Imagine before each important promotional meeting, debrief session, or arrival onto the fire ground, you could silence the ever-present inner critic. The critic’s voice sounds something like this: You’re not qualified, you don’t belong, and you will inevitably fail, so why make the effort? This self-sabotaging voice largely flies under the radar of our awareness. But understanding it is the doorway into boosting our personal power and stepping into the driver seat of our lives.
The key to managing the inner critic is learning how to manage the mind. This is where yoga comes in. Many people don’t realize how much you can learn about your mind through yoga, and that its central tenet is to calm the fluctuations of the mind. Understanding your mind through yoga increases your ability to lead your life from a place of self-awareness and personal power rather than allowing self-defeating thoughts and fear take control.
During my teenage years and early twenties, before I started practicing yoga, I learned how to muffle and, more often than not, muzzle my inner critic, at least long enough to progress through high school and college. But this constant battle waging inside of me required my continual vigilance for fear that if I let my guard down by listening to all the self-doubts and judgments about myself and others, I would drown in a sea of despair.
This feeling of being victimized by the relentless rushing of my thoughts left me feeling frequently exhausted and depleted. Temporary relief was possible through sleep, exercise, and hanging out with friends. Fortunately, my coping strategies were fairly healthy. But being alone or idle produced a lot of anxiety for me. I addressed my anxiety by keeping a dizzying schedule.
It wasn’t until I started practicing yoga that I realized there was a third option. I didn’t have to feel oppressed or out of control by my thoughts. Instead, I could learn how to watch the noisy, anxious, chaotic space inside my head without having to do anything about it. Like sitting on a riverbank and watching a leaf or a twig swept by on a strong current.
Witnessing or observing the mind, also referred to as meta-cognition, is a superpower we all have. In fact, the ability to pop out of your thoughts and simply watch them, without judging the thoughts as true or untrue, good or bad, is a powerful capability that is linked to positive mental health and resilience. Both necessary components of self-leadership.
When we are completely identified with our thoughts, with the nonstop chatter in our minds, we tend to check out of what’s actually going on around us—kind of like a trance that separates us from present moment reality. For example, in the middle of a conversation with a friend, suddenly you’re no longer tracking the conversation and instead are thinking about a hurtful email you sent a colleague, and how to enact damage control. Popping out of the trance and returning to the conversation you’re having with your friend is a demonstration of personal
power, and something we can train for.
As a yoga teacher for firefighters, I spend a lot of time in our classes exercising the muscles of meta-cognition. How does it work? One of the most powerful practices is called pranayama, or breath control. Each yoga class I lead starts with connecting with the breath. And here’s the thing about breathing–you can’t breathe in the past or the future. Breathing happens in the present moment and about 25,000 times a day. That’s 25,000 chances each day to pop out of thought streams and return to the present moment.
What happens when you’re in the present moment? You can let go of the relentless rush of thoughts and connect with your body, checking in and noticing how you’re feeling. Being in the here and now without the distraction of negative thoughts opens up a space for creativity, selfawareness and better decision making. In FireFlex Yoga, firefighters develop a process using the body, breath, and concentration to anchor the mind to the present moment. In practically every class, I hear stories about how using pranayama breathing during high-pressure calls helps firefighters deal with stress and make clear decisions. Here’s a sample FireFlex Yoga 60-minute class:
- 1. We start by connecting to the rhythm of the breath, which I call a Home Base, thanks to mindfulness teacher Jeff Warren whose content can be found on Calm.
- Next, staying connected to the Home Base, we begin to practice physical postures. I cue the group to move from focusing on their breath to feeling bodily sensations. For example, a posture that most people have heard of is a downward facing dog posture. Many people can feel the sensation of the hands and feet pressing into the floor, or the stretching of the hamstrings. While we are focusing on the feeling of pressing into our palms, what are we not focusing on? That’s right, we’re not focusing on all that noise inside our minds. Inevitably, the mind will be carried away by a thought current. When we notice we have drifted, we can pop-out of thinking and return to feeling, like the hands and feet in contact with the floor.
- We end the class by once again relaxing on our backs and connecting with the breath. When I started practicing yoga, I had no idea that 20 years later I would be leading a team of elite yoga teachers, working with dozens of fire departments and introducing yoga to thousands of firefighters. But what I learned from my yoga practice is that the only person we can truly lead is ourselves.
Shannon McQuaide
FireFlex Yoga Founder
Shannon McQuaide is an entrepreneur, educator, and author with nearly 20-years experience creating empowering instructional programs for first responders, corporations, municipalities, and public schools. She created FireFlex Yoga, a data-driven wellness program for firefighters, using science-based yoga techniques to de-escalate stress and to support peak performance in high-risk environments. She is a functional movement trainer, a certified yoga teacher, a behavioral health coach, and an Advisory Board Member of CORDICO.
Shannon comes from a “fire family” with several firefighters close to her including her father, uncle, and sister. She pursued yoga, in addition to a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and a master’s in transformational leadership. As a recognized author in her industry, Shannon’s book, The Conscious Warrior: Yoga for Firefighters and First Responders, will be published Spring 2021.