Rahshaana Green: Loosening the Grip on Perfectionism

Elizabeth Rovere:

Hello and welcome to Wonderstruck. I am your host, Elizabeth Rovere. I’m a clinical psychologist, a yoga teacher, and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. I am really curious about experiences of wonder and awe and how they transform us. My guest on this episode is Rahshaana Green. While Rahshaana holds degrees in business and chemistry and has worked in marketing and development positions for much of her professional life, it was an encounter with awe that set her on a new inward path altogether. Now teaching compassion-based resilience training at the Nalanda Institute in New York City and coaching private clients to loosen their grip on perfectionism, Rahshaana continues to explore healing and empowerment, both for herself and others by integrating moments of wonder and awe into everyday life. Rahshaana is here to share the intimate, actionable details of her remarkable journey from inner city Houston to the French Alps and beyond.

Rahshaana, we were talking about this very profound moment of recognition, of awe, of being in the moment when you were in the Alps this summer. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about your experience of that and what came up for you and how it’s affected your life.

Rahshaana Green:

I love to travel. I had to be in Switzerland for something, and instead of taking this short three-year… Three-year?

Elizabeth Rovere:

That’s your wish.

Rahshaana Green:

I wish I could be in Switzerland for three years or in Europe for three years. Three-day trip, I decided to extend it. I saw a friend in Geneva. And what was calling to me was the need for some quiet time, some time just to myself, connecting with nature, so I booked an Airbnb in this small town in France in Grenoble. I booked it specifically so that… I found a place that had a view of the mountains. I’d already pictured this…

Elizabeth Rovere:

Gorgeous.

Rahshaana Green:

…like, ‘I will sit and drink tea and stare at the mountains.’ These were my goals. I didn’t need to shop. I didn’t do anything else. It had wonderful blackout curtains. What it allowed me to do was just sleep until my body told me it was done with sleep. Then I got up and ate whatever delighted me, drank tea, read books, and stared at the mountains. My nervous system just down-regulated in this fascinating way that I can’t recall feeling for a while before then. So, of course, I’m having all of these breakthroughs, I’m like, ‘Wow, it’s been too long since I’ve experienced this.’

But as I’m sitting there staring at the mountains, it just wasn’t lost on me that this girl that grew up in the ghetto… I remember seeing the Eiffel Tower on TV as a child and was like, ‘Wow, that is amazing. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be able to see something that glorious.’ I’m going to get teary as I say this. When I saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time…

Elizabeth Rovere:

You just couldn’t believe it.

Rahshaana Green:

…I cried. I couldn’t believe how fortunate I was that it had come to be that I could do that, and that was years before. And so, this recent trip to Switzerland and I’m sitting in this small town in France, I was in awe, true awe that I’d somehow made… had the fortune to work into this place of privilege where I could make a choice like this and have access to something so beautiful and so peaceful, and so very different from the way the space and neighborhoods that I grew up in. And so, just that juxtaposition, that different sense in your nervous system and to know that I had access to that means it was in awe.

Elizabeth Rovere:

It’s so profound and I’m moved hearing you describe it. I almost feel like I don’t even want to say anything to take away from it, and yet I’m talking. My associations are awe, gratitude, self-compassion, a deep appreciation…

Rahshaana Green:

Deep.

Elizabeth Rovere:

…recognition. There’s so much in what you just said.

Rahshaana Green:

Deep, deep gratitude. Deep gratitude for the ability to touch into that and access that kind of beauty and that peace. Peace is the word that keeps coming to mind, peace, and peace as a means to having space.

Elizabeth Rovere:

The world opens up.

Rahshaana Green:

The world opens up in a beautiful way, in a way that’s hard to even explain in words.

Elizabeth Rovere:

I think about that, it’s like what can we do with our imagination to engage it so that we feel like we’re sitting there looking at the Alps? I’m not measuring mine, but I had the exact same experience. I can feel it. I can feel my body just go like this…

Rahshaana Green:

Oh, I know.

Elizabeth Rovere:

…when I’m looking at the ocean and there’s not the sirens or just traffic.

Rahshaana Green:

It’s a gift. But if you don’t have the means or ability to do that, how can you touch into that?

Elizabeth Rovere:

Right. How do you take that, like the vision, say for example, of the Alps, using it at almost as a metaphor, of bringing that… going inside and finding that place of calm, so there’s a way in which you can carry it as you’re walking outside in Manhattan or wherever or getting on a plane or I don’t know, whatever it is. It could be anything, right?

Rahshaana Green:

It’s navigating the day.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Stressing yourself. Yeah, getting lost.

Rahshaana Green:

Yeah, getting through the day.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Maybe, Rahshaana, this leads us into CBRT, Compassion-Based Resiliency Training, because when I was looking at that and thinking about it and reading through it, I was like, ‘Oh, let me just… ’ I have it written down, it says… Yeah, well, I guess I should ask you, well, “What exactly is this fascinating CBRT?” And then this module, which… it says, ”Healing reactive emotions and beliefs with self-compassion,” I was like, ‘I could deal with some of that.’

Rahshaana Green:

Couldn’t we all. So, what would I say succinctly about Compassion-Based Resilience Training? First, it’s one of my favorite things that I learned at Nalanda Institute.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Because you studied it and then you became one of the main teachers.

Rahshaana Green:

It was actually one of the first things I did. Coming into Nalanda Institute, I signed up to do this teacher training program which is about a six-month – a nine-month program if you do both parts… So, you walk through each of these eight modules in detail, so you get to understand the science behind it, neuroscience, psychology, positive psychology, and you get opportunities to practice, I guess, putting it into your own language and practice teaching it. Each module involves some meditations, how do you integrate things and give your nervous system and your mind-body a known sense of connecting to something. We integrate meditations to help touch into the concepts, so you start to embody them and connect with them.

If I had to summarize what it provides people with, it allows people to see themselves more clearly in how they are internally and externally when they’re navigating stressful or challenging situations. So, it allows you to both see that clearly – and from that clear seeing and that knowledge to determine ‘What do you want to nurture?’ and ‘What do you want to change about that?’ In that change, we’re talking about healing reactivity with compassion. Once you get introspective and you see some things clearly about yourself, some things that you don’t necessarily love, that you want to change, one of the first places we go is judgment, shame, like, ‘How am I doing that? Why am I still doing that? Why can’t I let that go?’

That doesn’t help us shift anything, that just keeps us locked in to, well, one, talking to ourselves in a very negative way. And so, it encourages that particular step: it encourages you to extend yourself some grace and some patience and understanding – and that change takes time and that we’re all flawed in that way; we all have things about ourselves we want to change. And so encouraging you to give yourself that compassion that sometimes it’s easier to extend to others…

Elizabeth Rovere:

Right. Right.

Rahshaana Green:

…when you see someone trying to make a change. It’s like, notice for yourself that you’re trying to shift something, you’re trying to make a change, and recognize the small bits of progress. Celebrate those instead of looking at how much more there is left to change. The road ahead to perfection is so long.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah, perfection, it’s not what it’s cracked up to be.

Rahshaana Green:

No.

Elizabeth Rovere:

I think about that in the context with the meditation piece because, for myself, I know that I can get wound up and reactive in doing things. And then if I’m like, ‘Okay, okay, I do actually have 20 minutes. I really do have 20 minutes. I’m going to sit down and I’m going to meditate,’ and then I do. I’ve been meditating more or less on and off for about 20 years now – and yet what is going on with my psyche, that it’s still like… sometimes I have to really get myself to do it? And then I always find out it’s like, ‘Oh, suddenly now I have a little bit of space.’ It gave me the space to get some of the reactivity in advance, almost so that some other kinds of answers that I clearly could not have thought of in that state will come. It’s like, ‘Why?’ I should be wanting to do that all the time, right?

Rahshaana Green:

Right. Yeah.

Elizabeth Rovere:

I think with a class maybe in the CBRT group, it’s like you’re with other people, you’re sharing these stories and there’s something about the power of doing it together.

Rahshaana Green:

Oh, yes, shared experience in community. It also helps tear down this thought that we all have, especially once we discover something about ourselves we want to change, ‘Oh, I’m like this,’ and ‘everyone else is better than me’ at whatever it is. Whatever it is you’re trying to learn to do or whatever you’re trying to shift in change. And in community, in these classes, that’s where so much of the learning coalesces and so much of the growth happens is hearing one another share their experiences week to week of how they’ve been challenged, how they typically respond and even the smallest shifts they’re starting to notice in themselves and even the smallest shifts are starting to notice in their meditation practice. I think it’s great you just shared that you’ve been meditating for this amount of time, for over 20 years, and still you can sit down and feel like you’re struggling to collect yourself and stay focused. I always remind people that it’s not about… It’s loosening the grip on perfectionism. It’s like your mind will…

Elizabeth Rovere:

That’s cool.

Rahshaana Green:

…will alternate between being too busy and being dull and spacing out.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Is that what you would say in one phrase, “What is CBRT?” – “Loosening the grip on perfectionism”? Because I kinda like that.

Rahshaana Green:

I think that applies. Absolutely, you do loosen the grip on perfectionism. Once we do that, we’re less judgmental of ourselves, we’re able to – circling back to something you just said – have some space. Once we’ve dropped some of the language about how we’re so awful because we’re not this perfect and how it’s never going to be whatever, some of that falls away, it creates space. That space creates a little silence, a little more silence to hear what else is happening, what else is going on, to notice bandwidth, to notice what shifts are happening – or not – and just noticing. I think, yes, it helps loosen the grip on perfectionism.

Elizabeth Rovere:

You’ve certainly had your experience and, sort of, in… so drawn into perfectionism and high achievement. I don’t know if you are a chemist, but you have a BA in chemistry.

Rahshaana Green:

Yes, in biophysical chemistry. If you needed to know…

Elizabeth Rovere:

Hardcore science?

Rahshaana Green:

If you needed to know how to describe upper level chemistry in mathematical equations, sure…

Elizabeth Rovere:

That’s cool actually. That’s pretty cool.

Rahshaana Green:

…that’ll let you know everything you need to know about me as an overachiever, why I needed to do that.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Well, then you went and got an MBA.

Rahshaana Green:

Yes.

Elizabeth Rovere:

And then you went into the corporate world and you’ve been very successful. That’s great. I mean, that looks really great to the world, right?

Rahshaana Green:

It looks great on paper.

Elizabeth Rovere:

It looks great on paper, but it didn’t feel so great because you were pushing through, you were in survival mode a lot, and you were like, ‘Achieve, achieve, achieve.’ And so, it’s interesting. And then something wasn’t working. I mean, I’m assuming, you didn’t know quite what it was. And then all of a sudden you had a car accident that slowed you down. I understand that’s what brought you more into this contemplative space.

Rahshaana Green:

It really did. When you literally have to have a car accident, an injury, make you stop and pause. There were a few things that weren’t working. There… when you’re in hyper-achievement mode like that, nothing in your now, in your present, is ever… it’s not good enough. You’re not even taking a moment to savor any of that. It’s, ‘What’s next? What’s next?’ I was feeling and hearing a call from within to be using my time in a way that felt purposeful to the world. I didn’t know what that was, and I do remember having this deep sense of frustration like, ‘What is it? What am I supposed to be doing?’ I didn’t know what it was, and I wanted to discover it, but I knew that what I was doing wasn’t it.

But long before I made that shift, car accident happened – and I, of course, landed in physical therapy. But I had a friend… My physical therapist, which was rare at the time, said, “Well, yeah, yoga could be good.” A friend recommended a yoga studio to me. I found myself on a yoga mat. One of my fondest memories, I found myself in a bridge pose for what felt like an eternity, felt like 15 minutes…

Elizabeth Rovere:

It probably was.

Rahshaana Green:

It might have been with this particular practice, and I thought, ‘What is she doing?’ My legs are shaking and they’re on fire. This practice is forest yoga, and it’s a slower moving practice that focuses you on connecting, using your breath to connect to your body and go within…

Elizabeth Rovere:

Mm-hmm, there you go.

Rahshaana Green:

…and get introspective. So, when you’re in a bridge pose for 15 minutes, you can choose to either constantly struggle – stay in struggle of, like, ‘Oh my gosh, when is this going to end? I can’t…’ whatever. Or abort mission – come out of it because you’re like, ‘I’m not doing this anymore.’ Or you can think about how you resource yourself to handle this particular challenge you find yourself in at the moment. You start to learn some things about yourself when you go within. You’re like, ‘Okay, I could come out of this pose. I can keep bitching about it…’ or whatever. But, ‘What am I going to do and how do I want to show up for myself right now?’

Elizabeth Rovere:

Something about it allowed you to have that choice. I don’t know, you were like, ‘Okay, yeah, maybe you do go through a little thing of bitching about it,’ but then you made different choices.

Rahshaana Green:

I started making different choices. And it’s the reason why I love this practice – it’s my personal practice, it’s what I do near daily…

Elizabeth Rovere:

Forest yoga.

Rahshaana Green:

…near daily for myself and I teach it – because it helps people meet themselves.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah. That’s cool.

Rahshaana Green:

You meet yourself. It also, as you’ll start to see how my life is aligning, it also gets you out of perfectionism. This practice is… was my first foray of quieting my mind, connecting with my body, and creating that space to listen. And it’s through my yoga mat that I came to even exploring meditation as a practice.

Elizabeth Rovere:

I guess I think about that in the context of this podcast and Wonderstruck, and I wonder about, in the yoga or hitting that place of transformation, did you have some kind of experience like that where it’s like, ‘Oh, my God, what have I been doing?’

Rahshaana Green:

Absolutely. And I had that experience somewhere within that first year of entering that practice. But I have that experience. We just talked about how do you capture that experience in the Alps and bring that within? How do you integrate that into your daily life? My yoga practice allows me to touch into that same… those bits of awe. Because awe isn’t just something we can experience externally. I have moments where I experience awe when I have a breakthrough that I didn’t know it could happen. It’s not a breakthrough of like, ‘Oh, I just did this handstand,’ it’s not that. It’s a breakthrough of, ‘Oh, typically I need to…’, ‘I can’t stay in this’ or ‘I abandon myself when I hit these types of walls,’ and then noticing, ‘Oh, I found other ways to resource and support myself, so I could be with that challenge in a meaningful way,’ versus say to myself, ‘I can’t do it. I have to put the knee down or I need to come out of this.’

One of my biggest moments of awe was in my teacher training when I learned to teach the style of yoga. On the final day, we sit in this large circle and the teacher asks you to just briefly state a key takeaway for you. What I realized was – and it still holds true and I did my teacher training maybe eight years ago – was when I realized that the way I choose to struggle on my mat is the same way I choose to struggle in my everyday life.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Can you give us an example of what you mean by that?

Rahshaana Green:

So much… so many experiences. So, for instance, on your mat – you’re a yoga practitioner as well – you come into a difficult pose and you’re feeling tired or you’re feeling like, ‘Oh, this is difficult. I don’t know if I can do this.’ For me, some people usually have a tendency in their practice, some people bail and then some people, no surprise to you, I’m of the second type, I’m always an overachiever, so I’m going to power through and muscle it, even if I don’t have it to give, even if I should make the change, even if I should bring the knee down and make a modification to take care of myself. There’s a piece of me, and maybe it comes from… Well, I know it comes from some of my upbringing of just barreling through things and getting through. It’s like I have something to prove. And it’s not necessarily to other people, it’s to myself. I don’t allow myself to need help or admit that something might be a little too big right now, that I could use some assistance, some support, or something about it changed.

Elizabeth Rovere:

You have vulnerability.

Rahshaana Green:

Don’t tell anybody, I would hate for anyone to know. I see that. It’s a way, especially earlier on in my yoga practice, I will just muscle through things. And the thing about muscling through things, yeah, you might get it done, but at what cost? I’ve exacerbated an injury or I’ve started to injure something or I’ve really over-exhausted myself unnecessarily. And what that looks like in everyday life is very similar. A person that will sometimes over-commit and say, “I can get it all done,” or try to take on more than I need to when I could raise my hand and say, “Hey, I could use some assistance. I could use some support.” It looks like that. It looks like physically just wearing yourself down trying to squeeze too much into a day. But again, that fear of showing vulnerability, of needing support, of needing help, and I’m not doing anything but hurting myself more. And also, I’m being disconnected from the power of vulnerability.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah, thank you, the power of vulnerability.

Rahshaana Green:

The power of vulnerability. This might be a breakthrough. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever said that that way. Because vulnerability is powerful. First and foremost, it allows you to access support from others, but it also helps people connect to you in a very human way. We are all vulnerable.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yes.

Rahshaana Green:

We all need each other.

Elizabeth Rovere:

It’s relieving to the other person.

Rahshaana Green:

It is relieving to the other person. I’ve had a friend once tell me… I’m going to mention her name, one of my best friends, Sidra, I’ve watched her raise two beautiful children, I have been present for most of their lives, and I’ve had the honor of showing up for her a lot as a friend. But one day she called me out, she said, “You don’t allow me to show up for you the way you show up for me.”

Elizabeth Rovere:

Oh, wow. Wow.

Rahshaana Green:

I was like, “Okay. True, that’s correct. Absolutely, that’s correct.” And that stuck with me, and it was probably the first thing that actually got through to me that made me realize that I don’t allow myself to be supported or be seen in this very human way.

Elizabeth Rovere:

And give the other person the opportunity and agency to help you.

Rahshaana Green:

Yeah. It’s wacky. That gives me goosebumps, just remembering her saying that to me, calling me out, because it was such a loving gesture…

Elizabeth Rovere:

Absolutely.

Rahshaana Green:

…from a friend. And you’re really good friends for someone to call you out this way. But it’s resonant and I try to remember it. Who am I, some superhuman being that’s not vulnerable, the one person on the planet that doesn’t need help?

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah, who are you doing that for?

Rahshaana Green:

I have no clue. No clue. So, I’m working on it, I’m working on it.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Being trained as a scientist, you think of the scientific method and so forth, and it’s very rational and logical. And then being trained as a yoga teacher and a meditation teacher, it’s very intuitive-based. And what a great thing to be able to blend.

Rahshaana Green:

It’s fun. I can tell you how I was fortunate enough, coupla weekends ago, I was with my teacher on a forest – her style of yoga…

Elizabeth Rovere:

Oh, cool.

Rahshaana Green:

…I was assisting her in some workshops.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Nice.

Rahshaana Green:

And being in a sea of bodies doing yoga allows me to merge all of this together because what science is is experimentation. Here’s what we… the body of evidence as we think we know it, this is what it says. And then there’s room for experiments around that. So, at any given point, bodies are all different, different ages, they’re going through different things. Someone might be growing life in a body, the body is aging or people have injuries. And so, there’s trial and error and experimentation in helping people stay active and engaged in their practice but meeting themselves safely and bravely where they are. So, meaning keeping themselves out of harm, but also still working at their edge so they’re growing and they’re learning something. So, there’s so much experimenting happening, but then there’s the intuition.

I’m in a very bodily sense reading things and sensing. Sometimes it’s not, like you just said, how do you know, sometimes the knowing isn’t knowing because I saw it with my eyes, it was like a feeling. And then I turn around and then I see it with my eyes, but it wasn’t my eyes that brought my attention to it…

Elizabeth Rovere:

You felt it.

Rahshaana Green:

…in the first place. That can sound wacky to someone to try to explain, but this has been my experience. That’s why I love, love doing this with her because, again, it’s another space in which I feel like all of me gets to arrive and show up.

Elizabeth Rovere:

I love that. It’s fantastic. I love you saying that too, because it’s, like, you felt it, you knew it because you felt it, and you turned and you saw and that it was accurate. And that is a bodily sense of knowing that’s coming to your awareness. It’s funny, right, we are a body of mind, a spirit. Why does it have to sound wacky because it seems so commonsensical on the one hand?

Rahshaana Green:

It does. But unfortunately at some point we’re taught to betray.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yes.

Rahshaana Green:

…our bodies. We’re taught to only rely on this rigidly fixed, ‘This what’s been documented, and this is what we know, and this is what’s supported as truth, as knowledge.’ And anything outside of the bounds of that is questionable, it gets you nowhere. And do you know what it does? And this is just coming to me in some kind of way, it disconnects us from our ability to be in awe.

Elizabeth Rovere:

That’s a profound… I mean, a realization.

Rahshaana Green:

It’s a choice. It’s not saying that I’m choosing the challenges. Life throws us real things, but struggle, there’s elements of struggle that are a choice. Once you own that, you recapture a lot of agency.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah, well said.

Rahshaana Green:

You recapture agency. And having agency is powerful. It’s everything. Agency is everything. It gives us power to move and change and shift that which we can have some influence over…

Elizabeth Rovere:

Absolutely.

Rahshaana Green:

…as opposed to disproportionately being focused on that which we can’t… we don’t have. And not to say that things we can’t individually and currently and immediately move and change we should abandon all hope and shifting and changing. They may take longer arcs and longer roads and teams and communities to shift and change. But that individual agency and finding where you can move things, it’s powerful.

Elizabeth Rovere:

It’s incredibly powerful. I love how you’re describing that and talking about it. And I think about it as feeling empowered and capable. And what a gift that is and a realization and what a way out of some of the chaos. I think about it, too, in the context, because a lot of times I think people will think that agency might look like that achievement or powering through and it’s like, ‘Not really, because you’re not really being an agent, you’re still subject to your checklist and so some sort of externalized standard that oftentimes is…’ I like to say bullshit sometimes, right?

Rahshaana Green:

Yes.

Elizabeth Rovere:

But rather, agency is that real internal source of power and movement that’s…

Rahshaana Green:

I know.

Elizabeth Rovere:

…so healing.

Rahshaana Green:

It is healing. It is healing. I see connecting to agency and that internal empowering empowerment as also connecting to – I love that you brought this in early because now I won’t lose it as a thread of something I’ll always think about – it allows you to more readily pull that Swiss Alps and connect to what gives you that feeling of awe or how you can access that wonderstruck, those wonderstruck moments. Agency and feeling empowered allow you to do that and find ways and paths to do that. You don’t have to be in the Alps to do that. I’ve had beautiful… I’ve had those experiences in the botanical gardens here in New York. Or one of the things I love about my little nook corner of a Brooklyn neighborhood are these community gardens.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yes, yes, it’s pretty cool.

Rahshaana Green:

I’m like, ‘What a beautiful thing that are open where strangers can just come and be together. Here’s this nature in a concrete jungle.’ I love that. I fall out of love with New York sometimes and then I fall really in love, and these are moments where I fall in love with New York – the parks and the gardens. Yeah, you don’t have to go… get on a plane to get to it.

Elizabeth Rovere:

No, you don’t, actually. I think that’s also about what happens when you start, like you’re saying, instead of when you’re out of a reactivity mode or survival mode, things start to open up in a way that you actually – and I can speak for myself, but I think it’s true for most people – that you start seeing things that you didn’t see before anyway. I might not have noticed that community garden, I could have walked right past it, and suddenly now I actually see it. The whole world opens up in a way. The blinders come off in a way.

Rahshaana Green:

Space.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah, space.

Rahshaana Green:

Spaciousness. So, that if we soften around the go, go, go, I’m just going from here to there to go here to do this, that whole hamster wheel of constant activity and achievement, then there’s space to – it sounds so cheesy – to stop and smell the roses, so to speak. Because you even notice that you’ve been passing by a rosebush every day, on your way between A and B, but now you have the space to even notice that it’s there.

Elizabeth Rovere:

And things start to look a little bit brighter even. I mean, it kind of blows my mind sometimes, have you ever noticed after… when you meditate and then you come out of it and things just sort of look brighter?

Rahshaana Green:

Yes. Glowy and brighter.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yes. Yes.

Rahshaana Green:

Absolutely. As if you’re almost seeing these things for the first time.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yes. Which is a wonderful thing.

Rahshaana Green:

It’s wonderful. Well, you’re almost, see… I think meditation, at least in my experience, also helps us strip down and let some things fall away so that when you do reopen your eyes or refix your gaze on what’s around you after meditation, these are almost new eyes. These are refreshed, a clearer lens, so to speak, that you’re looking at things with, so maybe things do seem a little brighter and a little shinier.

Elizabeth Rovere:

It’s true, you’ve gotten rid of some of the baggage a little bit. You talked about your mom a little bit. So, you grew up in Texas and you said your mom was really pushing education and pushing a way to get out. You also said, “I wish that maybe my family had known about some of these types of practices.” Can you tell me a little bit about that experience? Because I was curious on the one hand, right, she’s pushing you to get the education, so on the one hand it was helpful as a way out, but on the other hand it also set you up for that perfectionist achievement-oriented checklist, so how do you find the balance?

Rahshaana Green:

Where’s the balance? Where is the balance? Here’s what was great, here’s what was good. My mother was, for the most of my early youth, raising four children on her own. There was some, intermittently, some other family members in and out the picture trying to help support, but my mother was doing most of this work. We were very poor, and my mom was making it work. My earliest memory was focused on education for a couple of reasons. One, we were living in unsavory neighborhoods, and if you didn’t have your head in the books and you weren’t really on track, there’s too many opportunities to possibly get involved in things that will take you completely off track and lead you down other paths. And so, saw lots of – especially as it got to junior high school or high school – people involved in drugs and other violence or early pregnancies and other things, just really getting off track.

My mom told us to stay focused on our education. I remember her… I was laughing with my sister a couple of days ago; we chuckle with our mother’s, ah, parenting style, because she would have this way of just pointing out to us examples in our community or something we could see of someone going off path and what that looked like. She would say, ”Well, see, that’s someone who wasn’t taking their studies very seriously. And with all this free time, they were doing this and doing that, and now look at where they are.”

Elizabeth Rovere:

Oh boy.

Rahshaana Green:

She would literally say to us, “So, these choices are yours. I can’t make the choices for you, these choices are yours. You can either stay focused on your studies or you could potentially end up down one of these paths.” I just remember, it was a very early Scared Straight program. And I’m like, ‘Okay, yeah, that doesn’t look like fun. I’m going to read another book…’

Elizabeth Rovere:

Interesting.

Rahshaana Green:

‘I think I’ll read another book. That’s what I’m going to do.’

Elizabeth Rovere:

Interesting.

Rahshaana Green:

So, yeah, it was fascinating. But what she was doing was instilling agency and empowerment, however…

Elizabeth Rovere:

You have a choice in some way.

Rahshaana Green:

You have a choice. But the thing you just touched on, which is true… Oh, I can feel it in my chest, remember being that very perfectionist about my grades, like an A- wasn’t going to be good enough for me. It wasn’t like my mother was saying, “Oh, how dare you bring home that A-?” For me, I’m thinking, ‘I need to be the best. If I can be the best and do the best then I can get the scholarship to go to this school to get out of here and set a good example…’ I was also the oldest of four… ‘set a good example for my siblings that, “Look, see, I did it. You can do it. Stay the course.”’

And so, literally, I can feel a little bit of anxiety in my chest thinking about how that was my…

Elizabeth Rovere:

Well, it’s taking on a lot of responsibility.

Rahshaana Green:

Absolutely. Like, “I can save us all.” Like, “I can save us all. I’ll show you how it’s done, and then you can follow in my footprints.” And so it’s that piece where I’m like, ‘Okay, over-corrected a little bit here.’ Would have been nice to have access to some way of creating some balance in that, right?

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah.

Rahshaana Green:

But I mean, if I had it all over… to do over again, do I fault my mom? Do I think my mom was wrong? Heck, no, she wasn’t. She got four children out of that situation, out of those neighborhoods. I feel like I’m the least educated of the four of us now.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Good God. Oh, my God.

Rahshaana Green:

I have only one master’s degree. The rest of my siblings have at least two, I believe. And so, for what it’s worth, that approach in having us focus on a path towards agency and empowerment, that was great, but we were just missing a little bit of balance, and that showed up in a variety of ways. I do have a tendency, if unchecked, to be fixated on perfectionism, like the A- isn’t good enough, like what if that’s not good enough to do this or do that or make this move? And so, always looking beyond my current situation, which was positive for me when I was living in the ghetto, in a place that felt very bleak. It wasn’t nice to sit in and be in and savor that experience. So looking beyond that and having something as a pathway to breadcrumb you out of that, great. However, whatever the next situation was and the next, I was constantly looking for, what’s the next stepping stone and what’s the next thing, and not able to really take in the beauty of – or even necessarily appreciate – the progressive steps.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting, isn’t it, because there’s the way in which perfectionism and ambition can just generate it and get you and move you and get out of something. And there’s a time, like that survival mode, you need it, you need to utilize this, needs to be enforced, right?

Rahshaana Green:

Yes.

Elizabeth Rovere:

But then, it’s like how do you turn down the engine, because where do you go, where does it stop? And then if it stops, you’re like, ‘Oh, but this is it?’ Because I’ve not been completely present during the process.

Rahshaana Green:

That’s it.

Elizabeth Rovere:

It’s a very fascinating, complicated thing, right?

Rahshaana Green:

Yeah. How do you turn it off? Because that… a certain amount of stress reactivity or survival mode, it’s beneficial.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Hell, yeah.

Rahshaana Green:

We need it. When I’m teaching CBRT, one of the examples I use is that survival mode instinct to scan your surroundings to see, ‘Oh, is there danger?’ and then react accordingly, right?

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah.

Rahshaana Green:

When we were hunting and gathering, and if your scan let you know that there was a predator nearby and you needed to run to escape to be safe, that’s amazing. The people that didn’t have the sharp reactivity to escape and get to safety, they didn’t really survive. We didn’t come from those people.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Right. Exactly.

Rahshaana Green:

Because they got eaten.

Elizabeth Rovere:

They aren’t here anymore.

Rahshaana Green:

They got eaten. The thing is, that serves us well when the stressor is of adequate size and our ability to handle it is not there – and then so, maybe we do need to take some action: we need to flee or there’s a battle we’re gearing up for. When you do that and we have correctly assessed the stressor and our ability to deal with it, then there’s a discharge that happens. That discharge is exactly the thing we see animals do in nature. When they have a stressful interaction, they stop and they shake it off, they discharge. We don’t have that natural process, so what happens is if we are driving to work and we’re stuck in traffic and we’re getting worked up and that’s feeling stressful, and all of a sudden our brain is telling us, ‘Oh, I’m going to be late for this meeting, and then my boss is going to be upset, I’m going to lose my job,’ we’ve already…

Here’s this big stressful situation and I feel so powerless to deal with it. Your body is going through the same stress cycle that it would go through if you were being chased by a predator. And there’s no discharge. We don’t have a natural process for discharging it. So, we have to get more skillful at a couple of things, both right-sizing our stressors and right-sizing our own capability of dealing with whatever it is we’re facing. I do think it’s beneficial to have in our toolkit ways that we discharge when we are feeling worked up. Because sometimes this thing happens, then we realize, ‘Oh, I’m overly worked up over something that’s actually not that big of a deal.’ What do you do? What do you do for yourself, to discharge? A lot of people don’t necessarily have that in their back pocket.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Is that part of what CBRT offers? And is that what’s… what the forest yoga, for example, and meditation have been for you?

Rahshaana Green:

They both offer this. I think CBRT allows you to see yourself more clearly, assess what you have in your toolkit to do this, to both get more skillful and wise about assessing stressful, challenging situations, assessing yourself, your own capabilities, and determining how you can resource yourself to handle these things or to process. And then forest yoga for me is where I process, where I get introspective and I can actually look at how I’ve handled some things and how I’ve been. And I also can discharge and move some things through my body so they’re not sitting in my body.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Right. I mean, it makes me think of when you said that very first experience in bridge pose and you started shaking because you were up there so long.

Rahshaana Green:

There you are. The shaking isn’t incidental. There’s something moving…

Elizabeth Rovere:

Through and out.

Rahshaana Green:

…there’s something moving through and out. Look, maybe yoga’s not the thing for some people, and even say this about meditation, especially if someone’s feeling challenged in just the sitting on the cushion and trying to quiet the mind, maybe that’s not the point to approach it for you. Maybe you need to start with a walking meditation or a moving meditation of some sort. Or maybe you need to touch into something else that allows you to start quieting your mind and letting the busyness, the to-do list fall away. Maybe that’s gardening.

Elizabeth Rovere:

It’s interesting, I want to keep wanting to ask you a little bit about has your mom been able to apply anything for herself, like a way of accessing something for herself that’s been able to attenuate her own stress, and some of her, as you’ve mentioned before in other contexts and interviews, some of her mental health issues?

Rahshaana Green:

Yes. My mother is schizophrenic, which she wasn’t diagnosed with until, oh, maybe almost 20 years ago, so later in her life. One thing that I found where she seems to find some peace and spaciousness, she’s amazing with her hands. There’s literally nothing she can’t make. I remember some of my earliest memories are of just things she would draw. She would…

Elizabeth Rovere:

Interesting.

Rahshaana Green:

…sketch some things, and she’s never been formally trained in anything. She also taught herself to sew – home ec, like a high school home ec class – and from there, she never turned back. My mother is an amazing seamstress. There’s literally nothing she can’t make. I’ve seen her make tuxedos, wedding dresses…

Elizabeth Rovere:

Oh, my God.

Rahshaana Green:

…hand beading. I think somewhere, probably in storage, I still have a dress that I had my mother make me in college. I know I’m not the only one – woman – who’s done this, where you keep something that you were able to wear a long time ago just… and sometimes you see if you can get back into it. But also, I keep it for that reason because it was a well-fitting dress. But the real reason why I keep it is because I needed a dress for a formal event. I told my mother what type of fabric I wanted, what color, and I circled the top of a dress, the bottom of a dress, the back of a dress. She told me where to take some measurements on myself, and my mother sent me a perfect dress…

Elizabeth Rovere:

Oh, my God.

Rahshaana Green:

…that needed no alterations.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Wow.

Rahshaana Green:

She’s spectacular.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Really impressive.

Rahshaana Green:

A wonderful thing it got to do with my mother is growing up pinning patterns to fabrics and in fabric stores. And so, I learned how to do some basic sewing pretty early on, which is almost a lost art, so something I’m proud of that doesn’t exist on a resume, oddly enough.

Elizabeth Rovere:

It should though.

Rahshaana Green:

It should.

Elizabeth Rovere:

I think you should put it on your resume.

Rahshaana Green:

Also can sew.

Elizabeth Rovere:

The thing that’s fascinating to me about this is… so, part of the way that I got into psychology was working with refugees. And refugee groups. People would go, “Let’s go help the refugees,” but the refugees are like, “We don’t want any help. We’re not talking about our problems. Please leave us alone.” But they found that they would have sewing groups or knitting groups, and then all of a sudden, you’re hanging out knitting, and people started to talk and process. And then I’m thinking about your mom because she accomplished a lot with you all, with the four children, right?

Rahshaana Green:

Yes.

Elizabeth Rovere:

She really was heroic, and yet she’s struggling with reality, psychosis, schizophrenia. What held her together, and I don’t mean to be too concrete, but she’s sewing. And it’s creativity and agency. She’s making something.

Rahshaana Green:

It’s creativity, it’s agency. I love that my practice has allowed me to have space to look back on things like this, and that’s a moment of awe. It’s not a moment of awe, so just an experience of awe.

Elizabeth Rovere:

It’s awesome.

Rahshaana Green:

It is awesome, literally awesome that my mother, with all the things she was navigating and the challenges she was facing, so many challenges, that she was able to somehow create these little cocoons where four children could thrive, really thrive, and find agency for herself through creative outlets like making things. And through making these things, she was connecting with folks because she is a very… It’s hard to name, and I’m not a therapist, and I don’t know which came first. I think she’s also a very introverted person, but there’s something about these creative outlets where she comes alive and becomes a more connected version of herself. And it’s created these avenues for her to connect with people and work with people. And so, even when she’s in modes of self-isolation, sewing still is a thread, is something that connects her to community and to other people.

Elizabeth Rovere:

So, you see that now?

Rahshaana Green:

I still see it. When I call to check in on my mother, she has… And for a living, she’s done a lot of seamstress work, and so…

Elizabeth Rovere:

Incredible.

Rahshaana Green:

…she still has steady clients who bring things to her. It just fills my heart with joy when I’m hearing, like, ‘Oh, so-and-so brought you some things to alter,’ so I know she has a project and something she can work on with her hands and she can do. She lost her mom at the age of 10, and so I think part… this reason, survival, survival instincts, and she’s always been pretty survival-focused. She learned to make clothes early on as also part of survival, like, ‘I can make myself clothes for a little or no money.’

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah.

Rahshaana Green:

Right?

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah. It’s such an interesting thing because we can even say that sewing is some type of an embodied practice. Well, it probably saved her, right?

Rahshaana Green:

I think so. I totally think so. Sewing put into applying to caring for her children, too.

Elizabeth Rovere:

They say that creativity is… if we can access some aspect of our creativity it’s a way out of our trauma or it’s that thread that can pull us; it’s an outlet, it’s the crack in the armor. I mean, I’m inspired by your story and her story.

Rahshaana Green:

Thank you. Thank you. Creativity, that connects me to meditation, the power of meditation. Meditation is asking us towards allowing us to have a space where we let ourselves be creative. I can imagine myself being in the Alps. Even if I’ve never seen them, I could find a picture in a book, and I can imagine myself being there. Even that creative aspect, letting our imagination open up, provides a connection. We have that power. We have that agency. No matter what, we can start to make those little shifts. We can start to rewire our brains. We can start to give our nervous systems a different known experience. Right?

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yes.

Rahshaana Green:

We can do that through the power of using our mind, especially in some type of meditative way.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah. I mean, it kind of circles me into going back to the podcast and Wonderstruck. About having these kinds – it’s not just having these kinds of experiences or maybe it’s really more of allowing the space to have these kinds of experiences and seeing the transformative or the effects of such. I mean, that’s what William James was talking about 100 years ago. Look, he wasn’t the first one to talk about it, they were talking about this thousands of years ago. This is the part of the contemplative life…

Rahshaana Green:

It is.

Elizabeth Rovere:

…that we have this capacity, we have more creativity. We are inherently creative.

Rahshaana Green:

Yes.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Just create the space for it, let it unfold.

Rahshaana Green:

There must be the space. It all starts with space. It all starts with space. And so, what comes to mind – you were asking me about how I work with people – I fundamentally start to teach people how to create space.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yep. Loosen the grip.

Rahshaana Green:

They have to loosen the grip on whatever brand of perfectionism, whatever their perfectionism has them focused on, and create space.

Elizabeth Rovere:

It’s exciting.

Rahshaana Green:

It’s exciting. It’s exciting. And we can all do that. It excites me. This is why nowadays I’m excited about getting out of bed.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah, yeah.

Rahshaana Green:

To talk to people and to work with people, because I feel like in everything I’m doing, I’m helping people get to understand themselves better, see themselves more clearly, and connect to their agency and their power.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah. That’s beautifully said. I love that you just said that.

Rahshaana Green:

That’s what it is. That is it. And if I get to do that every day, that’s how I want to spend my time.

Elizabeth Rovere:

That’s how I want to spend my life.

Rahshaana Green:

That’s how I want to spend my life. That feels like a good way to spend my time. That feels purposeful. That feels like I am doing something to contribute and to give back in a way that’s meaningful.

Elizabeth Rovere:

That was Rahshaana Green. Thank you so much, Rahshaana. To learn more about Rahshaana’s work, including coaching, yoga, and equity and inclusion training, please visit www.rahshaanagreen.com. Please come back next time on Wonderstruck, when I’ll be talking with Russell Brand about practicing embodiment, striving toward freedom, and what it really takes to make meaningful change. For more information about the show, my guests, and some really exciting upcoming events, check out wonderstruck.org. And please subscribe to Wonderstruck on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and YouTube. We truly want to hear from you with your feedback, reviews and ratings. You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok at WonderstruckPod.

Wonderstruck is produced by Wonderstruck Productions with the teams at Baillie Newman and FreeTime Media. Special thanks to Brian O’Kelley, Eliana Eleftheriou, Travis Reece and Tom Camuso. Thank you for listening. And remember, be open to the wonder in your own life.