How An Ex-Fire Fighter Broke Through the Mental Pain Barrier

If you’re anything like me, you love to know how people tick.

Get a behind the scenes look into some of the decisions they’ve made to take them to where they are today.

I also happen to be on a journey to discover yoga practitioners who are also explorers, voyagers, people who leave an impact on their own terms. Such is the way with my next muse.

For me, she conjures up images of water and fire coming together in harmony. Not because of her fiery adventure retreats to Hawaii (a place she’s visited over 30 times and calls her spiritual home)…but well, you’ll understand why soon enough.

Meet Gena Kenny

I first met Gena back in 2016 when I came by her studio: Ohana Yoga in Melbourne, Australia. I was burnt out and looking for something to soothe my frazzled nerves. Stress was a familiar friend and in the past, I’d co-existed with the good stress to help achieve deliverables at work. But in this case, I had toppled over head first into bad stress where I was holding the tension in my body. I was feeling fearful and I was after a fix.

That’s when I found Gena.

In this second chapter of 52 Voices: Meet Gena Kenny you will discover:

• how a fire fighter learnt how to listen to her body rather than just push on through willpower alone,
• why chronic pain forged a future for her that she hadn’t considered,
• what pa’a is and why it’s important in a world of chaos.

If you’re interested, the 5 or 6 questions I ask my muse are based on journal prompts to help uncover who we are. You can take a sneak peek if you’re interested in a journaling practice. I also pre-send the questions so that they have time to process it.

Let’s get started.

The first question looks very simple on the surface and the responses tend to roll off the tongue with the first 4 or 5. Then it can feel like you’re digging deeper for more of the truth. And that’s the intent.

1.Describe yourself in 10 words.

Gena shares that she asked her partner Kent with help on the right 10 words. Sometimes our loved ones know exactly when to hold a mirror up to ourselves.

She starts off with “Passionate. Determined.” It was a debate between determined and stubborn. I notice that they’re two sides of the same coin yet there’s a key difference. One achieves progress, the other side stalls.

“Fair minded. Fairness is one of my deep values. Animal lover. Fearless.”

She learnt how fearless she was from running her adventure retreats. Jumping off a cliff or sitting on the edge of the volcano came quite naturally to her and it was only in guiding others there that that she learnt that we normal people can have a real fear of them.

“Generous. Inquisitive. Optimistic. Adventurous. Lover of nature.”

As I’m quickly trying to write down all the one liners and the snippets of stories down, I get the impression of someone who is connected with a source: whether it’s life, truth or with nature.

2. What are the 3 most important things in your life right now and how are you prioritising them?

During our chat, Gena has gone on a slow paced walk with her dog Duke to get him some fresh air. Given animal lover came up immediately as a way to describe herself, it’s no surprise that Duke is her first priority.

“It is an interesting time with my dog Duke, he’s a senior dog and he’s had health issues…had surgery in January and there were complications.”

Gena and her partner have had to lean into end of life chats about Duke. She’s thankful for small mercies.

“With COVID19 and things slowing down it allows me to spend priority time with [Duke]. He’s almost like a senior parent — he has senior needs and…he needs me right now.”

After Duke, her priorities 2 and 3 are on helping people gain broader access to her courses and classes. She offers both teacher training courses and classes for the general public. Her courses are not the typical 200hr teacher training but rather, they’re about helping the teacher embody who they are.

When it comes to classes, Zoom has allowed her to connect to former students who have moved on and physically out of reach. From moving suburbs to up the coast in another state to out of the country, such as France.

“Going online and broadening the message is important. Broadening beyond my youtube channel — previously it was just for teachers to access as part of their teacher training…where they can access the nuance of the teacher training. But now it’s for broader audiences so there’s [complete] classes.”

3. What makes you happy to be alive and how can you make more of that every day?

Her response surprises me.

“Lots of things make me feel really alive, but I think if I look behind them all…believe it or not, it’s uncertainty. Its the unknowing.”

Most people don’t like ambiguity. Most people prefer safe, familiar and comfortable. Earlier I described Gena as a mix of fire and water. What makes her feel alive is a story of water.

Outrigger canoe paddling is something she’s been doing for 30 years. She started in 1989 and has raced in Fiji, Hamilton Island, Cook Island and all over the world. In every race you never know what ocean environment will be there.

“I raced in Norfolk island in January and almost didn’t go because of Duke. Kent assured me they would be fine….The ocean was wild and canoes were getting smashed. My role as a Steerer is to steer the best course possible. Treacherous waters in 30 years. Every race I do is unknowing and so, I’m glad I went in the end.”

Even with COVID10, her first thought was ‘Well I think there’s a lot of great things that can come from this.’ Her partner Kent responded with “Not everyone is going to be on the same page — be careful of who you say that too.”

I get a sense of pure optimism, I tell her.

Gena builds on this with ‘it’s about trust. Being in a state of trust that you will be ok, you are ok. When you feel trust at a cellular level you just are..”

4. What one event in your life has changed you the most?

Her biggest change happened 13 years ago when she was still working as a fire fighter.

“I got called in to assist the ambulance. During a heavy lift I got a back injury. A chronic injury.”

Fire fighters get injuries all the time given their line of work but this particular injury took her out of a 15 year fire fighting career. Having chronic pain meant she had to learn how to be different with herself.

“I always knew how to keep going…be strong and keep going. I was 1 of 4 females in the Melbourne Fire Brigade. I had to be tough. I knew how to be resilient.”

“Having chronic pain meant I had to learn how to be different. Soft and gentle.”

She’s glad that she doesn’t have to be tough anymore. But, the whole idea of being a fire fighter evaporated. If Gena didn’t have yoga in her life already, she believes she wouldn’t have coped as well.

“Living with a back injury I opened Ohana yoga. Would that have happened if I didn’t have a back injury?” She laughs for a moment and then carries on with,

“As the saying goes — Step into the unknown and the path will be revealed.”

“ Yoga helped me with acceptance, acceptance that I could no longer continue my firefighting career, no longer do the sport that I love…”

I can almost hear a shrug of the shoulders as she remembers her past. “I had to have a level of acceptance that pain may be a part of my life forever. Fortunately, the practices that I learned and can apply took me out of chronic pain and I can now once again enjoy the sports and active life that I love. When I was living with pain I didn’t think I would be pain free but I am now…But you’ve got to give it time.”

Back then, she didn’t think she would be able to do what she’s still doing now: weight training and paddling.

“ Before, with paddling I used to push through soreness and injury. Now I listen to my body. I let my body rest. I’m more responsive to my body and my needs rather than being driven by willpower. “

5. Why did you start yoga? What makes you continue? What inspired you to teach?

Most people start yoga for minor injuries, be it the back, shoulder or neck. I was no different with it being pain in my lower back. In Gena’s case she had a knee injury from firefighting.

“ I didn’t recover very well…and all these people around were saying “you should try yoga”. I had different sources saying that, like my physio or someone from the fire brigade. But then I met someone while dog walking, we started to chat and she mentioned yoga and said “hey, why don’t we find a class and do yoga? “

As Gena lay in savasana in her first yoga class, she told herself she was there to heal to be able to do the things she wanted to do. Like run and paddle.

Yet she found she couldn’t even lie still, thinking “ why do we even have to do this?” Her start with yoga was an injury that forced her to slow down and in that, she learnt that yoga was so much more than the physical body.

“ The practice made me realise I wasn’t honouring myself. It gave me the courage to make the change that I needed to. Yoga really helped me connect back to who I am. It helped me mentally, physically and emotionally and spiritually, it was so profound for me that it [became] important to teach and share it.”

Most yoga teachers I’ve met talk about the practice in this way. The way that yoga nudges them into a new direction in life. She’s also pragmatic about the teachings.

“ I feel that in the yoga world, we have to be careful not to preach yoga. People will find the yoga that will connect. “

She doesn’t believe in a cookie cutter approach for everyone when it comes to yoga and meditation. “ Some people can sit meditate and feel home. That’s their practice. Someone else can sit there and it drives them crazy, makes them feel unsettled. Because we’re all so different I don’t like to define how it should fit. “

In her journey she has come to understand that she is able to become most meditative and fully achieve rest when she’s had a really good physical practice (or paddling or after working a shift). The key to rest for someone who is usually very physical is the idea of getting physical first.

“ Often what keeps us in the states of anxiety or uncertainty or worry or anger is our mind. Then the mind can keep you at a state. Whereas if you can do something to change the state of mind…that fatigues you enough that your will power isn’t trying to override what you are trying to do.”

And rest.

6. What does it mean to be good enough and how do you know that you are?

“ In the Hawaiian culture, there’s a state called pa’a — to be solid. When you’re solid and you know who are you, you walk a line of truth. It doesn’t matter what other people are doing, your path becomes more clear when you are pa’a. “

She shares a personal story to help bring meaning to pa’a.

“ I’d just moved to California and my friend from paddling invited me to Hawaii, to go paddling. I couldn’t afford it but I bought a ticket anyway. When I landed, the island spoke to me. I ended up staying an extra week. I would have stayed longer but only came back because I had my Fire Fighting Academy. “

She paid a heavy price in staying that extra week.

When she’d arrived home she had been evicted from her place because she hadn’t told her landlord where she was. It was the same story with her boss and her job. The money she used to buy her ticket to Hawaii was supposed to be for car repayments. The bank took back the car.

So on the first day of her Fire Fighting Academy, she had no place to stay, no car and no job.

Yet none of this really phased her because after being in Hawaii, she had found her spiritual home. “ I live a lot of the Hawaiian philosophies and share that in my classes. “

Plus, she landed a job at the Fire Fighting Academy that day.

“ In my journey of starting yoga studio, I just stuck to my course and not compare [myself to] what other people were doing. When you stop comparing or taking things personally you know you are good enough, you’re doing your unique thing.”

Final thoughts

Gena is not someone you put in a box. Earlier I described her as a mix of water and fire coming together in harmony. She’s a fierce ocean lover, ex-fire fighter, restorative yoga teacher.

What makes her feel alive is life itself. When she lost her job, a roof over her head and her car, it was because she had found her spiritual home. A career-ending injury made way for a practice that she feels now honours herself. She’s thankful for small mercies to be able to spend quality time with her dog, Duke in his senior years.

Take it from Gena, it doesn’t matter what other people are doing. Your path becomes more clear when you are pa’a. In this world of chaos walk your line of truth.

More in this series:

Originally published at https://www.sevensundaysyoga.com on June 8, 2020.