When your day job is teaching American government to college students, it turns out yoga is an excellent complement to the tumult and challenge of interesting political times. And boy, are we ever living in such times!

I spend my days with students who live in largely rural parts of middle Tennessee. Many of them have never traveled more than 50 or 100 miles from where they grew up. It’s tough to convince them of the value in paying attention to the broader world, especially to political figures who appear to be more often corrupt and self-serving than genuinely invested in representing their communities.

More pressingly, though, for those of us who make a living by or a habit of paying attention to the world, it’s really hard to foster presence and equanimity when so much seems so wrong. How can yoga help in these times? Here are three things that work for me.

Notice how effort brings reward in your movement practice.

The other day, I realized that I felt lighter, more energetic, and calmer than I had in a few days. And then I realized that I’d done a yoga practice the night before for the first time in a week! Despite the image many have of yoga teachers as doing energetic practices daily, I struggle to incorporate more than five or ten minutes of yoga into most of my days, particularly as a college professor in the middle of a semester. That moment when I realized that I felt better because of concrete action taken the previous day was a lightning bolt moment for me.

It’s also an excellent mindset for approaching a noisy, challenging world. We sometimes feel we must fix all of the problems, all of the time—I don’t think it’s just me who feels that way, right? But yoga reminds us to stay in the present and focus on just one thing at a time. On the yoga mat, that one thing is how we’re feeling in our body.

This practice of focusing on one thing and making the most of what you have in that moment? These are great tools off the yoga mat as well. How can you focus on one thing, take concrete (and doable) action, and see an incremental change? Let that be your guiding focus.

Cultivate (or nurture) a gratitude practice.

When the world feels a bit too much, we often feel our thoughts scatter to the seven winds. A gratitude practice helps bring us back to the moment.

If you’re anything like me, the notion of firing up a ‘gratitude practice’ can easily morph into permission slip to go shopping; buy a special gratitude journal, maybe some new and colorful pens, and redecorate a gratitude zone at home. In fact, as I write this, nothing would make me happier than to pop over to Staples or Target right now to buy new gratitude supplies.

These are just ways to pretend we’re doing the work, though. It’s shortcutting our way to a sense of gratitude.

Here’s what my gratitude practice today looks like: When I start to feel overwhelmed, dispirited, or pessimistic, I look for something good around me. Maybe it’s just that I drive a car that I absolutely love. Or that nobody in my house has yet found the box of Tagalongs I squirreled away so I’d still have some at Christmastime. My gratitude list is not written, is not glamorous, and would not merit public sharing. Instead, it’s full of very simple, very small things that buttress my life in unobtrusive ways. Noticing these things, and saying a silent thank-you to the universe for sending them my way, is one of my favorite ways to bring yoga into my daily life.

Acknowledge what you cannot control, and let that shit go.

The most powerful thing that happened when I began doing yoga regularly, and especially when I went through Curvy Yoga teacher training, was the dramatic increase in my comfort with acknowledging the things I cannot (or prefer not to) do, and then letting that shit go.

I remember being in a training session with Anna and breaking into tears when I tried to force myself into a downward facing dog pose. I felt boiling anger and frustration bubble over at myself: “How can I be a yoga teacher if I hate down dog?” I implored her.

Her answer was simple but profound (and prophetic): I’m a yoga teacher who never, ever teaches down dog in her classes. It’s that simple. I let that pose go (for me).

The sovereignty that comes in embracing your yoga practice, both on and off the mat, allows us to place boundaries around our energy and focus. There was a time when I’d be in a weekend yoga workshop, and I’d feel like I had to do the aggressive flow practice that was the “break” from our discussion.

For me, letting that shit go looks like opting out of that practice. Instead, I began propping myself up into my favorite restorative pose and resting there while the rest of the class huffed and puffed through boat pose and crow. People would come up to me after class and ask if I was sick. I would just smile and say, “I’ve never felt better!”

If this isn’t a metaphor for living in interesting times, I don’t know what is. We have limited mental, emotional, and physical energy, and we must identify what things in the world deserve those precious resources. Sometimes, that’s paying attention to the world, yes. But we do not have the power to change everything. And, if we try to fix everything, we will ultimately only create more problems, more need, by exhausting ourselves.

Acknowledge what you can do, what feels like a worthy investment of your limited resources, and let the other stuff go.

 

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If you’d met Liz Norell as a child, you’d have never predicted she would end up where she is today. For starters, she did not grow up in a particularly political family, yet somehow felt a spark of interest in politics when she accidentally crossed paths with an RU-486 rally on her first (school-sponsored) trip to DC.

Ultimately, she earned a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Texas at Dallas … although not without a number of swerves along the way. She spends the academic year teaching government courses at Chattanooga State Community College and thoroughly loves her work.

Every yang needs its yin, though, and for Liz, that’s yoga. In 2016, she completed her 200-hour YTT with Curvy Yoga. She has since logged more than 500 hours of yoga teaching in Chattanooga, Sewanee, and Tracy City. Her classes are gentle, meditative, and designed to include those of all body types and flexibility levels. In the last year, she has brought her teaching into the water, leading gentle aqua yoga classes to those who never imagined they could do yoga.

She will complete her 300-hour YTT in 2019 at the Asheville Yoga Center, where she has focused her advanced studies on trauma-informed, restorative, and yin yoga classes. She lives in Monteagle, Tenn., with her partner, Doug, two stepchildren, and a feisty rescue mutt named Lexie. Connect with Liz on her website or Facebook.