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. 

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.