I M Perfect lady

Author: bjukuri

  • Another Yoga Day is Done!

    When I entered my ‘studio’ today, the heat was there blowing from my roaring fire, very warm, my new long johns, were tighter than my old flimsy worn thin ones, and I felt immediately smothered.

     

    Instead of opening the door or changing clothes, I pushed play, and Bikram’s voice entered my space, and we were off.

     

    The heat helped, whereas the tight clothes felt like I was being strangled, everywhere, ugh.

     

    My tenacity to stay with Bikram no matter how uncomfortable I am amazes me.  I should have stripped naked and continued on, yet instead I was like a hotdog over a flame, ready to pop!

     

    Near the Mirror on the floor lay a sign, “Find your Joy!”  The simple clean letters seemed at odds with the room’s messy clutter, and me.

     

    Find joy in Rabbit when you can’t breathe and the clothes are so constricting, hot air surrounding you, ‘find joy’ sure where!

     

    Joy is found in Dead Body Pose and Bikram is Singing, another yoga day is done!

     

     

  • Day 62 Photos…

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    Spin Twisting by woodstove…Notice Hand on knee, I just have been able to do that in the past week.

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    Fixed Firm…I am just now working on getting my knees together…(two pot bellies, smile)

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     Balancing Stick, and it seems that my leg is so high, but I guess I have some to go.  I love my locked knee.

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     Cobra, and when I do this it feels like my elbows are close to the ground….someday.

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    Fixed Firm again….

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    Standing Separate Leg Head to knee….

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    Standing Bow Pulling, I went up higher, but my daughter clicked too early, Honest!

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     Triangle, I feel progress somedays.  Hard to get the thigh parallel.

    Well, now I have a second set of photos, these are for the Testimonial for BYD….

    Now let's see what next 30 days do for my shape!  I really can't tell much improvement in the pictures, but my clothes fit better!!!

     
     

  • Adopted.

    The Bikram Yoga Dallas (BYD) Studio adopted me as their first Remote Student.

     

    How cool is that?  It never mattered that I didn’t have a Studio, but it feels kinda nice now that I do.

     

    It is odd to be acknowledge as a ‘real’ student of Bikram Yoga; it feels some how that I have been legitimized when it never occurred to me that I wasn’t a real Bikram student, but hard when you are not affiliated with anything but your basement.

     

    I was surprised by the feeling of belonging I felt when the Studio owner said in an email, “Consider yourself adopted by BYD – you can be our remote student. :-)”

     

    Dare I tell her I have 7 more remote students she could adopt?

     

    We could continue to add to our group, allowing it to grow and expand.  Imagine who we would meet, and who would be inspired by the original 7 remote students?

     

    As I write my 60-day testimonial about doing a 60-day challenge ‘remotely’ I have to acknowledge the support of this group.  It brings in the energy of group I would otherwise miss.

     

    I can see this as being the first remote student group, which has students already in many states, but how cool if our Studio connection is my brother’s studio?  After all he is our first real connection to a studio, all I can do is ask, and the worst she can say is no. 

     

    Waiting for the rest of my yoga buddies to be adopted…

     

  • Onward I go…

    I am sitting here on day 61, looking back at the 60-day Bikram Yoga Challenge, and the changes within my body and out, are so many.

     

    When you begin, you really have no idea what this yoga can do for you or what parts of you are broken, stuck, inflexible or too flexible, weak, needy, empty or too filled, hollow, shaky, nervous, fearful, out of control, in control, responsible, not responsible, the list goes on and on. 

     

    You know ‘something’ isn’t right, but can’t put a finger on it, the answer floats just out of reach, yet daily you are dealing with the affects!

     

    If you do this yoga with great focus and endurance, bringing your best to each posture, what isn’t working falls at your feet. 

     

    Some times in tears and sorrow, and others in waves of nausea, but through it all, you will see where you are not true to you or true to reality in your life. 

     

    These are the Yoga Gifts.

     

    Bikram says, “one of these days you will know what this yoga is all about, what yoga can do for you, yoga makes you you.”

     

    The more you do this yoga, the more gifts you are given, and the more gifts you get, the freer you are, the freer you are, the more you you become.

     

    After 60 days, I feel that there are more gifts left unopened, so onward I go…

  • I Did It!

    It was a photo finish; my 60-day yoga challenge ended about the same time my co-dependent life challenge stopped or was recognized deeply.

     

    I looked up the word co-dependent.

     

    co·de·pen·dent ( kō ' dĭ-pĕn ' dənt ) adj. Mutually dependent. Of or relating to a relationship in which one person is psychologically dependent in an unhealthy way…

     

    Psychologically dependent, is a huge concept that I wasn’t aware of, yet I acted it out daily.

     

    It isn’t like it is my first thought, but it is a humming that goes on in the background, an unease to stand alone without support, hence ‘co-dependent’!

     

    What is even more odd is that if you get support, your mind will tell you that you need ‘everybodies’ support and it picks apart those who don’t support, in word and deed, your latest adventure.

     

    On the eve of this Challenge ending, I say to my husband, “tomorrow is my 60th day of yoga, 60 days in a row,” to which he replies, “oh” and goes back to his reading.

     

    Well, my mind, my little co-dependent mind was given a huge gift in that one little word and no gesture, it ran scenarios for at least an hour, while I tossed and turned trying to calm down to rest.

     

    I finally did yoga breathing in and out, and said to myself, “there will be an answer, let it be,”  in hopes that during the night, or during yoga something would come to me.

     

    My co-dependent mind attacks first the person who it feels should be saying doing and being something for me. 

     

    Yet reality showed me a man calmly reading his magazine, not one who hated me, my yoga, my life etc, just a man calmly enjoying his life.

     

    So, inward my eyes turned, tuning into my feelings, my needs, my cravings, and my desires outside of myself for “good girl”! 

     

    How was it that I and I alone can’t be enough for me?

     

    As I did my yoga today, there was sadness for the girl who isn’t enough by herself for herself, alone.

     

    And ironically, by doing this yoga for 60 days in a row I have been strengthening myself, growing stronger and more balanced alone, I am a whole me, even one who is working to get free of co-dependency.

     

    I also felt the flip side of how I turned on my husband when he didn’t voice a great cheer for me, how instead of love flowing towards him, I had anger.

     

    Anger because HE wasn’t using his voice to cheer me, HIS actions were not supportive enough, he doesn’t see me, etc.

     

    (I was wise enough to keep the words/thoughts to myself, until I had a firm answer.)

     

    Again I had to let him go free, to be a man sitting in a chair reading what IS interesting to HIM.

     

    Imagine!  And guess what, I can freely do my yoga.  He isn’t telling me lift that leg higher, stay in that posture longer and then mad when I can’t or telling me I am not allowed to change and become a yoga lady.

     

    That damn co-dependent mind.  It is that mind that this yoga works the best on, it will take that mind and bring it back to reality.

     

    A boy in a chair reading what he loves, and a girl in the basement doing yoga that she needs in order to set them both free.

     

    Free from the psychological dependency in an unhealthy way.  It is unhealthy and leaves me less than, and leaves him leaving his life to be in mine.

     

    There is only room on the yoga mat for one, me!

    It is a solo dance. 

    I am learning how to live alone.

    You are right Mr. Bikram.

    Yoga makes you you!

     

    My one voice is a cheer enough.

    I did it! 

     

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  • Expressing its Self

    Here it is day 59, and as I made my way downstairs I had a slight feeling of unease.

     

    By the time the first breathing was over, a softball size ball of nausea settled in my belly on the left side.

     

    It stayed there making all the poses harder to maintain, and caused me to sweat harder, literally drenched in what felt like a fever breaking moisture.

     

    I was so happy to lie down, even though I was able to do all standing postures, some were sickly looking and feeling.

     

    When I did the poses on my belly I felt I was squishing that ball, and compressing it reducing it in size.

     

    As I came out of the first Fixed-Firm there was a cramp like stitch on that side, and by the second one, the nausea ball was gone, fever broke, me more or less normal, but spent.

     

    I marvel at the body’s capabilities to do yoga, feel nauseated and breathe.  And I am thrilled I can be with nausea ball and do yoga anyway.

     

    In the past, all it would take is the teeniest discomfort and I would hang it up, put it down, stop it, and go lay down.

     

    Instead of using nausea or any discomfort as a blocking point, I am using it as a hurdle to get over, walk through, and conquer, not giving it power over me.

     

    I didn’t know what would eventually happen, would I get too sick and have to stop, would I even be able to do posture after posture, I was walking into the unknown.

     

    As I continued forward, the nausea eventually went away, now I would not have known that had I stopped or had not even started.

     

    I don’t know what the nausea was for, where it came and where it was headed, was it something bad I ate, all I know is that we honored each other and continued on doing what it was we both felt we had to do.

     

    My body is expressing its self.

  • Mind Zero, Spirit 58!

    "When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change." Unknown

     

    As I lay in bed for the 58th day, I still had the urge to just stay right there, resenting or fighting the idea of yoga.

     

    I had many excuses clamoring for my attention; too tired, too early, too chilly, not now…. But with work looming in a few hours, I simply got up and silenced them all.

     

    Somedays it seems just too much to ask of myself, as I look out over my scheduled day, but I vowed to put the challenge first, and for some reason feel I can’t let it down on a whimpy excuse.  If I do stop it will be for the mother of all excuses.

     

    And really to come this far, with just a couple of days to complete it, I must go on, I am almost there!

     

    This numbers game can be tricky for it can wear you out as you look ahead, but it can also spur you on when you look behind and see so many done already or so few left to go.

     

    Counting can make you feel like you are in a life sentence, where you are locked into this silly game all for the numbers.

     

    But is that true? At the end of this journey called 60 days of yoga in 60  days, is that all we have is a pile of 60.

     

    Just a heap of 60, is that all that will be there?

     

    Our minds focus on the numbers, busy adding up and subtracting, figuring out our payoff, tallying up the cost against the benefits, forever calculating efforts verses excuses, mind calculating if 60-day challenge is worth it.

     

    Worth it to who?  The mind?  Really the mind gets to decide?  Not the body, not the feelings, not the residual affects that appear in life, just a calculating mind?

     

    What these 58 days have shown me, is that if I let the calculating mind decide, no yoga would have happened, none, zero, nothing.

     

    For it is in the minds best interest to not do yoga, for then it remains the master of this body, instead of the Spirit of who I am.

     

    Here is the score Ms. Calculating Mind thus far; Mind Zero, Spirit 58!

     

  • More from Deepak Chopra….

    " Children's brains have neurons that mirror the brains of adults in their surroundings.  These so-called mirror neurons are responsible for the way children learn new behaviors, so the theory goes. As they develop, young children don't have to imitate their parents in order to learn something new; they only have to observe them, and certain brain cells will fire in a way that mirrors the activity.  For example, a baby being weaned from breast-feeding watches how her parents eat.  As they reach for food and put it into their mouths, certain areas of their brain light up.  Simply watching this activity leads the same areas to light up in the infants brain.  In this way the newly forming infant brain learns a new behavior without ever having to go through trial and error.
     
    This model has already been tested in monkeys and theoretically extended to humans.  It provides a physical explanation for something as mysterious as empathy, the ability to feel what someone else is feeling.  Some people have this ability; others don't.  A few saintly individuals have so much empathy that they can hardly bear it when someone else is suffering.  Research with MRI's and CAT scans suggest that brain function plays a major role in empathy.  A child's neurons mirror the emotions of the adults around him, leading the child to actually feel what their parents feel.  So if a youngster is surrounded by unhappy adults, his nervous system will be programmed for unhappiness, even before he has any cause for unhappiness himself.
     
    Why doesn't every child learn empathy?  Because brain development is wildly complex and never the same for two babies.  When we were infants, all kinds of brain functions were being programmed at the same time, and for some of us empathy was only assigned a minor role.  This is a troubling inequality, and it extends to happiness.  When you see the brain has a set point for  happiness, traceable either to genetics or childhood influences, it's all too easy to conclude that nothing can be done about it.  However, this would be a mistake, because neither the brain nor your genes are fixed structures; instead, they are in process every minute of your life, constantly changing and evolving.  You are still being influenced at the genetic level by new experiences.  Every choice you make sends chemical signals coursing through your brain, including the choice to be happy, and each signal helps to shape the brain from year to year.
     
    In the overall picture, research has shown that the brain's set point can be changed by the following:
     
    Drugs that act as mood elevators, which work only in the short term and have side affects.
     
    Cognative Therapy, which changes the brain by helping us change our limiting beliefs.  We all tell ourselves stories in our heads that provoke unhappiness. Repeating the same negative belief over and over, ("I am a victim, I am unloved, Life isn't fair, something is wrong with me. etc" creates neural pathwayss that reinforce negativity by turning it into a habitual way of thinking.  Such beliefs can be replaced by others that are not simply more positive, but are a much better match with reality (I may have been a victim in the past but I don't have to remain that way; I can find love if I chose better places to look for it, etc)  In treating patients whose lives are dominated by negative beliefs, psychologists have found that altering really fundamental beliefs can be as effective in changing brain chemistry as prescribing drugs.
     
    Meditation, which alters the brain in many positive ways.  The physical effects of sitting quietly and going inward are amazingly extensive.  it took a long time to unravel the puzzle.  Researchers had to work against the Western assumption that meditation was mystical or at best a kind of religious practice.  Now we realize that it activates the prefrontal cortex  the seat of higher thinking- and stimulates the release of neurotransmitters, including dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and brain opiates. Each of these naturally occurring brain chemicals has been linked to different aspects of happiness. Dopamine is an antidepressant; serotonin is associated with increased self-esteem; oxytocin is now believed to be a pleasure hormone (it's levels also elevate during sexual arousal); opiates are the body's painkillers, which also provide the exhilaration associated with runners high.  it should be obvious, then, that meditation, by creating higher levels of these neurotransmitters, is the more effective way ofchanging the brain's set point for happiness.  No single drug can simultaneously choreograph the coordinated release of all these chemicals.
     Deepak Chopra – book "The Ulitmate Happiness Prescription"

  • I Can

    It is day 57 and I am still in the game, still doing one day at a time towards the 60-day mark, with just three to go, I am astonished that I have done this consecutively and with surprising ease.

     

    How thrilling to see that I can do this, and I have to wonder what other things I have not explored, what other exciting, new, different, challenging, life changing items are out there waiting for me?

     

    I am heading for 101, and so after the milestone of 60 days in a row, I will just get up the next day and tackle the next 41. 

     

    When you put your mind, your desire and your soul into something, I am thinking it can’t help but happen.  We seem to move mountains of fear and piles of “I can’t” when we simply just focus on what it is we have to focus on.

     

    I am thinking the mind has a bottomless pit of excuses, a room filled with reasons to keep all challenges at bay, and our biggest challenge is to keep our eyes on the ball, our sights on the prize; getting our muttering mind to the mat, and our feeble excuses can drag along as we lift our arms and begin.

    For somewhere buried deep within us is this new identity arising, I can do it, I will try it, I am willing, I am able, out shouting all of the weak excuses. 

     

    I love my new voice, “I Can!”

     

  • Happiness Prescription

    In Deepak Chopra’s book, “The Ultimate Happiness Prescription, he writes;

     

    ”The roots of unhappiness are often invisible. This is especially true of the conditioning that creates toxicity in a person’s life.  The most powerful conditioning exists at a subtle level of the mind.  It begins in the first year of a child’s life, as the infant brain learns how to think, feel and behave from influences in the home.  Conditioning becomes he dominant feature in all of us by the time we are toddlers.

     

    This is when we set lifelong patterns into our brains. Even today you are replaying scenarios you learned when you were two or three.  Consider a small child out with his mother.  He sees a giant lollipop and wants one.  What does he do?  The most common pattern is the following: First he is nice, asking in a cajoling voice if Mommy will buy him a lollipop.  If this tactic doesn’t work, he tries the opposite, acting nasty.  He whines and cries and makes a scene. If this doesn’t work, the next step is to become stubborn and indifferent.  He refuses to pay attention to his mother, who wants him to stop being unhappy and difficult. This is a subtler approach than nice or nasty.  If stubbornness fails, the last scenario is to play the victim- poor me, no one loves me enough to buy me a lollipop.  When the mother finally gives in, her child becomes conditioned, thinking he’s discovered something that ‘works’.

     

    Simple as this emotional cycle might sound, millions of adults continue to act it out, using the same belief that their tactics “work” to get them what they want. The problem with this conditioning is that my manipulating others, you never really get what you want, which is greater love, peace and joy. Because conditioning trains the brain into a false sense of happiness, you are actually manipulating yourself.  You become the kind of person who doesn’t know how to be anything other than nice, nasty, stubborn or a victim.

     

    Conditioning is the subtlest form of toxicity.  You cannot reach true happiness without escaping your mental conditioning.  In our society there’s a wave of interest in leading a life that’s more natural, free of toxic substances.  Purification of every type can be beneficial.  But the secret to detoxifying your body lies more in the mind than anywhere else.  There are seven steps to ridding yourself of toxin at the subtle level.

    1.    Take responsibility for your present response.

    2.    Witness what you are feeling.

    3.    Label your feelings.

    4.    Express what you feel.

    5.    Share what you feel.

    6.    Release the toxic feeling through a ritual

    7.    Celebrate the release and move on.

     

    These seven steps apply whether you are trying to change a toxic emotion, habit, craving, or relationship, because your past conditioning lies at the heart of all of them.

               Deepak