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.