Showing posts with label yoga. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yoga. Show all posts

Reruns: March Posts Worth Revisiting

Over the years in March I've written quite a lot about biking and occasionally about a different topic or two. The month may come in like a lion, yet I've been able to ride year round no matter where I've lived, from snowy Spokane to soggy Seattle and now grey-ish and mild Olympia.

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Reclaiming Yoga

I started my run at #30DaysOfYoga counting on the power of repetition. It worked as I'd hoped, restoring yoga to a regular place in my life.

But I think it worked for more reasons than simple repetition. It seems to me that my connections to yoga over the years laid a foundation I could return to.

That may be one of the secrets to getting a habit back: Having its roots in something that's a part of you. If you're tryinig to develop a brand-new habit it seems to me tying it to something you've loved before may give you what you need to make it stick.

My yoga interest stretches back decades. When I was a kid I read a book on yoga that belonged to Older Brother #2. I remember it as having line drawings of the asanas, a discussion of breathing, and information on advanced practices that included everting one's bowels to rinse them in the stream you should be standing in, then I guess tuck them back in somehow, or maybe draw them back in through ab strength.

Whatever it was, I didn't plan to try it. But I worked on trying to do Lotus and Tree and a few others. I memorized the Sun Salutation sequence. Even with the limberness of youth I struggled with Lotus, feeling the pinch and drag of my feet pulling at my inner thighs after I torqued my feet into place with my hands.

In high school it was episodes of Lilias, Yoga and You on Spokane Public TV after school. Lilias had a long, dark braid, a soothing voice, and a Danskin outfit of leotard and tights. This of course told me that doing yoga required special clothes, and who wouldn't want some of that?

The years passed and Jane Fonda had her effect, what with aerobics and legwarmers. Two babies and a few career moves later I started setting my alarm for 5 a.m. to have time to work out before driving (ugh) from my home in Coeur d'Alene to my job in Spokane. Some of my VHS tapes (yes, this was in the dark, dark days before apps, my children) put me through step aerobics and workouts with light weights. Others, though, gave me the gravity-defying yoga of Rodney Yee and a few others.

I didn't know about modifications and these tapes didn't give me options. So when someone popped up and down effortlessly into multiple repetitions of Upward Bow when I couldn't do more than get my butt off the ground, it was a trifle discouraging. But there were encouraging moments too, like one in which the person demonstrating Tree said not to worry if I swayed because trees sway.

Then one day I saw an event taking place at a yoga studio near campus. They were offering a juice tasting, which sounded interesting, and a class. (For the record, wheatgrass juice tastes like new-mown lawn. Not a fan.)

Live instruction took me to a whole new way of practice. Being shown modifications let me work toward the ultimate expression of a posture while seeing each modification as its own posture worth executing well. Each class brought a new insight, a subtle shift in position, a reminder to lift or drop or open. I spent a whole Saturday in a workshop going pose by pose through the Sun Salutation, breaking each one down to examine its elements and then putting them back together. The year I turned 40 I did 108 Sun Salutations at the winter solstice.

Yoga was a habit.

So when I started doing it again I had memories of what it felt like, what I could be like, to motivate me.

I might not be able to do a full bind in a side angle now -- and may never get to that level again. But I can lift from the core, roll over my toes, and remember that Down Dog does, in fact, come to represent rest rather than exertion.

I spread my fingers, distribute weight evenly and push back to take pressure off my wrists, lift my hips, drop my heels a fraction toward the ground (not that they ever really touched the floor even when I was at my best), exhale. Inhale. Exhale.






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Keeping Another Streak Going: #30DaysOfYoga

I've written about the strange power of a #30DaysOf approach to working on a new habit like flossing. I'm now working on a new #30DaysOf challenge to revive an old habit: Yoga.

I used to have a regular yoga practice and loved the way I felt as I got stronger. It served as a moving meditation and gave me a community of people I practiced with.

It also gave me a different relationship with food. I could think about a snack (like, say, a giant snickerdoodle, which they sold in the bakery next to the yoga studio I first started going to) and my mental response ran along the lines of, "You don't want to eat that right now. You're someone who does yoga and you need to be empty for practice," or "You're someone who does yoga and you're deciding not to indulge."

Being "someone who does yoga" was good for me in the way the giant Snickerdoodle Incident sign was. Even better because it provided other positive benefits from the exercise and mental focus.

I lost that habit, though, for various reasons.

The first reason: Because I said so.

I gave myself permission not to do yoga in 2012 when adding it into already-packed days felt like a chore, not a gift I gave myself. This has happened more than once, as I blogged back in 2008. 2012 was a particularly full year that included changing my career along with the city I lived in, and with the move I gave up my access to a yoga community in a studio that felt like home.

The new career was intense, the days were long. After that 2012 career change I had another one in 2016 and yet another in 2017. With all those changes I really lost my yoga self even as my professional self stretched in new directions.

The second reason: The space/time continuum.

My life is more geographically challenging than it used to be. In Spokane I lived 2.5 miles from work. Although the bike ride to the studio was uphill all the way and thus a bit of a butt-burner it was only three miles from work and the ride home after practice was a downhill coast.

I now live 8.5 miles from my Seattle office or a 60-mile drive to the office in Olympia I'm in roughly every other week. Time isn't money, time is distance. Or distance is time, which is the same thing. I enjoy my 40-minute bike ride to work but it's 40 minutes, not the 15 it was in Spokane. Bus ride takes about the same amount of time.

Bicycling may have adjusted my attitude toward time, but the day has 24 hours and sleep is a food group so I make tradeoffs. (Sidebar: I'm quite aware of the privilege that enables me to live relatively close to work in Seattle's overheated housing market.)

The third reason: A trilemma.

I haven't found a studio I like in a location that makes sense with a class schedule that fits my work life. This equation is similar to the classic "Price, Quality, Speed -- Pick Two."

I can work from home occasionally, which gives me a great quiet space in which to focus and crank through a lot of things (although I've given up on the idea of "inbox zero" as a goal -- people just send more). Telecommuting essentially gives me time. But if I were to go to a studio near my office then I'd need to go to the office to be near yoga. And when I go to Olympia or travel somewhere else -- I'm on the road roughly every other week one way or another -- I'd be nowhere near the Seattle studio.

The fourth reason for a while: Ouch. 

The Great Broken Elbow Complicated Later by a Subsequent Frozen Shoulder Yuck of 2016 meant no yoga. No bicycling. That stupid frozen shoulder was incredibly painful and went on and on through physical therapy, medical massage, ice packs and ibuprofen, but eventually subsided.

Moving past those

So here I am. Settled into the new job that as of March 1, 2018 was a year old. Still geographically complicated but I travel less than I did early on when I needed to build relationships with new colleagues all around the state. I successfully completed a 10-day bike touring vacation fall 2017 so my body is clearly capable of some movement.

And I really need yoga. One of the side effects of the broken elbow coming after 18 months of savagely long days (merging two nonprofits is a lot of work) and sorrow at the loss of my beloved brother Don was weight gain. When you're drained by the day, a little sofa time with a nice glass of red wine feels medicinal.

Let that habit replace your exercise, though, and the effects of fewer calories out and more calories in really compound. I want the mindfulness I have when my identity includes that of "person who does yoga and thus pays attention to her food".

Given the success of my less-than-serious #30DaysOfFlossing personal challenge, I'm bringing that approach to yoga. There's no giant sign saying "Days I've Done Yoga" in the house but I'm on it.

I have a great app, Down Dog Yoga, that lets me choose length, level of difficulty, and a special focus if I want it like some extra core work or hip openers (good for people who bike a lot). The instructional approach and sequences are similar to those of my Spokane yoga home.

I'm practicing alone and thus don't have a community. But this practice has its own placemaking element. If you've been a regular studio practitioner you know what I mean by placemaking. You step into that dedicated space with its wood floor, its particular scent or sounds or vibes, the quieter voices and bare feet, and you've entered Yoga Land. It's a peaceful place.

Our house has enough open space in the living room for me to leave my yoga mat out. This provides a visual reminder that I'm Person who Does Yoga right next to the table where I eat. I light a couple of candles, set my tablet on the little stand that was a gift from Second Daughter, and touch "Start Practice" on the app.

How I'll get there -- ahimsa. 

Ahimsa, one of the core tenets of Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, calls for nonviolence, including nonviolence toward oneself. A while back I happened across a comment on social media from someone who was doing a similar 30 Days of Yoga challenge. She gave herself permission to be kind to herself. If what she could manage in a given day was a few minutes of legs up against the wall, which is an actual asana, that would count. Given these kinds of parameters and the ability to choose a really short practice on the app, I figure I can make this work even when I'm on the road or if I happen to feel under the weather.

How I won't get there -- making it extra hard by setting the bar too high.

Someone I know started sharing on Facebook when he committed to doing not just 30 days of yoga, but 30 days of hot yoga. The post the day he had an all-out meltdown and ended up getting his heart checked out was not motivating.

I don't see any need to break myself in this process. The point is re-establishment of a habit, not some Olympic feat, although maybe someday I'll once again feel I can do 108 Sun Salutations for Solstice, as I did a couple of times back in the day. (The feelings created by doing this provide another wonderful example of the power of repetition.)

I'm reminded of Betz's comment about people who tell her they can't come to her yoga class because they're not ready for it -- not good enough. "You don't get flexible to do yoga. You do yoga to get flexible." My left elbow, Breaky McBreakerson, is sending me some reminders that I'm not really back to nailing a bunch of full crocodile poses yet so I also need to remember I'm doing yoga to get stronger and am not there yet. Say, ibuprofen, come over here and sit down by me.

How I'll get there -- tracking, reminding, reporting. 

I do better when I'm keeping track of my follow-through. I keep a health notebook in which I record exercise on a chart showing four weeks at a glance (along with text notes on various things that need tracking for good healthcare advice, like my occasional migraines), so I have a visual pattern to look at. An empty box would be Not Good.

I set a reminder on my calendar that pops up at 7 p.m. every night to ask "Have you done yoga tonight?". Mind you, it doesn't bark at me in all caps DO YOGA. It asks gently. With ahimsa.

For more of that accountability that research tells us helps you develop new habits I'm texting Second Daughter every other day or so with an update on how many days I've practiced. Even if I don't reach 30, it's more than I was doing before I started. Yesterday's text read #10DaysOfYoga.

Namasté.

Your Turn
  • If you practice yoga, what keeps you doing it?
  • Are you working on some kind of commitment to yourself? How's that going?
Lots of 30 Days of Yoga Content and Other Good Yoga Advice Out There


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Biking As Downtime and Other Musings on Overproductivity

Inspired by What Happened to Downtime? The Extinction of Deep Thinking & Sacred Space

I’ve noted before in this space that I have a slight tendency to overdo. The world offers up lots of kudos for this. In fact, I just won an award you might attribute to overdoing, in a way (the 2010 YWCA Women of Achievement Award for Volunteer Community Service, which was an incredible honor and this isn’t meant to diss the award!).

Joining, doing and leading are lifelong habits of mine. At the same time I’m pretty fiercely dedicated to downtime, some of which is cleverly disguised as biking for transportation or for "exercise" (fun).

This didn’t used to be the case, mind you. I used to just add more and more and more and more and more (you get the idea) to the list. I’d end up feeling overwhelmed, feeling as if I’d failed people to whom I had made a commitment because I hadn’t done everything that I knew I could bring to the cause.

Note that most of the time the only person who knew there was “supposed to be more” was me. I have a deep-seated tendency to, as we like to say around our house, should on myself. I should have done this, I should do that. And there are so many good causes you should help!

Somewhere along the way I decided to stop saying yes to everyone who asked so I could be more present for the ones to whom I had already said yes, including my family. I tried to perfect a response along the lines of, “I can’t give it what I want to be able to give and I’m not willing to settle for less.” Much to my amazement, it’s okay to say no and (as far as I know, anyway) I haven’t lost any friends or broken any furniture.

And now for biking, as the title promised.

Biking can be a discipline to which you bring all the shoulding and compulsive over-achieving possible. (I know this because I’m married to someone who trains for bike racing.)

Fortunately for me, I’d already outgrown some of the Western world’s thinking about athletic achievement thanks to a yoga practice of several years. In yoga, where you are in your practice is where you are. Force it and you’ll snap a hamstring (which makes a sound like a rifle shot, as I know from painful firsthand experience).

Settle into your practice, though, instead of striving constantly for “more” and “should” and “better” and “perfect”; bring everything you have into that moment; and you will have a deeply satisfying experience that uses every cell and fiber in your body. (And you do improve so that ambition thing gets satisfied eventually.)

Biking is much the same way. Like yoga, it provides a wonderful practice opportunity for mindfulness meditation. Riding in traffic is particularly good for this. You pay attention only to your cycling, drivers and vehicles around you, pedestrians who may step in front of you, road conditions, and the other factors that affect your safety.

There is no cruise control on a bike, no “set and forget.” The street that one day is dry and bare may have a touch of frost the next morning so you have to brake a little sooner.  If you’re riding with the flow of traffic you’re constantly adjusting pedaling pace to maintain a safe distance as drivers speed up mid-block, then hit the brakes at the next red light (the world needs more hypermilers). And like yoga, the more you do the better you get.

This may sound like a lot of input. Compare it to a workday with ringing phones, people coming into your office with questions, the email notice blooming constantly in the corner of your monitor, a dozen or more tabs open in your browser--and I actually have two monitors at work, not one, so I have twice the real estate in which to create screens full of competing projects. 

Paying attention to only one purpose--riding my bike--instead of dealing with multiple purposes and priorities is incredibly relaxing by comparison.

When I ride my bike I’m completely in the moment. At the same time I have created a space in which I cannot be distracted by electronic technology, thus improving my ability to focus. Much as it may amaze some of my online acquaintances to realize this, I do not actually tweet every five minutes.

When I think back on the commute I used to have, driving from Coeur d’Alene to Spokane and back every day, the only thing I miss is my local public radio station. But even that provided constant stimulation—I was never without some kind of input.

Around 50% of all car trips in the U.S. are three miles or less. This is ridiculously short—the engine doesn’t even warm up. But on a bike that distance takes about 15 minutes, a wonderful length of time that lets you clear your head and make some space in your life.

Biking is downtime, a precious commodity in our plugged-in, wired, always-on world. And it’s fun.

Related posts:
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To race, or not to race: That is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune…

Or, put another way, whether ‘tis better for your butt to suffer the pains and agonies of a bike saddle that so outrageously isn’t your BFF that it creates actual wounds, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, leg aches and charley horses from your hamstrings down to your toes, and by opposing—or quitting—end them?

This may all be the Fit Chick’s fault. Or possibly mine—I’ll get there. She wrote a really nice blog post called Balancing Act on her Bicycling Magazine blog. It may be relevant that it took me three weeks to work far enough down in my email to read the bicycling.com email that led me to her post (which then inspired my post about the taste of happiness).

At any rate, I read it—about how she has lots of dust bunnies and a cruddy-looking kitchen but that’s okay because she and her husband prioritize riding higher than cleaning (and they have a cleaning service come in twice a month)—along with all the thoughtful comments. Then I came back to it the other day with a different perspective.

If the problem is deciding how to spend your time, I'm wrestling with it but from about 180 degrees away from her allocation approach: Do I quit training before even getting started in racing because I don't have the time to do what it takes to be competitive?

I'm a 47-year-old mother of teenage daughters; I work full-time; I chair or serve on several volunteer boards/committees that are important to me (including our local Bike to Work Week effort which peaks in May--and there's no taper involved in THAT effort....); I'm married to the love of my life and he trains heavily for racing (at a much higher level than I'll ever hit); Sweetie’s two kids are with us on odd-numbered weekends and he has to work Saturdays. These all represent time commitments and constraints.

I started training over the winter thinking I'd like to ride at a higher level and see what I could do in a race. My starting point was as a regular year-round commuter who does longer weekend rides of 30-40 miles with no trouble. I’ve stretched to the occasional longer ride of 60-90 on some of the region’s many outstanding bike rides like Tour des Lacs and Eight Lakes Leg Aches. Note—these are not timed and slowing down does not represent failure.

Since last October I've been putting in 8-10 hours most weeks getting in endurance miles, doing intervals with a power meter, being pretty systematic thanks to my racing sweetie, and getting stronger—but apparently not strong enough.

After a punishing 3-1/2 hour ride last Sunday checking out a race course that I'm clearly not ready for, I'm questioning all the use of that time that could have been spent hanging out with my teenagers (who will leave home all too soon) or just having a few minutes of down time between work, meetings, cooking dinner, and trying to spend a minute or two with my sweetheart. I gave up a yoga practice I was committed to in order to make bike time. (And the cat hair coating our crimson sofa could probably take on Fit Chick’s dog-hair dust bunnies in a fair fight.)

So now—shall I rather bear those ills I have than fly to others that I know not of?

Do I reclaim that time and get my life back to a different kind of balance?

Step up the training to try to be competitive, although I don't need racing to have a complete and satisfying life?

Keep up the training at the level I can make time for, race, and accept that it's going to hurt like hell sometimes and I'll probably finish last every time?

No matter what, I get a new bike saddle. My bike saddle—aye, there’s the rub.

I was so tired coming home from that ride that I fell asleep in the car. And by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wish'd.

Not that I want to die, mind you—this Hamlet thing can be carried only so far. But there definitely are a thousand natural shocks along 54 miles of chip-seal county road. My flesh was heir to every last one of them after that ride.
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What to do, what to do…. The native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

BUT.... today I went for a ride closer to 60 miles with the good folk of the Baddlands Cycling Club. I had a different saddle (courtesy of my sweetie and North Division Bike Shop where he works, I'm trying out a couple). The course wasn't so damn hilly. I managed a faster overall pace, albeit with a few stops when the group regrouped to let slower riders (AKA moi) catch up.

It wasn't so bad, and the pale cast of thought got sunnier. I'm signed up for a race, and hoping for a better outcome than that of good ol' Hamlet.
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Stuff I didn’t do today, or, I know what happiness tastes like

These are some of the things I didn’t do today, each one of which had at least some remote possibility of occurring:
  • Clean house
  • Eat 5-9 servings of fruits and vegetables
  • Floss (don’t tell my dentist)
  • Put in two hours on the bike trainer doing sweaty intervals
  • Take Younger Daughter to her two performances in Charlotte’s Web
  • Pick Younger Daughter up from her two performances in Charlotte’s Web
  • Update the Web site for Bike to Work Spokane to reflect this year’s plans and send a bunch of organizing emails to committee members
  • Update my Quicken connection to my credit union account and balance my checkbook
These are the things I did do today:
  • Ride my bike in the sunshine to Spokane Yoga Shala, where I made it through 90 minutes of a really sweaty yoga session alongside my friend Betsy
  • Bake whole wheat/oatmeal bread
  • Read some entertaining blog posts (thanks, FADKOG, for the usual laugh-out-loud experience) and some that contributed to my professional knowledge (a link you will follow only if you’re interested in higher ed use of Facebook and Twitter), and make extensive use of the “mark all as read” option in Google Reader so I could feel all caught up
  • Go shopping with the aforementioned Betsy and get some seriously cute new shoes* for only $8.96, along with a couple of very sensible sweater sets that were not $8.96 (*You can't tell from the photo but these are a beautiful deep bronze-y metallic brown. Yes, my feet will hurt after a day in these. No, that doesn't matter.)
  • Browse at a bookstore and make notes about ones to put on my request list at Spokane Public Library (how I love being able to request a book online! I get an email when it’s available, I pick it up. Magic.)
  • Make the vegetarian tacos my daughters requested for dinner
  • Prepare a batch of Rice Krispies Treats—only to be honest, they are Generic Crispy Rice Treats—that my family has almost finished off within about 30 minutes of finding them
Any guilt over the first list? Nope. (Well, maybe the fruits and veggies thing, although I did have a few servings.)

Without going all profound on you, I’ll just say that I have gotten far better at cutting myself some slack and not beating myself up over things undone than I was 20 or even 10 years ago.

I used to lie awake nights berating myself for all the things I hadn’t done that had been on the oh-god-can-it-really-be-this-long? to-do list that I kept both on paper and with some extras in a mental tally.

Extras like, “One of these days I really need to go through all those boxes of memory stuff, organize everything, set up some scrapbooks, write names and dates on all the photos, and create a lasting legacy of curatorial splendor for my children to ignore after I’m dead.”

Or, “It’s been far too long since I took all the books out of the shelves, dusted and polished the bookcases, and reorganized the books to figure out which ones I can put in a box in the car with every intention of trading them in at Auntie’s Bookstore sometime within the next six months so I can buy some more.”

Or, “The bathroom feels grungy. I need to do one of those deep-cleaning sessions where you start with the ceiling and work your way down. While I’m at it I’ll take everything out of the storage closet, pretend we’re moving, get rid of anything I wouldn’t pack if we really were moving, run to the store for some pretty containers to organize the cotton balls and Q-Tips, repair the broken bracelet that has been in a little container with tiny tiny beads and jewelry wire for the past six years, and turn some of those old T-shirts into eco-friendly grocery bags by following directions on the Martha Stewart web site.”

THAT kind of to-do list.

This went on until one sleepless night—out of desperation or inspiration, I don’t know which—I got up and took out my journal (which, at the time, I wrote in pretty faithfully every day or every other day; since then, it has become a victim of the slack-cutting I’m writing about here).

I initially intended to write a list of all the things that belonged on the to-do list, since I was lying awake worrying that I would forget some detail or other on some work project.

Instead—I wish I knew why because then I could write self-help books, make millions and retire to a life of yoga, coffee, cycling and naps—I wrote down everything I DID do that day. And I mean everything. I had cooked a healthy breakfast for my daughters. I had moved some projects along. I had made time to go exercise. And on and on.

What do you know? Turns out I accomplish a boatload of stuff in a perfectly ordinary day. I deserve credit for that. You do. We all do. So I don’t even need to feel guilty that I haven’t posted on this blog for a month.

I don’t know if this all fits the Bicycling Magazine Fit Chick’s definition of a balancing act, but I know what happiness tastes like—Generic Crispy Rice Treats.
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25 Random Things About Me, in Random Order


{{deJodie Foster bei der deutschen Filmpremie...Image via Wikipedia

Yes, I got tagged with this in Facebook originally. As long as I was free-associating, I thought I'd put it up here, in my ongoing quest to be myself.

  1. I would want Jodie Foster to play me in my bio-pic.

  2. I have never learned to do cartwheels. Probably won’t, at this rate.

  3. Once upon a time, I could name all of Henry VIII’s wives in order, and tell you how each marriage ended.

  4. I was born on Election Day.

  5. My mother voted absentee a few days before that, having given up on the belief that she would ever have me because I was born a month overdue.

  6. I’ve worn glasses since I was 5. I had radial keratotomy when I was 20, which corrected my vision for a while, but it didn’t last. I wear contacts most of the time because I'm vain.

  7. Back when I worked as a Kelly temp, I typed around 110 words per minute with almost zero errors.
  8. I used to be a member of Mensa. At the first meeting I attended, I met the man who would become my first husband (but not my last, nor my second-to-last). Draw your own conclusions about my intelligence.

  9. My dad’s birthday is Nov. 3. Mine is Nov. 6. My oldest daughter’s is Nov. 12. If she ever has children, she has to have one born Nov. 24 to continue the pattern.

  10. I think my daughters are really, really amazingly wonderful.

  11. My longest one-day bike mileage (so far) is 94, when we did Tour des Lacs in 2007. (This is a beautiful ride from Spokane into Idaho and back. If you're a cyclist, come check it out!)

  12. I used to read enormous amounts of science fiction and fantasy, and at one point subscribed to 3 science fiction magazines (Asimov's, Analog, and Aboriginal, which no longer exists).

  13. Every single time I have ever tried to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey all the way through, I have fallen asleep.

  14. When my second mother-in-law died of lung cancer I was there with the rest of the family. It was amazing and intense and exhausting, and after she died she was so beautiful, like marble.

  15. I was captain of our High School Bowl team. This was a quiz show hosted by a local TV station, kind of like Jeopardy.

  16. When I tore my hamstring a few years ago doing yoga, it sounded like a rifle shot. (Yes, I still do yoga.)

  17. When I bought my first PC in about 1986, I stayed up late many nights writing DOS *.BAT files for fun.

  18. I object to raisins in cookies. They are just masquerading as chocolate chips to deceive the nearsighted.

  19. I’m subject to vertigo attacks that make me feel as if I have the drunk whirlies, without benefit (or enjoyment) of alcohol.

  20. Sometimes when I sleep, my eyes are open—just a little. This is apparently very creepy. At a sleepover birthday party in my childhood, two of my friends thought I was dead.

  21. My college nickname was Greenie because there was a Barb Green going through sorority rush at the same time and I was Barb Greene-with-an-E.

  22. I went to a Seventh Day Adventist school for first grade because my birthday was after the cutoff date for Idaho public school. Once I was a bona fide first grade graduate, the public school could take me for second grade. Go figure.

  23. Unless I go back to before I started 4-H and Bluebirds in about second or third grade, I can’t remember a period in my life when I was not involved in some kind of group, committee, board, or other volunteer or civic activity.

  24. As far as I know, I’m not allergic to any foods or medications. I’ve had morphine once and it nauseated me but that’s about it.

  25. I once had a poem published in one of those books they try to get you to buy after accepting your work for publication. I may still have my copy somewhere around here….

  26. Bonus item: I am (finally) married to the love of my life, after learning a lot (I hope--and he hopes!) in my first two marriages. Third time IS the charm, for me at least.







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Yogavangelist

I’m like an evangelist who doesn’t go to church. I sing the praises of yoga, but I haven’t gone in months, beyond a couple of Saturday-morning sessions in August.

Over the last seven years, my practice grew from once or twice a week to a steady routine. At one point I practiced 5-6 times a week, and did 108 Sun Salutations at the Solstice and Equinox. My first 108 came the year I turned 40—the same year I rafted the Spokane River Gorge for the first time, and tried the tango. All wonderful and fulfilling activities that helped give me a new sense of who I am.

Yet I’m not going.

I miss it. I love the instructors at Twist Yoga, who are generous friends and gifted teachers and mentors. I miss the centered feeling yoga gives me as a moving meditation. I miss the calm, familiar environment of the studio, with its wood floors and high pressed-tin ceiling and its feeling of a place apart from the whirlwind of daily life.

I miss the community of regulars. When I went back those Saturday mornings, I saw people I hadn’t seen in months who greeted me with a smile and a “Good to see you!”.

I also miss the increased mindfulness it brought to my food choices. I could look at the giant snickerdoodles from Rocket Bakery—my absolute faves—and say to myself, “You do yoga. You can choose not to eat this.”

Since you definitely want to be empty if you’re going to turn upside down, this was not just mind over matter, it was common sense, but it truly was more mindful. I wasn't eating just because the food was there--I was eating because I chose to.

And there are the more obvious benefits of increased strength and flexibility. I was working toward being able to put a foot behind my head, I could sit in full lotus, I could do a headstand raising my straight legs from the floor overhead using my core strength.

Yet I’m not going.

Right now, I’m practicing one of the core tenets of yoga: ahimsa, or nonviolence. This takes many forms. It includes nonviolence toward yourself—being gentle with yourself.

Along about February-March, I just maxed out. I was taking a graduate class that had me driving to Pullman once a week, working long hours to make up for the lost time, and had plenty of volunteer activities in my life, including chairing the first major Bike to Work Week celebration for Spokane. I have two teenage daughters, two younger stepchildren, and my wonderful, wonderful sweetheart, all of whom deserved more time.

I could reclaim the time that yoga took out of each day, feel more focused at work because I didn’t have a required departure time to get to class, and go home to my family.

It’s a different kind of centering, and it doesn’t help with my snickerdoodle control in the least. I want my core strength back, and that mindfulness, but for now, this is ahimsa.
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