Yoga On and Off the Mat
Yoga On and Off the Mat
I have three main jobs in my life right now. I am a police officer, I am a father and husband, and I am also a part-time yoga teacher. These are three very different jobs, but my yoga background ties them all together.
I started my police job seven years ago I had great co-workers and was getting a ton of experience, but I was still teaching yoga part-time and was having trouble finding balance between the two. They were very separate, when I was at home I was an off duty police officer. When I was in the yoga studio I was a yoga instructor. I never considered myself a police officer who taught yoga.
It wasn’t until I started to observe a couple of veteran officers who worked in that area for a while handle stressful scenes that I realized how useful my yoga background is to my job and how it helps me be a better officer. The officers’ voices would increase a couple of octaves and their speech speed up. It dawned on me that “monkey mind” (as my yoga teacher always called it) was rearing its ugly head at my job with men and women who are used to being exposed to stress.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying they are ill-equipped for dealing with stress, everyone deals with stress differently. However, with my experience practicing yoga I handled stress a little differently than most of my coworkers. I had experience dealing with monkey mind from all the work I did on my mat and while some scenes seemed to get stressful I was able to slow things down and pay attention. The ability to slow things down also helped me deescalate situations.
Two years ago I became a field training officer and the biggest lesson I would teach the new officers that I would get was to breathe and slow down once life started to speed up. This is when I really started to realize that I was taking my practice off my mat and out of the studio and using the practice yoga in life, and I am so glad I made this realization because I found I really needed it for my next adventure…fatherhood!
In November 2015, I embarked on one of the hardest (but best) journeys with my wife, raising a child! As of this post my son is 10-months-old and it has been a wild ride so far. The stress of trying to help a little baby human whose only communication method is crying is unreal! I thought I knew what it felt like to be sleep deprived because of my police job, but raising a child has taken it to a new level. I am so glad to have my yoga training.
Talk about monkey mind, I find that I am constantly thinking about what I need to do – or forgot to do. Time is different too, when you sit in easy seated position for 5 minutes it might feel like 15 minutes. I remember in the early days trying to get my crying baby to sleep seemed like 3 hours, but was really only 30 minutes. I learned how to take these moments and turn them into mediation. I would sit there with my son swaddled, rocking him in the rocking chair, bouncing him, patting his butt, and trying to produce calming shushes. Once I learned the rhythm of this baby meditation and started to pay attention to my son and the little nonverbal cues he would give me, it started to make all of our lives easier!
What this comes down to is that the lessons learned on the mat in yoga class can be used as tools to find more balance in life. The physical therapy that yoga gives your body is absolutely beautiful and something everyone should experience. Once you start paying attention to the work you are doing on your mat, then you can pay attention to how that work can transition to your everyday life too!
About me
Hello, my name is Dan Castan and I have been teaching Yoga in the Northern Virginia area for the last 8 years. I am also a police officer. Yoga came into my life in college while I was studying for my Criminal Justice degree. I picked up Yoga class when I was short on credits one semester. Little did I know it would change my life. I found a way to take yoga for each semester until I graduated then took my 200 hour teacher training course. Now, I use yoga in my everyday life for as many situations as possible and try to help others find that they can do the same. Find out more about me and what I’m up to here