Resourcing the Revolution

Transforming Humanity

How to Use a Digital Detox to Bliss Out Your Summer

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Isn’t summer supposed to be time for vacation, and for slowing down?

These days, it feels more like life starts ramping up in the spring and goes full speed through the summer and fall.

And while long days, warmer weather, and lots of events to attend can make for a great summer… it can also make for one frazzled changemaker.

With so much on your plate, and so much fun stuff to do, how can you keep up your pace and not wear yourself out?

Enter an old idea, with a new twist.

Detox, of the digital kind

You’ve likely heard about detoxing your body — juice cleanses, detox programs and the like.

You personally may not use them or believe that they work, but the general concept is to aid the body in processing excess crap in your body by eating cleanly for a particular period of time.

Well, did you know that taking a break from technology can help your brain to get rid of some of the clutter that gunks up your neural pathways?

By giving yourself a break from screens, you give your mind a chance to settle and process, and to clean up anything it doesn’t need.

This process is Rebel Yogi tested. We implemented a 24-hour tech fast once a week in our house, and even though we haven’t been perfect about keeping up with it, I can really tell the difference the weeks when we do!

A 24-hour technology fast

Here’s an example of how it can work:

Friday evening at 5 pm, all computers in the house shut down. (Not just shut the lid, but powered down and unplugged.)

The internet and wifi get powered down.

The home entertainment system gets unplugged. No television, no radio.

Phones become just that — a phone. No internet browsing, no apps. (You may decide to make an exception for text messages.)

You may also want to decide if a reading device like a Kindle counts. I’ve gone back and forth about my Paperwhite, since it’s technically supposed to mimic paper, but most weekends I skip and just pull out a good old fashioned book.

Then… enjoy your weekend! Saturday evening, you can power everything back on and get back to life as usual. (Or, you can even wait until Sunday morning if the calm and silence is too good to give up.)

But what the heck am I supposed to do?!

You may be twitching a little bit just thinking about going without internet or any of your devices for a whole 24 hours.

The first couple of times you try this, you’ll likely find yourself reaching for your phone out of habit, or wishing that you could Google something…

But with a little bit of preparation, your digital vacation can be super refreshing (and productive)!

Every Friday at 4 pm, I make a pen-and-paper checklist of all the things I need to do that don’t involve technology or screens. My list is usually longer than I can get through in one 24 hour period.

Meals become an opportunity to have a conversation. This time is also useful for catching up on your reading list (books, no screens) and being creative — I’ve had a lot of fun with breaking out my coloring books and colored pencils, but you should do whatever feels like it would be fun for you.

And, maybe that’s just hanging out in your hammock, taking a nap, or going out to hang out with friends.

Relax your brain, refresh your summer

Whatever you decide to do, keep it (mostly) fun.

My experience is that Saturdays feel SO long. Rather than time disappearing in the internet vortex, you get to experience every moment fully.

Distractions (at least of the digital variety) go by the wayside.

And your summer gets that much more fun — and relaxing.

So take a look at your calendar and see if you can block off 24 hours this week to give your brain a break.

If you give it a try, let me know how it goes. Here’s to your blissful summer of 2016!

The Power of Choosing Love

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Confession: I struggled with this post.

Whether to write it. How to write it. What to write.

It’s tough out there. We live in this beautiful, amazing, vibrant world, that’s sometimes full of grief, sorrow, rage, and unspeakable tragedy.

And when tragedy strikes, in whatever form, sometimes it’s hard to know how to respond.

Sometimes it’s hard to find any words that can even begin to express the depth of what’s in our hearts.

The media fans the flames by focusing attention on the biggest, baddest, boldest — there’s something to be said about the power we give something negative when we focus so much of our energy on it.

I’m not saying that we should bury our heads in the sand, or that it’s wrong to feel whatever emotions we happen to be dealing with.

So during weeks (months, years) like this, I choose to fully feel the sadness in my heart, in my gut…

But I also choose love.

Love, for the amazing diversity of life in our universe.

Love, for our global human family.

Love. Full stop.

I end every yoga class that I teach with this, from the Integral Yoga tradition:

May the entire universe be filled with peace, and joy. Love, and light.”

Just, love.

Confessions of a Wannabe World Changer – Part 3

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It’s confession time. Again. (And again.)

I crashed and burned this week.

The past month has been… full.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s been good full, with lots of positive, fun things: traveling down to North Carolina to hang out with my work team, getting ready for the Eco Fair, prepping the garden and getting everything planted, and getting the house ready (finally) for our housewarming party.

Last weekend we made a quick trip to visit family and see a presentation by Joel Salatin, and when we got back I dove headfirst back into work. Writing deadlines looming, meetings, last minute subbing for a yoga class…

It’s all been good stuff — how do you say “no” to any of the things that you really want to do, even if it starts to get overwhelming?

So I didn’t say no. I said, “I can make it all happen.”

And for the past week or so, I’ve been tired. Exhausted, even.

But I kept pushing through, looking at the calendar and thinking “if I can only make it to next weekend, then I can rest.”

Remember how I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago, and talked about our bodies being smarter than we are?

Well, mine is no exception. It started telling me to slow down, and I didn’t listen. I heard what it was telling me, but I thought that I could ignore what it was saying…

And, well. It schooled me: a solid crash that ended up with me laid up on the couch (where I had been longing to curl up and relax, but hadn’t given in to that desire).

I could have listened, backed off, and taken some time to unwind.

But, instead, I gave my body an opportunity to remind me why I should not only be listening, but taking action on the cues it gives me.

The rest of the week and this weekend, I’ll be taking it a little easier.

And then on Monday I’ll be back to it, one life lesson wiser, and hopefully a little more open to paying attention.

What about you, fellow changemaker? As the spring begins to bring more activity back into your life, are you listening for cues about when to relax instead of continuing to press forward?

A Welcome Back, and Where I’ve Been

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Two years ago, Rebel Yogi first saw the light of day — what started as a January 2014 “lightbulb” moment took shape as a first post on March 19th and my teacher training that spring, with all the pieces falling together at what felt like lightning speed.

Yoga has always been a guiding marker in my life, a stake in the ground while the rest of the world spins wildly around it.

In the time since I wrote here last, I taught in yoga in three different states during a transition back to the east coast to be closer to family, and did my “best” to keep up with my meditation practice.

And during this time of transition, life happened, as it usually does. Finances, the day to day… and a decision.

Putting an intention out into the world, I announced that there were big changes coming to Rebel Yogi that fall. Little did I know how literally those changes were going to take shape.

I like to think that the universe has a sense of humor; while I intended to take a break from writing on the site while I made some changes, I didn’t intend for what happened next.

With the financial belt tightening to a point where I couldn’t ignore it anymore, I took a job. I don’t regret this choice, because it taught me more than I could have ever imagined, but it pulled my focus almost entirely away from anything and everything else.

There’s a balance to life, and I had let mine get all kinds of out of whack. When you’re in debt with no new funds coming through the door, there’s no possibility of balance — there’s only the stranglehold that it puts on every aspect of your life.

So with this decision, I spent the next year bringing my finances back into balance… while pretty much ignoring every other facet of my life.

Long story short, and with a fast forward to the end of last year (because really, all I was doing was sitting in front of my computer working), I reached another decision.

This time the transition was to work that (so far) seems to fit really well into the rest of my life, as well as the opportunity to finally put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and start writing again.

I’ve missed you all dearly, and have so much that I want to share with you from my time of silence — including more mistakes that you can learn from (I seem to be pretty good at making those) and some pieces of wisdom that I’ve gleaned along the way.

So sit back and relax, and let’s take a trip down “lessons learned” lane.

Nourishment is a cycle

We all know that we need to eat, to fuel our bodies and replenish our energy — same thing goes for our cars, our electronics. But do you ever think about the fact that so many pieces of our lives require a cycle of nourishment?

Not only food, but also our sleep patterns, our exercise… and even our finances.

I’ve come to realize that my time away was an opportunity to replenish my financial nourishment, which had almost dried up. Every business has to bring money in the door, so that they can continue to provide their products or services to the people they serve.

It was the same with me. I had spent too long without focusing on the inward cycle of financial nourishment, and it took some time to bring myself back from that point.

Even the “right” thing can be wrong

And yet, even though I was replenishing my finances by taking that job, I was also swinging the pendulum to the extreme opposite end of the spectrum.

Yes, now I was bringing money in the door, but at what cost? When you spend so much time working, under a heavy load of both work and stress, you’re still out of balance.

The time I spent in that high-octane environment just reminded me that at this point in my life, I need to pay far more attention to my stress levels than I was able to in that situation.

It’s easy to come back too fast

I think we all have this tendency — we think that we can accomplish far more in a short period of time than we actually can.

And when we’re starting something new, it’s easy to get really excited and try to take on ALL THE THINGS at one time.

I had spent so much of the previous year since my diagnosis being careful about how much I took on, that when I finally decided to come back, I just jumped in the deep end. I survived, but I didn’t do myself any favors in the process.

Looking back, it would have been far more beneficial to ease in a little slower, rather than my dramatic cannonball reentry!

We only have 100% to give

I was at a writing workshop with Jon Morrow last April, and one of the things that he said really stuck with me.

He was talking about how becoming the best writer you can possibly be meant that there would be some kind of sacrifice — was it going to be your relationships, your health, your job, or your hobbies?

It might feel a little extreme, but he hit on something important: we only have so many hours in a day, so much focus, so much energy. Where are you putting yours?

So many of us (myself included) think that we can sacrifice our health, without actually realizing that’s what we’re doing.

  • We sleep too little, because we don’t have time for sleep, and it’s an easy thing to sacrifice in the short term.
  • We don’t eat well, because cooking takes time that we could better spend elsewhere.
  • We don’t exercise… because? Time!

Our bodies are smarter than we are

In doing all of this, we start to cause long-term damage to our bodies. We give up something that’s really important, without noticing.

But here’s the thing:

Your body knows better than you do. And it’s generally giving you lots of signals when you’re doing things it doesn’t like.

The problem that we run into is that our society moves so fast that we don’t actually take the time to listen to what our bodies are saying. It may have to scream at you before you even notice.

That’s where having a regular exercise program and doing something every day to be mindful comes in handy — it starts to tune us in to what our bodies are telling us.

You have to give yourself permission to take it slow

In this mad dash of a society that we live in, it’s easy to get swept away in the current of “go-go-go”.

Distractions are everywhere. It’s so easy to fall into a rut and let your health be your last priority.

And time passes by so quickly that the times where you think, “oh, it will be okay. I just have to deal with this for a little while” can turn into a significant amount of time before you realize it.

It’s not an easy thing to do, but there comes a time when we have to say “enough” and give ourselves a break. Despite what society says, we don’t have to do it all. We can step away from the mad dash.

Yes, we might miss out on some things, and we’ll figure out that the world will keep spinning without us (which can be quite damaging to the ego).

But when we take the time to slow down and be in the moment, choosing our actions with intention, we have the opportunity to really start to enjoy the things we choose to experience.

So I’m back. Now what?

I’ve been doing a lot more here in Charlottesville over the past few months – teaching yoga at a local studio, doing more festival yoga – and I have some more fun events and workshops up my sleeves.

And like I mentioned in the beginning of the post, I’ve picked up a whole bunch more “wisdom via mistakes” to share with you as we continue down this path together. That means I’ll be writing regularly again on the blog. (I promise!)

If you’ve been here with me since the beginning, thanks for sticking around. And if you’re new here, welcome!

I’m so grateful to be traveling the path (again) with you.

Reflections on Giving Yourself Permission

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These days, I’ve been starting off my yoga classes with a reminder to my students: every time we step on to our mats, it provides an opportunity for us to practice being okay with both where and who we are at this moment.

It’s an opportunity to give ourselves permission to be okay, to take a look at ourselves (bumps, bruises, rough edges and all) and honor that this is the very best version of ourselves that we can achieve in this moment. There is nowhere else we have to be, there is nothing else we should be doing, and to expect more is doing ourselves a disservice.

What’s funny is that even though I speak this truth every time I sit down to teach, I have a really hard time following it in my own life. It’s a fairly classic “do as I say, not as I do” scenario, and it goes hand in hand with making excuses instead of just following my own advice and taking care of myself.

This is where I fall into the “not enough time” trap, or where I end up “trying to take care of myself” instead of actually doing it. We can make all the excuses in the world about why we can’t do certain things, many of them completely viable. But in the long run, we’re missing out on making a positive impact in our lives by making these excuses.

My question is: why in the world do we do it??

Why, when we know that we need to get enough sleep every night, do we cut corners and try to get away with the bare minimum? Why, when we know how good we feel after a yoga class or a good workout, do we procrastinate and end up skipping it? Why?

I think it’s because we’re human. We’re these inherently flawed, yet unimaginably wonderful and capable creatures who are wired for immediate gratification, and our human nature often wins out over the intellectual argument between our bodies and our minds.

And speaking of the mind… we often live so deep inside a constantly active, chattering, future-thinking, past-remembering clump of synapses that we forget about this moment. Remember in last week’s post where I compared the mind to a drunken, scorpion-bitten monkey? It’s no wonder we have such a hard time just being, much less being okay with where we are in this moment.

Toward the end of the last Skype call I had with my business coach, we touched on this subject. Between being in location transition and it being summer, I have the perfect opportunity to really settle in and do my own work. Instead, I’ve been beating myself up about all the things I should be doing, and the fact that I haven’t progressed as quickly as I would like in certain aspects of the business. Instead of being honest with myself, I claim that I’m “trying” to take care of myself. Instead of being proud of the things I’ve accomplished, I beat myself up over what hasn’t happened.

One of the things that I hold dear with Rebel Yogi is the chance to be transparent about the process. Yes, it sucks (a lot) to admit that I struggle as much as the next person. But my hope is that by laying open the dark side of the story, rather than just the bright and shiny side that is usually the only side of the story that makes a public appearance, we begin to see that we’re not alone. We are all on our own twisty journey – the yoga journey (of the self, through the self, to the self) – but we do have traveling companions along the way.

It’s the major reason I started the Changemaker Q&A series – to share the stories of those fellow travelers, to remind us that we’re all in this together. We all struggle, we all fall, and we all have this beautiful opportunity to smile anyway – to get back up after those falls, to dust ourselves off, to find the beauty in the struggle – and to find a way to be okay with where we are, even in the midst of that struggle.

So am I okay with where I am in this moment? If I’m being honest: most of the time, no. But I’m making an effort to be more aware of the times when I’m not, and taking those opportunities to pull myself out of the boiling pot of mind-stuff, to become present in the moment, and to just be.

Our lives are a work in progress. Let’s give ourselves a chance to open up to that idea, and maybe ultimately to be okay with it.

I’m in. Are you?

Saving the People Who Save the World: Adventures in World Domination

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Three weekends ago, I had the chance to hang out with over 3,000 of my favorite people. Those of you who have been following along for a while might recognize the World Domination Summit (WDS) as that place where I met a whole bunch of the people I’ve interviewed for Changemaker Q&A, or you may very well be one of those awesome people who came into my life due to WDS (hey you!).

I’m one of the old timers – those who have been in attendance at every WDS since the beginning. This was my fourth year at the event, but with one big difference – instead of being an attendee, this time around I had the opportunity to see behind the curtain and to serve on the Ambassador team. Given how many awesome people I’ve met during the event, and the number of opportunities that have arisen due to those connections, this year it really felt like it was time for me to give back.

If you’ve ever been to WDS, you know the energy that comes from being around thousands of world changers all in one place. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced in my life. I distinctly remember standing at the front of the room during the inaugural event with my friend Brandon and getting the craziest goosebumps I’ve ever had; we were talking about the similarities in projects we had been involved with around the BP Gulf oil spill, and that connection was so powerful that it was like we were tapped into a power grid.

And, if you haven’t been to the event, take my word for it: it’s intense. I knew going in to the event that it was going to be a challenge to honor my own Rebel Yogi work – taking care of myself. I was scheduled out for three really long, intense days and if my history was any indication, I had to be very careful about listening to my body during the event.

I could feel it even from the first couple of hours at the pre-party on Thursday night: this was going to be a challenge. Being in the room with so much energy, catching up with old friends and meeting new ones, I could feel my body starting to take on the tense edge that comes along with being in that kind of situation. Even breaking away for dinner with just a couple of other people, I could still feel the tightness in my gut when I got home.

The next morning dawned bright (er, dark) and early, and I got to Pioneer Square just after 6 am to start laying out yoga mats for the Great Namaste world record attempt. Five hours and 808 attendees later, the mad rush of the attempt was over but my day was just getting started. After doing registration for the Jonathan Fields RevolutionU Academy and sitting in on the talk, it was time to head over to meet and greet at the official opening party.

If you were there, you may have seen me dancing like a fool, high-fiving, cheering, and generally carrying on in the greeting-line of orange-shirted Ambassadors on your way in to the party. It was at about that point when I realized that I was starting to crash, hard. A little bit later, I found myself talking to an old friend, almost swaying from exhaustion, realizing that I hadn’t eaten since lunch. It was then that I made probably the best decision I had up to that point: I talked to our volunteer coordinator, asked if I could leave, and did. I took the bus back to the east side of the river, grabbed a healthy dinner and then headed home for a relatively reasonable bedtime.

Now, that may not sound like much of an accomplishment, but for me, this was huge! If it had been even last year, I would have ignored the signs that my body was giving me. I would have pushed through, probably not eaten until really late that night, and only managed to get a few hours of sleep. But, knowing what I do now, and knowing that I had two more really intense days ahead of me, I made the smart choice, and took it easy.

The next two days of the conference were a balancing act. I was scheduled to take lunch breaks, which I took advantage of. When asked to do something during my break, I politely let them know I needed to go eat. I had a backpack full of healthy snacks, and a water bottle that rarely left my side. I took a nap during my lunch break on Sunday where I crashed so hard that I drooled on myself. Yeah, classy, I know.

All in all, the weekend was another amazing experience. Getting to be an integral part of the experience for so many other people, giving out thousands of high fives and smiles, and seeing WDS from the other side was truly awesome. Did I push myself a little too hard? Probably. But, did I do better than previous years? Absolutely.

It’s like I have talked and written about on a regular basis: it’s all about the journey. We’re all learning as we go. We stumble and fall, and we learn from it; then we do a little better the next time around. This year’s WDS was a success for me. I had the opportunity to hang out with some of my favorite people in the entire world, to make new connections and to reaffirm how important the work is that we’re doing in this world. And, I heard the same thing over and over when I talked about what we’re doing with Rebel Yogi: “how can I get involved” and “wow, I really need that, when can we start?”

I came out of this year’s event both slightly exhausted and completely recharged. We are all doing such great work in this world – let’s keep it up, and keep finding our balance as we go along. We’re all in this together, and it’s going to be one hell of a ride.