Off the mat, into the world.

It is embarrassing to admit how many years it took me to realize that contemplative practice is not just for that time on the mat or cushion. I loved the stretching and movement of yoga and the centering of sitting. I loved the momentary respite from doing and worrying that (sometimes) came during that time. I loved the fleeting peace.

When I first found yoga, it was because I had been a gymnast for twelve years and wanted to continue challenging my body. Under Haverford College gym's buzzing lights, yoga was for playing with postures that came easily to my limber teenage body. It was purely physical, though I found myself enjoying the lying down part that came at the end. Even after I grew curious and started exploring the other limbs of yoga, I still was limited to those moments and the delicious afterglow.

The problem, I learned, was the afterglow only lasted so long. As I began teaching years later, that would be only through my first period of class of wily middle schoolers (if I was lucky).  By lunch time, I was already grasping for the equanimity that seemed so available on my bike ride to work, when I soaked in the sunrise and noted the birds twittering happily along the roadside. If I did nothing else, by 4:15 I found myself flat on my back across the desks wondering where I had gone wrong. I thought I needed to go to more yoga classes, to sit longer, to dig deeper into the literature. How many yoga classes or meditation sessions would it take to keep my sanity? Twice a day?? Four hours at a time??? I couldn't possibly do it.

Luckily, somewhere along the way I learned that I don't have to. It is the short moments of awareness throughout the day- a deep breath as I glance up from my computer, feeling my feet as I walk to the grocery store, listening to the children play in the splash pool- that reconnect me to my center. As Chris McKenna, program director of Mindful Schools, helpfully reminded me again and again this past year, "Short moments of awareness, repeated many times, become autonomic and continuous." Though my last year was a challenging one in the classroom, it was activating these mini refuges for myself- closing my eyes for a breath when the hallway felt particularly chaotic, waiting a moment to talk to the student who had just detonated before my eyes- that allowed me to respond as I wanted. I found an iphone app that would periodically remind me to breathe. I glanced out at the sky to gain perspective on the tiny classroom world.

The more formal and lengthy practices are critical, to be sure. I personally need an half hour of sitting a day to maintain my ballast that rights me when I get knocked down by the world. I do yoga to invite openness, work out stress, and build strength in my body. These more concentrated practices give me something to reconnect with in those shorter moments. They provide depth and stamina. They provide wisdom. But I can't just stay there, and I can't just rely on basking in the afterglow. Remembering to connect to my anchor throughout the day is what makes the day more livable.

So as I step off my mat and into the world, I actively seek moments
to listen
to see
to smell
to taste
to breath
to anchor.

On the Eve of the Eve of My Departure

Warning: it's about to get mushy.

Pull out the metaphors, folks. It's a no holds barred scenario- transition time. We need all the wisdom and cliches we can gather to make sense of all that come with any huge transition, and this one is a doozy.

I have been in DC for five years, the longest I've ever been anywhere since childhood after a series of transitory seasonal jobs that defined my 20s. In DC, I've grown magnificent relationships with my colleagues through the blood, sweat, and tears of trying to tame the wild beasts of the middle school classroom. Just as deep were some of those relationships with aforementioned beasts, who taught me more about myself than I would have liked to know if given the choice, but this ultimately led to such profound growth. At home, I was invited into a wild web of friendships and found myself loved from all sides by musicians, artists, writers, DJs, nurses, do-gooder lawyers, environmentalists, and many other world-enhancing folks.

Because of this radiant extended family, I scaled mountains in California, painted myself into an art show, played music on stage, immersed myself in yoga, completed triathlons, and handed off eighth grade poetry to author Rebecca Skloot. I found myself in hysterics watching friends attempt to teach the worm on New Years Eve, crying alongside them when parents passed on, and sitting contently with them in the woods in deep meditation.

I do not try to push down the waves of sadness that overcome me as I hug my coteacher for the last time, as another's children refuse to leave the car because they don't want me to leave, as I sit amongst a going away brunch surrounded by the very chaotic joy I have chosen to forsake.

Instead, I breath it in deeply and feel the sadness push against my chest and pool in my belly. I notice the moment it rises into my throat, then swirls and falls away, giving me access to peace once again. Having the luxury of time during this move has allowed me to observe how emotion moves through me. Because of the time to practice sitting, I think, the waves have been swells that come and pass, rather than roiling tsunamis that crash overhead and bury me in despair. I am not anguished, but gently melancholic.

My gratitude sits solidly in the midst of this, a rock to find solace on as I ride the waves that come from letting go of something so dang good. "How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard," said Winnie the Pooh. I feel that so deeply, on this eve.  How truly lucky I am.

So I leave with all of the emotions, for as I look back, I, too, look forward. I will return to the land on which I was raised- of pine trees, craggy peaks, snowy streets, and salty ocean air. My family will sit an hour or two south and long time friends down the street. There's a two bedroom apartment in the West End of Portland waiting with my name on the lease. My sweetheart is coming with me. Other than that, there are many unknowns yet to be penciled in.

When describing the impending birth of his child, my friend Mark noted, "It's like we're standing at a trailhead and it's really foggy. Everyone keeps describing the steep beautiful mountains behind the fog, and we know they are there, but we can't see them. We are about to go on an epic hike, and we're excited, but we don't really know what it going to be like." As I walk towards the next chapter in my life, I feel similarly.

On the eve of the eve of my departure, what is happening is this: I sit amongst some half filled boxes in an echoing room, reflect back, imagine forward, and land here. I breathe in. I breathe out. A helicopter groans overhead. I yawn. I breathe in. I breathe out. Everything else has gone by or is yet to be, and so I give thanks for this moment too.

Now what?

There's nothing better at bringing you back to the real world after a week-long retreat than an indecipherable email from your incompetent land management company claiming your house owes "nearly $1000" (apparently they are unclear on the exact amount) from some time over the past 2 years of it being inhabited (with the full ledger attached) and requiring we "send send" a check right away.

After one week of retreat, of sitting in silence for 2 1/2 days, of listening to profound talks and inspiring lessons, there was only one response.

I had to rapidly shoot off a mouthy email to my roommates: This email is f***ing insane!"  I only realized aforementioned management company was still looped into the email chain as I watched "sending" repeat on the bottom of my screen.  I haven't enabled undo send on my email yet(put that on my to do list), so my rapid thumb-punching had zero impact on the progress of the transaction.  It was done.

Oops.  

Mindful Erica= 0.  World= 1.

   

I spent a few minutes post-send swallowing a huge lump back in my throat and enduring waves of panic. 'I was in super ninja mindfulness training camp and THIS is my first move back in the world???'  I couldn't believe it.  My head started to spin.  'I want to teach this to people?  I'm an idiot!   The oldest mistake in the book!! Gahhhh!!'  And on and on until...

"Now what?" 

 The question came to me.  The same question I had spent cultivating in the hours and hours of meditating from the week before. Okay, so I screwed up.  What happens next?  With that question I noticed my mind pause.  And so I asked again. And again. Each time I asked my mind slowed for a moment and I noticed breath. The chatter of folks around me. The hum of the bus wheels churning against pavement.  

"Now what?"  

I wrote an apology email to the management company for my message born from frustration.  My roommates were delighted at my faux pas and wrote back in glee.  My mom laughed with me as I noted the great irony of the situation.  

It was an unskillful response, no doubt.  My mindfulness was a bit delayed out of the gate.  But the, "Now what?" let me recognize where I was and stop the story I was making up, so I could clearly see what was actually happening next.  So that I could choose a skillful response.  

Mindful Erica= 1/2?  

The Human Mirror

I left teaching at my current school for many reasons.  Mostly, I didn't like the way I was feeling emotionally on a day-to-day basis, despite all the self-care strategies I was using.  I was sleeping well, eating well, exercising, and meditating in the mornings.  I still left at the end of the day feeling ragged.  My Sundays were still spent with a heavy lump in my chest pouring over lesson plans and student work for the coming week.  I was working really hard for my happiness, but it just felt...bad.

I felt like I needed some time away from the classroom, so I started constructing a vision of an alternative life as an outside provider of mindfulness, or tutoring, or teaching yoga, or monitoring a rock wall.  I imagined coaching willing participants through yoga poses and meditations.  I imagined waking up on Sundays and taking leisurely runs without the strain of Monday looming.  I imagined coming home on a Thursday night and staying awake long enough to see the darkness of night.  I imagined feeling peace.  It felt...good.

But then, as fate/well-meaning mothers would have it, my mom forwarded me a job posting for teaching middle school English at an expeditionary learning school in Portland.  One of the best in the country.  Exactly the role I filled at my old school.  It was too perfect.  I had to apply.  I had to get on a plane to interview.  I had to be offered the job.  I had to accept it.

All of this with so little thought, but lots of dedication, to the cause.

Until things started to get shaky.  My certification that we were all waiting on was taking forever.  When it came through, I was missing 12 English credit hours.  I spent 24 hours straight (I didn't sleep that night) wracking my brain about how I could take 4 classes in the next two months. There are online self-paced classes.  I could study every spare minute and eek it out.  I could do it. But I can't.

As I agonized over this decision, I bounced it off of friends near and far.  They had so many suggestions and words of encouragement.  Can't you long-term sub?  Can't they work something out? You can push through this sumer and get those credits in!  I found myself growing angry with them.  No, no, and no.  It's a big bureaucracy.  There are no loopholes.  I can't do that much work while traveling and moving.

In fact, my primary response to this whole situation was rage.  Rage at the injustice of it all.  I have a certification, a master's degree, and five years of teaching in the very role they are seeking to fill. You're saying I'm not qualified?  This is how the system works?  A first year teacher straight out of school would be a better fit?  I could not accept it.

Until.

Until I explained the whole situation to a friend over the phone, who stated simply, "Well, it sounds like you just don't want to do it."

Huh. I hadn't really fully digested that possibility.  Maybe I just don't want to do it.  My primary emotion was anger around the absurdity of it all, not disappointment at not getting to teach next year.  I was frustrated with my friends for trying to fix the situation. Maybe I didn't want it fixed.

Until my friend provided that mirror for me, I couldn't see clearly what I really wanted.  My vision was clouded by the perfection and ease of the possibility of working at that reputable school.  By the knowing that I would be great in that role, and the school could really use me.  By the security of moving with a job and salary lined up.  These are all incredibly valuable truths.

But maybe not the only Truth.

There are people who believe the universe, or God, helps us align with our true calling.  Or that, "Way Opens," according to the Quakers.  I've never really settled into any particular belief system without my fierce skepticism quickly tackling the idea and wrestling around with it, but I also never fully walked away from this line of thought.   It is comforting to think that perhaps it wasn't meant to be in a grander sense, and that the universe has other plans for me.  I don't know if it even matters if that's the real truth if it serves me.  And the universe did seem to be listening on this one.

Moments after I had mentally and emotionally let go of the prospect of teaching, my dear friend announced to me over chat that she was coming back to Maine to lead yoga retreats.  In less than half an hour, we had the seed of a business plan.

I don't yet know how this is all going to unfold.  There is a slight chance the school will get back to me with a work around.  The dreams with my yoga lady friend are still just dreams.  But I feel more at peace than I have through this whole process.

Our emotions serve as important cues that we are quick to ignore in the face of logical choices.  My ire, instead of disappointment, was an important nuance that I couldn't see at the time until someone came and saw it for me.  I didn't see my friends' questions and suggestions as support because I wasn't 100% sure I wanted to solve the problem.  Sometimes we need others to help us more clearly see our own path.  If we don't like what they say, that's information to collect and interpret.  If we resonate with their beliefs, that's also information to ponder.

So to all my mirrors: I thank you.

Mindful Schools Student Evaluation

This was my favorite part that you can't see on my first infographic:

Want to understand Baltimore? Ask an eighth grader...

I made the mistake of watching videos of the riots in Baltimore in my classroom this morning. For someone trying to maintain peace and equanimity within the context of the (now seemingly) minor chaos that is my school day, tuning into major chaos that has erupted just north of D.C. was unwise. It took more than a few deep breaths to bring myself back from the fear, sadness, and anger that filled me. As we exchanged official documents and computers for my students to test on, my assistant principal and I remarked how odd it felt to ask kids to test when there was so much heightened emotion from the last few days. But what was to be done?

The conversations started bubbling up organically even before testing began...the four boys in the back of the room, frequently jumping off the walls, huddled to share what they had seen on the news in homeroom...a couple of students passing in the hallway from lunch stopped, and we talked about our observations and concerns...

We needed to talk about it. To wonder and worry collectively about it. To make sense of it.

When it comes to talking about issues like the death of Freddie Gray, I try to find my students solid sources of information, ask them prompting questions, and then listen. I try to listen not just with my mind, but with my heart. As a Caucasian teacher who works with primarily African American students, I am keenly aware how little I understand their experiences of the world in the context of their racial identity. Furthermore, for those who come from single-parent homes and resource-deprived neighborhoods, my understanding is even more limited. Their perspectives on their own lives, as well as the events that impact our community, are valuable. So I listen.

When my crew, my small advisory group of eleven, came together, there was plenty to listen to. They all had watched videos, seen TV, and/or talked with their parents about the events that had occurred. Most were dismayed that Freddie Gray had died in the custody of police with so little information around his death. They acknowledged the anger of the young men destroying businesses and cars while chiding them for their violence. They recognized that there are bad police and good police.  They called for mentorships and opportunities for deprived neighborhoods. They proposed some sort of racism sensitivity training. They spoke with all the nuance and courage you would hope from national news outlets, that instead insist on flattening the issue into click bait.

When one student had identified racism as a major issue, another responded, "We should make all the racist white people be slaves, and see how that feels." Many students attacked this notion as ludicrous ("slavery is so over," pointed out one young man). However, I thought there was something powerful in that statement. While slavery was an extreme example, the truth is that there is a need for people with racist beliefs to develop empathy for people of other races. In fact, there is a need for all of us to understand the experiences of others who have different perspectives of our own.

And to do that, we need to listen. We need to listen with our ego aside. With our defenses down. With our hearts open.

Fight or flight.

Sometime this past fall, my students became my enemies.  I had to fight them to get them to learn anything.  They were rude, disrespectful, ungrateful, and unkind.   They talked back, talked over, lied, and threw tantrums.  They needed my help, but refused to listen when I tried to support them.  The only thing consistent about them was their irrationality.  

Furthermore, my workload was unmanageable.  Grading and planning and teaching and reporting shrunk my personal time to nothing. I hated weekends where I was scribbling lesson plans on Saturday mornings and responding to emails late Sunday evening.  I loathed the frequent late week nights required of me to help families in their search for a best fit high school. Every email asking me for something else made my skin crawl.

Was it true?  Sure.  

Was it the only thing that was true?  Absolutely not.  

This year, I had to decide if my work was to be around changing the circumstances or changing the narrative I had constructed around them.  

It is not always true that we must abandon ship at the slightest hint of dissatisfaction, as our culture suggests.  We currently elevate the pursuit of happiness as the key to life.  Get a new cell phone every two years.  A new car.  A new marriage.  A new job.  Life can have the feeling of being disposable.

However, throughout history, people have endured, and thrived in, the most horrific of circumstances.  Even when they cannot change them, they have managed to find happiness in the darkest of spaces. Perhaps most famous mentor on this topic is Victor Frankl, a German psychologist and Holocuast survivor, who said, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”  He noticed in the concentration camps that there were those who died from the psychological burden, but also noticed there were those who were able to survive.  In his eyes, the difference was perspective; it was the story these people told themselves that most mattered.

Now, least you think I am comparing my teaching experience to being in a concentration camp, I want to assure that I am not.  In fact, I teach at an incredibly life-affirming school.  Many of the complaints teachers cite for burn out- lack of support, lack of agency, test-centricity, boredom, isolation-- are not the issues which I have faced.  The school is highly collaborative, the professional community is smart and loving, and the curriculum is ours to generate and mold as we deem necessary.

Despite this, I have found myself inching towards the door, a glance cast permanantly back in wonder that I would even consider leaving.  After all, if I can't survive such a teaching utopia, with so many parts that I love, how can I trust this urge to move on?  How do I know I will not always be slightly dissatisfied, and I just need to dig deeper?  I just need to sit longer, sleep better, exercise more-- really amp up the self care-- and dig back into the work itself, of challenging young minds to explore the world through text.  

Could I just change the story?  After all, I created a narrative of burn out for myself.  

Furthermore, it is hard to escape this belief that I'm a mindfulness failure.  Shouldn't real mindfulness ninjas be able to sit with anything and maintain peace and equanimity?  In recognizing these stories I have created, shouldn't I just be able to sit with those thoughts and move on?  

If I HAD to stay, I probably could do all these things and find ways of sustaining.  But I also have the freedom to choose a different situation.  Perhaps something where I don't have to work so hard to change the story because the reality presents fewer challenges.  Or maybe the challenges are just different ones that I want to tackle, rather than shirk from.   

I have always said teaching middle school provides unlimited "opportunities" to practice mindfulness.  It's a great training ground for noticing my own way of being when challenged.   But perhaps it's okay to go down a level to a place where the obstacles are not so constant and demands so not rigorous. Perhaps a move made in self-preservation is not failure but an opportunity to grow in a different way.  

After five years of teaching at my school, I have decided to move on.  Interestingly, in doing so, my narrative shifted naturally. Suddenly I felt so grateful for the care my students could muster for one another at unexpected moments.  I saw their brilliance and appreciated their struggle to become fully formed people in a world that doesn't always treat them kindly. I saw their desire to learn, and frustration when they felt they couldn't, clearly again.  I saw their beauty.  

And the work seemed to ease up.  I remembered to set time limits and say enough was enough.  I got excited about learning how to engage students more deeply in the process of grappling with complex text.   And I extended myself to pursue projects that I felt most excited about--teaching mindfulness to anyone who would have me in their classroom.

In the end, it took letting go of my position to shift my narrative.  I reconnected with my deep love for my students.  I found more forgiveness.  I felt  capable and effective again.  These were all things that were there throughout the year too, but weren't as much a part of the prevailing story I had constructed.  I am now weaving them back through, even as I prepare to depart.

I have wondered if this means I should stay.  Maybe I just said it was unbearable to justify leaving, and now I have proven myself wrong.  But that unease this year gave me the freedom to explore other opportunities and reinvision a life where I can give more to the world. I can be a better version of myself.   So I will still move forward in pursuit of growth, while soaking in the new warmth towards what is true now.  And I am grateful for it all.