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Posted on October 20th, 2012 by in Life Lessons, Yoga

Rituals of Transition: A Shamanic Approach to Moving Beyond Fear and Anxiety

Bo Forbes, guest blogger

According to clinical psychologist and yoga therapist Bo Forbes, the best tactic for overcoming fear and anxiety is to run toward them rather than away. What do we do once we catch up with our fears? As Bo explains in this month’s feature article, the wisdom of tribal societies can offer a context and container for moving forward.

Have you ever attempted to fight off your fear but, no matter how hard you try, it still defeats you? Have you tried to outrun your fear and thought you’d left it in the dust, only to have it overtake you just as you’re starting a new creative project? Or have you felt so paralyzed by fear that you can’t make the smallest move forward, even toward self-care? If so, you’re not alone.

Fear is a universal human experience. Everyone has it, from the guy next door to your yoga teacher to the Dalai Lama, who wrestled with a fear of flying. We can’t expect to get rid of it; nor would we want to, because fear houses the seeds of our potential. Yet fear causes us great physical, emotional, and spiritual distress. So what’s the alternative to fighting it, fleeing from it, or letting it freeze us in place? How do we uncover its seeds and nourish them?

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Posted on September 12th, 2012 by in Healthy Living, Life Lessons

Moving Forward After Cancer

A cancer survivor explores bold new directions

When I plopped into the Radiance program’s opening night welcome circle, I was exhausted. That morning, I had attended the memorial service for my dear friend, Dara, who had passed a week before. A couple hundred people gathered to share stories, laughter, tears, and outrage that this beautiful, lively, loving soul had left at age 40, from cancer.

And now, a train ride and time warp later, here I was in the branch-filled Berkshires, sitting in a back jack, meeting eight cancer survivors and our co-leader Maria Sirois. In that moment, “life after cancer” looked to me like throwing a rose on my friend’s coffin and hearing it thud. It looked like crying myself to sleep every night for the last two weeks.

But as I settled in and heard tales of diagnosis and survival, I remembered: Oh. We’re all still here. In my fellow workshoppers—eight people from their 30s through 50s—I saw stress and fear and bravery and resilience and resistance. I saw myself. Diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma seven years ago at age 31, I had almost been forgetting that I was a survivor, too.

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Posted on August 21st, 2012 by in Yoga

Nourishing the Teacher

The other weekend in a yoga teacher training, we had a lovely woman guide our group in the basics of restorative yoga. At the end of the night, seeing my students in the sweet, post-practice daze, I tried to recall the last time I put my legs up the wall and covered my eyes with my lavender eye pillow. It had been a while.

Life as a yoga teacher can get busy. E-mails, cooking, writing, leading classes, planning, marketing, meeting with students, Facebook updates, and studying are only the beginning. Throw in social engagements, kids, community work, an additional job, and phone calls to loved ones, and there are simply not enough hours in the day.

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