meditation

Sweet Clarity: Choosing to Feel, Heal, and Shine

~ Katie Carlson ~ 1 Comment

Today marks 100 days with no alcohol! It’s probably the 3rd or 4th time I’ve hit this milestone. I don’t consider myself “sober”. I don’t like that word very much. And at this moment, I don’t foresee alcohol in my future. But you have to know yourself, and I know telling myself “never” or “forever” doesn’t work for me.

I’ve never considered myself an alcoholic. I never hit a rock bottom. My choices while using alcohol never negatively affected or impacted other people. If anything, I become more bubbly and pleasant with a couple drinks in me.

But there came a point, about six or seven years ago, when I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I had gone a day without two or three glasses of wine. That pattern settled in without me realizing it. Numbing had long been one of my ‘go-to’ responses to a series of traumatic events in my teens and early twenties. As a young adult working in the toxic and hard-partying environment of the Indiana Statehouse, alcohol-fueled evenings became the norm. In 2012, I went through a challenging divorce while managing a Congressional campaign in Southern Indiana, and the two to three glasses of wine a day became a balm.

Then I began my career in public safety. I fell in love with the field, but I went from living in the green to living in the orange, a heightened state of stress and vigilance. Suddenly, I was ultra aware of every bad thing happening in my community, and as the sole Public Information Officer, I was on call to the media 24/7/365.

The first time I took a break from alcohol was like a punch in the face. Without my rosé-colored glasses, I looked at my life and I did not like what I saw. I didn’t like how I was spending my time, I didn’t like how I looked, I didn’t like how people were treating me. I was neglecting my health, my passions, and my boundaries.

I was going through a program called “Hip Sobriety” that I’d stumbled across on Instagram. The founder, Holly Whitaker, eventually wrote a book “Quit Like a Woman”. I’d highly recommend it.

And while I didn’t stay “dry” beyond that 8 week program (it had never been my intention)… my eyes were open, and I couldn’t unsee what I saw.

Three things all happened around the same time. I stopped drinking for the first time and began a long conversation with myself about my relationship to alcohol. I found my current therapist! I don’t know what I would do without her. And I signed up for Yoga Teacher Training. It was something that I had always wanted to do, but it was never the right time. After the “sobering” view of my life, I decided that I was doing it, and nothing was going to stop me. The rest is history.

Obviously, teaching yoga has been deeply transformative for me. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to actually teach at first. My early motivations were more along the lines of education. I knew I wanted to write and talk more about spirituality. Being a yoga teacher could be a platform for that. What I wasn’t expecting was for the philosophy and energy systems behind yoga – aspects of the practice that are often overlooked in Western yoga practices – would begin my journey to healing deep-seated trauma. I also didn’t realize that this healed—or continually healing—version of myself, who once dreamed of sharing these transformative practices with my colleagues in public safety, would soon have the opportunity to create meaningful change in my community and present these practices (and more!) on stage at international conferences.

When I talk about my work, I often tell people that I have to pinch myself that this is really my life. And that’s mostly because this was NOT THE CASE just a handful of years ago.

Over the past several years, there have been times when I have slipped back into old habits, particularly when I’ve been in mourning or when life has just been kicking my ass.

But when I rededicate myself, not to sobriety, but to CLARITY, to feeling all the feels without turning away or numbing, it reminds me of my wholeness, my inner worth, and what I (and all of you) deserve: to wake up in the morning ready to make a difference, and to whole-heartedly reject the ideas, the people, and yes, the substances that dim my inner light.

The Butterfly Effect: On Wanting to Be Something You’re Not

~ Katie Carlson ~ 2 Comments

The Butterfly Effect: On Wanting to Be Something You’re Not

I’ll blame the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad summer I had for this delusion I had of wanting to become a butterfly.

Not an actual butterfly, of course. I know I’m not an insect. But I’d been in such a dark place – from a severe infection on my leg, to losing my sweet, sweet dog Oke, and sustaining injuries in a car wreck that totaled my car- that I saw a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of getting accepted into an exclusive training program.

I had it all planned out. I would travel across the country, I’d knock the socks off the other students and instructors with my experience, my passion, and my knack for teaching. When I came back, I’d re-emerge from the dark cocoon of grief, illness, and injury, brighter, shinier, and ready to make an enormous impact by sharing my new skill set.

But that’s not what happened. Not at all.

Instead of the transformation I’d hoped for, I came back sleep-deprived and disillusioned, a rough version of myself. I even lost four pages of raw reflections I’d written, which I thought might be for the best. 

As I traveled home, inspired by one of my favorite podcasts – “The Emerald Podcast” – I wrote out a long plan for a detox, and a reset. The primary focus of this period of cleansing and renewal would be getting enough sleep, a subject matter that I teach, but know from a lifetime of experience that it’s easier said than done.

Slowly but surely, I started to feel like my normal self again, and for the second time that summer, I pulled myself up out of a deep, dark hole.

The evening I returned home from San Francisco, I met up with one of my best friends for dinner, and over our conversation, it dawned on me: I didn’t need to become someone different. I just needed to come back to myself.  I’m not a butterfly. I’m Katie Carlson. Purposeful, passionate, playful, resilient, unapologetic Katie.

It’s hard to blame myself for wanting life to be different, but I was failing to utilize one of the most powerful tools in my toolbox, me. My truest, most authentic self.

Like many people, particularly women, I struggle with “imposter syndrome”. As a civilian working in the field of law enforcement wellness, I feel pulled between knowing that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, and a sense of defensiveness, feeling I need to prove that I belong in my field.

This sense of wanting to fit in draws me toward certain modalities of healing and wellness because they are more highly “accepted” in the field of public safety. My belief in the power of these more accepted modalities is deeply real. I’ve witnessed them in action. I’ve watched them work, over and over again. But that doesn’t mean I need them to justify my existence.

One positive thing, however, stuck out from the training. Even in a room of incredibly impressive people, folks with unmistakable credentials in the field, when the topic of conversation turned to holistic wellness practices, like yoga, wellness, and breathwork – and it did on multiple occasions – suddenly my credentials were unmistakable. 

Compared to about 64 hours of training in the widely-accepted healing modality, and another 24-30 as a practitioner, my yoga teacher training was 200 hours, and my meditation teacher training was 300 hours. I’ve taught almost 450 hours of yoga, and about 100 hours of teaching meditation. I’ve spent more than 400 hours, just since 2021, in my own meditation practice, and over 18 years, it’d be impossible to guess how many hours I’ve spent in yoga practice, but at least 1,000.

I don’t need to justify my existence, nor do I need to doubt the impact of my work in the field of public safety. The proof is in the pudding.

This whole thing has given me a much higher degree of compassion for people I see trying to figure out who they are, folks who are trying to figure out the truest version of themselves. So long as they aren’t causing harm, I’ll now try to suspend my judgment of them as inauthentic.

I went through a course recently with one of my favorite teachers, Nikki Myers, called “Healing Secrets, Healing Self”, and she would often reference Michaelangelo’s meticulous work on the statue of David in which discussed the pre-existing completeness of the status, noting that he just needed to chip away at everything that wasn’t David.

Our paths to authenticity, more often than not, are a matter of subtraction, not addition.

Over the course of our lives, we pick up a lot of stories. Families tell us what we should value. Political parties tell us how we should vote. Religious doctrines tell us what we should believe. Industries tell us how we should look. Corporations tell us what our goals should be. Social media accounts tell us how we should be doing in comparison with others.

All of this conditioning, all of these added layers, sediment, if you will, cloud our vision of the truest version of ourselves. The self that has always been there, that will always be there. 

I saw an Instagram post recently that said “Two people to impress: Your 5-year-old self and your 85-year-old self.”

So there’s good news, and there’s bad news. The good news is that we can in fact metamorphosize, though the timeline is different from that of a butterfly. We can transform our bodies, our minds, and our souls. The bad news is that you aren’t going to come out on the other side a different person. Yep, sorry, you’re stuck with you.

All of the physical conditioning and plastic surgery in the world can’t change the purity of your child-like soul and it can’t erase the scars that have been acquired along the way. But you can shed all of the things that you are not.

Unlike the metamorphosis of a butterfly, which is brief and linear, human transformation is cyclical and deeply rooted in our previous life experiences. Our transformation is ongoing, and even our truest, and most authentic versions of ourselves can shift and take new forms over time. 

When you are in your purpose, living your truth, being your most authentic self, it won’t matter what anyone else thinks. You might fall. You probably will, but you’ll fall forward. You might get criticized, but it can’t hurt you.

It might take some shedding, some cleansing, some experimentation to find the real you. But you’ll know it when you find it.

Mirroring and a Yoga Yell: Reflections on Five Years of Teaching Yoga

~ Katie Carlson ~ 1 Comment

Monday, March 4th, 2024 was the five year anniversary of my Community Yoga class in Garfield Park, which means it was also my fifth anniversary of being an actual yoga teacher. I completely missed the anniversary, despite Community Yoga falling on a Monday and on the exact day. 

Our class – and I say “our” because it’s truly a class that belongs to our community – has bounced around to several locations. It began in the Burrello Family Center. About a year in, we were shut down due to COVID, we started back up outside that Fall, we took another pause, started back up outdoors that next Spring, moved inside to the Garfield Park Arts Center, first upstairs, and then downstairs, moved back outside, and now we’re at the Burrello Center again.

You know the saying “the more things change, the more they stay the same”? It was surreal coming back to the Burrello Center. I could feel the flood of terror I felt as a first time yoga teacher wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into, and arriving nearly 45 minutes early every week to walk around the room in circles repeating mantras to myself.

I almost didn’t go through yoga teacher training for one main reason. I’m not great at distinguishing my right from my left, or, it takes considerable thought, and sometimes looking for the “L” shape in my left hand. As a navigator, I drove many drivers crazy by simply pointing and saying “this way” or “that way” or “left, no I mean right!”

It didn’t stop me, though, because I didn’t think that I’d actually want to teach yoga. In fact, I’d convinced myself of that. “It’s just a way for me to get some additional education in the spiritual realm,” I’d say. “I’m mostly just interested in learning more about the philosophy of yoga. I love philosophy!,” I’d reason.

Well, the joke’s on me. 

I didn’t love teaching at first. It terrified me. I had imposter syndrome. I questioned my own authenticity. I picked apart my classes. I picked apart my appearance in the front of the classroom. Ironically, I didn’t start to love teaching until after the pandemic hit.

In the earliest days of the lockdown, I began “Yoga Lunch Breaks” on Facebook Live. A classic millennial, I felt a little more comfortable with a screen between me and my audience. But it became a lot more than that. When people were scared of them and their children and their parents of getting sick and dying, unable to leave their homes or obtain household basics, like cleaning supplies, I learned what it really meant to “hold space”. While acknowledging the fear and uncertainty in the world around us, I had the opportunity to create an accessible practice for people to connect to their body and their breath. It meant a lot to a lot of people, and it still gets brought up from time to time.

Teaching full length classes online, along with the Daily Lunch Breaks, helped me grow more confident as a teacher, and by the time Community Yoga was able to start back up outside, I was hitting my stride.

I had intentionally chosen to wait until I felt comfortable teaching yoga before requesting to teach it at the Marion County Sheriff’s Office Training Academy. I did not want to “practice” on incoming law enforcement personnel. I wanted to know that I could deliver them high quality classes. But by December of 2020, I was ready. One of my dear colleagues, now-Lieutenant Jason Kirlin, who oversees all physical training at the MCSO Academy, attended that first class for Detention Deputies, and immediately included yoga in the physical training of the next Deputy class. Without his belief in the benefits of the practice for law enforcement, I can hardly imagine that I would be in the position that I am today.

By June of 2021, I was teaching at the Indiana Law Enforcement Training Academy, as well as the Indiana State Police Training Academy, thanks to my friend, and an incredible trainer and leader in public safety wellness, Troy Torrence.

The rest, as they say, is history. Once I started teaching incoming law enforcement personnel, I never stopped. I also don’t shut up about it.

Another opportunity landed in my lap during the Summer of 2021. I had the opportunity to go through Mindfulness and Meditation Teacher Training through the Engaged Mindfulness Institute, a training organization under the same umbrella of the Center for Mindfulness in Public Safety, through which I met Troy, and several others who are now good friends.

Like the concern about knowing my left from my right, I had concerns about becoming a meditation teacher, too. Primarily, that I didn’t meditate that much. The opening “silent retreat” via Zoom almost killed me. I’d gone from meditating sometimes for about twenty minutes to being expected to meditate for hours a day. If I hadn’t been home by myself, I might have killed someone. I thought I had made a big mistake.

But as the training went on, I was soothed by a heavy emphasis on philosophy (“I love philosophy!”). Then, as we got into the techniques of teaching, not just teaching, or guiding meditations, but facilitating, something clicked in me. For years before I had been a volunteer at Girls Incorporated of Greater Indianapolis. I taught hundreds and hundreds of girls, usually between the ages of 9 and 11, in a variety of life skills, like conflict management and media savvy. I loved teaching the girls, but eventually parted ways with the organization. For a while, I felt that I didn’t have much to show for that investment in time (hundreds of hours over eight years). But as I began to facilitate meditation courses, I realized that not only did I have hundreds of hours in facilitation practice, but that training willing or required (in the case of recruits) adults is WAY easier than 9 to 11 year old girls. That transference of skill was such a blessing.

I’ll admit it. While I LOVE teaching yoga, I love teaching mindfulness and meditation even more. I think it’s a matter of accessibility…something that has always been very important to me. So while it would be unreasonable to expect everyone to love yoga (although I try to teach it in a way that makes it feel as good as possible), everyone, and I mean everyone, can benefit from mindfulness and meditation.

It makes me giggle because I remember in yoga teacher training when my teacher, the beloved Marsha Pappas, warned us against using a “yoga voice” or using an unnaturally soft, wispy voice to teach yoga. She said to just be ourselves. It’s easier said than done. When you have a room full of people who come with an expectation of leaving more relaxed than when they arrive, you want to sound soothing. However, when I teach yoga and meditation at the Indiana Law Enforcement Training Academy, it is me, in a gym, and about 150-160 cadets. I don’t have a “yoga voice”, I have a “yoga yell”. That same “yoga yell” carries outdoors for our Community Yoga class. And yet, somehow, people, whether they are in the Park, or at the Training Academy, still tend to leave a little more relaxed than when they came. So there must be something to that sense of authenticity.

And how are things going with my left and right, you ask? Well, in the past year or so, I have taught myself how to mirror, so that when I’m facing a class, and calling out for them to step their right foot forward, I’m stepping my left foot forward, mirroring them. I’m still surprised I can do this, but I can observe the considerable impact this skill has on my effectiveness as a yoga teacher and demonstrating the poses, especially to those totally new to yoga. But sometimes I still have to shout out, “left, no! I mean right!” and vice versa.

All this is to say, I can’t believe I’ve been teaching for five years. I can’t believe it’s ONLY been five years. It feels like a lifetime. I’m grateful to so many people… my many teachers, my friends and colleagues at the Training Academies, and every student (probably close to 2,000) who has ever trusted me with a configuration of their body or their breath. And I’m so excited to see where it goes from here.

5 Lessons from 500 Days of Meditation

~ Katie Carlson ~ 1 Comment

I’ve been waiting to write about meditation. First, I passed the point of 100 consecutive days, and though the benefits of the daily practice were practically bursting out of me, I thought that 100 days wasn’t impressive enough. I’ll share at the one year mark, I thought.

The one year mark came and went amidst a lot of chaos, chaos that was softened by leaning heavily on my meditation practice. But with no time to write about it.

But on December 12, 2023, I hit 500 days of consecutive meditation practice! 

Mindfulness meditation practice has made a huge impact on my life, but I’m going to boil what I’ve learned over 500 consecutive days of meditation down to 5 lessons.

  1. Be Your Own Biggest Cheerleader. If there is one biggest impact that mindfulness meditation practice has had on my life, it’s this. I spent decades of my life beating myself up. Whether it be harshly judging my actions and/or my appearance, or comparing myself to others, I was not nice to me. But in meditation practice, there’s an opportunity to change that running narrative. Sometimes people think that meditation is about being able to concentrate for a certain amount of time without being distracted, so they think they “aren’t good at it”. But meditation is about recognizing when your mind wanders, and gently, with kindness toward yourself, bringing your attention back. That sense of kindness toward myself… replacing the “Katie, you suck at this” with “That’s okay! Just bring your attention back!” seeped into the rest of my self-talk. Over time, I’ve gone from my own worst critic, to my own biggest cheerleader, and the cheer is: “It’s okay! Keep going!”
  1. Show Up for Yourself. Sometimes self-care is described as “putting on your own oxygen mask first”, which is apt, especially if you frequently put the needs of others above your own, or are pouring from an empty cup. But the truth is that service to others isn’t the only reason that we don’t give ourselves the self-care we need. Stress and overwhelm can make us forget about our true capacity to show up for ourselves. We may also forget that showing up for ourselves doesn’t have to mean finding an hour to take a yoga class, or a twenty minute meditation. My teacher, Fleet Maull, taught that in mindfulness, we must “take our seat”. That may mean taking our seat on an actual meditation cushion, but it also just means showing up, and arriving at your practice. The secret is that even if you just show up for yourself for one minute, or five minutes, “It’s okay!” (see above). 
  1. Just Breathe. Our breath is so important. When we can control nothing else around us, we can control our breath. And while we’re lucky that we don’t have to think about each breath we take, our bodies SAVOR the intentional assistance with our breath. There is a lot of anatomy and neuroscience behind breath work, and why it’s so effective, but I’m not going to rehash that here. But I joke as I’m teaching breath work, yoga, mindfulness, meditation, and other resilience practices to public safety personnel, “Have you noticed that we are mostly just breathing?!” As you read this sentence, take three big, deep breaths. Then notice how you feel. Your body and mind will thank you.
  1. Actively Direct Your Energy. This might tie with softening my self-talk for the biggest impact that mindfulness has had on my life. Or they just go hand-in-hand. It’s pretty simple, actually. We can passively let life happen to us, or we can make choice after choice after choice to spend our energy on the things that are important to us. But first, it helps to be crystal clear about what’s important to you. Make a list. Mine is something like: family, friends, my dog OkeDoke, my personal health and self-care, my work, my hobbies (like climbing and teaching), serving my community, my relationship with God, and all people, beings, and things. Then make another list. What gets in the way of those things that are important in your life? We practice mindfulness meditation not so we can qualify for the Best Meditator Ever Award, but so we can strengthen our muscle of mindfulness – that noticing of when our mind has wandered, and gently bringing it back – so that we can live our lives with our energy and attention directed at the things that really matter. Recognize what distracts you (phones, meaningless drama, bad habits, etc.), and direct your attention and energy back to the things on this first list. And guess what! If you get distracted, and have to start over, “It’s okay!”
  1. You Can Always Start Again. As the Japanese proverb, and many other iterations go, “Fall down seven times, and get up eight.” Whether you’re directing your attention during a five minute guided meditation practice, or implementing a new self-care routine, it doesn’t matter how many times you have to start over, as long as you start over. It’s totally okay.

Bonus: Some of my favorite authors, like Gretchen Rubin and James Clear, write about “habit stacking”, one of the most useful methods I’ve used to implement healthy habits. So while I hope to have convinced you to consider adding a mindfulness meditation practice to your life, think about what you are already doing. Do you pull into a certain parking spot each day? Stack a 1 minute mindfulness practice onto parking. But another option is this: Stack your mindfulness practice with a gratitude practice and/or prayer. They go hand in hand. And I won’t promise much, but I’ll promise this. You’ll never regret taking three big breaths and listing three things you are grateful for.

Start small, folks. My meditation practice took many years, many 21 Day Challenges, many courses, many articles, many apps, and a 300 Hour Meditation Teacher Training to develop – not to mention the past 500 (!) days – and I get distracted during meditation ALLLLLLL THE TIME. I’m always interested in deepening my practice, including extending the length of the practice. But the current length (about 20 minutes daily, followed by gratitude and intention setting) is one that fits well into my morning routine, and is something that I can maintain. It’s been encouraged that I participate in annual silent mindfulness meditation retreats and everything inside of me pouts, “But I don’t wanna”. My practice has lots of room to grow, but for now, it is where it is and that’s okay.

I’m endlessly grateful for the people and organizations who have helped me develop this practice. It started with the Center for Mindfulness in Public Safety, including my teachers and friends Dr. Fleet Maull, Vita Pires, John MacAdams, Julie Paquette, and Robert Ohlemiller. I completed my 300 Hour Mindfulness and Meditation Teacher Training through the Engaged Mindfulness Institute, with the same amazing people listed above.