug addictions, they have criminal backgrounds, perhaps they have experienced homelessness and violence. Their trauma is big and obvious and real. It’s a given. But let’s not forget that we all have some sort of trauma in our lives. Maybe we haven’t been homeless, but maybe we’ve struggled with long-term poverty. Perhaps we haven’t developed a chemical addiction, but we have a parent or other relative who is an alcoholic or drug addict. Maybe we struggle with grief and pain and insecurities that are just as powerful but less obvious than my yoga students. And those types of trauma inform our lives just as much, albeit in a more subtle, sneaky sort of way.

It’s so important that we treat ourselves with just as much tenderness and care as I treat my yoga students. Because we all have hurt and fear, and how close to the surface it is can be just a matter of one assumption or one touch or one thoughtless comment. We deserve to honor the fact that we are all evolving beings, every day, and that all of that trauma, all of those challenges, create who we are just as much as all the support and love and success does.

And I think that’s why the trauma-informed yoga training sounded so simple to me: I already practice trauma-informed personal training. I just didn’t know it. But my entire business is based on believing that every one of my clients come to me in some state of vulnerability, with hopes and goals, and the big fat dose of courage it takes to ask for a bit of help reaching those goals. Working in a gym isn’t just a matter of figuring out how much weight a person can bench press; it’s also about figuring out how much work is encouraging, and how much is demoralizing. It’s finding the line between feeling like a badass and feeling like a failure. It’s realizing that on some days, it’s really there, and on some days, it’s just not – and that’s totally okay, because we’re different, every minute of every day, and it would be stupid to expect anything else.

But more than just expecting our respective damage to show up here and there, I think we should really welcome it, with open arms, as part of our own history. It’s like a road map or a stretch mark or a post card. It’s the emotional equivalent of an old photo in an album you never pull off the shelf anymore. Trauma is part of your history, it’s part of my history, it’s an absolute universal; nobody gets out of this life alive. Let’s choose to honor that trauma, as a building block to our strongest, most honorable, most badass selves. Let’s own it, work through it as much as we can, and then create something gorgeous on top of it. What’s that traditional Buddhist chant, about how lotus flowers grow from mud? Yeah, like that.

In other words, let’s all treat ourselves and each other just like we would all treat my yoga students: with compassion and love and with the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume we’re all worth that. Because we are.

The Best Part

Last weekend I did something I had been wanting to do for almost 7 years: I went to Crater Lake. For those of you who don’t live in Oregon, Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States, formed at the top of a volcano, and it’s absolutely breathtaking. I guess I had imagined driving around the rim, talking photos from the air-conditioned comfort of a running car, watching other people do whatever it is that other people do.

What I hadn’t imagined was actually getting out of the car, walking around, climbing up on rocks and tree stumps to get the best views. I hadn’t imagined actually BEING at Crater Lake, only, I dunno, seeing it, like some sort of real-life post card.

But when I spent time there last weekend, I found myself fully engaged with the experience. I DID climb up on things to get better views. I DID pay such close attention to the smell of the air and the color of the water. Basically, I wanted to be IN that experience, not watch other people be in it.

And that’s when it occurred to me that I had discovered the very best part of the fitness journey I’ve been on for the last 2 1/2 years. I mean, it’s been gratifying to lose some unwanted weight, and to notice triceps where I had never felt muscles before, and to complete a triathlon and a marathon. Of course that’s been rewarding and inspiring and has its own intrinsic value. But somewhere along the line, I think I forgot the whole point: to be able to live life fully, without feeling held back by my body. I forgot that I first hired and trainer and went to a gym because I was sick of feeling like I didn’t have a place in the world, like my body was holding me back from the things I wanted to do. I was tired of hearing about people doing all these fun things like hiking and kayaking and camping and traveling, and bemoaning the fact that I was too out-of-shape to do them, too. Eventually, I got tired of telling myself that I would do those things One Day, when I had lost enough weight or gained enough endurance or felt just a little bit more comfortable in my skin. One Day, I would actually be alive instead of just living.

Fuck that.

Because here’s the real truth: There’s no such thing as One Day, not in the way I meant it. There is no day during which we are perfectly ready to tackle the world. There is no such thing as waking up feeling 100% strong enough and pretty enough and capable enough and smart enough and talented enough and and and and… There’s just today, this day, the day we’ve been given. Right now. And that’s plenty good enough.

I don’t think I would have realized that without my fitness journey. Getting stronger physically has allowed me to appreciate my body in ways I never thought I would. I still have a lot of extra weight I would like to lose, and I still have areas of my body that need more strength development. And you know what? Who cares. WHO CARES. Because I had the energy and the agility and the confidence to run around that mountaintop, in awe of the amazing beauty of Crater Lake, and that experience felt like it belonged to me every bit as much it belonged to everybody else. It felt miraculous and liberating and perfect. And it was absolutely the best part.

Lily-Rygh Glen
http://www.flexiblefitnesspdx.com

Getting to know you…

A couple of weeks ago, I tried out some new Crossfit classes in my neighborhood, intent on learning some new exercises for my clients and for myself.  And I did learn some new things.  But the real take-away from those classes was something entirely different.  More than anything else, it was a reminder that the overwhelming majority of people working in the fitness industry have no idea how to train people who are overweight or out of shape or not already athletes in athletic bodies.  In a class full of people who looked like professional underwear models, it took me a full 5 minutes to explain to an otherwise knowledgeable trainer than I could not lower my squats any further or I would fall backwards; he didn’t understand that gravity is a real contender when it comes to those of us with a bit of junk in our proverbial trunks.  I’m a personal trainer, which means two things: I have a relatively strong body, and I’m not afraid to be a little mouthy.  So I held my own with this guy.  But it made me wonder how demoralizing that situation would have been for a woman who didn’t already know what her body could  do, and wasn’t confident enough to stand up for herself.

It’s a sad and totally irrational truth that much of the fitness industry is like the diet industry: it sets people up to fail, because failure creates repeat customers.  I’m interested in really breaking  that mold.  I believe that most people who start exercise plans and “fail” only do so because they weren’t coached into the right plan in the first place, and they weren’t given the proper motivation.   My goal is to do the exact opposite: to introduce women to exercises that are appropriate to their bodies and their goals, and to encourage them to work up to their potential, understanding that potential, by design, isn’t achieved right out of the gate.  True fitness incorporates the body, the mind, and the spirit, and it takes time.  There are no quick fixes to fitness, no sexy pills, no “as seen on TV” packages that make it easy.   It’s hard.  But it’s attainable.   It really is.

To get started, contact me at FlexibilityCoach@gmail.com. 

Lily-Rygh