Living in the Present Is the Only Resolution I'll Ever Need

Meditation has a scary, intimidating sound to it. but if you just let that go, it can be found in everyday things. In January of 2017, my New Year's resolution was to live more in the present. I'm still living that resolution. It stuck. It's something I can return to all the time. I don't have to make a new resolution every year. I can just use that one to do anything I want in life.

I started with cleaning out my closets that year. I decided to pull everything out of all of my closets at once. It was a bold move. But one I knew I needed to take because  I was so worn out that if I started small, it would never get done. And one I had the luxury of taking because I live alone.

Then I lived in the present every day by focusing on the little things. I didn't look at the big mess. I just walked over the mess and  took small parts and addressed them every day for months. Little by little it got done and got done the right way. That one thing led me to so many rewards.

I need to do another big closet cleaning. I have some trouble balancing my resting and my house cleaning still. But my huge purge 2 years ago and keeping things really minimal has made cleaning up and clearing up so much easier when I do it.

But what does that really mean to live in the present? What I tried to do is focus on stopping myself from ruminating on the future or the past. I've found that the way to do that is to just do something. Focus. Focusing sounds intense. But it is one of those paradoxes that I love. When you focus you can let go.

In meditation, you focus on your breath. When you focus on your breath, you can let your thoughts go. That's why personal training with Khris is so present-moment and meditative. It's very focused. When you focus on your form or your breathing or small precise movements, you let go. You are not mindlessly doing reps or thinking about what you're going to do later in the day.

When you focus on small things, you are in a meditative and relaxed state. I remember reading an organization book that started with shining your kitchen sink. It told you that no matter what the condition of your entire house, it wanted you to empty your sink and clean it until it shined. You were to scrub it with Comet and use SOS pads and do everything possible to make it perfect.

It was a way to get you to take some action, but not just any action. An action that was focused and small and really had you in the moment. You didn't have to make decisions and your mind couldn't wander.

I love small focused tasks like that. Sometimes, they are the most satisfying. Cleaning a light switch plate or a door knob. Shining a mirror. Cleaning the screen on your phone.

The expression that the little things are the big things is perfect for meditation and living in the present. It's why I love yoga and training. If you start to judge and worry, you've lost your focus. Sometimes when I'm in yoga or training, I can make an improvement that is so tiny. Sometimes I can only feel the intention of the improvement in my body. I can feel my energy reaching in that direction. To me, that's meditation. It's living in the present.

If I have things I want to do or find I need in my life, I think the place to start is to figure out how I can live in the present to make them happen.

What Got Trained Today?

Did you train arms? Legs? Core? Nope. That's not what I'm talking about. Training is deeper than that and we need to look deeper when we think about our training and reflect on our sessions.

Train: teach a particular skill or type of behavior through practice and instruction over a period of time. 

We learn all kinds of new behaviors and skills from our training from our coach and from ourselves and the practice over time. We learn discipline, compassion, persistence and much more. We learn very personal and practical lessons, if we pay attention. 

Yesterday, I was at the gym when another client was experiencing a very intense moment with Khris, a high jump box and his own fortitude. From the outside it could have been interpreted many ways. I won't interpret it. I will say that the boy who experienced it has a lot to unpack from his training! 

His lessons could include simply training lessons about getting over his fear and getting over the box. But there's so much more there. The moment he thought might be disappointing to his coach, he found out later was the highlight of his coach's day. Khris posted his pride all over social media. There is a lot to be learned from that. 

Again, I won't presume to learn his lessons for him. But I learned lessons FROM him! And I learned that there's always more to learn from training than it seems. We need to look deeper every time we train at what we can learn from our practice. What did we train in addition to our body? 

Today's Training: The Squat

You may think you've done squats a million times, what could be new? But today's squats revealed yet again why personal training is so important. I've done squats before, too. But today we really broke them down and worked on form to help with dead lift form.

We really worked on getting the butt back without letting the knees come forward, which stretches the hamstrings and puts the weight in the heels and really makes a huge difference in everything that is supposed to happen and work in the squat. And consequently, the dead lift form is better, too.

Then I did a cool thing where I had to sit on the BOSU and pick up a kettle bell on my way to standing up and then push my butt back and sit down slowly without plopping down. That took lots of little hints and breathing tips and bracing my core tips.

When you really focus on the little things like landing softly instead of plopping down and pushing your butt back on the squats and not bending your knees too much and keeping the weight in your heels without tipping over, you can really feel a difference in the muscles that are activated and the intensity of the work.

That's the benefit of having a trainer and really being present in your workout instead of just going through the motions of a bunch of squats or other exercises and moving on. The trainer watches your feet and your elbows and your knees and really makes sure each movement is precise and deliberate.

My trainer makes workouts fun and effective by being creative and by being really attentive and detailed with the most basic exercises so they feel brand new!

#kbuddahtraining

P.S. We did the same thing with the push-up the other day. The knee push-up became really effective and intense when I figured out just where to lower to so that my triceps and chest and upper body were engaged perfectly. I felt my upper body for days!

Zen and the Art of Training Maintenance

When I walked into restorative yoga today, one of the teachers, who was working at the desk asked me if I had lost weight. She said like a lot of weight since I started coming there. She said she noticed today when I was coming in from the parking lot that it looked like I was disappearing.

I said, actually, no, not since I've been coming here. That I've been about the same since March, but I've lost quite a bit over the last almost two years.

While that is the truth, I think that maybe i have found myself in this new weight in the last several months. I wear clothes that fit better. I walk more confidently that this is who I am. I am not a fat person trying to find the thin person inside of me anymore. I've found her again.

But she's a different thin person than the one that existed so long ago. I'm not trying to be who I was. I'm trying to be who I am.

When I first thought about maintenance and goals and losing weight, I thought maintaining would be the hardest part. But because of the way I've approached things, it's turning out to be a very rewarding part.

For whatever reason, my goals have been very fluid and really process oriented rather than results oriented, especially after starting to train.

My "resolution" at the start of the New Year of 2017 was to live in the present. That led to cleaning out closets and clutter and then losing weight with just starting to address food issues. Training, if you've read any of my blog, came as a complete surprise, divine intervention from the universe, and addressed pain and more food and life issues.

I never worried about how long things were taking or a number of pounds or things like that. When I hit March of this year I just kind of stalled on the scale, but kept living.

Even so, I changed sizes and I feel like I changed my body and a lot of things in the time since March where I'm happy with where I am. I'm not afraid of gaining weight. I like how my clothes fit. I feel good about myself. I enjoy my active lifestyle.

I can't imagine wanting to pig out or stop exercising. Things have changed so gradually and deeply that they are easy to maintain. They are routine. They are what i want to return to. They are what I crave.

I didn't do it for anyone else. I didn't do it to reach a goal and now I'm lost because I don't have anything to work for. I'm the goal. I'm working for me. My goal is still to live in the present. It's a goal I can never reach yet I can always reach. I love being Zen and crunchy!

KBuddah

Last year when I first started training and getting to know Khris a little bit, I remember him telling me something about how he was working with someone to create a logo for his brand, KBuddah, and he talked to me a little about some things he wanted to do in the future.

I can't even remember how it happened over time, but we became better friends. Training became even more awesome. KBuddah shirts became my uniform!

This past summer took a whole new turn when I was allowed to be part of creating a new home for KBuddah Training: a new gym that has its own warmth and soul.

Just yesterday, I was one of the first people to actually train in the new gym. It was such a great experience. Khris called it calm excitement. That is exactly what I felt. I could tell he was perfectly at home in his new environment. An environment that he created for us and for him to be able to help us. But I could tell that on the inside, he was really happy to be there.

It's just the beginning for KBuddah. I'm so happy that I could be here for the beginning. That I could see it be created from the idea that had been in his head from before I knew him. I'm so happy to know that there is so much more to come.

Congratulations to my friend and my trainer, Khris, KBuddah! I'm so happy for you and for all of the people that get to be helped by you and welcomed into the magic.

Mindful and full mind

Mindful is a big buzzword now. It's part of meditation and living in the moment. Living more mindfully. Mindfulness was the topic of restorative yoga today. At one point the teacher said something about it being weird because the word is mindful and we're trying to empty our mind.

That got me thinking. What if we do what we often do in yoga and turn that upside down. Do an inversion with it. Look at it a different way. Maybe what makes the whole thing so difficult is the idea of emptying your mind. Maybe if we take the word at its word, we can make it seem easier. If we are joyful, we are full of joy. So if we want to be mindful, let's fill our minds.

Perhaps if we think about our minds being so full of the important things that there's no room for the non-important things, it will be easier to let thoughts that are anxiety producing and harmful float right out of our minds. There's just no room for them. Our mind is full. Sorry. No room in here for you bad thoughts. No room in here for you gossip. Sorry. No room in here for you negative thinking.

There's a story for time planning about rocks in a bucket where big rocks represent the important things to you and pebbles and sand the things that are less important and even not important at all or distractions. If you put the big rocks in first and then let the sand and pebbles fill in the rest of the bucket, you'll get more in than if you fill the bucket with the sand and pebbles and try to force the big rocks in afterward.

Maybe we can look at mindfulness like that. We can keep thinking about what's important to us and instead of trying to force out the not important stuff and empty the bucket of our mind, we can just keep filling our minds with the important stuff and then emptying our mind will happen more naturally. We will have an easy time doing the important things even if they aren't the most fun things. We won't be distracted.

When we're doing the dishes or doing laundry or making the bed or working out or any simple tasks that require our attention, we can give our full attention and let it give us so much joy because we know that it's an important thing to allowing us to live a full life that we have chosen.

So when we want to be mindful, we can ask ourselves, what is filling my mind right now? Is my mind full of important, useful, helpful, joyful things? Or is it full of negative, ruminating, wondering, denying, blaming things.

Instead of trying so hard to empty our minds, we can try to fill our minds with the right things and then our minds will naturally allow themselves to relax as they enjoy silently coexisting with those beautiful, joyful thoughts that live there and letting those other ones just pass right on by.

Who knows?

Say Yes to Yin!

One of my favorite things about my yoga studio is that they have a really great offering of Yin/Restorative yoga throughout the week at all of their locations. The idea of Yin/Yang is very popular. We want to have balance in our lives. But the Yin part is often neglected or looked at as a luxury.

Many of the yoga places I've gone to in the past have had Yin yoga or Yoga Nidra as a special workshop maybe once a week or even once a month or once every 3 months. It was nice, but it wasn't a regular part of my routine. It was like massage or other things we do every once in a while to treat ourselves.

It reminds me of the movie City Slickers when Curly told them that people spend 50 weeks a year getting knots in their rope, and then they think 2 weeks there will untie them. Yin Yoga is wonderful to incorporate into my week several times a week.

It seems like nothing when you do it, but it has so many benefits. It really is doing so much. It's relaxing and it's great for your mind and spirit as a meditation, but it also helps you physically in ways your yang training and yoga practices don't. It's not stretching in the same way.

I remember when I first learned of Yin yoga a long time ago with Paul Grilley books and DVD, he compared stretching muscles and stretching connective tissue to stretching a rubber band vs. stretching taffy. A rubber band is stretchy already and can be worked like we work muscles.

Our connective tissue is like taffy. If we try to stretch it the way we stretch muscles, it will break. We will hurt ourselves. We need to let gravity and time help us to allow those tissues to give us permission to stretch them.

When we look at the yin/yang symbol both sides are equal. We can't achieve balance if we only give a tiny bit of focus to the yin part. If we expect a few naps or baths to untie a year's worth of knots. If we look at Yin as an afterthought and not a significant piece of the puzzle.

So whenever you can, say yes to the yin things in your life. Don't think of them as luxuries. They are necessities for balance.

Gratitude For Not Being Good at Everything

I just read the Instagram post from one of my yoga teachers who tried something new tonight and she said it's what she's been craving. It reminded me of something Rodney Yee said at the yoga conference I went to years ago. He said something to the effect that beginners sometimes have it better than really flexible people because they don't have as far to go to get to the sensation or the benefit of the poses.

Today after training, Khris was helping me to figure out some things to help me address my back pain issues for my yoga poses. I had to show off my 1 second crow pose before we walked out. Of course, he was non-chalant about it as he is about everything I do. But I know he knows I'm impressed with myself. He told me to practice that as much as I can.

I told him that not everyone tries that when we get the time to try it during class. I've always loved trying it. I don't even care if I fall forward onto my face. It's fun and it's such a rewarding feeling to balance, even for a second.

It got me thinking about why the challenging things are so much better for people who are really able to surrender and accept things. Who aren't worried about not being good at something. Who don't judge themselves  or compare themsleves to the rest of the room.

It keeps you present.

When you are doing the first 10 pushups or situps or leg presses or any exercise or yoga poses that are easy, your mind can wander. As soon as you get to the push up that is a little tougher on your muscles, you are in your body and your mind is where it should be.

When you are in yoga and you are listening carefully to the cues and making subtle adjustments all the time, you are present. When you are challenged, you have to pay attention. So not being good at everything allows you to focus and be present and have more fun trying. It's something to be grateful for, not be frustrated about.

Even in restorative yoga, there is always something you can do to be more present, but mostly this is about the challenging practices. The most fun training sessions I have are when I do things where I really have to try hard to do something and I'm really all there. Sometimes I wobble and fall, but I'm there and I try again and again and make small improvements.

So tonight I'm grateful that I'm not good at everything. It gives me lots of room to have fun and really challenge myself. I'm also grateful that I have awesome teachers who work with me at every level of my goodness and not goodness.

Connection: Becoming a Student Again

Weight loss and pain reduction are only a few things that have been transforming for me this past year and a half. I have gained physical and emotional strength and I have made connections that have brought me outside myself and also forced me to look within myself.

Connection is a word that is used a lot in the digital age. People say that we have lost the ability to connect because of the internet and phones and because we are actually connected all the time we need to learn how to disconnect. As with anything the word connection has many meanings, nuances and connotations.

There is so much connection to information that we can be easily overwhelmed and drawn into drama, arguments and stress at any moment, if we're not careful. We can have a conversation and a debate with anyone at anytime now. But are we really connecting with them?

Perhaps that's why people keep arguing their same points over and over. They've never really connected with anyone so they've not satisfied the need to express themselves to someone who matters. Nobody has heard them. They've just spit out their opinions and had someone spit back at them.

Anyway, through training and yoga, I'm able to disconnect, and I have also connected with new people and made new friends and even just acquaintances. I smile at the people at the gym and at the yoga studio and connect with them through eye contact and energy. I am a part of something. I belong there.

Those small connections are important. I remember a time when I was a teacher and I was going to be absent the next day because I had a doctor's appointment. One of my students said, Oh, no, you can't be gone. I said, don't worry, you're just going to be taking a test, you won't even miss me. She said, but you won't be at the door to smile and say hello to me when I come into class.

When I was a teacher, I was the giver all the time. In my retirement, I'm connecting in a different way. I am the receiver. It feels nice to be the one receiving the smiles and the hellos when I come in.

At the yoga studio I have connected with a few of the teachers. I really like all of the teachers at all of the locations. They are all welcoming and good teachers. But a few, in particular, have really connected with me. They call me by name and they talk to me before and after class a little bit. And, obviously, my trainer and I have become friends.

Then there is physical connection as in touching, proximity and eye contact. When I was a teacher, I discovered the importance of connecting with people through touch, movement and eye contact.

I choreographed activities to allow students to connect by walking around the room to discover clues to answer questions. They faced each other to play games. I had them pass stuffed animals while saying the answers to things. I touched the back of their chairs or put my hands on their desks or their papers. I crouched down next to them. You can't connect with someone, if they can't feel your energy.

In yoga and in training, the teachers watch what you are doing so they can give verbal cues to have you make subtle shifts. They make hands-on adjustments and corrections. They connect with you. They let you know they are present and aware of you. They aren't just running a class or a training session for themselves; it's for you. They are aware of you.

Today in training, Khris stood in front of me and held onto a body bar so I could hold onto it, too, because he needed to be there to stabilize me because I also had a huge resistance band around my waist and it was pulling me back, if he wasn't pulling me forward.

We were literally connected by that body bar. I was doing the work, but he was all in. He wasn't just watching my form or counting, although he was doing that, too; he was part of the exercise with me.

In connecting with you, they help you connect to your own body awareness. I read in a yoga article once about the pros and cons of hands-on adjustments. One of the cons was that students might get used to them or dependent upon them. I say, let them get addicted! I'm addicted! I love it when the teachers adjust. With training, it could just be telling me to move my foot or put the weight in my heels or lower my shoulders.

With yoga, the touch can even be massage. Many of the teachers use massage during the poses where your back is exposed and you are relaxed or in a twist. It is the best! My teacher today even did a scalp massage behind the ears when she put the cloth across my eyes in final relaxation! I gave her lots of gratitude energy while she did that!!

I'm thankful for the connections I've made at my gym and my yoga studio. I have learned to open up a little more and to receive. I don't always have to be the teacher. You have to be a student to learn. I like becoming a student again.

Resistance and Easier Said Than Done

Something that's challenging about Buddhist philosophy is that many of the words don't really mean what they seem to mean because they are used in different ways from the way we use them normally. So we tend to misinterpret them and resist the lessons that they offer. Resist is one of those words. Detach is another. Those are but a few.

Recently I read something that said that suffering equals pain times resistance. It was an interesting article, but it didn't really do much for me at the time. I just kind of filed it away. Today in restorative yoga her intention was self study. Yin yoga is always about letting go and letting gravity take over. It's about giving in. Letting time and gravity do the work.

Recently I wrote about letting things be instead of letting go because sometimes trying to let go is doing work itself. It is effort and letting go is about no effort. All of those things are resistance. The teacher today talked about what is holding us back from letting go. I don't remember if she used the word resistance, but it hit me. She talked about sometimes our body is holding us back. Sometimes our thoughts hold us back and today with our self study we should try to figure out what was holding us back from giving in to the poses.

It made me think about the idea of suffering equals pain times resistance and the Buddhist idea that suffering is optional and suffering comes from attachment. We can't always get rid of the pain, but we can get rid of our resistance to the pain which creates the suffering. Here's where the misinterpretation of words comes in.

Detachment doesn't mean to be cold and unfeeling. It means figuring out how to work through it. How are we resisting. Denial and being cold and unfeeling is actual resisting and creates suffering. So feeling the pain is not resisting and allows us to move through and suffering can dissipate eventually. Denial and forced detachment is lying to yourself and is actually more attached. I love irony and paradox!

The thought of the phrase "easier said than done", Khris's hated phrase, wandered through my head as well. I thought about it as a way of resisting pain before it happens and therefore creating suffering in the sense that people don't try things because of fear of pain or fear of failure. They are avoiding pain. But they are suffering nonetheless because they really want the results of the ideas that are "easier said than done", but they are afraid of the work or of the pain that they perceive will come along with it.

I'm not an easier said than done person, but my resistance sometimes comes in the form of the idea that people don't understand me. I fear my feelings will be hurt because people don't get my choices. So I don't open up or share things. I don't ask for help. I fear being judged.

So what's the lesson from this equation? When we feel like we are suffering, can we examine where the pain is and ask ourselves how or where we are resisting the pain. The pain may not go away, but maybe we can find ways to stop resisting and help the suffering go away.

Fatigue

I read a Tweet the other day by a random stranger replying to a person who had posted about her ways of dealing with Fibro flares. The Tweet said that Fibromyalgia isn't real. It's a mental health issue. That's a common feeling among the public and even among medical professionals. Somehow people think it's all in our heads. I didn't want to be diagnosed with Fibromyalgia for that very reason. I wanted to have Lupus or something that actually has a test that says I have it.

But as with many other things in life, I can't worry about what other people think or what other people do or do not understand about me. I know what's real and what I experience. Khris said we can't let labels define us. And I don't.

For a long time I thought I had to accept my condition to move on with it. Now I try not to talk about it or use the label very often so it doesn't define me. But sometimes it comes and slaps me in the face.

I was in yoga today and I just couldn't do it. I had to roll up my mat after about 10 minutes into class and go home. I just couldn't do it. I got in the car and cried and went home.

Training has completely changed the way I experience the pain. My pain levels have decreased in ways I never imagined possible. I go out and exercise and go to yoga almost every day of the week. I'm so much happier.

Something that is harder to address and so hard to explain and so hard for people to understand is the fatigue. It's not just being tired. It's being ridiculously tired. All. The. Time. I never feel rested. Never. Ever. And then when it builds up, I can't take it anymore.

I don't have another thing in me. I don't want to move. I don't want to talk. I have to cry. My fatigue is like I'm a cellphone always on 15% right before the battery saver. I never ever get to the higher battery levels. I'm always running on the low levels.

And then sometimes I'm on the 0% and need to be on the charger for quite a while. Even after a night of sleep, I wake up at about 30% and as soon as I get ready for the day I'm at 15% again. The times when my battery turns completely off sometimes catch me off guard. I think I have a little left and all of a sudden. Boom. Gone.

I've started doing more restorative/yin yoga to try to add some slower more meditative movement to my workouts. I need to get back to reading, but my eyes are so tired, I have a hard time.

I need to try to make a more consistent sleep schedule this fall once the KBuddah gym opens and start to read and go to bed and get up at the same time and make a shower/bed time routine.

Summer is not over yet. During the last weeks of summer, I will enjoy the pool and other summertime activities and figure out some ways to work on consistency and helping my fatigue as best as I can. I'm looking forward to the gym and the yoga studio this fall and winter.

I don't really know what people mean when they say Fibro is a mental health issue, but I'm not going to entertain that. I'm just going to work with my own experience and my own coaches and healers.

Balance Comes From Roots

Balance is a great word and something people strive for in many ways. 

Yoga and training have given me completely new ways to look at the word balance Yoga and training really do give you lessons to take outside of the gym an off the mat! There are so many things that apply to life from the physical practice.

When we think of balance, we usually think of it visually like a teeter totter or a juggler. Keeping things balanced. It seems like it's tough because we look at the things that are up in the air instead of at the juggler.

Or we focus on going from one side of the teeter totter to the other as it keeps going up and down and up and down and trying to add to each side making it stay flat.

When you are training or doing balance poses in yoga, you realize that balance comes from the stable leg or the standing leg, not the one that's moving around doing all the fancy stuff. If the stable leg or arm isn't grounded and rooted, balance has no chance.

When you do tree pose, it's the standing leg that is the important one. When it is grounded and rooted, then you can move your arms into prayer position or above your head or do whatever variation you want that will make the pose look pretty. As soon as you start focusing on your arms, you will lose your balance. You have to focus on your leg and your toes and your gaze.

Maybe this can help with the idea of balance in life. If we have strong roots, the other stuff won't matter as much. So rather than focusing on going back and forth from work to fun to exercise to hobbies to whatever else is important and trying to gain balance that way, which is frantic and like running from one side of the teeter totter to the other and expecting it to be flat eventually if we add the right amounts of each on each side, we can focus on making sure we have the most important things holding us up and then all of the extras can be there whenever we want.

Save the teeter totter for the playground. It's not fun when it's flat anyway!

The important stuff to us should be in the standing leg, it shouldn't be the balls in the air. I know I mixed the metaphor, but I hope it made sense.

Sometimes Let it Be comes before Letting it Go

I've received that message multiple times this week. I read that idea somewhere a few weeks ago and I have had the universe reiterate it to me in the last few days. This morning the teacher even played Let it Be by the Beatles during Shivasana after yoga sculpt class!

So many times we get the message from ourselves or from others that we just need to let things go. We want to move on in our lives and we think we have to let things go in order to do that. We think we need closure.

Meditation seems to be about letting go of our worries and that seems to be the hard part. We think we can't meditate because we can't let go of our thoughts. But sometimes, it's better to just let things be than let them go. When we just let them be, we can move on before we let them go.

Sometimes we aren't ready to let go. Sometimes in trying to let go, we do too much work. We make more problems. We add, rather than subtract.

I learned this from my body in restorative yoga last night. In restorative yoga, you find the pose and then you sit with it for several minutes. You are supposed to let go and surrender and then let time and gravity to the work. You are not supposed to do any work.

But when you try to let go, you are doing work. So I remembered the idea of let it be. I just let my body be, even if it didn't feel like it was letting go. Even if it felt a little strained in places. I just let it be. Then I let time and gravity do its thing. If I kept trying to let go, I would be fidgeting or thinking too much. I'd be doing work. I decided not to do that. My body let go when it was ready. In some poses, it was never ready. Time didn't have enough time. But that's okay. In some poses, it really let go.

There is one pose that is a real wonder. It is a most uncomfortable pose for restorative yoga. Your arm is outstretched. Your shoulder is against the floor. Your body is twisted and your foot is on the floor across your back. Time and gravity does its thing and although it's not relaxing in the least during the pose, when you come out of it, somehow you feel the most relaxed you've felt in your entire life.

I need to remember this. When there are things I need to let go, I can't force myself to let them go. I can't rush time and gravity. I need to let them be. They will go when it's time. I can let them be and move right through them. I don't need to wait for them to be gone in order to move on. I don't always need closure. I can live with loose ends. I can be uncomfortable. I know how.

Stay woke, Peppermint Patty!

My yoga teachers over the years seem to always pay attention to me. Maybe they have the gift of making all their students feel special, but I really do think I get seen in class along with other woke yogis.

I am having fun using that slang term, but it works in this context in many ways. I was talking to Khris after training today about yoga and training and form and listening. He mentioned namaste and energy and he said my yoga teachers feel that.

He said they feel my energy and that I'm  listening. As soon as they see and feel that I'm there to participate and receive, they give back. When they see that someone isn't listening or really wanting to get it, they give back the same energy.

That really hit me. He said yoga teachers in particular, in addition to trainers, give really detailed and specific audio cues to talk students through form and movement in order to get them to pay attention to really subtle things that make big differences in the poses and helping with safety and results.

The teachers can tell who is serious about their practice by who makes the effort to listen to those cues and attempt to make those adjustments. Those are the people who get their energy.

This was very interesting to me. I've seen so many students in yoga classes who, no matter how many times a teacher will say hips forward, will still turn. Or who will compromise their form so they can touch their toes and look cooler or feel like they are keeping up with the others, even when the teacher says just touch your shins if you're back can't stay straight. And I wonder why the teachers don't help them more. But it makes sense now. The teachers see they aren't listening.

This made me think of my own teaching. So many teachers focused so much on the students who didn't care at the expense of the students who really paid attention. I wasn't one of those.

So many teachers used to brag about not letting students sleep in class. I let them sleep. I wasn't going to spend my energy on kids who weren't ready to learn.

I would of course talk to them after class and let them know I was there to support them and help them when they were ready, but I wasn't going to hold up the lessons to keep giving energy to them when I had kids who were into the activity. I rewarded the kids who were into it.

That's what my yoga teachers and my trainer do. They give back more energy to the ones who give the energy to them.

So Peppermint Patty, you have a lot of support waiting for you when you wake up and are ready to listen and give your beautiful energy to the people around you! Stay woke!

Training Anniversary

This is my second action anniversary of the year. As I said in my first action anniversary post, I'm not a big anniversary or celebration person, but I am going to reflect a little bit. My first action anniversary was deciding to lose weight in general. I decided I was going to do it and I decided to address eating and not worry about exercise at that time.

I had done it the other way around so many times and I was in too much pain and too tired at the time to even try it with exercise. I was rebelling. But I was also very committed and very nonchalant at the same time.

I knew it was going to happen and I knew it was going to take time and I didn't care. I wasn't in any kind of competitive mode and I wasn't going to allow myself to get frustrated. I was in the perfect frame of mind. This wasn't going to be a short-term project.

I was in the right frame of mind, but my mind could never have imagined the places that my frame of mind was going to allow me to go. I was seeking to be happier. I was making my environment very minimalist to allow me to keep it neat and clean without getting overwhelmed or overtired. (Little did I know that eventually I would have to get rid of all of my clothes, not just to organize and get rid of old things and things that didn't serve me anymore, but because nothing fit me.)

I was feeling happy about having lost 40 pounds last summer and I was ready to get moving and exercise and do some yoga. I didn't think I would do anything strenuous. I wanted to get out of the house. I wanted to have some fun. I wanted to feel a little better.

If you've read any of my blog you know that I met my trainer that way. It was a fluke. I showed up to Blast Fitness, which I had joined online months earlier because it was cheap and they offered some classes, including yoga.

I had gone to the yoga studio, which I loved, but it was expensive. I figured if I could get a few classes at the cheap gym, I could stretch out the ones at the studio. And maybe they'd have a step class or some other class I'd like at the cheap gym.

Well, I showed up one day at the beginning of August with my yoga mat and there was a sign on the door that said the yoga teacher quit unexpectedly. So I sat down at the desk to get my ID card for the future and they brought Khris over for a free personal training assessment.

Oh shit was my first thought. I do no want a personal trainer. I can't afford it. I don't want it. I don't want someone telling me what to do or telling me that everything I do is wrong. Crap.

Well, he talked to me and he was attentive to my muscular knots and did some stretching and found every knot in my body. Mostly he talked to me and there was just something about him that told me that I needed to do something that I don't ordinarily do. I needed to do this. I said, sign me up. I knew it would give me a structure for the next 2 months.

It was twice a week and at that time, I did just those 2 days and I rested the remainder of the week. It's hard to remember now, but I was still in a lot of pain. I still wore gym shoes with orthotics because my heels and my arches were so bad. I remember crying at home from emotional releases from the muscles. I remember being worn out from just 2 days a week.

I also remember at some point that I just didn't feel the same pain in my muscles anymore. I don't remember when, but at some point I felt confident enough in my feet to buy Nike gym shoes instead of orthotic gym shoes. I had been getting cortisone injections in my heels at least twice a year for a long time because I could barely walk on my feet. At times it felt like I was walking on crushed glass and my calves were so tight from the arches that my steps were like a grandma.

I remember getting up from doing sit-ups or exercises on the floor and I could get up! It used to take me at least a minute to get up from the floor. Sometimes I would need to use a table or a chair for help. Sometimes I had to have people help me. My students used to help me up from my chair sometimes.

I could go on about how it used to be, but let's get to how it is now! I'm still tired. I still have some pain. (Oh, my back! )
But.....

I feel skinny! I feel like I can wear jeans and a t-shirt and not look like a blob!!! I can take a shower and not cry! I love yoga again! I can exercise 5-7 days a week! I can get up off the floor easily! I love eating good food! I never have digestive problems! My muscles never radiate aches the way they used to like a Fibro person would understand. The pain is deep under there; if I push, my muscles hurt underneath, but I don't ache all the time!!

I love to exercise! I am happy! I know how to rest so I can kick ass and feel good enough to kick ass again.

To Khris:

Thank you for helping me to see a better me than I knew was here. You have a special gift. You know how to challenge and push and still be compassionate and kind. You knew how to read me and knew what I needed. You were always genuinely happy for me when I expressed my gratitude and my emotion about how much you've changed my life. Thank you for being my cheerleader, my friend, my hero and my trainer.

I look forward to creating new intentions as we start another year together and I can't wait to see what magic and surprises await!

Mandalas and Detachment

The word mandala has shown up twice in the past few days so I figured it has to have some significance beyond even where it showed up. I saw an article about how cities are fractal mandalas when you look at them. Then in yesterday's yoga class the teacher said she was using the mandala this week during all of her classes so the transitions would be a little different than usual.

She talked about how the mandala was essentially a circle and that it was considered perfect because of how things were equidistant from the midpoint and all that. And how we are complete and perfect as we are. Her mantra is that practice makes progress; we are already perfect.

Our transitions brought us in circles around our mat or we rolled in circles on our body and we ended the practice where we started, making a circle. She also talked about the Buddhist monks who make sand mandalas and how they spend hours and hours creating beautiful mandalas just to have them swept away by the wind once they are finished.

That the mandalas themselves may have been blown away in the wind, but the intention, the beauty that was created would never be gone. And that was how it is on our mats. We spend time and intention in our poses. They don't last, but the intention and what was created doesn't disappear because it's over.

It's a good lesson about impermanence and that impermanence is not to be mourned. When we understand impermanence, it makes the present moment all the more precious.

Another interesting coincidence is that it's National Coloring Book Day on Twitter. Mandalas are popular in adult coloring books now. A connection I thought of is that the circle is the same in all of them, but the insides are different and have twists and turns and curves and lines that create a beautiful and peaceful chaos. We are all perfect and complete. And our chaos can be beautiful and peaceful on the inside if we relax and focus on the present moment and detach from the outcome. Focus on the process and not the results.

When you color a mandala, you color tiny bits of it at a time. You don't usually worry about the final picture. You pick a color and start coloring little bits of the design. No matter which colors you choose, it will usually turn out beautiful. Sometimes people choose similar colors. Sometimes people choose colors that don't seem to go together at all. But the finished mandala is usually wonderful because you don't focus on the outcome as you color.

Another reminder of circles comes from my favorite show and character: Morgan Jones quoting Eastman on Tbe Walking Dead. It's all a circle and everything gets a return. I don't do Aikido, but I love yoga. I like wearing my KBuddah wrist bands to yoga. They are circles. I will try to use them as a reminder to detach. To be present.

The yoga teacher that I had yesterday was my yoga teacher today for 2 classes. I've had her for 3 styles of yoga now: sculpt, hatha, and restorative. She is my favorite yoga teacher since Jenny from Lifetime. I have liked most of my yoga teachers, but this teacher has made yoga really fun!

That's another reminder of the mandala. It's just fun. When you are present on the mat it's fun. If you fall, you fall. It's better to fall and try something than to not try it. I love trying crow any time they give you a chance. I enjoy balancing for even a split second. We tried rolling up to a flat footed squat. I tried 5 or 6 times and I never got there. But I tried it and it was fun.

She is like Khris. She has challenged me more and I've pushed more in really subtle ways and seen really interesting improvements from specific cues and adjustments. And she has been really compassionate and helped me soften and care for myself.

I understand the zen garden more now. I gave Khris some kind of water painting chalkboard thing once. I understand that concept more now, too. It's an exercise in detachment. I always understood the meditative idea of the creating part, but I like the idea of the impermanence part.

You can't get attached to whatever you create because it won't last. The sand will be raked away or the water will evaporate. You have to enjoy it while it lasts. It also allows you to feel freer to experiment and explore your creativity rather than get so paralyzed by fear of how it will turn out. Knowing that it's not meant to be something that needs to be saved forever gives you more space. More freedom. Permission to make mistakes.

I might have to get myself a mandala coloring book.

Systems and maintenance

My dad used to say that maintenance was key to any system. He worked with spreadsheets and numbers at work and he created a magic budget on a spreadsheet for his finances that I used for years before my finances became so simple that I don't even need a budget anymore.

You need to spend time creating the system and then you need to spend time maintaining it. Both parts are important. Many people spend a lot of time creating the system and then neglect the maintenance. So they end up making a big mess, cleaning up that big mess or re-creating and repeating that cycle.

When you maintain. You spend smaller amounts of time more often and more regularly, and it seems so much easier and you never make a big mess. Every once in awhile, you might do a spring cleaning or a revision or a deep cleaning, and spend a little extra time, but you never have a big mess. You're not stressed out all the time.

I remember when I was a teacher. Every summer I tried to organize and clean my classroom so that I could keep things orderly during the year. And every year, things would look great and work great until about October. Then things would start to get messy and I'd have to do big clean ups. It just didn't work. I'd just organized things and made the mess pretty. I hadn't created systems.

One year, during the year I wrote down ideas and tried to really come up with systems that made sense for the way things worked in my room.  Finally, the following year, I had systems that did, indeed, work.

I made routines for the class and created systems and spaces for them. I put things where they made sense. I created systems for every routine that we had as a class.

I spread them out in the room. I didn't try to condense them to take up less room. I spread them out. I made them easy for me and for my students to keep them organized. They knew where everything was that was theirs and I knew where things went that were mine.

That year when I left for home every afternoon, my desk was completely clear and everything was put back in its place. October came and went and things were still organized. December came and went. March came and went.

The end of the year arrived and the systems were still working. Of course, I did do a little maintenance each day and a little extra every once in a while. But it never got out of control.

Many people think that being organized and having systems and routine seems boring. Like there's too much control and no freedom. But there was so much freedom in having those systems and having things organized. So much freedom.

My students used to tell me how nice it was to be in a neat and organized room. I was free to stand in the hallway and greet my students during the passing period because I had a place for them to pick up their warm-up work and they knew where it was. They knew where anything and everything went. They knew where to find supplies.

I had a routine for the lessons and the students knew it. I taught them the routine. They knew we started with a warm-up, then a song, then a lesson and some activities, then some written practice. They knew what to expect.

But the freedom and fun and exciting part came with what the activities were. What games we would play. What lessons we would learn. That routine gave me freedom and control of my lesson planning.

I even had skeleton lesson plans as far as weekly topics for the entire year that I gave to my students. That didn't box me in, it allowed me to relax. I knew where things were going and I knew what was happening next. Of course, when things came up, I changed and adapted, but I had a plan and I was never caught completely off guard at the end of the year trying to fit things in. Students hate when you try to cram in material in the last few days that is going to be on the final exam.

My eating and training was a good routine. I had training, class or yoga on certain days. I know I have certain foods available to me at home that are appropriate for me so I don't have to wonder what I might eat. There is a freedom in that.

With my skin cancer procedures and things changing at the gym, my routine has changed. It seems like there would be more freedom in not having a routine. Like you'd want to do other things. But it doesn't work that way for me. I need my routine first. Once I get my routine, then I can relax and add the other things.

So I'm creating a new routine even if it will only last a month or so until the KBuddah Gym opens. Once I make my temporary routine, then I think I will feel free to add other things like going to the pool or going for a walk.

So I've found yoga days and some new classes and made a little schedule for myself. I'm looking forward to gaining back my stamina and strength. Khris trained me a little today and I remember how fantastic training is. A trainer makes such a difference in the way you challenge yourself and feel challenged when working out. There's a reason teams have coaches!

I am looking forward to the KBuddah system!