Your Trainer Talks for a Reason

Show and tell. Look and listen. People always like the first part, but aren't so hot on the second part. I've noticed during training and classes that people tend to want to watch and look at how something is supposed to look instead of listen to instructions about what to do or how it is supposed to feel or helpful analogies about how you're supposed to do the movement.

Teachers tend to want to tell rather than show and students are very resistant to that. Their usual excuse is that they are visual people and want to see how it should look. Something that occurred to me today was that there are good reasons for trainers and teachers not always wanting to show, but wanting to tell.

One reason is that things don't always look just one way. They don't look the same for everybody. When I do my pushups, if my elbows are 90 degrees, it might not look as impressive as someone else whose elbows are at 90 degrees. My body is different.

In yoga, if I do a side angle, in order for me to stay 2 dimensional, I need to reach for my knee and not the floor. If I were to just watch someone do the pose, I'd try to reach the floor and compromise everything for looks. By hearing the teacher say that I should be able to drop my body into a toaster like a piece of bread, I know I have to lift up and make space in my side ribs. I feel good about making that adjustment instead of feeling like I'm not doing what I'm supposed to.

Another reason my trainer tells me things more than shows is because the important adjustments to the exercises are usually small and subtle. He demonstrates the large and overall movements, but then tells me the subtle things. If I'm always worrying about how things look and wanting to watch him, I would miss those things. When he tells me to pinch my shoulder blades, or pull my head back or square my hips, I wouldn't have been able to notice that I needed to make those adjustments just by watching and mimicking him.

If my trainer or teacher is always doing the movements next to me or in front of me so I can watch, then he can't watch me. And that's his job. He needs to watch me so he can tell me how to make those subtle and small adjustments. He can see things I can't see.

He can help me make adjustments from what he sees, but he can also tell me how and what I'm supposed to feel that you can't see, even if I don't feel it yet.

That's the most important reason my trainer tells me instead of shows me. He wants me to be in my own body. If I'm always watching him. I'm outside myself all the time. He tells me what to do to make adjustments to how I move so I know how I should feel in MY body. How things look for me.

People always tell you to listen to your body. Your trainer wants to you to listen to his cues to help you learn how to do just that. Learn to listen to your trainer so you can learn to listen to yourself.

Winnie the Pooh and KBuddah, too! Namaste!

I've had some of the best teachers! I learn things all the time from them and their lessons come back again and again. This week the lessons did a nice little smash up. Things from all of my teachers came together.

Khris has always challenged me in a variety of ways. The challenges are never meant to be challenges just for the sake of challenge, as in to do something that looks hard or seems advanced. There's a reason for the challenge. In Nadja's hot yoga this week, we did a super challenging sequence that I did as best as I could.

It was just like when I do something super challenging with Khris. I loved it because it made me focus and really think about what I was doing. I was really in it the whole time. I didn't care that I couldn't do some of it. I felt really good about giving it my all and trying it.

Heather talked about the idea that Level 2 yoga is about subtle improvements. Khris works on that all the time. We take squats or push ups or basic exercises and focus on small adjustments. It's the same way in yoga. We know what Warrior 2 is and now we focus on tiny adjustments in alignment and creating space or making small changes to progress.

Sometimes you can't even see the changes, but you feel them in your body. I know when Khris breaks down a familiar exercise and focuses on tiny adjustments, you can feel it in your body. It's not about doing more; it's about doing better.

Nadja always makes me think about things when she's not even trying. She talks about saying I'm breathing in and I'm breathing out when trying to relax during restorative yoga to bring your attention back to the breath. She gives other mantras like Inhale Let; Exhale Go. But I like I'm breathing in. I'm breathing out.

I'm not a good visualizer and I don't like abstract things when doing yoga. When thinking about relaxing and meditation, it's common to think we're supposed to clear our minds and not think at all. Or get out of our bodies and minds. But Nadja made me see things differently when she said, we want to focus on what will bring us back to our bodies. We want to ground ourselves in reality.

That changed the way I look at meditation. I want to be in my body. I want to be in the moment. In the now. Khris did that for me when he told me to use Inhale. Brace. Exhale. I use that all the time in training even when he doesn't tell me to. It keeps me focused on being in my body and in the movement.

Being in reality reminded me of Winnie the Pooh's Say What You See game. It keeps you in the moment. It's a simple meditation. Your mind can't really wander or worry, if it's focused on naming what you see.

Alisa's intention for us this week was observing without judging. That's exactly what Pooh is doing when he plays his game. A funny way of seeing how you can get caught up in making stories around what you see instead of just observing is watching what happens when Pooh's friends try to play his game. 

And finally, Heather's topic for the week was magic. The simplicity of all of these things creates the magic that is yoga. That is training. That is meditation. That just is. 

Christopher Robin: What are you doing, Pooh?
Winnie the Pooh: Sometimes when I’m going somewhere and I wait, a somewhere comes to me.

Rocketman

Watching Rocketman gets more enjoyable each time. The music is the best part, of course, but it's really fun to see lessons and interesting comparisons between me and the people in the movie and to relive lots of things from that time period. I was a child of the 70s. My grade school years mirrored the 70s. I graduated 8th grade in 1978. So I was in 1st grade in 71, second grade in 72, etc.

I did get to experience the magic and freedom of the 70s, but as a kid instead of a teenager or adult. It was a great time to be alive! I distinctly remember listening to Elton John on 45s, and on the radio. I also remember that the older sister of my friend down the street had the Yellow Brick Road ALBUM! I remember the flamboyance of Elton. And I remember my name being in Crocodile Rock!

Something I noticed watching the film again at home is how much I relate to characters or people who are introverted and sensitive and yet have inner performers, artist and creators, and long for connection. I always thought I connected deeply to the Bernies, but I realize I also connect to the Eltons.

Those whom movies are made about tend to be very dramatic in the ways that those things manifested. For me, my subtle inner performer and creator came out in my classroom. I connected with my students through my creativity, art, music, and lots of different and somewhat flamboyant ways.

Something that really hit me this time watching Rocketman is that it's a good thing for me that I am not attracted to drinking or drugs as a coping mechanism, even though there is a strong genetic likelihood that I might be and I'm sure I used food as a drug from an early age.

Watching Elton connect with himself and forgive himself and love himself in the creative and surreal ending scene in the circle, I was struck by the words that he 'gave everything to keep something he never had in the first place' when referring to John. It was a very enlightened way of taking responsibility for everything he had not seen when it was happening.

And if only everyone could have a Bernie in their lives, the world would be a better place.

Throat Chakra

Our restorative yoga class today focused on the throat chakra. A little over a year ago, Khris gave me a stone that he picked for me and it was supposed to be helpful in balancing and opening the throat chakra.

At that time, I thought it was to help me open up and speak up more. I looked for signs about that in the last year. But I was looking for the wrong signs. I had the idea that the throat chakra was about speaking. Unconsciously, subconsciously or somewhere in me I was looking to open up in the wrong way.

When we think about using our voice more there is a misconception about getting louder. Telling people what we really think. Telling people off. Getting things off our chests. Not taking any shit. But that's not using our voice. That's misusing our voice.

If people used their voice like that with us, it wouldn't help us. We wouldn't understand them any better. We wouldn't want to listen to them. It wouldn't open communication.

We have to use our voice the way we would want to receive someone else's voice. With compassion. With love. With clarity.

Opening the throat chakra comes with breath. Breathing and speaking come from the same place. They help each other. Slow your breath and your speech slows as well. Your thoughts slow. Your heart and mind have time to express what you really want to express. Not what your emotions are tricking you into expressing to cloak your body for the moment.

Let the throat chakra remind me to breathe before I speak. To remember that the mind, the voice and the body all speak to me with words and without words. I need to listen. To listen to myself with compassion first and always speak to others the way I would want them to speak to me.

Slowing Down

I've had signs coming at me from everywhere lately telling me I need to slow down. Slow down? You don't do shit, Susie! No, no, no! That's not what slowing down means!!

I've been listening to the signs and slowing down and I am feeling the benefits!

As the song from the 70s said, sign, sign everywhere a sign!! (that song had a different meaning about the signs, but I'm choosing my meaning!)

I've been slowing down. Getting back to routine. Training in the morning. Going to bed a little earlier. Making my bed. Doing restorative yoga. Reading. Noticing. Pausing.

Slowing down is not just in actions, it's in reactions. It's in the in between. It's in the mundane. The routine. The daily life. Slowing down isn't for vacation. It's for pacing.

It's like Curly from City Slickers said....you spend 50 weeks getting knots in your rope and then you expect two weeks up here will untie them. Slowing down unties the knots as you make them. I've seen how knotted rope has hurt me in my past--growing up, as a teacher and even now.

Most importantly, slowing down has helped me reflect and feel gratitude for the ability to be able to keep a routine that will help me.

My routine is much slower than what is normal for most people and what is culturally acceptable and valuable. But I am in a place where I can thrive with it and even move into a new and exciting life with it.

I can slow down for huge gains in mind, body and soul. Thank you for all the signs!

Simple or Profound? Change Your Mindset!

I've been thinking a lot about the simplicity of some sayings and some things I've read and how they seem so simple. Keep calm. Don't take yourself so seriously. Laugh more. Pause. Breathe. Change your mindset.

Ironically, I applied the simple mantra of my trainer to think about it: Change your mindset.

It's all about mindset. Is it simple so it's cliche and irrelevant? Or is it simple so that it's profound and highly relevant? That's up to you. I've read reviews of books that say things like...good book, but nothing new here just the same stuff. I understand that, but sometimes the same stuff is what we need.

The same stuff at a different time in our lives so it sinks in differently because we can receive it differently. The same stuff as a reminder. The same stuff that we can interpret with new eyes. The same stuff that we can peel off another layer of what we never realized had layers in the first place.

Something as simple as Khris's change your mindset has taken on so many layers over time. I just realized this morning as I was thinking about things that back when I was teaching, I used change your mindset without naming it that every summer when I examined all of my teaching strategies and attitudes to try to improve things.

Something as simple as if I was going to give students pens or pencils if they forgot them was a matter of mindset. I thought about all of those things beforehand. Some teachers were of the mindset that they needed to teach students responsibility and never gave students pens or pencils. They even went so far as to have certain punishments attached to forgetting them.

I decided that my mindset about that particular issue was that I loved my students and that everyone forgets things. I remember how I felt as a student when I would be in class and I had no pencil. I would feel panic. I didn't want my students to feel that. I didn't want to add to that feeling by punishing them. So I always had pencils in my drawer for them. I went so far as to give them a pencil with a smile and sharpen it for them if they asked for one.

I didn't leave a cup of pencils out on the shelf. I tried that one year and they just disappeared and I was constantly replenishing them. But when I kept them in my drawer and they had to ask me for one and I said, sure and handed them one with a smile, I felt a connection to the kid. I made them feel like they could be safe at school even if they made a mistake. And I didn't care if they forgot to give it back. Usually I told them to keep it for their other classes.

That mindset made things so much nicer for me and for my students.

Things we learn in meditation and yoga and in lots of the books related to those types of things seem simple. But are they just simple or are they profound as well? When I have read the same quotes or books at different times in my life, I have understood them in different ways.

I may have been in a different emotional state or I may have revealed or uncovered an additional meaning to it.

Recently in a yoga class, the teacher was talking about the mantras and about breathing and she gave us the mantra of inhale let, exhale go. She kept talking about the mind wandering and all the stuff that yoga teachers always talk about with meditation and at some point she said something like the idea is to bring yourself back to the breath or whatever keeps you grounded in reality.

Grounded in reality. That hit me like a yoga brick! Nobody every said it like that. Or I never heard it like that before. It's not about clearing your mind and letting go so much that everything is gone. You're clearing your mind and letting go so that you're HERE!!! You only focus on the breath and the mantra to be here NOW! IN YOUR BODY!

When Khris talks about emotion and logic, I think we can have both if we are in our body. If we stay calm and feel. When I let my emotion take me out of my body and do and say things that I don't have control over is when I get in trouble. I'm not grounded.

When I recently read to pause and feel what your body is telling you, that is a way to ground yourself. You are in your body. Listening to your body. You being here now. Experiencing the emotion or feeling and letting your body tell you things.

But you are also letting your mind (logic) work. You are bringing yourself back to reality. Calming yourself. Not letting those crazy wandering thoughts (emotions) take over.

Logic and emotion are living together. One is not taking over so the other doesn't exist. They are existing together so that logic helps you understand what your emotion is telling you or how it is fooling you or protecting you, so that you can feel it and use it and respond to it or not respond to it yet.

It's a meditation of sorts. It's simple and profound. It's not just simply pause. There's work to do. Just like with my pencils. I had to decide to give pencils to my students with love. But that wasn't the end of it. I had to do that every time.

I couldn't get frustrated if 7 people asked for a pencil during one class. Or if the same kid asked for a pencil day after day.  I had to smile every time. I couldn't slip and give a mini-lecture and say, try to remember your pencil tomorrow. I had to smile and give it with love. EVERY TIME!

Simple isn't always easy. Profound is deep for a reason. Change your mindset!

Don't worry. The simple lessons will keep showing up and giving you more chances to dig deeper!

P.S. When you dig deep in the mud, you just dig farther. The mud is still mud. You just keep digging. So when people say something is deep, people expect the lesson to be different somehow the more you dig. But it's not, it's the same mud or dirt. You're just digging deeper. So don't always look for something new when you're looking for a deep concept. It's just mud. You just need to keep at it and dig more. It's more beautiful mud. Not necessarily different mud.

Signs

I've been doing some interesting things lately. Zen tarot card readings, New Moon Astrology reading, Ayurvedic medicine reading. It all sounds like stuff many people would say is crazy stuff that is just made up. For the purpose of what I'm writing about it's irrelevant if it's real or made up. It's helpful to take the signs you get and work with them.

In Ayurvedic medicine, I am Pitta dosha and I had read about that idea years ago and about the foods I should eat and avoid, etc. to balance that dosha. But I only just recently understood some things that can really help me to use that concept to help me practically in my life.

I was told by someone whom I just met that I was wearing a bracelet that had lava stones and I should be careful with that because I was already a fiery person. I had never thought of myself as fiery. It seems such a negative thing. But I am. I only got the lava stones because they are porous and I could put essential oils in them. She told me to get watery stones like pearls to balance my fire.

When you read about the doshas, your qualities can seem negative. But that's not the point. The negatives are only when your dosha is out of balance. If you avoid some of the foods and try to do some of the things that it recommends, you are in balance and it's not a bad thing.

For me, I think I've always naturally balanced my diet by avoiding spicy foods because my stomach can't handle them. But my digestive problems came from other things like greasy, heavy foods that put me out of balance.

Something I found in my most recent search about Pitta dosha is routine. I've found that when I don't have a good routine, especially for long periods of time, the fire comes out. I get crabby and irritable and emotional and exhausted. When I think about my childhood, I was fire then, too. I was a stomper. I stomped up the stairs all the time. I was probably overstimulated and exhausted.

In a moon energy astrology article, it talked about things happening in January having an effect on what's going on now. I looked back at my January blog and I wrote about craving routine and needing to focus on the process and living in the present again.

It talked about events from mid April to mid-may being important. That was a huge time of turmoil for me. I'm still dealing with the aftermath of that and figuring things out. Now I'm not saying that as a way to "prove" that it's correct. We can always fit our lives into the astrology. I'm saying who cares if it's correct or not. Why not use it to help us organize and determine ways to help ourselves?

Why not let the signs we find in the world around us help us use our own intuition to take steps to take care of ourselves in the ways we know we need to in order to best honor ourselves so we can experience more joy and gratitude and take more action to be more compassionate with ourselves and others.

Why fight everything? Why not balance it instead? I am fire! There's nothing wrong with fire. I just need lots of water to balance me. Fire is beautiful and so is water. I need to embrace them both. Find the balance so I don't burn up or drown. That's all.

Emotional Intelligence

Khris and I have had many conversations about emotion and logic. We agree and disagree about a lot of it. In general we agree about some things but use different words to express it so it seems like we disagree. In English sometimes we have too many words with many different connotations. In the case of the words emotion and logic, I think we have too few and therein lies some of the problems when discussing this topic.

The Buddhists tell us that compassionate listening is meant to help us understand people so we can help them suffer less.

Emotions and logic. Why does it have to be one or the other? Why can't it be both? I think it can. That is emotional intelligence. That's where feeling comes in. That's where thinking comes in. That's where Buddhist philosophy comes in.

Emotions exist. If we didn't have them at all, we would be robots. We wouldn't need compassion.

But it's true, emotions can get us into a lot of trouble. People use emotions to manipulate. People get manipulated by emotions.

Emotions can lead to poor decision making. We can make decisions when we're in highly emotional states, either positive or negative. We can make rash decisions when we're excited or not take chances when our confidence is low.

We can bury our own emotions and not face them. Those emotions won't go away. They will get ugly. They will come out in ways sometimes where we don't even know what's happening. Emotions affect our health as well.

If we don't use our intelligence to face our own emotions and take care of ourselves, we will be less and less able to be compassionate with others. We will be less and less able to express gratitude. To share joy.

If we want to understand others, we need to understand ourselves. Empathy requires that we use our own experiences to imagine the experiences of others and how they must feel.

Emotions teach us things. They also allow us to feel things. I want to experience joy and gratitude and love and peace. There is suffering and injustice in the world. I will experience sadness and loneliness and anger and frustration.

I've learned recently, that I can pause and breathe and that my body will tell me what I'm feeling. What my emotion is teaching me. What is under that emotion.

Instead of lashing out or talking fast or pacing or whatever my body wanted to do, I need to pause. I need to breathe.

What is my body telling me? Can I listen to it with compassion? Am I afraid? Am I tired? Am I angry? Why am I angry? What am I afraid of? What's going on?

Breathe! Breathe! Breathe! My body will tell me what that emotion is all about. What am I protecting myself from by reacting so quickly? That anger is processing to protect me from something. That's combining logic and emotions to become feelings. I can express my feelings intelligently. Calmly.

I hope to remember to use more logic and intelligence to temper my emotions so they can become the way I feel and not act on them in ways that hurt me or others. That way I can listen to myself and others more compassionately to help us suffer less.

Becoming the Buddha

Thich Nhat Hanh says that "Becoming a buddha is not so difficult. A buddha is someone who is enlightened, capable of loving and forgiving You know at times you're like that. So enjoy being a buddha. If you don't become a buddha, who will? 

When I had my first card reading from Yolanda, my 10th card was consciousness and Yolanda said to me, You are the fucking Buddha! 

Yolanda

I met Yolanda at our sound healing event at KBuddah. I was not in a great mood that night and I didn't really relax or connect with her at that event.

She was very nice and lovely, but I didn't really want to be there in the emotional place I was in. I just wanted it to be over so I could go home. I was crabby.

But once she started chanting, I started to cry. And then when she played a certain bowl, I cried. Then during certain lighter instruments, I was relaxed and okay. Then during the heavy bowl, I'd cry again. I was releasing something.

I had been crying a lot during the weeks around then because we had been doing a lot of recovery muscle work with foam rollers and golf balls and it was painful and I had been releasing a lot of old tension and emotions were coming along with it.

Everyone else loved it and hugged her and talked to her a lot at the event, but I just tried to be invisible and take pictures for the KBuddah social media and just get the night over with.

On the topic of social media, everyone was connecting with her on Facebook after that night. I tagged her professional page for our posts, but they all became friends with her on her personal page.

About a week later, I got a friend request from her on Facebook. Then when I posted about going to see Rocketman, she asked if she could join me. I was not expecting that at all

After we saw Rocketman, I met her the next day at the river in Geneva for a reading. It was quite illuminating and fun. I just went back today for a second reading. I am going to go to a sound healing next week to experience it in a better mindset. And I know we are going to have her back at KBuddah for more sound healings in the future.

Here are the highlights of my two readings:

Reading One

The issue that came up to work on in my first reading was abundance. The card was cool looking. He was a fat hippie with a lotus and a book and she talked about how I was creative and my issue was opening up to living a life of abundance and receiving.

My next card that was needed for my issue was change. Huge change is what's happening for abundance and creativity to manifest. I have to face my shit and pause and go through the change. Learn from it.

One of the biggest things I'm learning is pausing and breathing and not forcing the changes. I have to go through the turmoil. Letting go is going through, not going around. When you slow down and take a breath sometimes you can let go so much easier.

I've had that happen in my dreams. Sometimes I know I'm dreaming and I get uncomfortable in my dreams and I want to wake myself up. I used to yell at myself to wake up. I'd yell, wake up!!! Eventually I taught myself in my dreams to take a deep breath and slowly open my eyes and then I'd be awake in real life.

I need to do that in my waking life. When I get uncomfortable, I need to slow myself down instead of yelling at myself or yelling at other people or doing dramatic things as a way of trying to protect myself.

My next cards were all about not giving away my power, trusting myself, and not worrying about the past or reverting to old patterns.

Reading Two 

My issue was past lives or past issues. Letting go of the past.  One of my last cards was courage!! I can do this! I don't need to think about my past or things that I used to do or cling to past patterns. I can move forward.

I got a card that was ripeness, meaning now is the time. I don't want to wait until the fruit is rotten. I want to do my work now. I got the card of slowing down to enhance the issue. Which to me means exactly what my first reading told me and the signs that I've been getting from everywhere. 

I need to slow down. I need to listen to my body and myself more. I can't worry that other people think I need to push myself more. I know what's best for me.

I know that after months of pushing myself this winter,  I paid for it. It didn't help me; it hurt me.

I got the inner voice card. I know I need to listen to my inner voice more.

My attraction card was rebirth. This was my favorite card visually. It was dark clouds at the bottom with a lion coming out of it roaring and then a little joyful angel playing the flute coming out of that.

Yolanda said it was pain and darkness at the bottom and then you have to roar and get mad to come out of the dark place to be able to get to the joy. 

I feel like more rebirth is coming. It's unfortunate that the roaring and anger has to come to pull you out of the pain and darkness to get to the joy. But next time I need to come out of the darkness, I know I can roar and use my anger in a more productive way to get to the joy. 

I got the We are the World card, which she said is my way of using my creativity in service to others as part of my joy. 

My outcome of the issue was burden. This was fascinating to me. The outcome of past lives is burden. If I can let go of worrying about the past, I can let go of so much burden. That's so much of what I've been doing in my work with Khris in training. How so much of an entire level of my pain was able to disappear so quickly.  Pain that had been trapped in my muscles and had been a burden to me for so long.

The burden card pictured burden on top of burden on top of burden. Layers and layers of burden. 

Fibromyalgia is like the rebirth card. It's the dark place of pain and depression and fatigue and tightness and all of that. The anger is the work.  You do the work and roar with your training and crying and release of your pain in order to let that pain and anger roar out of your muscles and your body to get to the joy and release a layer of burden. And then you do it all over again. 

And you love and forgive! Again and again. Because you are the fucking buddha!~ 

Lessons from the Universe- Part 2

So to continue yesterday's blog about changing your mindset about the lessons that keep showing up from the universe. If it doesn't mean that you've necessarily failed to learn a lesson just because the same lesson or similar lessons show up again and again, what could it mean or how could I change my mindset to learn something from it?

I kept thinking about things yesterday. I know I have things to learn from the lessons the universe is throwing at me again and again. But as I said yesterday, my dream and my trainer have let me know that I need to change my mindset about it and flip it. So how do I do that?

It's not enough to just realize that I haven't failed because the same lessons keep showing up. I need to practice and I need to learn deeper things and more facets of those lessons and understand that we face the same lessons at different times in our lives with different people. That's only the first step.

That helps me change the questions I can ask myself in order to learn the right things. Instead of asking myself why does this keep happening to me, or what am I doing wrong or blaming other people or other things, I can start asking different questions.

I can ask what can I do differently? What am I doing in these situations to create the wrong results? What are the signs I missed?

How can I handle these situations better in the future? How can I be prepared? How can I prevent? How can I change my focus? How can I pause? How can I be peaceful? How can I stop pushing?

I need to learn from this. Not so this lesson never shows up again. But because it's sure to show up again and I need to be ready for it.

Lessons from the Universe and My Trainer

I had a dream last night about hockey and quoting my trainer and it all came together this morning in the car and during yoga. Doesn't it always?

First my dream. Well, one of my dreams--I have all 18 theaters open every night. I don't know why there was a hockey team watching video games or something and they were trying to figure out shots (it won't make sense--it was a dream)...but the idea was that they were complaining because the video game was wrong because they couldn't have made those shots because there were other circumstances in between that made it impossible.

Anyway, I said, well, as my trainer always says, Change your mindset. Instead of worrying about why the game is wrong and why the shots can't be made, maybe the game is trying to teach you to think ahead. Instead of thinking that the shot is the end, maybe think past the shot and what can you do after the shot if it's missed and what move you might make then.

Again, this doesn't make a lot of sense now because it's a dream. But my brother somehow showed up, nodded, and said, Perspective.

My lesson when I woke up was that there are always new ways to look at things and new lessons to learn. This got me thinking about the quote that you see all the time about the universe keeps sending you the same lesson until you learn it.

And I flipped that quote for the first time. At first glance that quote seems to imply that if the same lesson keeps appearing in your life that somehow you haven't learned your lesson yet. You've failed. If you'd learned that lesson, it wouldn't keep showing up. But that's wrong. The universe is going to keep showing you that lesson in different ways to keep you on your toes.

Learning doesn't stop because you've learned something. It's like training. You don't stop training because you've trained once or learned an exercise. You keep training. You learn deeper. You learn better. You practice.

The universe keeps sending you the same lessons because you need practice. You need to remember what you've learned. You need to learn deeper. You need to learn in different ways. With different people. At different times. Maybe you even need to help other people learn, too.

Professionals athletes probably learned how to play as kids. They learned the rules. They learned the skills.  But the learning wasn't over then.

You keep learning and playing and getting better and better as time goes by. As you grow. As you play better opponents. There are degrees and levels of learning the same things. Different facets. New challenges. New ways of using your skills and applying those rules.

We learn life lessons the same way. We learn them. But we then we grow. Time goes by. We face different circumstances. We play different opponents. We have different teammates. We get out of practice. That doesn't mean we never learned anything. We always have more to learn. We always need practice.

I have learned many life lessons. I haven't failed because the universe is still sending me some of the same lessons. The universe is helping me. The universe is reminding me what's really important to me. What I need to practice. Deeper lessons. More facets. It's giving me more practice. It's making me better.

Tulips

The tulips are out again. I am reminded of the idea of introverts and tulips. I read somewhere once that introverts are like tulips. They can bloom and shine but for short periods of time and only after the winter of rest. They aren't like the summer flowers that bloom all summer long. I liked that idea.

Some people think that introverts never like to "come out" and have fun or be pretty. But they do. They just can't do it for a long time without needed the long rest of winter to be able to come back out again.

Lately I've been feeling like the way too wide open tulip that has been out in the sun for too long and the leaves have turned brown and the petals are falling off. I'm ready for a rest. I tried to be a summer flower like the rest of the world and it just didn't work. I can't be what I'm not.

I can't maintain the schedule that the rest of the world does.  I wilt. My petals fall off. I get ugly. Really ugly.

It feels like the world is made for the summer flowers. People don't get the tulips. But I'm the tulip so I'm the one who has to get them.

I have to figure out what I need. What my wintering involves so I can keep my flower blooming and stop my leaves from turning brown and my petals from falling off so easily and enjoy the sunshine more often. I'm a tulip and tulips are pretty cool and beautiful even if they don't last as long and need special care.

Giving Myself Credit

When I look back on my teaching career, and my fibromyalgia and early retirement, I sometimes feel like people think that I didn't just push myself enough. I was reading a book today about the happiness mindset and it talked about several celebrities with chronic conditions who have found ways to manage their conditions while staying positive and happy and I thought, shoot, I did that for 30 years!

I managed it. That is how I pushed through it. I went to bed early so I could get through the next day. Sometimes early meant 8:30. Sometimes early meant 6:30. I rested all weekend so I could make it through the week.

At different times I did yoga. I did walks. I got sun-simulation lamps.  I got massages.  I meditated during my lunch break. I researched homeopathic remedies. I read. I went to movies. I swam. I went to the hot tub.

I spent my summers resting on the porch making lesson plans and organizing my ideas so I had things ready for the year.

I spent 2 weeks in July cleaning and decorating and organizing my classroom so it was ready for the year because I knew I couldn't do it in a day before school started when things were already packed with other tasks.

I made routines for my lessons that benefited my students and also allowed me to have a rhythm and a rest every hour so I could get through my days. I needed pacing.

I still managed to add creativity, fun and variety to my lessons all the way up til the day I couldn't do it anymore. I always loved my job and my students. There just came a time when all the managing in the world wasn't working anymore. My body just wouldn't do it. It couldn't keep up.

Putting me down with shingles or ear infections or stomach flus or muscle spasms to force me to rest wasn't cutting it anymore. Going to bed at 5:30 every night wasn't enough.

So if people think I didn't push myself, I can't worry about that. I know I did. I managed and pushed myself for a long time. And I managed to be pretty positive and happy all that time.

I have to remember that now when I'm managing and pushing myself in different ways in my next phase of KBuddah life. I get in trouble when I focus on the past or the future. When I focus on the now and the present, the world falls into place the way it should.

I'm Two KBuddah Winters Old

Tomorrow we're supposed to get a little April snow. But I've made it through two winters now with KBuddah! And they've been the easiest winters I've been through in forever!

Winters are really hard on me. I remember saying those exact words a lot to myself in the past. Winters are really hard on me.

The darkness. The cold. The grey. It's not that I don't like winter. I never thought I minded it. I like snow sometimes. It's pretty. I like hiking in it even. I like fleece clothes and cozy fires and hot chocolate. I like cozy in general.

But something about winter is hard on my body. I get tired. I get really tired. Really, really tired. My pain was always worse. 

These past two winters seem to have gone by so easily. I've been tired. But that's not going anywhere. I'll get to that in a minute.

I've been tired, but I have gone out of the house to the gym at least 4-5 times per week and done workouts at least 3 times a week.

I have been overwhelmed at times, but for the most part, I have been able to keep up with my laundry and housework at home and with what I want to do to help at the gym and even take showers after every workout day. 

When I used to be overwhelmed, I'd have to take days and weeks off to catch up. Now I can catch up in a day or two or over a weekend.

Things like taking showers and doing laundry and dishes likely sound like things normal people do all the time, but for me, those are things that were very difficult to manage when I was working and in pain and exhausted. 

As spring arrives, I feel the next level of KBuddah training arriving as well. My surface pain and the radiating pain that was non-stop, has essentially disappeared. That happened really quickly after I started training. That was a huge surprise to me. I never expected that to happen.

It's a difficult pain to describe. It was a dual pain. There was a skin pain and then there was a pain that was a little deeper that was like the aches from the flu or the soreness from working out that was there all the time. 

All the time. It was nagging and relentless. It wore me out physically and emotionally. I still have back pain, but that's different and separate.

Underneath that skin and aching pain was a really deep and sharp muscle pain that was almost in my bones. That pain is more like the deepest part of a black bruise. Like when you hit your muscle on the sharp corner of a table. But I feel that pain from just pressing on my muscles. 

That pain is still there. It's still underneath my skin. It's still deep in my muscles and between my ribs. Deep in my thighs. In the knots in my shoulder blades. Under my armpits. It hasn't gone away. I just don't feel it all the time. But it's still holding onto things. It's still wearing me out. 

Khris has started a stretch and recovery class. This class has started to dig deeper into the muscles and let out something. When I first started training, I'd have emotional releases after training at random times.

I believe that was my body releasing pain and tension and stress that my muscles had been holding for years. I believe that's how the pain started leaving my body. 

Now it's time for this deep pain to start to release. I don't know if it will ever totally let go, but I'm ready to put in the work to see what happens.

I'm grateful to have a partner like Khris who will push me and push my muscles and not worry about the tears that come. He only worries about the progress that will come by the time I'm Three KBuddah Winters Old.