What My Dad Told Me at 3 A.M.

It made no sense. One moment I was standing at the top of the stairs, the next I was mid-air, as if someone had swept my feet out ahead of me.  My mind racing: is this how people die? Is this where I break my back?  I don't remember hitting a single step on the way down. Just landing at the bottom with a big thump.

These are stairs from the late 1700s, steep the way old stairs are. I'd gone up and down them my entire life and never once slipped, let alone missed the entire flight.

I landed at the bottom in a pinwheel, oddly enough- a yoga pose, holding my own hand, a finger jammed somewhere along the way. Everyone in the house came running. I was shocked, but miraculously  unscathed. 

Thanksgiving dinner had just ended, and I was getting my things together so I’d be ready to leave in the middle of the night to head to Nosara, Costa Rica. I was about to teach my first 100-hour anatomy training for yoga teachers. The first program the institute had ever asked a student to create for them from scratch.

I'd wanted to be asked to create a Yoga for Athletes training. I was one, I'd worked with them for years, I'd written the injury-prevention manuals that training facilities actually used. Instead they asked for anatomy. Which I did know well, but shouldn't a doctor do that?

So I went in hard. Two years of a master's in consciousness studies, just so three professors, one in physiology, one in physics, one in Jungian psychology, could check not just my science but my philosophy. Every bone. Every muscle. Every chakra that overlaps with an endocrine organ, and a nerve plexus. Fascia, before fascia was a thing anyone talked about. A whole section on breath that had nothing to do with taking in more oxygen and everything to do with tolerating more carbon dioxide. A 300-page student manual, fully APA cited. Two more binders of notes just for me. Every one of the hundred hours mapped out.

I thought I was calm, cool and collected, but as I sat at the bottom of the stairs that night, I realized maybe my active pace kept me from feeling just how terrified I was.

In the dark hours of the morning my dad generously drove me from New Hampshire to the Boston airport.  Along the way I turned to him and asked him, "What's wrong with me? My ego is so big. I was sure I was the right person to build this multi layered program.  My ego is also so small that I'm afraid that the second the participants walk into the room they'll see I'm only twenty-seven, and I'm not a doctor.  They'll want their money back and leave."

My dad is pretty great at giving simple answers that land.

"One part of you knows what you're capable of. The other part does the work to make sure you can actually fulfill it."

It makes sense to be scared, and that fear activated me. That protective part of me was smart. His reflection took the shame and the judgment out of it. Reorienting to the intelligent mechanism instead, cleared so much weight, all at once.

Without realizing until writing right now, that 3am conversation was the beginning of part of the work I do now: finding the intelligence in our protective mechanisms, de-shaming the process, and then finding how we can create more support.

Before teaching each class over the next two weeks my added layer of support was to look up at the jungle canopy and say, "Dear Archangel Michael, help me to see what can't be seen, to hear what can't be heard, and speak only what needs to be said."  Then I'd let go, walk into the room, and trust the flow of each session.

My skill met the moment thanks to this knowing and doubt. The extra layer of support, the orientation to health and support beyond me, helped calm my nervous system. 

I wonder if you've ever had a time in which you were called to something and doubted yourself at the same time? If you felt a whisper and the brakes?

What if both are wise? What if the whisper knows what you're capable of, and the doubt is just asking for one step of preparation you've never taken before. 

One step. Barely brave enough.

We don't need to leap down an entire staircase. The step is enough.