There. I said it. Now I can get on with my life.
Spent the weekend cross country skiing in Breckenridge, one of my very favorite things to do in the whole world. Went by myself on Saturday and spent an hour and fifteen minutes going all out. I was winded, I was tired, and I was on a massive endorphin high. Went with the family out to our favorite restaurant, a Japanese noodle house called Denzaimon. Very yummy and authentic. Probably would be a roadside stand if it were in Japan. But since it's in a semi-upscale Colorado ski town, it is a sit down place with an awesome sake menu. And there's nothing like a top shelf cold sake to top off a runners high.
Went skiing today with my 9 year old daughter. She rocks! We did about 4 miles on blue trails and we had so much fun. It was snowing and peaceful and so, so beautiful. After we'd been out for about 1:45 she was clearly pumped. We'd gone up to see an old mining structure and skiied past a house with a way rockin snowman and my little trooper said she wanted to keep going. I kind of sensed we were a few minutes away from a bonk. As we were a few minutes away from the lodge as well, I chose that option. I will never know for sure, but since she scarfed down 4 free granola bars in about 5 minutes, I think my instinct was a good one.
I love having something that she and I do together. So often we butt heads, but on the nordic trails we just mesh. She loves it the way I do. She gets it the way I do--the calm, the silence, the beauty, the personal challenge, the endorphin rush.
And the vibe. Seriously. It is so different from the downhill scene. I mean, can you imagine free granola bars at a downhill ski lodge? People who remember you from year to year? People who honor your pass even though you left it at home and tell you to "just remind me to do two punches next time"? True, you can't do shots or eat hamburgers in the lodge. And sometimes that does seem like a lot of fun. But you can always meet your friends at the bar later. Gimme cross country any day.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Friday, January 4, 2008
Yoga traitor
I pretty much consider myself a vinyasa kind of yogi. I began my yoga journey with Kundalini in 1992, because (oddly enough) that is what was being taught at my local gym, in what I have come to recognize was a very pure form with chanting and a variety of pranayama and arm waving and all the wonderful Kundalini kookiness which I still love.
Then I discovered vinyasa aka power yoga and was hooked. It has movement, it has strength-building, it has spirituality. I also discovered ashtanga and became a wannabe ashtangi, but with no teachers in the area I gave that up. Instead, I found vinyasa teachers I loved, both locally and on video, like Baron Baptiste and Bryan Kest. I went to Bootcamp with Baron to celebrate my 40th birthday and wished I could live there forever.
Somewhere along the way I also started doing Bikram. I think it's because a studio opened up here in Colorado Springs and I was curious. I kind of hated it, but kept going because I was training for a summer marathon and thought it would be good to get used to the heat. As if you can ever get used to that kind of heat. I've been doing a lot of hot yoga lately, which is my local studio's bastardization of Bikram. Same poses but you can drink more water. And, depending on the teacher, they might play music.
Yesterday I did a bastardization of a bastardization, Hot Power Fusion. This hour-long class is heated slightly less than hot yoga but is still very hot and follows much of the hot yoga sequence minus the horrible icky breathing exercise in the beginning (yaay!) and including a few vinyasa poses such as down dogs, some core work and kapotanasana (pigeon). It was pretty cool. Well, very hot, but I've always hated the breathing (did I make that clear already?) and felt that my arms and hips weren't getting enough of a workout in hot/Bikram, which this addressed. And core is always a bonus, although I've been doing some pretty awesome core exercises I found in Runners World's most recent issue.
The funny thing is, I will go to hot yoga again today, even with the horrible breathing, even with the feeling that I am being a traitor and I should be going to a vinyasa class, or doing a Kundalini or Baron or Bryan DVD at home. There is a lot I don't like about hot yoga. Sometimes it's too hot, although I think the heat is what has been drawing me lately. I felt really smelly a week or two ago, and I don't feel anywhere near as smelly anymore. Not sweat smelly, toxin smelly. So that would be a like, actually, not a dislike.
Dislikes about hot yoga:
Opening pranayama sequence
Lack of any arm strengthening
no inversions
Bizarre names for asanas. Like, why is tree pose tadasana, when in every other school of yoga it is vrikshasana?
Lack of any "yoga talk" or spirituality, even though the instructors showily announce every pose in really long, really strange sanskrit. Like dancers pose, or natarajasana, which they call dandayamana danyurasaha. Okay, I know that translates to standing bow pose. But it just seems so... arrogant to go against the tide of everyone else's names of asanas.
And that's another thing I don't like about Bikram. Him. Bikram. The man. Not that I've ever met him or attended a workshop with him or anything But he seems so arrogant and anti-yoga. Trying to patent the poses?
I will echo my cousin's sentiments that all of this just proves that the yoga does its job, because even with all of those complaints, I still primarily feel good after a hot yoga class and continue to attend. Quite a bit lately. And that is my dilemma. Why? Boredom? The need to switch things up? And yet I didn't feel sick of vinyasa. And in all my yoga research for my dissertation, Bikram is NEVER mentioned as having any western-scientifically authenticated health benefits.
Partly it's because the timing of the classes works for me. I wonder whether there are other reasons to continue to subject myself to something I find vaguely unpleasant.
Well, time to go make school lunches and hang out with my kids before the school bus comes.
Then I discovered vinyasa aka power yoga and was hooked. It has movement, it has strength-building, it has spirituality. I also discovered ashtanga and became a wannabe ashtangi, but with no teachers in the area I gave that up. Instead, I found vinyasa teachers I loved, both locally and on video, like Baron Baptiste and Bryan Kest. I went to Bootcamp with Baron to celebrate my 40th birthday and wished I could live there forever.
Somewhere along the way I also started doing Bikram. I think it's because a studio opened up here in Colorado Springs and I was curious. I kind of hated it, but kept going because I was training for a summer marathon and thought it would be good to get used to the heat. As if you can ever get used to that kind of heat. I've been doing a lot of hot yoga lately, which is my local studio's bastardization of Bikram. Same poses but you can drink more water. And, depending on the teacher, they might play music.
Yesterday I did a bastardization of a bastardization, Hot Power Fusion. This hour-long class is heated slightly less than hot yoga but is still very hot and follows much of the hot yoga sequence minus the horrible icky breathing exercise in the beginning (yaay!) and including a few vinyasa poses such as down dogs, some core work and kapotanasana (pigeon). It was pretty cool. Well, very hot, but I've always hated the breathing (did I make that clear already?) and felt that my arms and hips weren't getting enough of a workout in hot/Bikram, which this addressed. And core is always a bonus, although I've been doing some pretty awesome core exercises I found in Runners World's most recent issue.
The funny thing is, I will go to hot yoga again today, even with the horrible breathing, even with the feeling that I am being a traitor and I should be going to a vinyasa class, or doing a Kundalini or Baron or Bryan DVD at home. There is a lot I don't like about hot yoga. Sometimes it's too hot, although I think the heat is what has been drawing me lately. I felt really smelly a week or two ago, and I don't feel anywhere near as smelly anymore. Not sweat smelly, toxin smelly. So that would be a like, actually, not a dislike.
Dislikes about hot yoga:
Opening pranayama sequence
Lack of any arm strengthening
no inversions
Bizarre names for asanas. Like, why is tree pose tadasana, when in every other school of yoga it is vrikshasana?
Lack of any "yoga talk" or spirituality, even though the instructors showily announce every pose in really long, really strange sanskrit. Like dancers pose, or natarajasana, which they call dandayamana danyurasaha. Okay, I know that translates to standing bow pose. But it just seems so... arrogant to go against the tide of everyone else's names of asanas.
And that's another thing I don't like about Bikram. Him. Bikram. The man. Not that I've ever met him or attended a workshop with him or anything But he seems so arrogant and anti-yoga. Trying to patent the poses?
I will echo my cousin's sentiments that all of this just proves that the yoga does its job, because even with all of those complaints, I still primarily feel good after a hot yoga class and continue to attend. Quite a bit lately. And that is my dilemma. Why? Boredom? The need to switch things up? And yet I didn't feel sick of vinyasa. And in all my yoga research for my dissertation, Bikram is NEVER mentioned as having any western-scientifically authenticated health benefits.
Partly it's because the timing of the classes works for me. I wonder whether there are other reasons to continue to subject myself to something I find vaguely unpleasant.
Well, time to go make school lunches and hang out with my kids before the school bus comes.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Reality Check
I came to my computer yesterday and saw this page open on the screen. I know I did not leave it open, which means that one of my daughters found it in the pulldown history and opened it up.
I was just thinking the other day about how I would feel if a psychotherapy client read this blog. That would be a hypothetical client at this point, since I don't have any clients at the moment, having finished my practicum 3 days ago. Would I want them to see this? I am a fairly self-disclosing kind of therapist, but there are limits of what I want them to know. And even if I do disclose my history of eating disorders, for example, I do it when I feel appropriate, not because I am an exhibitionist.
Is keeping a blog exhibitionist by nature?
But anyway, I never even considered my children reading this. Yes, of course they know lots about me. But there are things they don't know, and I'm not sure I want them to know at this point. Like the ED. Maybe someday if appropriate. Not now.
So do I change what I write? Do I put in less? Do I use code words? Or do I leave it all out there, allowing anyone who may stumble upon this access to parts of my psyche? Something to ponder.
I was just thinking the other day about how I would feel if a psychotherapy client read this blog. That would be a hypothetical client at this point, since I don't have any clients at the moment, having finished my practicum 3 days ago. Would I want them to see this? I am a fairly self-disclosing kind of therapist, but there are limits of what I want them to know. And even if I do disclose my history of eating disorders, for example, I do it when I feel appropriate, not because I am an exhibitionist.
Is keeping a blog exhibitionist by nature?
But anyway, I never even considered my children reading this. Yes, of course they know lots about me. But there are things they don't know, and I'm not sure I want them to know at this point. Like the ED. Maybe someday if appropriate. Not now.
So do I change what I write? Do I put in less? Do I use code words? Or do I leave it all out there, allowing anyone who may stumble upon this access to parts of my psyche? Something to ponder.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
I'm feeling sad and a little bit teary right now. I just read in the paper about a book called Body Drama about real girls and real bodies-- published by a Miss America swimsuit winner who also happens to be a Harvard grad with a concentration in women's studies, which I am as well. Not the swimsuit part. She is very beautiful but has compiled a book of "real women" who are not all perfect or airbrushed. I think I will get this book for myself and my daughters.Despite getting up and writing the blog entry about granting myself grace, and despite having left the house at 7:30 am to go climb the 13 flights of the Antlers Hotel 11 times in training for Run the Republic, I still feel really fat and blobby ad out of shape and crappy about myself. I want so badly to love myself, or at least feel good about myself, to have confidence. But it is so hard. And so I work for grace.
Space for grace
Happy 2008. I am very excited about the new year, with no real sense of why, exactly.
Last night we were sitting around the dinner table, sipping gorgeous wine, when our host had us all go around and state our resolutions. I don't usually make resolutions, since they seem so ripe for disappointment. I do have goals I would like to accomplish this year. One is, of course, finishing my dissertation. That is something I would very much like to see happen in 2008, and will work hard to make that a reality. Another thing I will try for this year is grace. Grace towards myself. Yes, I would like to get in better shape, which I think I have been moving towards over the past month. I am also going to get together sometime this week with my running partner, whom I'll call Scoop, and talk about races we want to sign up for over the coming year. Always good to have goals to work towards. And I want to keep up my asana practice and keep lifting weights, both of which make me feel really good. But I also want to work on developing grace.
I am 41.5 years old. I am not going to look like I did when I was 20. I am also not going to look like I did when I was 35 and nursing my second child and at the same time running 40 miles a week and lifting and dieting to train for a figure competition (never got there-- the strict dieting was making me so crabby my husband begged me to stop. Since he is usually so supportive, I took this pretty seriously. There were other reasons to stop... but that's not the topic here). I will never look like that again. Yes, I want to eat better and work out more, but I have a much broader focus in my life right now, and I don't think that my fitness will ever again be the prime focus of my life the way it used to be. And that needs to be okay. I am getting a doctorate. My kids are getting older. I need to go on internship in August, then develop a practice, etc. I've got a lot going on. And so I need grace. I need to work on loving myself.
I tell all my clients that if you don't like yourself and take care of yourself, it is awfully hard to like and take care of other people. It's time to start walking that walk. That does not mean making excuses. In fact, the opposite. Loving myself should be about taking good care of myself, both mentally and physically. And there is no better time to start that the present moment.
Last night we were sitting around the dinner table, sipping gorgeous wine, when our host had us all go around and state our resolutions. I don't usually make resolutions, since they seem so ripe for disappointment. I do have goals I would like to accomplish this year. One is, of course, finishing my dissertation. That is something I would very much like to see happen in 2008, and will work hard to make that a reality. Another thing I will try for this year is grace. Grace towards myself. Yes, I would like to get in better shape, which I think I have been moving towards over the past month. I am also going to get together sometime this week with my running partner, whom I'll call Scoop, and talk about races we want to sign up for over the coming year. Always good to have goals to work towards. And I want to keep up my asana practice and keep lifting weights, both of which make me feel really good. But I also want to work on developing grace.
I am 41.5 years old. I am not going to look like I did when I was 20. I am also not going to look like I did when I was 35 and nursing my second child and at the same time running 40 miles a week and lifting and dieting to train for a figure competition (never got there-- the strict dieting was making me so crabby my husband begged me to stop. Since he is usually so supportive, I took this pretty seriously. There were other reasons to stop... but that's not the topic here). I will never look like that again. Yes, I want to eat better and work out more, but I have a much broader focus in my life right now, and I don't think that my fitness will ever again be the prime focus of my life the way it used to be. And that needs to be okay. I am getting a doctorate. My kids are getting older. I need to go on internship in August, then develop a practice, etc. I've got a lot going on. And so I need grace. I need to work on loving myself.
I tell all my clients that if you don't like yourself and take care of yourself, it is awfully hard to like and take care of other people. It's time to start walking that walk. That does not mean making excuses. In fact, the opposite. Loving myself should be about taking good care of myself, both mentally and physically. And there is no better time to start that the present moment.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Last day of my practicum
Today is the final day of my 3 years of practicum. To celebrate, I will do a WAIS-III, WMS-III and an MMPI-II. Then I will come home and go to a new years eve party.
Tonight is totally my kind of party: three families, all with kids around the same ages who have known each other their whole lives... literally. I met the two other women at a so-called playgroup nine years ago when our oldest children couldn't even sit up yet. Those should be called get-desparate-new-moms-out-of-the-house groups. But anyway, one of the couples recently had the opportunity to buy a super-cool, historic Colorado Springs house for a relative song, and that is where we are going to be.
On the menu: Turducken. A turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken, with the remaining cavities stuffed with some sort of saugsage type thing. I looked that shit up online and it is like, 1700 calories per serveing, with 110 grams of fat. A few different sites agree on this. Yipes.
Tomorrow, no more excuses. My weight still is too high and, even though I am feeling better about myself since joining the Y and lifting more, I still need those numbers on the scale to come down. Please do not mistake this as a new years resolution. It is not. Rather, it is a return to the healthier eating that I seem to have at least somewhat abandoned.
Tonight is totally my kind of party: three families, all with kids around the same ages who have known each other their whole lives... literally. I met the two other women at a so-called playgroup nine years ago when our oldest children couldn't even sit up yet. Those should be called get-desparate-new-moms-out-of-the-house groups. But anyway, one of the couples recently had the opportunity to buy a super-cool, historic Colorado Springs house for a relative song, and that is where we are going to be.
On the menu: Turducken. A turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken, with the remaining cavities stuffed with some sort of saugsage type thing. I looked that shit up online and it is like, 1700 calories per serveing, with 110 grams of fat. A few different sites agree on this. Yipes.
Tomorrow, no more excuses. My weight still is too high and, even though I am feeling better about myself since joining the Y and lifting more, I still need those numbers on the scale to come down. Please do not mistake this as a new years resolution. It is not. Rather, it is a return to the healthier eating that I seem to have at least somewhat abandoned.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Five minutes to Samadhi
Started up my meditation practice again. Five minutes first thing in the morning. I understand that I have little chance of entering a state of samadhi in five minutes, but that is all I can muster up enthusiasm for at this point.
About a year ago I meditated for five minutes a day, then brought it up to ten, then eleven. I never got higher than 11. In fact, I stopped altogether.
Two summers ago when I went to Baron Baptiste's teacher training level 1 bootcamp he had us meditate daily for 30 minutes. Frankly, it was excruciating. I know that meditation is about stillness. And I knew that he was going to spend the rest of the day working our assess off, and that I should enjoy the time of stillness. We would sit in virasana. First my legs would go numb. Then I'd have to think about that for a while, until I would allow myself to shift into simple crosslegged pose. Then I'd be okay for a while. Then I would have to start to move. I mollified myself by telling myself that I was doing yoga, because I did a kind of Kundalini-inspired grind from the waist. In both directions, of course. Plus, I figured that everyone had their eyes closed, and whoever was looking around and could see me was "cheating," too. Then I could usually be still for a while more until Baron would come in and start yapping away, which he basically did for the rest of the day.
I know that all of that restlessness is the first step to stillness. I do. But at this point in my life, with grad school to be finished and kids to be raised and dissertations to be written and stairs to be climbed and weights to be lifted and marathons to be run and yoga to be practiced and lunches to be made and carpools to be driven and homework that needs help and dinner to be cooked all in time for bedtime, I just can't do it right now. That stillness isn't within me. And yes, I know that fidgety busy people like me are supposed to do restorative yoga and calming postures to balance our doshas. Oh well. Not going to happen anytime soon. So in the meantime, I'm bucking for samadhi in 5.
About a year ago I meditated for five minutes a day, then brought it up to ten, then eleven. I never got higher than 11. In fact, I stopped altogether.
Two summers ago when I went to Baron Baptiste's teacher training level 1 bootcamp he had us meditate daily for 30 minutes. Frankly, it was excruciating. I know that meditation is about stillness. And I knew that he was going to spend the rest of the day working our assess off, and that I should enjoy the time of stillness. We would sit in virasana. First my legs would go numb. Then I'd have to think about that for a while, until I would allow myself to shift into simple crosslegged pose. Then I'd be okay for a while. Then I would have to start to move. I mollified myself by telling myself that I was doing yoga, because I did a kind of Kundalini-inspired grind from the waist. In both directions, of course. Plus, I figured that everyone had their eyes closed, and whoever was looking around and could see me was "cheating," too. Then I could usually be still for a while more until Baron would come in and start yapping away, which he basically did for the rest of the day.
I know that all of that restlessness is the first step to stillness. I do. But at this point in my life, with grad school to be finished and kids to be raised and dissertations to be written and stairs to be climbed and weights to be lifted and marathons to be run and yoga to be practiced and lunches to be made and carpools to be driven and homework that needs help and dinner to be cooked all in time for bedtime, I just can't do it right now. That stillness isn't within me. And yes, I know that fidgety busy people like me are supposed to do restorative yoga and calming postures to balance our doshas. Oh well. Not going to happen anytime soon. So in the meantime, I'm bucking for samadhi in 5.
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