Sometime last year I started doing yoga down at our local YMCA. I realize a statement like that may raise a conservative Christian eyebrow or two; and for others it may seem about as “radical” as if I simply said, “I’ve been trying to exercise more.” So, recognizing that in some of the courtrooms of Christian opinion, the jury’s still out on the whole yoga question, let me qualify my statement by explaining that, when the instructor tells us set an “intention” for our practice, I always make it my intention “to glorify God”; and when she tells us to thank our selves for participating, I always specifically thank Jesus for giving me a body and keeping me healthy; and when she says “Namaste” at the end, I always say “God bless you,” instead.
I’m sort of a rebel that way.
And if that doesn’t help any of you wondering what a Christian Pastor (a pretty conservative one, at that) is doing doing yoga of all things, let me also explain that it has to do with something I learned the hard way about the “ethical imperative of self-care.” I know very little about yoga, actually, but I do know that heavy muscle work releases endorphins into the body’s system; and I know that focusing on just breathing slowly and intentionally for a while has a calming effect on me; and I know that I feel really good after a good hour of quietly stretching and balancing myself.
In short: yoga is something I’ve found I can do to take care of myself. And like I say, I learned the hard way—the “crash-and-burn-out” hard way—that taking care of one’s self in ministry is, in fact, an ethical imperative. “Imperative,” as in, it’s something that you should do, and “ethical” as in it’s wrong not to do it. As a pastor I have an ethical responsibility to take care of, not just my spiritual health, but also my mental, and emotional, and physical health as well.
I say I learned this the hard way because for a long time in ministry I placed very little importance on self-care. I was lax when it came to guarding my Sabbath times; I did not take things like rest, sleep, recreation, or nutrition seriously; I had terrible ergonomics at my desk at work; I never said “no.” I didn’t necessarily think I was doing anything “unethical” in neglecting these things, it’s just that—work was too demanding to stop for lunch—there was always more to do than could fit into just 6 days a week—and, hey, I could usually get by just fine on 5 hours of sleep a night, and then catch up on the weekend.
But then, as I shared in last week’s post, I reached a point in ministry where the emotional drain and the physical demands and the spiritual pressures of this very unique kind of work finally caught up to me. It was like my mental health was a credit card and for five years I’d been racking up the bill and just making the minimum payments. Then one day I was standing at the “till” of my life and the “credit card” was finally maxed out. No matter how hard I swiped it, there was just no room left on the account.
I’m speaking metaphorically, of course, but it was not metaphorical, what happened. As things got more and more difficult for me emotionally, I began doing what, as I’ve learned, most people do when they are in this place. I began to self-medicate. This is one of the most important lessons I learned through my burn-out, and the hardest: that when we are under stress, if we aren’t practicing self-care, we will start to self-medicate to deal with it. This is why self-care is an ethical imperative, because unlike self-care, which is constructive, self-medication tends to be destructive.
I don’t want to sensationalize anything, so I won’t go into details, but let me just say this. For some people, self-medication happens through things like substance-abuse, risk-taking behaviours, binge-spending, viewing pornography, stuff like that. By God’s grace my form of “self-medication” didn’t lead me down any of those dark roads. It was more about me looking for cathartic ways to vent the turmoil I was in and usually ended with my having physically hurt myself and feeling finally some vague sense of relief. It was much less “serious” than the kinds of self-medication that some people have hit upon as ways of dealing with the stress of their circumstances, but it was serious enough that, having come through the other side, I can say it from experience that a wise, balanced self-care plan is far, far better than a desperate form of self-medication. And if you don’t have the former, your brain will probably start looking for the latter, without telling you it’s doing so.
Which brings me back to yoga. Yoga is hardly the only thing I do to take care of myself, but it is, for the reasons I mentioned above, one of the things I do. And whether or not saying “God bless you” instead of “Namaste” makes any difference, I do know that I feel far closer to Jesus—and better equipped to serve him—when I’m taking my responsibility of self-care seriously.
If any of this is ringing true for you today, let me add a few other practical things I do by way of self-care, just so you don’t think it’s all downward dogs and exalted warrior poses for me. Here’s my list in no particular order:
1. Guarding my Sabbath—as best I can, and making it Holy to the Lord.
2. Having an Accountability Partner—we meet on roughly a monthly basis to talk about this stuff, and more.
3. Playing squash weekly with a good friend—recreation has a way of “re-creating” things in you.
4. Getting Good Nutrition—I’m still working on this one, because I have a really bad habit of skipping meals, but as I’m learning, the body needs fuel, and coffee on its own is not really fuel.
5. Getting Enough Sleep—another work in process, but I no longer regard operating on 5-hours a night as an act of heroism.
6. Practicing proper ergonomics at work—no more hours on end hunched over a tiny laptop screen.
7. Exercising regularly at the Y—heavy muscle-work really does release endorphins; I try to get to the gym at least three times a week.
8. Connecting more regularly and intentionally with friends and family—I have a tendency to be socially withdrawn, but studies have shown that positive social interactions actually release a hormone called telemorase that slows aging and heals us from the effects of stress.
9. Volunteering in the Community—I volunteer at a song-writers club at a local elementary school, another great source of telemorase for me.
10. Being Creative—writing poetry, composing songs, making music, doing art, whatever it is, I’ve found that if I don’t have something creative going on in my life, my mental health suffers.
11. Walking to work—I sit a lot at my job, obviously, so this vigorous 30 minute walk, much of it through quiet green parks and peaceful neighbourhood streets is daily balm for me.
This list may seem kind of silly to some. It may just seem like common sense to others. But inasmuch as I’ve learned how important self-care really is for longevity and effectiveness in ministry, it’s important for me see it in writing like that.
If you are a pastor, like me, let me suggest to you that your temperament, your training, and your work alike all condition you to being others-oriented and hesitant to think seriously about your own needs. This is an occupational hazard. But so is burn-out. So to avoid the latter, let me encourage you to spend some time on the former, if you haven’t ever done so, and give some serious thought to how you are responding to the ethical imperative of self-care. It may not be yoga for you, but by God's grace may we all find ways to take care of ourselves, so that we are fully able to lose them in him.
In the Buddhist tradition there's this teaching about something called "The Hungry Ghost" which is a certain way of being or spiritual state. A hungry ghost is a spirit with a very narrow throat and a huge distended belly; it's always stuffing itself but never filled. It's a picture of human emptiness and spiritual despair at its worst.
