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There wasn’t much time for reading lately — it’s been a 6:30 am alarm clock and a 1 am “off duty” each day while I’ve been at Outdoor Retailer in Salt Lake City. So, no new resources for you this week, but in the absence of great articles to read, here’s an alternative update. One of the delights of this week’s Outdoor Retailer show was an invitation from the apparel brand, prAna, to attend a one-hour “mindfulness session” on Saturday afternoon of the show. The session was led by author and meditation teacher Mark Coleman. After a one-minute silent meditation and discussion, we did a longer guided meditation and then discussed our individual experiences. At one point in the conversation, Mark reached for a water bottle to illustrate a point he was making, and gently picked it up with one hand. “You can pick up the water bottle,” he said, “or you can strangle the water bottle,” he added, tightening his grip around the bottle until the plastic crackled and the bottle was crushed inside his grip.

I am a total bottle strangler.

One of my greatest challenges is figuring out how to exert just the right amount of effort. Take this week, for example. I was supposed to work Wednesday through Friday, then take the weekend off to ski. Instead, I worked past midnight every night this week (and that includes both days of the weekend). And even while I was doing it, I thought to myself, “Why?” WHY do I work so hard? It’s not external pressure — I could have stopped work at 5pm on Friday and skied all weekend, and nobody would have noticed. The painful flip side to that is the knowledge that nobody but me is going to notice that I worked all weekend! I strangled the shit out of OR (like I always do), and I’d like to learn how not to do that.

I learned — after much effort — how to not strangle law school. I felt intense pressure and anxiety during law school. I felt like if I didn’t study every minute, I’d flunk out. So I overcompensated, and performed above the level I needed to during my first two years of school. It wasn’t until my last semester of law school that I actually achieved my goal of “picking up” law school instead of “strangling” it, and was delighted by my first straight B’s report card. Those straight B’s meant that I passed all my classes, but they also meant that I’d taken care of more than just my schoolwork that semester. I’d climbed, I’d spent time with friends outside of school and family, I’d taken care of myself. Instead of an A in school and a D in living, I was stoked to score straight B’s across the board.

So now, I am home, and it’s a day where my deadline is not yet met, I am at the place of tired where I feel as if my eyes are going to water. Today will roll into tomorrow, which was full to a convex meniscus even before I roll today’s missed deadline into tomorrow morning’s workload. And it’s unmistakable that I do this to myself. I overpromise. I set expectations too high (for myself, and when communicating expectations to others). I put accommodating other peoples’ timelines ahead of taking care of myself (or honoring my own boundaries) and try to juggle more balls than I have the skill or temperament to juggle.

So what do I do to loosen my stranglehold on these facets of my life? I did it once — during law school — and I can do it again, right?

What I learned then was to take time to climb; to make a schedule and stick to it even when the work wasn’t “done;” and to make a point of spending time with friends that weren’t a part of my “work” life, with whom I could talk about anything but law school. Now, in the years that have passed, I’ve learned about meditation and flow and — a concept that I’ve spent precious little time indulging in lately, and which probably deserves more of my effort — lightness. In times of stress, I actually close my eyes and think of a feather. It’s white, like the one in Forest Gump. It hangs in midair, floating gently from side to side. When I feel serious, I feel heavy. Attached to the ground. I feel the gravity of being pulled down; the inertia of not moving; I feel anchored. When I think of a feather, I’m reminded that lightness enables movement. Lightness leads to flow.

I learned this same lesson through climbing. If you overgrip — if you hang on harder than the minimum amount of effort that it takes to keep yourself on the wall, you pump out, your endurance fails, and you can’t hold on anymore. Worst case scenario, you feel your fingers actually peel one by one off the grip you were holding; the force on the remaining straining fingers increased because of the additional weight they now have to bear because of the failures that have occurred, this process repeating until you fall. That lesson is so familiar to my cells, that just typing those words made my hands sweat.

And I’ve learned strategies through meditation. If I gently return my attention again and again to what is here before me, rather than spinning off about consequences or what happens next, then I can be more present. What is the purpose, in this context, for strangling the shit out of a bottle (or a writing project, or a proposal, or a speaking engagement, or a rock climb)? If I’m present, and mindful, then I can pick up the bottle deliberately, with just the necessary amount of effort to achieve the goal.

This is one area where I’m in the awareness stage, not the “I have the answers” stage. How about you? What are your tips and strategies for lightening the stranglehold on life and work and exerting only the necessary amount of force?

~Sara Lingafelter, Social Media Specialist at REI

(She is not speaking for REI in this post. The views she’s sharing are her own, and do not necessarily reflect REI’s views).

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A winter yoga festival right in the heart of the Elk Mountains in Crested Butte, Colorado. Come join us! Yoga, Music, Family, Meditation, classes, clinics, celebration, and more! Yoga Rocks the Butte benefits Yoga World Reach, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing yoga outreach to third world countries and underdeveloped areas.

“We are enthusiastic about hosting this inaugural event,” commented Ethan Mueller, vice president, general manager of CBMR. “With its natural beauty, peaceful atmosphere and welcoming spirit, Crested Butte is the perfect location to host a festival of this caliber.”

Yoga Presenters, Workshop Gurus &  Musicians For more information  visit www.yogarocksthebutte.com.

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“We are Outdoor Nation!” So say thousands of young people in America, a dedicated group of philanthropists from the outdoor industry and now two pilot programs’ worth of inner-city youth and their collegiate guides in Atlanta, GA and Washington, D.C.

My name is Colin Steele, and I’m one of the Outdoor Nation Campus Club Fellows in Washington, DC. Along with three other students from Georgetown University and a half-dozen from Howard University, I’m helping Outdoor Nation to get high school-aged children from D.C.’s underserved neighborhoods into the outdoors.

The elegance of the concept lies in its simplicity and its holistic vision. In both pilot cities, fellows like myself were drawn both from universities with extant outdoor programs (Georgetown and Georgia Tech) and from nearby historically black universities (Howard in D.C. and [the consortium of HBUs] in Atlanta). In that way, the fellows coming from established outdoor programs can help coach the fellows from our partner HBUs — who are eager to start outdoor-education programs at their universities, which have none at present — in the daily workings of a collegiate guiding program.

At the same time, both sets of fellows share the same goal: working together to help instruct under-privileged middle school students outside and instill in them the love of the outdoors that we fellows have developed through 20-some years of playing outside. The students we’re instructing may not have had the same access to the outdoors that we fellows enjoyed while growing up, but it is already clear that their capacity to appreciate the outdoors is no less than our own.

During the first semester of the program, fall 2011, and working with students from a local non-profit partner, Groundwork Anacostia, we helped put together two events: a mid-autumn kayaking trip on the Potomac River and a hike along the Billy Goat Trail in C&O Canal National Historic Park in Maryland. During each trip, the other Georgetown fellows and I tried to show our colleagues from Howard how we handled the planning and logistics for the events as guides, then all of us fellows from both universities set about introducing the participants to the opportunities for outdoor adventure within and just a short way outside of Washington, D.C.

Before anyone got in a boat for the Potomac kayaking trip, we asked all the participants to give us some sense of what kinds of outdoor experience they had and what their favorite activities to do outside were. Although most students had some experience with the outdoors, it was usually minimal: bicycling, walking, running, and so forth. Through their involvement with Groundwork Anacostia, the students who were coming kayaking with us were starting to get more exposure to outdoor recreation than most of their classmates, but I was still struck by the realization that I had grown up taking the outside almost for granted while even these most-interested of high-schoolers from Southeast D.C. (the poorest, most disadvantaged part of the city) had such limited access to and experience with the outdoors.

Just like the socio-economic disparity that marks D.C. in general — the city is more than 50% black, yet you’d hardly know it walking around Georgetown — the dichotomy between my experience and that of the Groundwork students could in some ways hardly be more pronounced. I grew up hiking with my family, vacationed in the Rockies for the first time the summer after seventh grade (the same age or younger than most of the Anacostia students), took a month-long NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) course after my first year of college, and attend a university where I feel cut off from the outdoors yet where North Face clothing is a fashion statement.

In spite of the differences in opportunities and experiences with the outdoors, I also see similarities between myself and the Groundwork students. First, we live in the same city and must bring a certain amount of creativity to bear on our desire to play outside. D.C. is the most urban place I’ve ever lived, which I found quite challenging for the first couple of years as a student here. It took me a while to figure out how to approach my desire for outdoor time creatively: running and bicycling were good; walking through the city and finding hidden and not-so-hidden gems like Rock Creek Park was better; finally becoming a Georgetown Outdoor Education leader was best of all.

From the perspective of seeking outdoor time in D.C., then, my experience has been somewhat similar to the students the other fellows and I are guiding this year. Though I began with experience and interest, it took a while for me to figure out how and where to pursue outdoor activity in a city environment. That – connecting a variety of people to the outdoors, even and especially when the outdoors seems far away – is the most important mission of the Outdoor Nation fellowship program. The National Parks, America’s “best idea” and national birthright, often play host to our fellowship activities. I was blessed with tremendous access to national parks growing up, from the Lexington and Concord battlefields near my home to the huge parks of the West that I visited with my family, and I especially came to treasure them after spending a month living in national wilderness in Wyoming for my NOLS course. If the idea of preserved wildland was not alive, I would not have had the opportunity to take that course.

National parks, conservation and the outdoor ethic in general are not immutable things. Just because President Theodore Roosevelt had a good idea a century ago does not guarantee the survival of the idea. More importantly, it does not secure the idea behind the idea: that conservation is worthwhile for its own sake – that there is something so special about the lands, animals and ecosystems preserved in our national parks that they are worth maintaining relatively untouched for future generations to enjoy. In these days of short-term focus, monetarism and global climate change, then, I think it is vital to the health of both people and the planet that America’s “best idea” get passed on and owned anew by the next generation of Americans.

That’s a lofty goal for the occasional paddle on the Potomac or walk in the woods, to be sure. But I still think it’s worth keeping in mind – Teddy Roosevelt didn’t create the first national parks by thinking small. This program is about fellowship after all: the idea that college students and urban youth who may not have otherwise met might all teach and learn from each other in the common classroom of the outdoors. A fellowship is usually a relatively small thing, but a nation is a much bigger one. With luck, our little Outdoor Nation fellowship may push America towards becoming an “outdoor nation” writ large. And that, as TR might say, would be “bully” indeed.

~Colin Steele, Outdoor Nation Campus Club Fellow

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The model of Shiva Rea’s teaching is complex, drawing not only from most of Yoga’s traditions including Bhakti, Hatha, Tantra, and Raja Yoga, but also from a wide-variety of world traditions ranging from Tribalism and Shamanism to Paganism and Christianity, all the way to ecstatic dance and western science. She has a way of teaching the primal human spiritual experience that links all traditions while simultaneously transcending them.

After witnessing her variety of teaching styles at Bhakti Fest, Wanderlust, and Burning Man, I am excited to see how the Rocky Mountains will influence Shiva Rea’s creative teachings this February at Yoga Rocks the Butte Winterfest in Crested Butte, Colorado, especially since the festival will be hosting a list teachers, musicians, and students who are already open to and experienced in Shiva’s ways.

~Ryan Nadlonek, Prana Flow® Energetic Vinyasa instructor, kirtan musician, rock climber, surfer, and blogger.

For prAna blog readers, use the code PRANAYRB for a $250 festival pass. Yoga Rocks the Butte is also a benefit for Yoga World Reach. 10% of profits will be donated to this non-profit which brings yoga outreach to people around the world. For more info email yogarocksthebutte@gmail.com and join them on Facebook!

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The constant of change ebbs and flows through every facet of life. Happiness and sadness, ease and disease, past or future-these seem separate and different from one another, but all things are connected. This place that all things flow from is everlasting and without opposite. This is what my music is all about. Much like the waves of a lake or ocean, everything returns to this place of true love, life and joy.

Save The Waves Coalition is a global nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and preserving the coastal environment, with an emphasis on the surf zone, and educating the public about its value. 25% of the proceeds of my first album ‘One’ go towards supporting their efforts. Save The Waves works hard to measure the immeasurable value that I express in songwriting, trying to answer important questions like, “How do we communicate the value of the coast and ocean to individuals from all walks of life? How will this information assist in local, regional, national and international coastal and marine management? And how can we work together to sustainably protect the valuable resources of the coast and ocean?”

My connection to the cause runs deep. Having grown up in a coastal environment just off the East coast of Lake Michigan, I ran up and down the dunes, jumped waves, enjoying every drop of it. When I moved to Chicago for college, immersing myself in nature became a challenge. I found myself making innumerable trips to the lake and for the first time learned the true value of nature. The desire to reconnect to what I felt growing up brought me to those shores every time. Lake Michigan’s coast brought me to an understanding of an intelligence beyond our rational, thinking minds.

The practice of letting go of thinking only with the head, and instead thinking with the whole body. This is often translated in yoga or meditation practices where the focus is on the breath. The waves were my first teacher, before I knew anything about that. Somehow during these times I could sense the vastness of the lake within myself. This experience of oneness is what has inspired my music, and continues to inspire me.

The energy and ease that comes from sitting and watching the waves, in awe of their rhythmic sounds, dissolves the incessant stream of thoughts. Imagine how that can translate between two people or an entire community. The waves become a lesson for experiencing authentic relationships with the capacity to expand, flex and be together without limitation. By no means do we have to surf or even geographically live near them to be aware of this wavelike potential within each of us. It’s there, whether we’re playing a song, climbing a boulder, working in a hospital or sitting on a park bench. The wisdom of the waves can be translated to most everything, that even with all our comings and goings, point to the one thing that will always remain.

Composed of beauty, our coastlines are a source for inner peace, a place to play, and for many-a home. The powerful feeling a coastline conveys has the power to transform and translate essential life lessons. These lessons of life and love deserve to be carried on for generations. Save the Waves encourages people to celebrate and conserve something so great, that conveys understandings that stand the test of time-our coastlines. We just have to be there for it, to build something sustainable through community, with music and the efforts of Save the Waves.

~Kurt Denison, B&W images via Rachel Wolfe

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