{"id":9144,"date":"2025-01-08T14:15:30","date_gmt":"2025-01-08T19:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/?p=9144"},"modified":"2025-01-08T14:15:31","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T19:15:31","slug":"warrior-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/2025\/01\/08\/warrior-101\/","title":{"rendered":"Warrior 101"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Antonia Small, ERYT-500, Maine AgrAbility, January 2025. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d rather be with the bears than do yoga,\u201d said Heather Strout Thompson (F\/V Gold Digger) when she and I first met.\u00a0
Wild guess: you\u2019ve never set foot in a yoga studio. I mean, it\u2019s hard to know who yoga is for, when it\u2019s advertised as super bendy skinny people sweating too close together in exotic locations \u2013 am I right?
We westerners have taken techniques designed to calm internal hurricanes and turned them into marketing campaigns for expensive leggings with an air of righteousness.
(And for the record, Heather, I\u2019m with you: I prefer the woods too.)
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, yoga was training for warriors to keep their shit together in battle.\u00a0
Now that sounds more like you, doesn\u2019t it?
Yoga marketing strategies have kept the folks most likely to die on the job away from some of the best tools we have to remain resilient in the face of great stresses: breathe efficiently; remain calm; use your strengths; train for your weaknesses; don\u2019t believe everything you think; and say thank you.
Most of you have a yoga practice already, even if you don\u2019t call it that: you must be mindful or die. You definitely use your strengths. You revere wild places. You pursue a meaningful job. You are at home in all kinds of weather and times of day. You don\u2019t believe much of what anyone else thinks.
And, maybe most importantly, you love the life you live \u2013 as long as folks in suits stop interfering with it \u2026 (What do you mean? I AM CALM AF!)
Yoga originated 5000 years ago, mainly as<\/p>\n\n\n\n

teachings to establish mastery of the mind, but also to optimize the mind\/body connection. Much like Stoicism, it offered a framework to learn inner control amidst external chaos.\u00a0
Yoga works with the nervous system, which has a few branches, including the autonomic \u2013 which has two more branches: the sympathetic (SNS) and the parasympathetic (PNS), which make up our stress response. Your SNS is the fight or flight aspect: your giddy up when you really need it. PNS is your rest and digest system. Ideally, you\u2019d move back into your PNS after SNS activation, but we all know how difficult that can be when the hits just keep on coming \u2026
Mammals have the skills to rebalance this stress response when it gets activated. Humans have consciousness, which means we need a good 24-48 hours under normal circumstances (by \u201cnormal\u201d I mean nothing else can set you off) to recalibrate.
We need tools when we don\u2019t have the luxury of<\/p>\n\n\n\n

long timeouts. We don\u2019t want to live in constant giddy-up mode, or it gets jammed, and we get ugly.
\u201cWhat about my beer and recliner?\u201d you may ask. \u201cGummies and a nap? I mean, I relax between trips \u2026\u201d
Yah, no.
Relaxation and self-regulation are not the same thing.
Relaxation is a good first step and part of yoga training, but self-regulation is like building a better boat for the storm. If we only attend to the relaxation phase, the hull will collapse under pressure.\u00a0
Yoga training includes mental preparations of inner discipline and outer conditioning; physical drills; tactical breathing; sensory awareness drills; single pointed focus; concentration, and flow state.
These are the 8 limbs interpreted by Yoga for First Responders (YFFR), designed for military, fire, rescue and police departments. As a yoga instructor, I\u2019m required to keep learning. YFFR has reminded me why I think yoga is important for folks who work at sea.
It\u2019s a perpetual rollercoaster.
But we can\u2019t live on the battlefield full time. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Antonia Small, ERYT-500, Maine AgrAbility, January 2025. I\u2019d rather be with the bears than do yoga,\u201d said Heather Strout Thompson (F\/V Gold Digger) when she and I first met.\u00a0Wild guess: you\u2019ve never set foot in a yoga studio. I mean, it\u2019s hard to know who yoga is for, when it\u2019s advertised as super bendy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":229,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","spc_primary_category":0},"categories":[73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fishability"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":73,"label":"FishAbility"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"irusso","author_link":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/author\/irusso\/"},"comment_info":"","category_info":[{"term_id":73,"name":"FishAbility","slug":"fishability","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":73,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":31,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":73,"category_count":31,"category_description":"","cat_name":"FishAbility","category_nicename":"fishability","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9146,"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9144\/revisions\/9146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}