by Lara Land | Nov 21, 2022 | BOOKS, COACHING, COMMUNITY, LAND BLOG, LARA LAND, Self Improvement, SELF-IMPROVEMENT
Much has been written about morning rituals and morning routines and for good reason. How we start the day informs the rest of the day. It is so deeply important. So much so, that even if I’m exhausted I will try my absolute best to get up before my daughter and husband to have even a few minutes to collect myself, give thanks, and get clear about my day.
Do not sleep on these moments!
I used to do a full Ashtanga Yoga practice as my morning ritual, a routine that lasted almost two hours with set up and break down. A combination of motherhood, covid, and revelations about the Ashtanga yoga founder changed that. Covid specifically caused me and many yoga practitioners and teachers I know to question and reconfigure our practices. What is the right morning practice and when is the time to change it? These are not easy questions by any means. They require thought as does anything we put our time and focus to.
Discipline is important as is sticking to a practice.
Yoga can teach us about discipline. Discipline is an important part of our evolution and can teach us about false perceptions of our limits and the heights we can reach. It can also be destructive when it pushes us too far and causes us to distrust important messages from our bodies. When is the time to give up on a practice that’s been beneficial? That’s a question only you can answer, but I’ll give you some hints to look for.
It may be time to switch up your practice if:
- Your life has had a dramatic shift.
- You’ve tried adapting it and you still don’t feel you are growing.
- You are clear that it isn’t for lack of discipline or an inner block around something in your practice you don’t want to face.
If you have changed some small things but even that won’t do it. Maybe you need a bigger change in your morning routine or yoga practice.
The essential question to ask yourself is what you are hoping to gain from your practice.
There are many different reasons folks practice yoga or other centering morning rituals. Ideas of why you may be practicing include: comfort, stress relief, connection to something bigger, the doctor said so, stretching, peace, creativity, evolution, inner knowledge, prayer, awakening, excellence, better at the job, nicer human, healthier, stronger, focused, etc
Different rituals provide different results so first decide what you are practicing for. From there you can figure out if you need meditation, yoga asana, pranayama, journaling, silence and stillness, stretching, prayer, nature, cold shower, morning pages, or other practices. You may need ten minutes or two hours to get the results you wish. It all depends. Just keep in touch with something.
On the last episode of the Beyond Trauma podcast, Michelle Casandra Johnson and I talk about morning rituals and how these changing times are calling us towards new practices.
Take a listen HERE.
by Lara Land | Nov 14, 2022 | COACHING, COMMUNITY, LAND BLOG, LARA LAND, Self Improvement
As I’ve been interviewing folks for the Beyond Trauma Podcast, certain topics have come up again and again, reminding me that we are being called at this time to work with them. They leave something to be explored. Grief is one of those very present topics today. Many of my guests have referenced the grieving process and each time it has struck me as an important and timely topic.
Have you been grieving lately?
Many people experienced a lot of loss in the last years, not just in terms of people, but of the life they were leading and the future they imagined. And yet, no time, support, or roadmap was given to hold that grief. Most were forced back to work, many clocking way more hours than pre-pandemic with no breaks between meetings or mindless commutes.
What happens when you lose a life you never got to live?
Folks in war zones and regions struck by climate disasters face this trauma daily. We’ve experience this trauma also as whole industries have been destroyed and neighborhoods uprooted. We need time to grieve what was lost, our old restaurants, neighbors. So much has changed.
How much time and resources are given to folks to be in the grieving process is not the same for everyone. We favor minimizing the impact of our losses in favor of maximizing production, especially when losses occur in marganalized communities. If a person lost is not a family member why can’t the grief be just as bad? It can, but we don’t make room for it.
Many of us are afraid to feel. We worry that opening the space for sadness would leave us overcome and nonfunctional. Instead we armor up and become cold and cruel. We don’t know ourselves and each other because what we won’t look at in our own bodies we will not allow another.
There’s another way. Being together in our sadness is powerful and necessary. It’s not easy, but it’s the most healing and transformative work we can do. Now is the time to check into your grief and see what it wants to be telling you. Here’s one way to do it:
Find a quiet place and some stillness. Place both hands on your heart and let the muscles of your chest soften. Allow any realizations to come. Notice if you want to clench up, move away or distract yourself and instead return to the feelings. Stay for ten minutes in quiet and then journal anything you discovered.
This week on the Beyond Trauma Podcast, Michelle Casandra Johnson and I discuss grief as well as a number of other timely topics related to traumatic stress. Take a listen HERE
by jimmycrow | Nov 7, 2022 | AUDIO PAGES, COACHING, LAND BLOG, LARA LAND
Going off to college is considered by most to be one of the most exciting and liberating times in their lives. It is infused with possibility and potential. What many don’t realize is that it is also a place where there is a large occurrence of sexual trauma. The stats are as high as 26% of women, 23% of transgender or nonbinary folks, and nearly 7% of men.
Even with rates that high, most colleges do not have the services and resources to support survivors, many of whom are not comfortable in talk therapy.
Zahabiyah Nagasaki has made it her mission to change that. Her eight-week program, Transcending Sexual Trauma Through Yoga spans colleges and universities nationwide and is often the first place survivors go to for support on their college campuses. It’s trauma-informed yoga at its best. In her classes emotions are welcome and the space is safe (as possible), empowering, and communal.
Her knowledge and experience are especially important for trauma-informed yoga teachers. She gives great tips for how to hold space, use fantastically heartfelt and original trauma-informed invitational language, and how to invite students into yoga practice which balances energy.
Her ability to break through college campus culture and bureaucracy to get these programs implemented is truly inspiring which you will note especially as you listen to and experience her soft, joyful voice and demeaner. It’s a testament to a trauma-informed way of being.
I hope you will take a listen to her story on the Beyond Trauma Podcast on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and you will surely benefit from her wisdom.
by Lara Land | Oct 24, 2022 | COACHING, LAND BLOG, LARA LAND, Self Improvement
In 2011 I opened Land Yoga, a yoga studio in Harlem a historically black community which I was living in. Then a few years later I formed nonprofit Three and a half acres Yoga to help me bring the practice of yoga to folks in the Harlem community who wouldn’t necessarily feel comfortable coming to my yoga studio. We’ve been training yoga teachers in trauma sensitivity and placing them in partnerships all over Harlem, Upper Manhattan, and the Washington D.C. area since 2015. Recently I was invited to Louisville, Kentucky to train yoga teachers there in trauma sensitive yoga and share my experience bringing yoga to trauma survivors. Here’s some of what I had to say at that training:
Very well-meaning white yoga teachers often want to bring yoga to folks they perceive as “under-resourced” and suffering from trauma, aka low-income black-bodied people. They come to me asking how to do so and/or why they don’t get folks turning out for their trauma-sensitive yoga classes when they are offered.
Here are some reasons why and some things you can do about it.
- You are not safe. White women have a long history of and still are causing harm to black bodied people. Trauma sensitive yoga is about reminding people of their agency but there is no experience of agency when one doesn’t first experience safety. You can’t bring a feeling of safety in a white body, maybe ever and definitely without a ton of work.
If black neighborhoods are really where you really want to bring yoga, start first by living in, working in, and serving in those neighborhoods in other ways. Build relationships, prove your consistency and dedication and listen and learn about what’s really needed and how you might be most helpful.
Don’t become a yoga missionary!
- It’s hard to hear as yoga lovers and teachers, but yoga may not be someone’s first or second or third priority. Yes, we know the practice can change lives, but so can job opportunities, access to healthy food, and resources schools. You are not necessarily what’s needed first or at this time, but you may be able to partner with community organizations offering those kind of resources to see how yoga, breath work, meditation and mindfulness practices might help them to achieve their goals and perhaps even keep their team from burn out.
Back the people already doing great work!
If I could go back in time, I’d take this lesson with me because it’s so true and valuable. There are probably folks already offering yoga in the communities you wish to reach. How can you support them? Back them? Throw resources behind them, and learn from them about what is needed. That’s true helping.
- Deal with white trauma. White bodies carry trauma from surviving traumatic events and from participating in the oppression of black and brown bodied people. Consider where in your own white neighborhoods yoga could be a helpful tool for waking people up to the ways they are causing harm. Could you get access to political spaces and decision makers and help them make better decisions? Could you do what we did with Three and a Half Acres yoga and get yoga to the police?
This avenue of using trauma-sensitive yoga to make systematic change, open eyes, and build white folks’ capacity for being in conversation about race, is where yoga is needed. White people need to be bringing the conversation and experience of yoga to a place that helps us release our need for power over, teaches us about security and enoughness, and guides us to share resources so we can all have a more equitable future.
If you are a yoga interested in learning more about how you can do this, check out the next trauma-sensitive yoga teachers training at Three and a Half Acres Yoga where applications are now open. Non teachers can help support our work with any level of donation!
by Lara Land | Jun 24, 2019 | COACHING, COMMUNITY, LARA LAND, SELF-IMPROVEMENT, SPIRITUALITY, Yoga
If there is one secret I know about life it’s to show up for it. Even if you are not ready, unsure, and frightened as hell, you will always prosper in some way from showing up even if it’s to learn your lesson for next time. Growth will never come from hiding.
My commitment to showing up was the beginning of a major shift in my life, one which has continued to reveal ongoing benefits. One great thing about learning to show up is it gets easier and easier each time until you don’t have to think about it at all.
One day you realize that you are just naturally in the muddy mix of your life and you can’t believe there was a time you chose to stand on the sidelines.
Here are 3 simple ways to start showing up more in your life and gaining the immediate benefits of engagement:
- Say “yes”. Shonda Rhimes Book Year of Yes is a great one to read if you have a tendency to say no to things and want to make a shift. Forcing yourself to attend parties, meetings, and events is a real necessary and level one part of showing up. Start saying “yes” to invitations (even the challenging ones) or they’ll stop arriving. Risk being uncomfortable for the reward of being present.
- Quit the snarkiness. Snarkiness, sarcasm and judgement are ways of disengaging. They keep you outside the story. Drop them and get inside where the mess of life happens. That’s next level showing up. You’ll never be fully in your life if you’re always judging how others are living theirs. You will never understand the tough choices people make until you are busy making your own.
- Dissent. Showing up means bringing all of yourself, even if that means towing unpopular opinions. Share them and let yourself be known for all that you are. This is the highest level of showing up. It involves bringing all of yourself, even the dark, quirky, and strange parts into the room. When you can show up in this way and be accepted you know you are in the right circles. You’ve found your people and you’ve found you.
Which level of showing up are you and how could you level up your ability to show up this summer? What do you find the most difficult and most rewarding aspects of showing up? Take the time to reflect on how you are showing up in all aspects of your life and relationships. Share your stories in the comments below!
by Lara Land | Mar 6, 2019 | COACHING, COMMUNITY, LAND BLOG, LARA LAND, LECTURES, SELF-IMPROVEMENT
“I wish I had your discipline”
is something I hear so regularly it got me thinking. It’s said as if it is something I inherited from parental dna and not actually what it is, something I learned, nurtured, and refined. I want to answer, “You could” but it’s always clapped back with “I’ve tried” “I just don’t have it”. That defeatist attitude finally drove me to write this blog and lay out once and for all how you too can grow your discipline to equal or even beyond mine.
10 Simple Steps to Becoming More Disciplined Today:
- Break down each task/goal. Avoid overwhelmment by making a list of what you want to achieve and breaking down each task/goal into its smallest components. Commit to which tasks you can do in a given time period and put each one in your calendar treating them as any other important appointment. Consider that things will almost always take longer than planned and build in lots of room for set backs so when those obstacles happen they are already accounted for.
- Shut down distractions. Multi tasking is so 2010. 2019 is all about putting full focus into one thing at a time and refusing to allow any distractions in. Before you sit down to work on any item on your to do list, make sure you are ready to be fully present. Shut off ringers and close open tabs especially but not only those related to social media. Refuse to be reactionary. You do not have to respond to calls/texts/emails every minute. They will be there when you emerge from your task.
- Set a timer. One of the best ways to train discipline is to set a time frame for working on one task or project and commit to staying on task until that time is up. This may feel really uncomfortable and challenging at first but this will pass as you train yourself to stay with tasks through the urges to run. You will build a unique and powerful inner strength and discover how much you can accomplish when you refuse to dilute your focus.
- Take the questioning out of it. Decide in advance that once you create your plan of action, it can not be negotiated after. Know that there will be voices in your head suggesting otherwise and be prepared to actively ignore them. This will become easier with time as those voices tend to back down when they are not attended to. When you are very advanced at discipline you may be able to adjust your schedule/make acceptions after creating it, but in the beginning when you are building self discipline you should not allow for any alterations or rationalizations for why something can not be done.
- Do not wait for inspiration or to feel like it. It’s a dangerous myth that one has to be inspired or moved to get work done. Have a day you’re not feeling into it? Do the work anyway. That’s the pro level. Everyone thinks inspiration leads to action but few realise the greater truth that action leads to inspiration. That’s your edge.
- Re-write your why every day. In the My Bliss Book planner there is a place to do this on every page. Remembering your big picture and why you started and keeping that vision clear and present each day is going to make taking all the actions you need to take to get there so much easier.
- Think long term. Train your mind to visualize the long term payoffs of discipline. See clearly where you will be when it all comes together. Draw it. Write about it. Put it up on your wall if that helps. Make a commitment to choose this reward over and over again against immediate pleasures and gratification. Prepare for temptation by practicing seeing yourself resist temptations that have diverted you in the past. Rehearse in your mind exactly how you will respond moving forward.
- Remember that you are an adult. The train has left the station and the time to get it right is running out. Take responsibility for your actions, lack of action, mistakes, and setbacks. Refuse to blame others when you fall behind. Grab hold of your life the future you desire.
- Award good behavior. Celebrate all successes, even the small ones. Award yourself with anything you want except by giving yourself slack when it comes to discipline or by allowing bad habits. Buy yourself a treat. Congratulate yourself verbally, in a journal, to friends and family. Bask in the richly rewarding feeling of getting things done. You will call upon and remember that feeling in the future when you have doubts and it will fuel your continued growth in self discipline
- Get support. Don’t try to do it alone. Find a friend or an accountability buddy that will help you to stay on track by checking in on you each week. Choose that tough love friend who doesn’t let you get away with lying to or shorting yourself. Just telling another person your goals will provide you with that extra pressure to come through.
Do you relate to any of these tips? Tell me which ones you’ll be using in the comments below and share you have other self-discipline techniques that have helped you.
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