I M Perfect lady

Category: Yoga

  • Success in each pose……..day three.

    “Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one’s liberty.”

              Henri Fredric Amiel 

     

    I am excited to have completed day three, and thrilled to have witnessed slight changes in my body.  Okay, they were teeny tiny and most likely not able to be seen with the naked eye, but I truly felt them inside.

     

    My bottom is actually touching my heels in Fixed Firm and will soon allow me to go back and lay upon the floor in a full stretch out.  I am a little nervous to get into that position again, but willing to try.

     

    My back remains really stiff and unbending, but I felt I could reach just a bit further, although my nose is quite a distance from my knee in many poses. 

     

    The bunched up knotted muscles of my shoulders were so happy to be in Eagle.  It almost brings tears to my eyes to feel the pulling apart of the bundles.

     

    I wasn't as sore before the yoga, but I still have places where there is a definite tenderness.

     

    I will hold today’s advances as markers of success! 

     

    If you are doing yoga today, I hope you too find little pieces of success in each pose!

  • Will I love it enough to continue forward…..(day two)

    This morning an older lady stiffly made her way to her basement, rolled out the yoga mat and put the CD going. 

     

    Her mind began the dreaded words, “you will never make it 60 days, this doesn’t feel good, what have you promised so many?”

     

    I then began the yoga and let the worries of whether I can complete the next 58 days go.

     

    My sore muscles were not comfortable in many poses, but I noticed by the second set they were less sore.

     

    I am thinking that in all of life we tend to push back and away from pain and discomfort instead of understanding the source. 

     

    The long months of neglect to this body are the source of the pain, not the yoga. 

     

    The yoga gets the blame when it is really the one who is here to fix and repair.

     

    If I can just remember that by stopping the yoga I am actually supporting the neglect of this body, it may help keep my momentum going. 

     

    Creating new habits and ways of living, feel awkward and difficult, it would be much easier to just walk back to the old routine.

     

    As I moved through the 90 minutes, I focused more on each pose, each screaming muscle and concentrated on bringing in healing breaths.

     

    Little gulps of sadness seemed to be with the sore muscles; emotion seemed to pass by as each new breath came in.

     

    It is very enlightening how much my body has gone unnoticed, and lived without me paying attention to its needs.

     

    The body is innocent, it simply follows our lead, if we lead it to disuse, abuse, laziness, we can hardly blame it for reflecting our actions!

     

    Just as much as our body is a reflection of past behaviors, we can change this by bringing it to yoga each day, and little by little turn this all around.

     

    I felt sad in the state it was in, but hopeful that change was at hand, and frightened that perhaps I will once again turn from it in neglectful abuse.

     

    It is scary it is all up to me, no one is coming along to bring health to this body, only me.  A daunting thought.  Will I love it enough to continue forward…

     

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  • Day One.

    I began the yoga tentatively eager to see just where my body was, or how far back it had fallen due to the lack of yoga in the past 6 months.

     

    In the first pose, Half Moon, my arms went numb quickly and it was all I could do to keep them above my head.  This is good news, for I kept saying that my shoulders were tensed up, the yoga echoed the truth.

     

    I surprised myself with being able to lock my knee and stay balanced for the length of the pose, but the limberness of completing the pose is not there.  It will be fun to see how this improves daily.

     

    Beginning the yoga this time I felt like an adult.  I was patient with my body, and didn’t expect it to do things it couldn’t do, and I was kind.

     

    My focus was on how it felt not how it looked.

     

    Maybe it is knowing I have 60 times to do this, that I don’t have to make all the improvements and changes in one session, I was more relaxed.

     

    I noticed that my forehead did not come close to touching my knee on the “Head to Knee” pose, but there was no dizziness at all in the Triangle.

     

    The Fixed Firm pose seemed to lose the most ground, for my bottom did not sit on my feet, close but a ways too go.  I just sat there, feeling the painful hip, knee and ankles in their stiffness, with no attempt to go backwards, I simply wasn’t ready yet.

     

    When I was asked to stretch in the separate leg, my finger tips touched my toes the first set, but were able to actually grab the toes the second. My back felt so good to be stretched and my legs now feel relaxed as I sit here.

     

    All in all I am very pleased with how the yoga felt to my body and how I kindly applied it.

     

    My focus was to keep my breath going first and foremost, and then to hold myself as deep as I could go in each pose. 

     

    I like the term applying yoga to my body, it is my intention to apply it each day for 60 days, and it felt soooo good.

     

    “The tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal.  The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.”

               Benjamin Mays

     

  • It is the ultimate race between Ego and Soul.

     

    “If I listened to my mind…” is a sentence in my brother’s blog www.messyguru.typepad.com and it suggests that sometimes our greatest challenge is in our minds.

     

    It seems that before we even begin to begin, our mind shows us all the ways we can fail, and even how it may be best to ‘not even try’.

     

    The mind often times isn’t our best friend, but instead the ‘thing’ that keeps us from growing, healing and expanding our life experiences.

     

    Looking back, as my brother did, over the past years and in all the places that fear wanted to root itself, but I didn’t allow it, are my most proud accomplishments.

     

    Tomorrow is the first day of our challenge, and the greatest challenge for me is to still the mind and its list of things or reasons as to why I ‘can’t’ do the yoga.

     

    If we can set our minds to it, or tell our minds that this is what we are going to do each day, then perhaps our minds will be rendered silent.

     

    What actually is the purpose of this yoga is to wrestle the mind for this moment of time.  To bring the mind back to the body for 20 seconds, the length of time each pose is.

     

    The mind is like a restless 2-yr old, loves to do what ever it wants, hates to be told what to do and when!

     

    We may be lulled by the mind to thinking the yoga is hard, but what will be harder is to convince the mind, this is what we are going to do each day.

     

    As you lay in bed each day, watch and see what the mind comes up with, the reasons for not doing yoga, rarely do you hear it urging you on, for mostly it is holding you back.

     

    My brother listed all the things he accomplished last year, because he didn’t listen to his mind and all the fears it presented.

     

    I am thinking if you are aware that the mind wants you to fail, it will be easier to overcome its flimsy excuses, of how hard it will be.  Yoga is the minds worst enemy. 

     

    What I know for sure is that the mind can and will try to steal your peace, your wholeness and for sure doesn’t want you to be ahead of it.

     

    What I mostly did was drag my reluctant mind along, until it fell into line behind me. 

     

    When you contemplate whether to do yoga or not, just so you know, the Mind wins each time you don’t do it, and the body and soul loses. 

     

    It is the ultimate race between Ego and Soul.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • A Perfect You.

    “No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth.”

               Martha Beck

     

    To sit in the middle of truth and go with the flow of it, although difficult and painful, is so much easier and better on your body and soul than trying to fight it.

     

    You suffer no matter what, but I would much rather suffer in the truth than to suffer pretending it isn’t happening!

     

    My brother’s yoga teacher said to them yesterday, “Let Go of the Suffering (and go with the flow)”

     

    The flow is as it is; you are where you are, and not a moment sooner or later.

     

    As we begin the 60-day yoga challenge, don’t try and bring your body where it is not ready to go, face each posture with your level of limberness and strength, be okay right where you are and have patience with your body and little by little it will bring you further into the posture.

     

    Don’t suffer wishing you were further, don’t hurt your body trying to bend push and stretch it beyond its comfort.  Remember to breathe in each pose, if you lose the breath, you maybe reaching out too far.

     

    We will build upon the foundation of where you are today, to learn how to stand and lock your knees like a solid lamppost unbroken.

     

    If you try and skip the locked knee, your pose will be shaky and unsteady or reliable.

     

    There are so many metaphors between this yoga and life, slow down and focus on you.

     

    You will watch your body change and strengthen, balance and become limber, flowering into a perfect you.