Creating New Patterns

Last spring, after an end of winter attempt to start running again, I had tightness and discomfort - even pain - in my right hip.  I stopped running, but the discomfort persisted, affecting my walks to work, yoga practice, and most movement, though cycling seemed not to aggravate it.

As the months went by, the problem didn't go away.  In fact, it seemed to be getting even worse, and I found the sensation moving around.  Sometimes the front of the hip would feel tight, sometimes the side, back, or down by the sitting bones.  I thought of seeing a physical therapist, or having an MRI done.  

A couple of weeks ago, in mid-October, I'd been emphasizing relaxing and releasing tension in my classes, and I was reading Vanda Scaravelli's wonderful little book on yoga, "Awakening the Spine."  In it, she emphasizes the release of tension, and of grounding the lower body in order to allow lightness in the upper body.

One morning, I'd reviewed the anatomy of the hip, getting a visual image of the bones and muscles and how they related.  The thought occurred to me that perhaps a lot of what I was experiencing (discomfort and tightness that moved around in the hip) was muscles gripping - contracting in spasms, and holding tension.  That morning as I walked to work, a little more slowly then usual, I focused with each step on relaxing into the step, feeling myself very heavy, and consciously relaxing around my hip.  I also thought about space in the hip - the pelvis to the inside of the femur.  I've had a longstanding issue with my right hip feeling that it was 'hiked up,' or a little bit jammed.  

The walk felt fine, though I didn't know how to interpret what I was feeling.  I taught my lunchtime yoga class, continuing the theme of strong grounding and releasing tension. Sometime in the afternoon, standing at my workstation, I realized the hip felt different - more balanced with the left - and not stuck or hiked up.  I walked home slowly, relaxing the hip all the time, thinking of what the left hip felt like when it moved, and trying to match that in the right. 

Almost all of the hip unhappiness I'd been dealing with for seven months was gone by the end of the day. That was very welcome, but also quite amazing to me.  To think that all I needed to do was to pay very close attention to my movement patterns and consciously redirect them.  Since then I've continued to work on it - watching for any tension creeping back - and my hip feels great.  

This experience taught me a lot about the importance of directed attention and consciously letting go.  I'd done a lot of general relaxing, guided meditations to put the body in a deeply relaxed state, but that clearly wasn't focused enough to break the pattern.  The key was being very deliberate about releasing tension as the hip was in motion.

Crossword Clue

I've been doing crossword puzzles for several years.  Most work days I pick up a copy of the Express - a commuter oriented paper from the Washington Post.  At some point during the day I'll do the puzzle - usually finishing - but sometimes bringing it home to finish later.

These puzzles are the right level of difficulty for me.  Often I have to work around a word or phrase, but can usually figure them out.  I have several different approaches.  Sometimes I go through all the horizontal clues, writing down any answers I'm confident of.  Then I go back and work through the vertical clues.  If needed, I'll go back to the horizontal clues and fill in the last ones.  Another approach is to fill in the first answer I know, then build off that word in all directions - seeing, for example, if I can get all the way from the top left corner down to the bottom right before being stumped.  Sometimes I don't use any system at all.

A couple of weeks ago, I realized why I like to do the crosswords.  In a job that has lots of loose ends and interruptions, projects that can go on for a long time, and depend on the work of other people, it's hard for me to bring anything to completion on any given day.  The crossword is something I can spend a little time with, and finish.  It's a small accomplishment - trivial really - but it's concrete and definite.

Awareness that I needed a sense of completion and accomplishment that I wasn't finding at work has made me rethink how I approach work.  I've focused more on organizing and defining work so that I can complete more things, even if they are just a part of, or a step in, a bigger project.  

Early Earthling

I woke this morning before the alarm, and got up happy for an extra 15 minutes before leaving for work.  On Mondays I walk in to arrive soon after the fitness center opens at 6:30, so I can take a shower and be ready for my 7 o'clock yoga class.

I headed out the door about 5 minutes after the hour, braced for the chill.  30 degrees, the iPhone weather said, and it felt like it.  But the sky was dark and clear, and gave me a beautiful of Orion, Cassiopeia, the Pleiades, Venus and Saturn.  At the darkest spot, away from streetlights, I stopped to watch Orion for a couple of minutes.  Thinking of the vast distance, the energy streaming through space, and feeling very connected to this planet, knowing that every molecule in me is from here.  This planet, that holds me close to it, and also holds the atmosphere I need to breath, Earth.  I am most definitely an Earthling.

I arrived to find the gym dark.  Sometimes they're a few minutes late to open, but there are usually a few people waiting.  I was all alone.  I looked at my watch.  5:33, it said.  33... yes, they're a bit late.  Wait..... 5?

5:33 am?!!

It slowly dawned on me that from the moment I woke up and looked at the clock, I had gone through my early morning preparations an hour early.  I'd looked at several clocks, my watch, my phone, and never registered the hour.  I suddenly felt a little sleep deprived, and turned to what I would do for the hour I had to wait.

Getting a Different Perspective

I've been practicing wheel pose, or urdhva dhanurasana, a full back bend with hands and feet on the floor.  This is a difficult pose for me, that has improved a lot with persistent practice.

I had an image in my head of what my pose looked like, based on how it felt, but it's not possible to see in this upside down position where the eyes are looking away from the rest of the body.

Yesterday, I warmed up for a while, and then had Pam take a photo of me in the pose.

Whoa!  I looked little like the image in my head.  My feet were too close to my hands, keeping my knees bent at an acute angle, rather than pushing towards straight, and my shoulders were not nearly as much over my hands as I thought.

Having the different perspective entirely changed my mind about how I should set up for the pose and work on it.  I lengthened my feet out quite a bit.  The pose felt less cramped, and another photo revealed that it was just barely enough to get good alignment of knees over ankles, though to me the pose felt like my feet were extended much farther away.

Though how a pose feels is ultimately more important than how it looks, I needed this outside perspective to point me in a different direction.  Otherwise, I would be continuing to fight too much to make an overly tight pose feel spacious.

New Arrival!

Today's post has to be about the arrival of another grandson - Eric Joseph Tromble.

Though he's been with us for a few months, out of sight, identity hidden, the day of birth is an astonishing transition - in a moment, air enters lungs for the first time and a whole chain of changes is set in motion as baby begins its independent life.  It's as if one set of machinery is suddenly switched off and another turned on - too complicated to possibly work - but it does.

Welcome!

Each Day is Important - a Reminder

An email this afternoon told that a coworker and fellow musician had died suddenly of a heart attack over the weekend.  I'd seen him just last week at the gym - his locker is next to mine.  He seemed fit, exercised at the gym, swam at the Y.  Suddenly gone.

I stopped by the gym on the way home from work.  His name, and lock, still on the locker.  Someone will have to deal with that - clearly a low priority - and many in the community still don't know the news.

It's a reminder that as important as it may be to plan for the future, life is lived in the present.  None of us knows how many more days we have.  It is folly to forego living fully in the present thinking that enjoyment or fulfillment are for some future day.

Live now!

Leaf Watching Season

Leaf watching season is here! Leaves were coming down throughout the beautiful, temperate fall day.  Mostly gold and brown from the tulip poplars, but I ran through one patch of red maple leaves on the path.  Later, out for a little walk to investigate some day-long construction noise, I watched a leaf fall.  It drifted toward me, and I reached out and caught it. It was crisp and crackly.

In the afternoon, I went to sit on the back deck and read.  The deck is off of the 2nd story, so it looks out over the trees that line the yard, about 10 feet up in the branches.  I had just sat down when a black squirrel appeared, moving along an improvised highway of tree branches - running out to the top of a branch and then climbing or jumping to the tip of a branch on the next tree.  When it came near a large oak tree, it leapt off a tiny hemlock branch onto the trunk, climbed up the tree a few feet and around to the other side, then leapt off into another hemlock branch and continued on.

Soon, another squirrel came by, following a similar path, though different in detail.  At the oak, it climbed higher up the trunk and sat for a while on the stub of a dead branch.  The black squirrel came back through the branches, this time with a nut in its mouth.  It once again used the large oak trunk to move past, and then vanished out of sight in the tree-filled corner of the yard.

Sunlight is streaming through the oaks and tulip poplars, whose leaves seem to glow with the light.  Some rays get through to light the spotted acuba leaves that surround the base of the large trees.

Another practically perfect autumn day!

Birthday!

Friday, October 9 2015, was my 59th birthday.  I took the day off from work, and spent it well.

I checked the indoor garden after breakfast, then watched some YouTube videos about gardening things - when and how to transplant seedlings and how to top pepper  and tomato plants.  Then I moved some peppers up to a larger size container, and planted four grape tomato seeds.

After finishing with the garden, I took a chair out on the back deck to read.  On the way, I stopped to watch the shadows playing on the window shades - a favorite thing for me. The morning was perfect, just the right temperature, sunlight filtering through the trees, and just a hint of breeze.  Occasionally, a leaf would tumble down from the tall tulip poplars.  I watch them all the way down, as a mindfulness exercise.  Some tumble, some spin, some flutter - every leaf a unique shape - and that uniqueness expresses itself in a few seconds of motion - leaf pulled down through air by gravity.

My reading was about the yoga concept of vairagya, or letting go.  Letting go may mean not dwelling on past events, playing unproductive mental games of "if only.." or "I should have.."  It could also mean letting go of a future result, realizing that whether or not my actions lead to the desired result, I will be OK.  Anxiety about results is wasted time, energy, life.

Then it was time to hop on my bike and ride to Takoma Park for Francesca's noon yoga class.  I often go there from work, often after a bit of a hurry, and I was much more settled and calm, arriving after a morning spent doing just a few things that I really wanted to.

After lunch, I rested a while, then read some more before dinner.   Dinner was a bit of an adventure.  We drove to Takoma Park to eat at Busboys and Poets, parking a few blocks away on the street.  It was a little cool in the shade, but we sat outside for dinner.  Just as we were talking about dessert, the sky became ominously black, a dark, gray-fronted cloud moving in quickly from the west.  Lightning began to flash up in the cloud, and the diners along the street began moving inside.  Then the rain began - a full downpour.  We stood with a crowd inside, while we waited for our dessert to arrive - to go - and then waited 20 minutes more until the storm passed, the sky grew lighter, and the rain slowed to a light shower.  We were a little wet by the time we got to the car, and then drove home to eat the chocolate cake.

Sticking With It

This afternoon I got a report to review.  I'd seen an earlier draft, and it had been reviewed by several other people.  I thought about giving it a cursory look, but decided instead to read it more closely.
Page after page, I found one or more problems - typos, grammatical problems, style inconsistencies, and a couple of more substantive issues.

It's hard work to stick to.  After a while I tire and start to lose concentration.  That's time to get up, take a little walk to clear the mind, and then return to the task.  I thought about leaving it to finish tomorrow, but chose instead to keep coming back to it until it was finished.  Now, rather than a partly finished review competing for my attention tomorrow, I have a finished review I can discuss with the author.

It's easier to find space between things when I stick with a project until it's done.  It can be a challenge to fend off the distractions, and choose to turn back to the task when tempted to leave it unfinished, but it's well worth the effort.

Dogwood Harvest

Last spring, the dogwood tree outside our kitchen window sprang to life, greened, and flowered. The flowers are small, but around each cluster of flowers are 4 large bracts, either white or pink, depending on the tree, that I identify as the dogwood flower.  They're very pretty, and persist for quite a long time, unlike some other early blooms, like the cherries.

Eventually the bracts wither and drop, and the tree stands in the full summer sun, gathering energy.  Toward the end of summer small green fruits begin to grow.  They get larger day by day, and then ripen into bright red berries, perhaps a quarter to 3/8 of an inch in diameter.

 Today was harvest day.  I had seen a flock of robins in the yard, and a little later Pam came in and said "You might be interested in what's going on outside the kitchen window."  Indeed.

There was a frenzy of activity.  Birds fluttered into the outer clusters of leaves and berries, scrambling for purchase on the thin, flexible vegetation.  Once stable, they would eat a berry, or perhaps two, then fly away into a nearby tree.  Sometimes they'd grab a berry, and then it would drop.  I couldn't tell if they just weren't good at getting the berries into the gullet, or if they had judged it not ripe enough.

Mostly robins, there were also cardinals, a northern flicker, and a wood pecker with a bright red head.  Then a few starlings appeared.  Unlike the others, they flew first up to a window ledge on the house before coasting down into the foliage.  I watched one gulp down four berries in quick succession before flying off.  The most I saw a robin take in one visit was two.

There was a lull in the action, and we went to the farmers market.  Perhaps half the berries were still on the tree.  By the time we got home, there was one left that we could see, and a few scattered on the ground.

In a few hours, the birds had harvested the dogwood's full production for the year.

Breath

Breath connects us to the world around.  We breathe in the air, and we breathe it out, but it is changed.  Like every part of the system of life, we exchange what we don't need for what we do.  One part feeds another.

Breath connects our conscious and unconscious minds.  It flows, usually out of view, thousands of times a day.  But in an instant - breathe in..... NOW! - it responds to conscious direction.

Breath reflects how we feel, and how we breathe can change how we feel.  So, conscious control of breath is a tool to change our physical and emotional state.

I walked home from teaching yoga on a cool, damp night.  I felt the cool air entering my lungs, and held a hand before my face to feel the warmth of the breath spreading back out into the world outside.