The Freedom of Limits

I have been teaching a half-hour yoga class at work for about 4 months.  It's a non-traditional class, as yoga goes, because we have it in a conference room, in our work clothes, with no mats or traditional props.  As a result, the class doesn't involve many traditional yoga poses - no downward facing dogs, no triangle poses, no cobras or planks, no seated twists or arm balances.

The limits imposed by the format have forced me to go deeper into the nuances of movement from a narrower range of positions.  I have stolen every standing pose variation from every yoga class I've taken, and made up a few myself.  The challenge of keeping the class fresh within the limits I have accepted for it has been a motivation for creativity and a catalyst for deeper exploration, as I wring more value out of the most basic of positions and movements.

The class has also given me the chance to develop, in my own way, some of the things that I've enjoyed the most from my teachers.  One of these is the way that Francesca Cervero, in her Aligned Vinyasa classes, teaches a sequence of movements connected to the breath and then takes the class through it repeatedly, increasing the intensity at just the right pace as we internalize the movements.

This morning, after getting up and feeding the cats, I felt like moving a bit, and came up with a simple flow that opened the shoulders.  Three breaths in all, with garudasana (eagle) arms in the center of the sequence.  I built today's class around that, with the idea of using Francesca's approach.

From the beginning of the class, we established a cadence of breathing - in for 3 counts and out for 3, that I carried throughout.  Then, after some preliminaries, I had them do eagle arms - which most were familiar with - to get that established in their bodies since it was the heart of the simple sequence.

I demoed the sequence before talking them through it slowly, pausing in a couple of places for an additional cycle of breath before moving on.  Next we moved through it with no pauses, moving with each inhale and exhale.

At that point I had the sense that they had it - (and one of the nice things about the format is that the class is arrayed around the walls of a conference room, so we can all see each other) - so I told them that we were going to move through the flow again, keeping the cadence of movement and breathing, without any cueing from me.

We moved through the sequence together in silence, moving and breathing together, and it was so beautiful that as we finished I said "Let's do it one more time," and so we did, and it was even more sublime.

While sometimes I wish I could fall back on more of the traditional asana repertoire, this experience confirms for me that simplicity can be an asset, and that limitations can be the foundation of freedom.

Decisions, Pt 1

I've been thinking about decisions.  This post is labeled Part 1 because I know there are more layers of this to explore than I've reached so far.  But I have something to write, and articulating it here will help me process it further.

I recently came across a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote about decisions:  "Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen."

I've written before about aligning my awareness with the pulses of the world, and how that brings a sense of effortless and inevitability to life.  I don't think the universe is an active agent, following us around and rewarding us by responding to our decisions.

Rather, I think that when we make a decision, and commit to pursuing an objective, we allow ourselves to see all the resources around us that can support us.

I also think its possible to make a decision and to not find any evidence that the universe is conspiring to make it happen.  Decisions that are made without humility, awareness and acceptance of the world as it is, are likely to be stymied and frustrated.

I've also been thinking lately about the sense of being stuck, and the process of creating space and movement that leads out of the stuck place.  It occurred to me that when we are aware that we have a decision to make, that may be evidence enough that we are, to some extent, stuck.

Most of what I do, the actions I take, the things I focus my attention on, are not done with the point of view that I am making a decision.  I just do them, because they seem like the right thing to do.  But of course any of them presents an opportunity for a decision, because for everything I do, there are an infinite number of other things I could do.  What a nightmare it would be to face everything as a decision!

So what is going on when I do identify something as a decision?  Is it a sign that I am out of the flow, stuck off on a siding somewhere, confronted with some uncertainty or fear (are they different?) that has kept me from simply moving ahead, doing what I know in that moment needs to be done?

To be continued....

Out of a Rut, and On the Run

Over the past few weeks, I've been rearranging my habits with the intent to be more free in my movements in and around Silver Spring.

For 10 years, I've been walking the mile and a quarter to and from work, packing a shoulder bag with me - sometimes carrying things to and from work and not making any use of them.  The bag was useful, as it could carry anything I needed, but it also encouraged me to take things I didn't really need, and no matter how much or little I had to take, I always had to lug the bag.

As I've begun running again, I thought it would be nice to be able to run to and from work, with the option to take an indirect and longer route sometimes.  I thought I could also run the 1.8 miles from work to Takoma Park on the evenings I have yoga classes there, rather than taking the Metro train down.  But running with the bag was not an option.

In the past couple of weeks, I've tried it out, running to and from work a couple of times and down to Takoma once.  But to make this work on a regular basis, I had to figure out a way to have the things I need at work and pare down the volume and weight of things I routinely pack back and forth - ideally to just keys, ID, a little cash and a credit card, and my phone.

I'm fortunate to have a gym at work where I can shower and change.  After mulling over some ideas, I've arrived at a plan that I think will work.  Monday morning I can walk to work, taking a little back pack with things I'll need for the week - mostly clothing.  Friday evening I'll pack it back home.  For the rest of the week, I'll be free to run in either direction whenever I want to.

The final piece of the puzzle was a good way to carry my minimum essential items.  Yesterday I got an Amphipod hip pack at REI that seems perfect for the job.

This morning I packed my weekly supplies to work.  After work, I strapped on the Amphipod and my Xero Shoes huarches and jogged up the street to a yoga class.  After class, I ran home, taking a 1.8 mile route down to Sligo Creek Park and up to the house.

It feels liberating to be able to decide on the spur of the moment whether to walk directly home or take a run through the park, or to hoof it to Takoma rather than riding the train.  To get that freedom, I had to rethink a lot of habits and assumptions that I had built up over the years.  It is great to get out of a rut.

A Ride in the Park

I have always enjoyed riding bikes.  So why hadn't I ridden my bike in several years?  We live in a perfect spot for it.  Just left out of the driveway and down to the end of the street, takes us into Sligo Creek Park where we can ride several miles either upstream or down.

Last summer when granddaughter Rachel was coming to visit, we thought she might bring her bike, and I got our bikes ready. It had been so long since they had been ridden, that the tires were all flat.  But the car was full, so the bike was left at home, and we found other things to do.

Something made me think of it again - perhaps the cooler than normal summer weather we've been having - and I suggested to Pam that we could go for a ride if we got a nice weekend day.  Yesterday I checked out the bikes.  Indeed, sitting around for a year, all the tires were flat.  I pumped them up, and checked them this morning - they had held the pressure just fine.

After lunch today we headed out and down the hill, a little unsteady at first.  My main challenge was relearning how the shifters worked.  I didn't get back to it being second nature, but achieved a functional level of competency.

We headed up the trail, past Forest Glen Road and Dennis Avenue to University.  We might have turned around there, but decided to cross the busy road and explore the trail on the other side, which we had never been on.

Then Pam saw a sign that said 0.9 mi to Wheaton Regional Park, and we decided to go check that out.  It's a large park with a riding stables, a small train, and Brookside Gardens, a lovely place that we've been to a number of times that also has a seasonal butterfly exhibit.  We entered a trail on the south end of the park and did a loop that took us near the train - that's how we discovered its existence.  Had we known last month we could have taken grandsons Andrew and Lucas on that one.  

Then we headed back.  The downstream gradient on the return trip made for easy pedaling.  We stopped to see a browsing deer that was very accustomed to people and let us hang out just a few feet away.  Closer to home we say another deer with a half grown fawn, its coat still spotted.

Just a little jaunt, 8 miles round trip, but thoroughly enjoyable, and making the question of why we've neglected this activity for so long.  Just stuck, I guess.

Unsticking

Are you stuck?

If you were, would you know?

As things in my life, particularly around my yoga practice and studies, and consequently my entire schedule and routine, are in transition, other things are beginning to unstick.

We have nice bikes.  We haven't ridden them in years.  Wouldn't it be fun to ride them in the park on a nice day?

Clutter. I don't enjoy clutter.  Why do I accumulate so much of it?

The box room is a mess.  It has been that way since a leaking pipe required moving several stacks of boxes from one corner of the room.  Some of the boxes are in my music room.   Oh, I could restack the boxes - the pipe has been fixed for a year.

On a desk in the music room there was a large, wrapped, picture frame.  What is that?  Oh, that's a nice set of pictures from a family boat trip when the kids were teenagers and Mom and Dad came to Alaska one summer.  It was in my parents' house, and I brought it back when we sorted out the family memorabilia.  I could hang that on the wall by the door of the music room - there's a nice space and it will be nice to remember.

Each little thing reveals another layer - something left partly done, or perhaps something that had some meaning but I didn't really know what my relationship to it needed to be.

It's so much easier to accumulate these things than to resolve them.  And to put things off rather than do them.  But the unsticking process has begun.

If you are stuck, do you know it?  It can just feel normal.  Then, something begins to move - perhaps some little thing, seemingly inconsequential - and then the stuckness in other parts of life comes into view, and suddenly everything begins to move.

Transitions

As I approach the end of my year of yoga teacher training, the uncertainty of what comes next has been hovering for a few weeks.  I've realized that as I begin some part time teaching, I will need to give up some of the regular classes I've taken for a couple of years, and find a new balance with my time and energy.

This is both exciting and unsettling.  I'll certainly miss some of what I must give up, and I will also have some great new experiences.  Change is difficult, and wonderful; challenging, and necessary.

At some level, everything is changing, though I often can construct and maintain a convincing illusion of stability - for a while.  I enjoy those periods, illusory as they are in the end.  I need to be able to let them pass when it's time.

Over the next few months I'll be making decisions about what things I most want to do, what new paths to head down, and what things I need to say goodbye to.  It will be a good time.

Barefoot

Yoga is practiced barefoot.  Developing and strengthening the natural movement of the feet is an important part of the practice.  Off the mat, though, I had shoes of one sort or another for every occasion - athletic shoes for the gym or for running, shoes to walk to work, different shoes to walk to work on rainy days, shoes to wear at work, slippers to wear in the house, boots for when it was snowy or cold.

Sometime this past spring, I found myself wanting to leave my shoes off at work and just pad around in my socks.  I also found myself leaving the slippers at the bottom of the stairs at home and going barefoot around the main levels.

What was going on?

I think my awareness of the relationship between strong, flexible, healthy feet and the rest of the body, and being more tuned in to the sensations coming from the thousands of nerves in the feet, finally reached a tipping point.  My feet just don't like to be locked up in shoes anymore.  I feel better when my feet are free.

Our feet are made to interact with the world and to support us as we stand, walk and run.  At best, shoes diminish that natural function, and in many cases, they prevent it altogether.  This article, from 2008, does a good job explaining the issue and some other peoples' experiences:
http://nymag.com/health/features/46213/

I know that shoes afford some protection to the feet, and being barefoot isn't always a great idea - like when, as a barefoot kid, I stepped on a sharp garden implement and embedded a tine into the sole of my foot.

But I'm realizing that they also aren't needed all the time, and going shoeless can feel great.  This afternoon I took a trial spin down the street and onto the park path.  There was an occasional uncomfortable twig or pebble, but I was surprised at how little discomfort I experienced with my pampered peds.  The different temperatures and textures I felt with my feet added new information to the familiar experience of a walk to the park.

So beware - I'll be barefoot more.

Ouch..... Still...

Last week I was sick with what I thought was a normal cold.  I was very tired for a couple of days, but the congestion never got really bad and I felt better over the weekend.  As other symptoms subsided, I realized I had a sore throat that wasn't going away.  Wednesday I had a strep test that was negative.  Yesterday evening it was quite bad, and today it seems a bit better.

This has given me an opportunity to see how I experience, and deal with, chronic pain.  I don't like it.  I just want it to go away.  It diminishes my ability to concentrate on other things.  Each night I go to sleep with the hope that it will be better in the morning - and then wake up in the early hours with it screaming at me louder than over.

It hurts the most when I swallow, and so my mind wants to avoid doing things that require swallowing.  I'm sitting here with a cup of tea, aware that every sip I take will activate the discomfort.  I sip anyway.   Perhaps I'll get used to it.

I do have confidence that it's a temporary state, and at some point in the near future I will feel better.  I don't know how I would deal with it if I thought it would persist indefinitely, or get progressively worse.  Perhaps you can't know that unless you experience it.  There are things I'd prefer not to know.

Middle of Summer

We're halfway through July. To me, that seems like the middle of summer.  I know that according to the seasons we are less than one month into summer, but the functional summer feels more like the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and with each passing day I can now feel the acceleration toward that early September holiday.

 We're enjoying a few days of cooler weather than we might expect this time of year.  Tonight's low is forecast to be around 60F, and daytime highs are in the low-mid 80s.  It is nice to have a respite from temperatures in the 90s with high humidity, though I'm certain we'll have more of that to come.

I spent some time today making travel arrangements for some meetings coming up in the next few months.  But if I spend too much time thinking about October, I miss what is going on now, what is special to enjoy during the long, hot (or pleasantly warm for the moment) days of summer.  Though the planning is essential, it seems worth making a conscious effort to keep most of my attention on the days that are immediately before me.

Happiness - where are you?

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”  Abraham Lincoln

This is the important truth about happiness - it comes from within us, not from without.  If we cede our happiness, our contentment, our joy in life, to the events of the world, we have lost our most essential power.  

Mindfulness practices help us recover that power - the ability to connect with the happiness within us, and to maintain it through the vagaries of life.

 

Flashes and Crashes!

One of my favorite things to experience is a thunderstorm.  The first thing that comes to mind is watching the storm - the dramatic shapes and dark hues of the clouds, and the shocking, brilliant flashes of lightning.  But equally rich are the sounds of the storm, the cracks of thunder, or sometimes rolling booms, and the sound of rain pelting trees, streets and roofs - and the fresh, clean smells that come with the rain.

Last night I was lying in bed with my eyes closed.  I knew a storm was coming, and was looking forward to hearing the patter of rain on the roof as I feel asleep.  Suddenly I was startled by a bright light, as if someone had flicked the light on in the room - only several times more intense - even though the only entry points for light were a skylight in the closet and a window with translucent shades.  By the time I opened my eyes, the room was dark again, and the house-rattling crash of thunder came almost immediately.

This afternoon, while in a meeting 16 stories up, I watched a storm move in from the west, an embodiment of energy with lightning, thunder, and heavy rain, and then move through within 20 minutes or so, the darkness moving off to the east, the sky clearing behind.  I'm musing about how all this energy becomes gathered and contained, so it can manifest with such incredible force.

I can remember many storms in Kansas as I grew up - dark swirling clouds approaching, almost always from the west.  Heavy pelting rain - in the summer sometimes warm and fun to play in, building dams in the gutters and finding sticks to float as pretend boats down the torrents.  I didn't fully appreciate the danger in all that power, sometimes staying out by the windows to see if I could spot the swirling tornado indicated by the siren that had started to blare.

The power is so far beyond me, the forces so completely out of my control, the sights and sounds so basic, so visceral - I think that is the basis of my fascination with the storms, my awe in the experience. The joy doesn't diminish.  Each storm is a unique being.  I expect to be enjoying thunderstorms as long as I live.

End of a Hiatus

The last post was July 1, making this by far the longest break in the Mindful Day blog.  Plenty was happening, but a new post was always just a little out of reach.

We drove to Savannah, Georgia for a family reunion and enjoyed several days there with time amid the old town squares and several miles southeast at a house on the Tivoli river.  I especially enjoyed talking with my two aunts about family history, and plan to pursue that a bit more.

Our trip back was split into two days of driving, though somehow each one seemed nearly as long as the single day driving down.  This let us spend a day near Greensboro, North Carolina shopping for antique china for our dining room.  We had talked about this for several years, but hadn't made the long road trip.  The reunion in Savannah gave us a good opportunity.

We also enjoyed coming back on Rt 29 through Virginia, rather than the monotony and high traffic volume (especially trucks) on I-95.  We hadn't been through the country around Lynchburg and Charlottesville, and had a nice trip back - until we ran into the D.C. suburbs between Warrenton and Manassas, where traffic volume spiked quickly.  The last hour and a half or so were quite a shock - back to gridlock on the Beltway (I-495).  For the last 9 miles we took a favorite "short-cut" (shorter only in time, if the Beltway is a parking lot) and arrived home in 30 minutes.

No sooner did we get home, than I was overtaken with a virus that sapped my energy and kept me from going back to work as planned.  By the weekend I felt better, though, and was able to complete the July weekend of my yoga teacher training.

In the last part of June, I had begun running again, hoping that with all the yoga I've been doing, I could run and stay injury free.  I ran with Evan several times in Savannah, and once in North Carolina on the trip back.  Yesterday, during the break between morning and afternoon sessions, I ran home from the yoga studio by a scenic route (longer than it needed to be).  My right calf tightened up and was quite sore.  So that's a bit of a set-back, but it also has given me incentive and a focus to learn more about the muscles of the lower leg, how they get injured, and how to treat them - which is valuable for me to know.  

A Most Interesting Ride on the Metro

We had a busy day today.  We spent a good part of it trekking up to Baltimore to visit the National Aquarium, which was well worth the effort.  We saw a lot of interesting marine and aquatic life, and the facility is well designed, taking about 3 hours to get through.

But that wasn't the most interesting activity of the day.  We had promised grandson Andrew a trip on the Metro.  At 5 years old he is very interested in trains, planes, construction equipment and most other large and noisy things.  But we had opted for activities that didn't need a Metro trip, and this was our last evening before heading to Savannah for the 4th of July.

So after dinner we packed up in the car and drove to a county parking garage near the Silver Spring Metro Station.  We walked to the station, and as soon as it came into sight a train was spotted.

"There's one!"  "Can we take that train?"

There are several impressive things about the Metro, for anyone who hasn't just become used to them.  One is just the fun of boarding a train and then whisking off - the electric trains accelerate briskly.  Another is the tunnels and underground stations.  And some of those stations are deep underground, so they have extremely long escalators that take passengers up to the surface.

We were able to give Andrew the full experience, riding two stops north from Silver Spring out to Wheaton, which has one of the very long escalators.  We rode it up, exited the station, and went outside to look around for a few minutes before reversing our course for the ride back to Silver Spring.

I was reminded of how amazing the experience can be, and how much is missed by treating it as routine, or creating 'negatives' out of the experience, such as unhappiness about having to wait several minutes for a train, or how long it takes to get up the escalator to the top of the station, or being bothered by the stream of other passengers all hurrying to the escalator or the turnstiles.  It is nice to just leave that little internal complainer turned off and enjoy what is.