Part 1
It was an easy flight to San Jose, California in June. I went for a yoga training to learn how to teach “Trauma informed” yoga to first responders. My friend Shannon McQuaide, started a program in 2014 called FireFlex YogaTM, “Designed to improve overall physical fitness and psychological health of firefighters.”
I met Shannon in a Yoga and Psyche Training taught by Mariana Caplan in 2015. Shannon used her Capstone project at CIIS to develop a unique yoga program for firefighters. Shannon comes from a family of firefighters; her father, uncle, sister and brother-in-law are all firefighters.
FireFlex YogaTM was born from Shannon’s personal experience with yoga and her unique perspective on firefighters work lives and personal personal lives. She fused her two loves to form a functional-movement-based-yoga-program to strengthen and bring awareness to the movement patterns firefighters use on the job, every day.
There were 18 of us in that cramped, carpeted, hot little room on the third floor of a fitness gym. What we accomplished in those 48 hours was a tacit bridge between cultures: firefighters and yoga teachers. Two sub-cultures inside a much larger culture of North Americans. It was a compressed weekend full of insight, information, and fresh inspiration.
I took lots of notes, most of which were my on-going silent commentary and questions that arose for me over the weekend.
One of my favorite parts of the training was speaking with Fire Chief David, who is also a yoga teacher. He said, “Firefighter save lives and yoga teachers save lives. I have experienced both.” David has learned to use the principles of yoga (which are really just common sense) as a Chief in the firefighter world. He is actively, daily bridging the two cultures of yoga and firefighter.
David spoke to us about cultivating awareness on the yoga mat and awareness in the field of duty through the lens of yoga. “Firefighters learn to relax and control themselves through regulated breathing. Yoga doesn’t take away stress. Yoga is there to help one cope with stress with calm and ease. As a yoga teacher you can hold space for firefighters to slow things down, focus on their inner self, and release stress.”
Chief David went on to say, “When we become fire fighters we take an oath: I swear to give my life for another stranger. This is the Firefighter’s Pledge. This is the pivot between firefighters and yoga teachers. In the yoga scriptures we have the word ahimsa, which means “Do no harm.” As students of yoga we also take an oath, “Do no harm to self and others.” This is our shared code of ethics.
Shannon has taught 100s of firefighters around California and reminded our group that, “Part of holding space is holding silence.” The power of silence and not trying to “make anything better” for our yoga students. This is a hard lesson I am currently in the process of learning.
As with all good trainings, I am left with more questions than answers. I believe this is a good thing, although my mind would like the have the answers, but I refrain and give myself space.
As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in Letters to a Young Poet, p. 35.,
“You stand before beginning. I would like to beg of you, dear friend, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. Perhaps you are indeed carrying within yourself the potential to visualize, to design, and to create for yourself an utterly satisfying, joyful, and pure lifestyle. Discipline yourself to attain it, but accept that which comes to you with deep trust, as as long as it comes from your own will, from your own inner need, accept it, and do not hate anything.”
Here are a few more of the questions I am left with after the FireFlex YogaTM training:
- Why Yoga?
- Why Yoga for Firefighters?
- Why does yoga work for stress, for breath, for strengthening but also relaxing the body?
- Why is yoga the method some choose for working their spiritual nature?
- Why yoga for anyone?
- What does this population of first responders really need? Am I the best person to provide what they might need?
Fire Chief David sat with us on the last day of the training and said, “Firefighters need help. You all in this room inspire me to keep going. We can become desensitized to our job, this is not a good thing. We are human, simply human.”
I don’t need to have all the answers. I attempt to live the questions. I know that yoga works for me and that’s what matters. I see and hear that yoga works for other people and that’s what matters.
As one of my teachers used to say to me, “Practice makes practice.” This is why I teach yoga. And practice connects me to myself and from that place I can connect with others.