LAND BLOG | Lara Land

We are all addicted

by Lara Land | Aug 1, 2022 | LAND BLOG, LARA LAND

I’ve probably mentioned this already, but my husband always says that a person’s opinion is the least interesting thing about them. I think that’s about the greatest thing I’ve ever heard.

In a social media driven world overrun with opinions, I’m left constantly wondering if any of the folks I encounter spouting their strong AF views ever give any consideration to the positionality and life-experience they are coming to those from. Or do some actually believe they are neutral, blank canvases? I know the Supreme Court would have us think they are though it is so obviously not true.

In fact, the United States great lie is that there is this fair neutral view which is why so many of us are going great lengths to call it out as biased and blind and supportive of white, male, able-bodied needs and desires.

It’s not only our views, but our way of thinking which we are addicted to.

By the time we are adults, the way we process information, weigh priorities and outcomes and come to conclusions is all habitual, feels good and right and we are addicted to it.

We are affirmed in our addiction by our peers and circles and followers who tend to think as we do, creating what is commonly called the echo chamber.

New ways of thinking are harder to come by in later years when we are less exposed to the new frameworks and paradigms we get at school. We have to seek out more fringe ideas, philosophies and teachers and listen to folks who think differently, trying on their thinking and working through thought exercises and giving our brains a good stretch.

This is something I have enjoyed doing via podcasts I listen to which in the past years have led me down many different styles of thinking but most notably, metamodernist thought projects and system change queries. I am so grateful.

Nikki Myers, the latest speaker on the Beyond Trauma podcast, is known for her work combining the twelve step program with yoga to help folks with addiction. However, her knowledge and practices are actually so much more than that. The way she explains and curtails addiction goes all the way to the way we think.

Take a listen on iTunes or Spotify and leave me a review to let me know what you think!

Afraid to be too big?

by Lara Land | Jul 25, 2022 | LAND BLOG, LARA LAND

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
– Marianne Williamson

As many of you who have followed my life-coaching writing and posting up through now undoubtedly know, one of the teachings I repeat again and again in my life-coaching work is that there is always a pay off one is receives from any habitual feeling or action that continues to cling long after it has surpassed its helpfulness.

It is an illusion that one goes from growth to growth.

Understanding the reward we are addicted to and accepting its loss, is necessary to gain the next level of personal growth.

This is true of all long term emotional states including insecurity.

Insecurity may come from a variety of roots including parental figures whose psychologies craved the neediness and dependance of a child even as the child matured. Or it could stem from teachers and other influential adults who also gained in power through nurturing doubt in their subordinates. In more recent years insecurity has been produced and nurtured through social media where the illusion of others’ success creates impossible goals and expectations.

Regardless of the root cause, insecurity continues through adulthood, like all other undesirable habits, by choice, when we are unable to face the fear of how others may react to us if we hold our power…

…or because of false notions that if we stand in our self security we can’t also make and own mistakes.
…or because there is a reward we receive for playing small and insecure that we are afraid to give up.

That reward is the reassurance of others that we are good, smart, strong, pretty, etc etc.

If you are someone who deals with regular, long-term insecurity, ask yourself what reward you would have to let go of to let the insecurity go. Is it the ability to escape scrutiny? The avoidance of risk? Reassurance? Excused immobility?

Once you understand the pay off for any hard to break habit, you can decide consciously if you are ready to go there and let both the habit and the reward go.

Let me know how this worked for you!

Helping my life-coaching clients to understand and break patterns for the long-term is one of my greatest joys. If you think you can benefit from life-coaching, consider joining me for my Women’s Realignment Retreat this October 7th-9th where you will receive both group and individual coaching or message me to discuss ongoing private coaching openings for fall.

I can’t wait to help you grow!

little t trauma

by Lara Land | Jul 18, 2022 | LAND BLOG, LARA LAND

When we think of trauma our minds usually go to a single traumatic event like a crash or natural disaster, but traumatic stress actually goes way beyond this limited definition. There are medical traumas, trauma produced when we witness a violence and can’t act, and there is the trauma of lack when needs are not met, especially in childhood.

In some ways, we are more likely to get the care we require after a single traumatic event than when an ongoing disempowerment is taking place. Ongoing traumas are often hidden or when they are exposed, minimalized in deeply unhelpful ways.

A traumatic response in our systems may occur anytime we are unable to act, get away, or metabolize the traumatic event and instead must hold in the tension of the flight or fight we desire to enact so deeply as our evolutionary response. This happens regularly to folks who experience racial trauma and it stresses the body to levels which often produce negative health outcomes.

Many of us will have experienced traumatic stress from covid and our inability to flee or be together in ways that we are so drawn to when fighting a common enemy. Even if we weren’t in the worst of situations when covid hit, it’s important not to minimize the impact that delayed response has had on our bodies.

Making sure to check in with yourself and if possible with your patterns to get to know what might be lurking below the surface “I’m fine” is essential for making sure your trauma isn’t passed on to others. In some ways our self work is our basic responsibility and it’s the work my next Beyond Trauma podcast guest, Dr. Liz Cohen is so familiar with and good at.

She explains so clearly why what we may be calling little t trauma is actually where some of our biggest challenges lurk and why we shouldn’t shrug off what we’ve all just been through with covid even if we feel as if it is over.

Take a listen on itunes or spotify and as always, please subscribe, rate, and review and comment here with your thoughts!

You’re stressing me out! The underrated importance of VIBE!

by Lara Land | Jul 10, 2022 | LAND BLOG, LARA LAND

In long term relationships there is a way we balance each other out. If my partner worries a lot I may become the more free-spirited one. If they are always carefree, I take on the concerned role. Those role types tend to adjust to balance things, but they are not vibe. That’s different.

Vibe energy is the nervous system energy you bring into the room.

Most folks are generally unaware of this energetic presence unless they’ve been made conscious of it. After that, it’s something they can’t stop noticing!

Lara Land blog - The underrated importance of VIBE! - girl blowing bubble

The way our nervous system impacts others unless they are ultra conscious of it and can control it, is that we match energy. If your stress response is even low grade activated, I can feel that. If you are super and genuinely calm no matter what I throw at you, I will eventually chill out too.

Being in the presence of someone who has their nervous system down regulated is something you may not until now have been able to note consciously, but if you’ve had the experience, you will never forget.

It is why folks wait in line to see Amma. It’s why I’m obsessed with Lama Rod. And it’s why I take my best photographs with Simon Keough. (Have you seen the new ones on my site?!)

It’s also the most important element to get right as a trauma informed yoga teacher.

It doesn’t matter what poses you instruct or breathing techniques you teach if there’s something in you that’s rushed or unsettled, it will be felt in the trauma informed yoga room and your students will not be able to truly calm down.

This is why I stress the importance to my trauma informed yoga teacher trainees of keeping up a regular yoga and/or meditation practice which sets our average nervous system at a more regulated place AND to do whatever practice works for them to regulate themselves in the moments before they walk in the yoga room.

Regulating practices include Nadi Shodhana (alternate nostril breathing), self-touch like a hand on the heart and/or belly, shaking out, sun bathing and many more. Trauma sensitive yoga teachers should practice working with different techniques and testing what works for them before teaching others. Understanding our nervous systems is critical to becoming skilled teachers.

Free nervous system regulating meditations are available on my YouTube page. I also do this work one-on-one with my coaching clients and teach it as part of the Three and a Half Acres Yoga Trauma Sensitive Teacher Training.

Redefining Resilience

by Lara Land | Jul 4, 2022 | LAND BLOG, LARA LAND

When you ask folks how they define resilience they will often describe a person who is able to bounce back. Devika Shankar, today’s guest on the Beyond Trauma podcast asks the question, “what are they bouncing back to?” a question which reframes the way we look at the whole picture, not just of the individual but of their surroundings and the systems they are embedded in.

It’s an important and profound question that has been popping up around yoga and mindfulness practices especially as they have moved into schools, prisons, and the workplace. It’s important for yoga teachers and especially trauma sensitive yoga teachers to ask ourselves if the work we are doing is being used to make people more comfortable in situations that they should be uncomfortable in and causing them to resist and push less for change.

This is one possible outcome folks suggest can come of calming practices. Whether it has resulted from yoga, or trauma sensitive yoga and meditation is up for debate. I haven’t seen it but I have seen other problematic behaviors arise from these practices which is why it is so important to have the right teachers and the right intentions when approaching any practice, sport, teaching, or even hobby.

When we look at resilience, what we want to focus on is our ability not necessarily to come back but to move forward into an active space in which we can collaborate with others to move the dial on the systems which are causing so many to experience harm. When your resilience is for a purpose it brings your life meaning and in a beautiful circle brings more resilience and capacity.

You might ask yourself not just what you need to survive and thrive, but what are you surviving and thriving for?

Concurrently, you’ll want to be looking at your stress reduction and nervous system regulation practices to honestly assess if they are working in pursuit of your purpose. This is the central question of trauma sensitive yoga and a question I see penetrating the general yoga population more and more since the pandemic. We are finally realizing we need support not competition!

Take a listen to Devika Shanka, transnational feminist, organizer, and advocate on iTunes or Spotify to learn more about this process and consider joining me for the Women’s Realignment Retreat October 7th-9th to delve deep into systems of support and emergence.

Combating Not Enoughness

by Lara Land | Jun 27, 2022 | LAND BLOG, LARA LAND

Lara-Land - Smiling Lara in the Catskills

Lara-Land - Nature view in the Catskills

Combating Not Enoughness - Lara Land - Thimo in a hammock with Chickens

We all feel at times that we are not enough, don’t have enough, maybe even that we will never be enough. These feelings can stop us in our tracks with overwhelm, or cause us to push ourselves to exhaustion trying to prove them wrong. They leave us hopeless and unsatisfied with life and stuck in comparison of the perceived life of others, a feeling heightened by social media and media in general, fueled by a capitalistic market that requires us to need more.

The perception that we don’t have enough is triggering to our nervous systems which have been programmed over our entire evolutionary history to look out for scarcity so we can eat, drink and survive through rough times. When the feeling is produced it launches us into the fight or flight response causing us to attack or run from others even though throughout time and especially in current times it may actually be more advantageous when in lack, to work with others and build communities with mutual aid.

We also have the problem of a triggered scarcity response which is not supported in reality for most of us by our actual situation in which most likely we have more than enough.

This causes us to collect, hoard, isolate, cheat, lie, gossip and act in many ways contrary to our values, as well as to unnecessarily fret and stress.

Understanding what one really has and what one really needs is a process that begins by slowing down the nervous system. It’s from this calm, open and present space that we can take stock of our qualities, assets, and resources in all their forms and consider the differences between what we need and what we desire. It doesn’t mean eradicating desire, however it does mean getting real about where each impulse lives in fact and asking ourselves hard questions about redistribution and our responsibility to others and to our planet.

This is a process which takes time and often separation from our regular environment. It is one of the reasons I put on the schedule a Women’s Realignment Retreat this fall. This three-day intensive yoga retreat is designed to switch us out of scarcity mode and realign to the abundance of nature and the resources we have when we sit in community. It’s in my most favorite place in the western Catskills, an area which has deepened my understanding of what I have and the little I need.

I hiked Bramley Mountain recently just minutes away from my home in the Catskills and was inspired to both write and to record a short talk and meditation for those working on issues of scarcity and not enoughness. Being in nature is one of the clearest ways to experience with all our senses what we have. You can enjoy my nature meditation for free here on my youtube channel.

I hope it helps you to settle in and see all you have and to better hold space for the natural feelings that are triggered by our current rapid environments while seeing those feelings for what they really are, just energy in motion.

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