Ten Minutes

I do my cardio at the gym. It’s not exciting or sexy, but it gets the job done.  It’s not a long workout but I do it most days and have done for years. If I’m honest, I’d feel weird if I didn’t do it. Despite all of this, I dread doing it.

Here’s the thing about the dread. It’s all mental. My body can handle it, but my mind insists on worrying over it like an animal licking a wound. It sits heavy on my mind like a weight until I actually get on a machine and start. And the first ten minutes are the hardest because I’m still carrying that weight with me. I think about how my muscles are tired today or how I just can do the intensity I did yesterday or how I just want to be home in bed. From all the whining and complaining, you would think I had never worked out in my life and in tremendous physical agony. Sadly, I think that a part of me does believe I am. 

Around the ten minute mark, my mind realizes I’m not getting off the machine and there is nothing to be had by yammering on. When my mind shuts up, my body can be heard and more often than not, she’s doing just fine. 

Think less. Do more.

Back on the Bike

Keeping in the spirit of finding balance, I rode my bike today.

I haven’t really ridden a bike since I was a pre-teen. In those days, I used to ride everywhere and loved it. Some of my happiest childhood memories were flying down sidewalks in Miami on the way to the lake when I was ten or bumping along the streets of Cairo to get to my friend’s house at twelve. But I never got a bike when we moved back to the D.C. area the following year and didn’t really live in a bike-friendly city as an adult until I moved back to Maryland five years ago. Even then, it took me until this summer to get a bike.

I got a bike in June with the anticipation of riding it everywhere. To yoga, to dance, to the store. So I bought it online and when it came, I put it together excitedly. And then I locked it up. I wasn’t ready to ride it yet. I needed accessories. Like a helmet. And a bike rack. And a basket. I bought these things and took my bike out for a spin. But it had a flat tire. I locked it back up until I had time to go fill the tire. This took a week or so. I went to the gas station, filled it and soon realized that it wasn’t just flat but had a hole in the tire. I contacted the store, they had to send me a replacement and then I had to go to a bike store to get it fixed. That took a couple of weeks. I would have ridden it after all of this, but it was too hot. Then it rained. Then I got busy.

I realized in this time that I needed to practice riding a bit before crossing major roads to get to yoga or the store.  Also, I never planned properly to leave enough time to actually bike, not drive, to wherever I needed to go. I worried over details about what route to take and if there would be a place to lock up my bike. A myriad of obstacles and objections weighed on my mind. It began to seem such a hassle to go anywhere with my bike and I never had time to just take it out for a practice ride.

So like this, weeks kept passing and soon my toy wasn’t so shiny in my mind anymore and, well, I sort of forgot about it most of the time and when I did remember, it was an inappropriate time to make use of the remembering.

That brings us to today. The weather was gorgeous. The sort of day that makes you feel guilty for every minute spent indoors (and if there is guilt to be felt, I will feel it). I had a couple of hours to kill before I had to get ready for a birthday party and I needed to get a gift from the bookstore was a mile away. “Why don’t I bike,” I thought. My mind started to craft a slew of objections but I stopped it before they got anywhere. I was going. And I went.

I 

can’t tell you how freeing it felt to be back on a bike, in the sunshine after all these years. I did note that for all my exercising the biking muscles in my legs aren’t as well equipped as they ought to be, but the wonders it did for my psyche was amazing. I felt like a kid again. I had to suppress the urge to take off my helmet and feel the wind whip through my hair like it did in my carefree childhood when protective gear seemed a ridiculous notion. I was free and the world so accessible. It was like I was experiencing the same roads I walk and drive down, anew. Seeing it from a new perspective. Finding different routes to suit my dual wheels. Rather than thinking of the shortest route with the least traffic lights, I had to consider hills and oncoming traffic. I realized with sheer delight I could cut through parking lots and take back ways to get to my destination. I felt like I was in on the secret shared by all my fellow bikers. I wondered why I had waited this long. 

I’m sure that by the time I put my bike away for the winter the blush will fade and the biking will become more routine. But for today, I was thirteen going on thirty…well, thirty-something.

Striking Balance

“We’ll be doing some work on balance today,” Mr. Yoga Teacher said, this morning. Words that always strike a level of anxiety in me. Balance is not my strong suite and I’m not that good with falling over. Something I do frequently with balance postures. I’ve learned to laugh at myself and to somewhat let go of the need to “get it right”, but I still find the emotional aspect of balancing almost as taxing as the physical. 

I have a perfectionist mindset (I can’t say I’m a perfectionist because rarely anything I do is perfect. Oh, the irony). I used to think that if I just was still enough, I’d be able to achieve balance. But the truth is, in stillness there is movement and this movement is critical to achieving balance. Think of riding a bike. If you try to perch on your seat and work adamantly to go in a perfectly straight line, you just won’t be able to do it. That’s not what riding a bike is all about. It’s all the constant adjustments you make as you pedal that keep your course more or less in a straight direction. The key is more or less. 

I’m wired to think in terms of black and white but am trying hard to learn all the shades of gray. Here is what I’m learning: Balance isn’t something you “achieve” and there is no such thing as perfect balance. Sometimes we exert ourselves too strenuously. Sometimes we sit on the couch too long. But if we look at our lives more holistically, we are more inclined to see the balance in our actions. Seeing it from this bird’s eye view also helps us to not get discouraged and give up when we veer off course. Instead of throwing in the towel when we eat too much one day, we are able to see that if we listen to our bodies and eat more sensibly the next, it will eventually even out. We don’t get so caught up in the straight line that we live in fear of stepping off it. Knowing that it is the collection of moments in our progression around that line that is the true meaning of balance. More importantly, by adjusting, wobbling and even falling, we are learning and growing. 

And that sometimes, toppling over and landing on your butt can be fun.

Friday Alone

It’s Friday night and I have no plans. For the first night in over a week, I don’t have a thing to do.

I’m sure I could have made plans, but I have a busy weekend and thought it might be nice to have a night to myself. Even so, I was doubting my decision, earlier today. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself sitting sad and lonely on my couch. Sometimes, in my imagination I was rocking back and forth, sometimes I was staring blankly ahead at the wall. In all circumstances, my brow was furrowed, my shoulders slumped, mouth downturned and the word “pathetic” practically tattooed on my forehead.

I should say here that this is absolutely NOT what I think of anyone who stays home on a Friday night (I actually think it’s a completely normal and comfortable thing to do). It IS what I thought I’d feel like. And while I’ve never spent a Friday night staring at the wall, I have spent many feeling rather lonely and small. And I assumed that I’d spend this Friday kicking myself for not making plans even though I was as tired as I am.

Only, this evening I decided upon a different track. Instead of accepting the mental scenario I had set out for myself, I questioned my feeling self -- rather than my thinking self -- to see what came up. It went something like this:

Did you really feel lonely?

Yes, I felt a little lonely.

What’s the lonely feeling about?                             

Well, I felt like others are having fun without me.  They are out there having fun and I’m home alone

Ok, maybe they are.  Can you accept the feeling of being a little lonely, missing your friends and also knowing that it wasn’t the end of the world?

Yeah, I guess it isn’t the end of the world. I think I can accept a bit of loneliness.

So what is left now that you’ve accepted the loneliness?

Hm…I guess I feel a sort of sleepy and tired.

Well, it’s a good thing you stayed in tonight, huh? Sounds like you could use the rest.

Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.

So what else is there aside from that?

Huh. I feel a bit…I don’t know…liberated. Like I’m free to do anything or nothing at all.

What’s that like?

                Pretty good, actually!

There you go. *smug smile*

Often times in my quest to control the future, my mind plots out how things will be. As if it is a certain truth. Then, I got blindly along, fulfilling the prophecy. But we are ever changing creatures. And even if the situation is exactly the same as ones we’ve been in before, there is no certainty that we will be and feel the same in that situation if we are present with ourselves. The truth is, I’m glad I stayed in. And once I gave myself permission to be lonely, I realized everything else was ok. Happy Friday. 

Gentle is as Gentle Does

I went to a Gentle Yoga class today.  My studio just started this type of class and this week the classes were free, so I thought I’d go. Now “gentle” is not a word that is ever used to describe me but I figured this class was something I would do to take care of myself after exerting me body heavily earlier in the week. I find it amusing that my sore muscles help me feel justified and less guilty in taking a gentle yoga class rather than the regular. Like I need a reason to be kind to my body or to take it slow for a change. 

As it was, and with only a small amount of guilt, I was looking forward a languid yoga practice. I thought I’d come out of it and write about how nice it was to shift gears for a change. How my body thanked me and how my mind was calm and serene like a placid lake. But such was the case.

I’m not sure if the teacher was nervous about having another teacher (who was on a mat next to me) in class, or if she in her spry youth thought she was being gentle by forgoing arm balances, or if she figured gentle meant simply talking in a soft voice. Whatever the case, this flow was not gentle. 

A quarter way through class and I was getting annoyed. What was with all these standing sequences? My core was hurting from earlier in the week and I didn’t come to this class to do a series of Boat crunches. I guess others in the class were surprised, as well as many of them spent a third of the class in Child’s Pose. “Couldn’t she see that she needed to lay off a bit?” I thought as I didn’t what seemed to be my millionth Chaturanga. “Dancer? Really?” I grumbled as I tried to keep my balance while extending my leg back. It was only as I took an optional shoulder stand that I realized that I was being the ridiculous one.

The class wasn’t bad at all. It was my expectations of what it should be that were the cause of my disgruntled attitude. It was also my expectations towards (surprise) myself. I had come there hoping someone would tell me it was ok to take it easy. I find it hard not to push myself when the options are given, if I’m physically able to do them. But just as I don’t need an excuse to take a gentle class, I don’t need an excuse to take it easy on myself. Any class I take can be as gentle or as hard as I want it to be. I can learn from my fellow yogis in Child’s Pose. They were listening to their bodies and honoring what was right for them that day. 

With Savasana came a new appreciation. So after class, when the studio owner asked how I liked it, I was able to truthfully smile and say “Wonderful.”