Lessons, p.6
Lessons, page 6
But I’m getting ahead of myself. With Amy as my teacher, I began doing alternate-nostril breathing every morning right as the sun was coming up. It got easier with practice. Meditation helps to cultivate the feeling of being present. Presents means gifts, and for me presence was the most amazing gift I could have received.
Sometimes people ask me what role yoga plays in my life today. The simple answer is that, for me, yoga, like meditation, helps me to remain present. When I get off a long plane ride I may do a few simple sun salutations or hip-openers. If I’m in Costa Rica and have the morning free, I like to do yoga with my friend Cris. I just love the exchange of energy that comes from practicing with another person. If I’m in the car and someone else is driving, I’ll do my pranayama breathing in the backseat on the way to a studio, or while I’m listening to chants from devotional singers like Snatam Kaur or Krishna Das, whose voices I listened to during both my pregnancies and the births of my children. Yoga can be helpful in so many ways. Whether it involves music or mantras or breath work or meditation, it is a powerful and beautiful spiritual practice. Yoga gave me back my life.
It also motivated me to start looking inward. I decided to look closely—for the first time—at my life, to examine what was really going on with me and what role I was playing. How had I even reached this point? Why, with so many good things taking place in my life, at least on the surface, was so much else going wrong? Over the years, I’ve come to believe in the importance of positive attitudes. I believe that the quality of our life is directly linked to our attitudes. When my anxiety attacks started happening, people who knew me felt sorry for me. It would have been easy to buy into that way of thinking: Why is this happening to me? Poor me! Why am I having anxiety attacks? I’m such a good person! But if I did that, I would have seen myself as a victim. And I’ve always believed that when you start seeing yourself as a victim, you surrender your power, and it can be hard to get it back. From the practice of yoga and meditation, I was able to see things from a different perspective. I began to ask myself: Gisele, why is this situation happening for you? There’s an opportunity here—what can you learn from this? What is the lesson here?
In no way do I mean to say that if you are experiencing anxiety or depression that you should not ask for help—I did. I also know now that the early twenties are an especially vulnerable time of life. Adolescence is difficult—but your twenties, when you’re still discovering who you are, and what you’re good at, and where your life is going, can be even harder. Young women and men can find themselves experiencing distress they’ve never experienced before, and they can’t understand why. If that is you, get help! It can save your life. But I didn’t know that then. I’d been in charge of myself since I was fourteen, and as far as I was concerned, there was only one person who could rescue me: me. I learned that the only way I could begin that rescue mission was by changing the conversation inside my head.
When I began wondering, Why is this happening to me? a big shift in my thinking got under way. Over the next few days and weeks I began to see myself and my life more clearly. As I started to improve, I asked myself another question: How am I going to deal with this opportunity that life has given me to learn about myself?
Around that time I remember having the strangest feeling: I was falling away from myself and from my ego, as if they were a pair of structures toppling slowly into the surf. Life was showing me something, and its message couldn’t have been clearer. It was up to me now whether I wanted to “see” what life was showing me or to hop back on the hamster wheel. It felt like I was being called on to reject everything that wasn’t supporting or benefiting me and to embrace everything that was.
For example, I told myself that if I was having trouble breathing, it might be a good idea to stop smoking. I’d started when I was seventeen, sweet cigarettes at first, though pretty soon I was hooked on the regular ones. Up to a pack a day. Whenever I wanted to fit in somewhere or try to look cool, I’d light one up. I’d tried quitting a couple of times, made bets with friends, seen an acupuncturist, and read books about stopping, but with no success. Now I told myself the cigarettes had to go. So I stopped. Just like that. I began running, too, thirty minutes every morning, even when it was raining or snowing. It was partly to help with not smoking, but mostly to form a healthier habit. Nothing makes you feel your lungs more than a good hard run.
My new focus on breathing opened me up to new ways of thinking about my other habits and routines, especially my habit of always being “on the go.” Traveling. Pursuing. Answering phone calls and texts and emails. Working all night and every weekend. Feeling guilty if I took even one day off. Telling myself, You have to take this opportunity while it’s here. You can rest later. In that culture’s “belief system,” everything has to lead to something else—money, possessions, getting ahead in the world. Yoga, by contrast, is about being rather than doing. It’s about being here right now, in this moment. Through yoga we learn we’re already everything we need to be.
Over the next few days and weeks it became clear to me how much of my life I’d never taken the time, or given myself the space, to think about. It never occurred to me, for example, that caffeine was an upper, or that cigarettes were stimulants, or that alcohol was a depressant, or that eating junk food and candy every day could affect my body and mood. All I knew was that when I smoked, it was the only time I allowed myself to inhale and exhale fully and deeply. I thought back on all the times I’d been at parties and, feeling hemmed in, on edge, or fidgety, gone downstairs or outside to smoke. Whatever the reason, I told myself I needed a breather. It was true: I did need a breather. Otherwise known as breathing.
Our body is a temple, but it’s also a vehicle. It’s a transportation device. It’s no different from a car or a bike. It has only one passenger in it: the soul. That’s you. That’s me. And at age twenty-three, the vehicle—“my body”—that held together my soul—me—was breaking down. As the person responsible for creating that breakdown, I was also the only one who could fix it. It’s easy to say in hindsight, but if you don’t take care of your body when you’re young, I guarantee you’ll pay the price someday, if not in your early twenties, as I did, then in your forties or fifties.
The changes I set about making in my life came from listening deeply and trusting in myself that there had to be other alternatives. When I began practicing pranayama breathing, I felt like I was entering a new room. Once inside that room, I saw there were other rooms that needed my attention, too. Like the way I ate.
I wasn’t raised to be a very healthy eater. After all, I grew up in a small Brazilian village, and my sisters and I ate what everyone else did—rice and beans with some sort of meat or vegetables. I liked snacking on the chips you could get in the supermarket, and my mother allowed all of us to drink soda on the weekends. I wolfed down Frosted Flakes with milk after volleyball practice. Around the time I quit smoking, I met Dr. Dominique, who told me my adrenal glands had completely burned out. (Whenever I visited his office, in fact, he addressed me as “Miss Adrenaline.”) His theory was that my high levels of stress had caused my adrenal glands to send out too much or too little cortisol, the body’s stress hormone. He made it clear my diet was harming me and advised me to give up all sugar for the next three months. Not just sugar from the wine I was drinking every night but sugar from fruit and from the carbohydrates my body broke down after I ate rice or pasta or bread. Even though I’d always loved chocolate and my morning mocha Frappuccino with whipped cream, I was disciplined—and scared—enough to do as he said.
Cutting out sugar was incredibly difficult. For the first two weeks I suffered from terrible headaches, though whether it was from doing without sugar or caffeine, or a combination, I can’t say. Once my headaches went away, my entire relationship with what I ate was transformed. Was the food I was eating undermining me or supporting me? Was it taking away or giving me energy? Once I began changing my diet, it was impossible to go back. I eliminated fried food and fast food and began eating a lot more vegetables, while also experimenting with raw (uncooked) foods. I went from eating meat twice a day to twice a week. It didn’t take me long to feel the difference in my energy level and, most of all, my mood. (I go into this more in chapter 7.)
There were other things I needed to get rid of, too, I realized—certain relationships weren’t the best for me. Both personal and professional. Sitting in silence I asked myself, Are these relationships good for me? Are they nourishing me? I’ve always believed relationships should be based on love, respect, and trust. I thought about the relationship I was in with my boyfriend at the time. Going through so much turmoil was forcing me to ask deeper questions of myself, and when the person you love isn’t asking those same questions of himself—and why should he have to?—you start to wonder just how much the two of you have in common. No longer numbing myself with smoking, drinking alcohol, and too much work, I was becoming more and more aware of things that I’d chosen not to look at. Was I alone in wanting to do some serious soul-searching while he stayed the same? In the end, unfortunately, the answer was yes. Not to mention that I was devoting pretty much all my energy to changing my own life. It wasn’t my fault or his; we were just in two very different periods of our lives. A wise friend of mine once told me something I’ve never forgotten. Gisele, he said, you have to give people the dignity of their own process. I think about those words a lot. At the same time, it was my choice whether or not to keep someone in my life. The decision didn’t mean I didn’t love that person either. It meant only that I needed to love myself first and surround myself with only those things that would nourish me and those people whom I could trust.
Two or three weeks into my new regime, I began feeling calmer and more centered, more in control. My mind was no longer racing. A month later, I stood in front of the elevator in my building. I am going to get on this thing, I told myself. I did. My hands didn’t sweat. I wasn’t counting off the seconds until I reached the ninth floor. I still had to travel for work. But I no longer needed to lug a machine with me on my flights. Instead I thought, I’m on an airplane. During the flight I’m going to read a book and maybe watch a movie. I was still working, but mostly in contracts I needed to fulfill. I had told my agent I really needed to cut back. People might get upset or might not want to work with me again, but I told myself my well-being was more important. If I didn’t have my health, or my sanity, I wouldn’t have a career—or, for that matter, a life.
My sister Fafi took this photo of Vivi and me in Paris in 2013, doing yoga in the early a.m. before going to work.
After three months of this new regime—yoga and pranayama breathing every morning at sunrise, meditation, exercise, no sugar, and a healthy diet—the panic attacks went away. Sometimes you need to touch rock bottom before realizing how far you have fallen. A warning sign shows up sometimes as a pinch, other times as a punch. We are always getting messages during the day and when we sleep. We can either listen to them and do something about them, or we can block them out. But this experience taught me that if you don’t listen to those messages, the louder and more intense they’ll get. You’ll end up either with an epiphany or with some kind of destruction. Thank God, for me it wasn’t the latter.
Even though that was a very challenging time, it really brought home how it’s my choice to see life either positively or negatively. The first breath we take when we enter our body as newborns we take by ourselves. So is our last. Between those two breaths, we have some important decisions to make. We can’t choose the circumstances of our lives, but we can choose how we experience them. At the end of our lives, do we want to think back on our own bad attitudes and behavior? The moments we acted out of cruelty, or jealousy, or fear, or said something unkind to someone else? Do we want to walk through life weighed down with our pockets full of heavy stones?
Writing in my journal during a yoga retreat, Sedona, Arizona, 2014.
For as long as I can remember, my desire has always been to live in harmony, as lightly and with as few regrets as possible. I’ll give an example. If I become angry at someone, and don’t let it go, but keep thinking about it, the anger can consume me. In fact it will consume me. The only person who can get rid of that anger is me. Why? Because I was the one responsible for creating that anger—which means I’m also the one who’s in charge of getting rid of it. First, though, I need to accept what I’m feeling and why. I need to be completely honest with myself. Is there a real injustice here I need to address, or is this some petty issue I should let go? Is someone else being hurt, or is this anger just hurting me? Only with an openness to learn, accept, and be honest can I ever hope to change. If I don’t acknowledge my anger, I become like a dog locked in the basement who bares his teeth whenever the door opens.
That’s why whenever I feel weighted down by anger or fear, the first thing I do is accept my feelings. I see the turmoil as a visitor just passing through. Then, consciously, I say goodbye to it, knowing I was the one who allowed it to come in the first place. I don’t let go of those feelings because I’m an amazingly unselfish person either! I let go because in the end it’s better for me. The only person living inside my brain, body, and soul is me. No one else is responsible for what I’m feeling. But this also means I’m the only one who can resolve the emotional upheaval.
The family that does tree pose together . . . well, you can probably figure out the rest. That’s Tom holding Vivi, with me, Benny, and Jack in front, Bahamas, 2014.
To my mind, there is nothing worse than reaching the end of your life and knowing you are responsible for hatred or division. I’ve heard it said that we’re born with the faces God gave us but we end up with the faces we deserve. At the end of my life, the only thing that will matter to me is whether or not I was a good person. A loving person. An addition to this life—not a subtraction. Someone who experienced life fully, who lived her truth, who loved life, and the earth, and had a positive impact on the world. I hope my own face someday reflects all of these intentions. My dad used to tell me that at the end of the day, when I put my head on my pillow, I needed to be able to live with every choice I made so I could sleep through the night and wake up in the morning feeling good about myself.
Love is the best therapy. Cuddling with my friend’s cat during a trip with my parents to South Africa when I was working on healing from my panic attacks, Cape Town, 2003.
When I think of love I always think about my family. In 2003, as I was making one change in my life after another, my family became my focus. Living between New York and LA, and traveling all the time, I realized how much I missed my parents and my sisters and how being on the hamster wheel hadn’t just disconnected me from myself; it had also disconnected me from them. When you go through a crisis, or a period when you don’t feel safe, you want to be near the people whose love and support are constant. Our families are our harbors, our safe spaces. No family is perfect, but I believe my family always has my back. When I’m around my parents and sisters, I have no defenses. They accept me as I am, both the shadows and the light, and I do the same with them. We speak a common language. If my sisters and I are talking, and one of us starts crying, a few seconds later we’re all crying. Always. If one of them asks, “Why are you crying?” the answer is always, “I’m crying because you’re crying!”
That’s why later that year I went home to Horizontina. I wanted to be around people who spoke my language, especially since I hadn’t spent much time with my family since I’d left to begin my career. I felt like I was fourteen years old all over again. I drank my mom’s special teas. I helped out with the clothes washing and the housecleaning. At night I helped make empanadas in the kitchen, just as I’d done when I was little. I spent as much time as I could with my five sisters, and that year we even went to Bahia for Carnival together. Slowly I got stronger. Steadier. Happier. I felt more and more at home. At home with myself. At home with the people I loved most, who loved me back.
Most people can’t and shouldn’t go it alone. Asking for help is never a sign of failure but a show of strength and confidence, and knowing your life is worth saving. At the same time, I’m also convinced that none of us learn, or grow, from the easy times in our lives. If my panic attacks hadn’t happened, I would never have felt the need to change. Not physically. Not mentally. Not spiritually. The difficulties that came so close to killing me was, in the end, what gave me a whole new life. The most negative period I’d ever experienced became the most transformative, and the greatest blessing. In many respects, that twenty-three-year-old girl did die. But when she came back, she was much happier and healthier. She had learned about suffering and the many gifts it offers, as well as how the darkest times in our lives can be our greatest teachers.
3
The Quality of Your Life Depends on the Quality of Your Relationships
Gise, my father said to me one day, during our seven-hour drive from the airport in Porto Alegre to our home in Horizontina, at the end of your life, what will you remember? The house you lived in? The car you drove? The magazine covers you were on? He didn’t wait for an answer. No, he said. The quality of your life depends on the quality of your relationships.
My dad and I had a lot of meaningful conversations during the long drives to and from the airport, especially when I was visiting home between the ages of fourteen and fifteen. I would always leave Horizontina with good advice from my father. I often think about what my dad said about relationships. The quality of my life really does depend on the quality of my relationships. The memories of my interactions with the people I love stays with me longer than other experiences. The talks I had with my son before bed. The conversations with my daughter on the drive to school. The moments shared with a partner or a friend over dinner. Imagine how unhappy our lives would be if we spent all our time alone, with no one around us, no one to count on or share our experiences. That’s why the biggest blessings in my life are my husband, my children, my parents, my sisters, my friends, my pets (yes, my pets are my companions too)—who accompany me through my life. Most people probably think that when they leave school they say goodbye to their teachers. But really, all our relationships are teaching us about ourselves one way or another. Because each relationship allows us to see different aspects of ourselves.
