I M Perfect lady

Category: Yoga

  • I Did Not Run Away!

    “I did it,” I said as I completed the last pose, I did it and I felt this accomplishment deep within, I did it.

     

    The overwhelming emotional feeling of victory settled all around me as I was bathed in the feelings of success.  A success between my relationship with my body and I; I had kept my word!

     

    I am learning how to be present,  be aware and to be honest with my body, what I put in my body and how best to treat it.

     

    For so long my relationship has been distant, aloof, uncaring and neglectful and my body displayed that marvelously.

     

    The body is such an incredible living mirror; it can only reflect how you treat it, nothing more or nothing less.  It simply responds.

     

    I am with a body that lived for years and years without a connection with me, for I didn’t want to feel its pain.

     

    Geneen Roth explains in her book Woman, Food and God, “…I tell my students that the greatest blessing of their lives is their relationship with food.  They look at me rather quizzically, but the sentiment sounds so lovely that they are willing to hear me out.  Then I say that we are not going to fix their relationship with food; we are actually going to walk through the door of their eating problem and see what’s behind it.  Instead of using food to avoid discomfort, they are going to learn how to tolerate what they believe is intolerable.”  Geneen

     

    I found out that I loved sweets for their ability to numb my body and make me tired, I am learning that by doing yoga it can wake me up and give me energy.

     

    It makes sense to me that I distanced myself from my body that I tried to shut it down.  It was hurt and abused. As a small child I had to shut it down to survive and I escaped with food that numbed the body so I didn’t have to feel.

     

    As you awaken this body back up, you do have to feel what you couldn’t feel way back when, but you feel more alive than you ever have felt, more powerful and confident knowing you can feel deeply and still breathe!

     

    When you numb out the bad feelings you also take the good ones too.  I didn’t know this. 

     

    I felt the rush of victory and accomplishment I did it! 

     

    I stayed with my body for 120 days I did not run away! 

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Reality’s Parade

    While a friend continues each day enduring the affects of cancer treatment, I had told her I would yoga along with her until she was done.

     

    She thought she had until August, and while that seemed a long ways off, I said I would do yoga each day. 

     

    We then found out our finish line was pushed way back until it is now January 2011.

     

    It seems to be a pile of days, a bunch of effort and a hill full of energy needed to make it that far, but if you break it down to this day, this day you can do.

     

    It is a parade of This Days, and if you just focus on this day, this day is way doable, or this moment, and not look so far ahead that you miss this step you are on.

     

    I would love a cool name for “This Day Parade” one that has an interesting phrase, one that suggests we all are on a journey of just this day.

     

    We all are in places in our lives where there are difficulties to face, challenges to overcome and a life to live. 

     

    It just seems to feel better to know you have other souls marching along learning and overcoming their own life lessons, that you are not alone, that it is indeed a life parade.

     

    In the life parade, we need to keep up with the music of reality, to hear the drums of truth, to adhere as life changes direction, after all we are just the participants of Reality’s Parade!

     

     

  • Going Beyond the Challenge

    Deadlines and completing challenges seem to divert our attention to what is really going on.

     

    I have been doing Bikram Yoga for 113 days, I am in the middle of my second 60-day challenge, and in a week, I can say that I was successful in completing those two challenges, but what I would have failed to see is the affects and where I stand today.

     

    Challenges and deadlines become more concrete than the actual practice, they loom larger and get more attention than the actual affects the body wears.

     

    As I was doing my poses today, I could see where I still needed work, but also how far I have come, witnessed the strength and muscles that I have grown in the past 113 days; I am growing a yoga body. 

     

    This challenge is almost over and I know that if I were to feel success was completing It, and not completing each pose to its ultimate, I would be done.

     

    Done with the challenge, but not done becoming healthy and strong.

     

    I like the challenges, they keep me continuing, but each time one ends, I look in the mirror and know I want to keep going beyond the challenge.

     

     

     

  • All the Gifts Awareness Brings!

    One hundred and four days into a new habit, the habit of being aware, of being responsible for my response to life, of knowing that I will always get the results I want depending upon my actions.

     

    My actions in the past 104 days has been to do yoga daily, to make it a priority to take care of this body, by giving it my attention, by moving stretching bending and stretching it into becoming more and more flexible and strong.

     

    I can’t get the results I want, without doing the action step.

     

    The action step is to get out of bed, to carve out time and space in my day to work on my body, to begin sculpting it into a new design.

     

    There seems to be only two habits in the world, the mindless effortless sleep habit or the action based awareness.

     

    I am making it a new habit to be aware in all things.

     

    It makes life alive and very responsive and I have the best seat in the house to experience and feel all the gifts awareness brings!

     

     

  • Good Habits

    “The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones.” 

        ~Somerset Maugham

     

    It really is true that the bad habits are much easier to keep doing and the ones that are good for us, our bodies and our souls take effort to keep doing. 

     

    I wonder if this remains true, or does the bad habit finally lay dormant?  Maybe dormant is not the word I want, but dead, done, no more.

     

    For the past 103 days I have been doing yoga and did the double so I could have two days off.

     

    On the two days off, I wasn’t craving yoga or wishing I had yoga, there was no withdrawal.

     

    Yet I don’t feel the desire to be lazy, I am not craving laying in bed or sitting around each morning without yoga.

     

    So, I am in the land between, where one habit seems to be gone, (lazy) and the other hasn’t grown in fully (yoga).

     

    My future view of myself is one where I am doing yoga daily, where I am centered, content and feeling whole in my body, where I am no longer abusing it… where I live in good habits! 

     

     

  • Closer to Being

    “Anyone who practices can obtain success in yoga but not one who is lazy.  Constant practice alone is the secret of success.”  ~Svatmarama, Hatha Yoga Pradipika

     

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    Ninety-nine days have passed by since the first of the year, and in those 99 days, I have done 101 classes of yoga in my home. 

     

    Ninety-nine days of setting aside 90 minutes to breathe and focus on my body, working against 50 years of misuse. 

     

    Maybe misuse is not the right term, perhaps unused is better.  I have not used the full potential of this body in years.

     

    The unused parts are rusty, weak and stiff and I am trying to restore full movement in places that have not been moved in years.

     

    Little by little, day-by-day, screaming joints are slowly creaking open, muscles are gaining volume and strength, my awareness is sharpening, life is opening up to more possibilities, yoga is returning me to full aliveness.

     

    My body represented how I lived my life, stuck in the same routines, only going so far, never venturing out beyond the lines. 

     

    It seems that the more flexible my body gets, the more flexible I can see my life becoming.

     

    One hundred days of yoga hasn’t reversed all the years of living thus far, but it is a great opening to a new life.

     

    As I struggle each day with this unused body to create one that is fully functional, I am one step closer.

     

    One step closer to Being.

      

     

  • A U-Turn In Your Life!

    “A bend in the road is not the end of the road… unless you fail to make the turn.”    

      ~Author Unknown

     

    Each morning a bend appears, as I contemplate doing yoga another day.  I really only face this one day at a time.  So early each morning upon awakening, I take inventory to see if I have all I need to begin.

     

    I think there is a part of me that is exhausted by this yoga every day, one that wants me to revert back to the ‘good’ ole days.  It wants to slip back in to unconsciousness of being lazy, to go back to sleep in comfortable do nothing.

     

    Challenging that idea is another part of me, the one who enjoys being awake, aware and alive.

     

    At this point I am faced with two roads, one leading back a comfortable bed of lazy, or the one who is forging a new me.

     

    When life is at its busiest, when my time seems so limited, it would be so easy to find an excuse, for they lay scattered all about.

     

    Each excuse can be a sign that says, “Turn back.”

     

    Who knew that excuses were directional signs?

     

    I do now.  So each time an excuse pops up it is telling you to turn back into the old person you used to be.

     

    A U-Turn in your life!

     

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  • Relaxation Response.

    When I began doing yoga 92 days ago, the view was to make it to 60 days, yet I knew that 60 days of doing yoga and then returning to my old life, wasn’t what I needed.  I needed to add this to my life daily, for it to become a way that I treated my body, a habit, and not just a fleeting experiment in my life. 

     

    I didn’t know how I would endure this 90 minutes of Bikram yoga each day, but I wanted the results. 

     

    The requirement of me is do get to the mat each day, to challenge myself when things are the busiest, when time is crammed full of things to do is when I need this the most. 

     

    Once I begin my focus is on my breath, this pose, this second, and it enables me to then bring the same to my life outside of the yoga mat. 

     

    Below is a great example of why to do yoga daily.  I want to remain out of the flight or fight pattern, and in to the relaxation response!

     

    ”The autonomic nervous system is divided into the sympathetic system, which is often identified with the fight-or-flight response, and the parasympathetic, which is identified with what's been called the relaxation response. 

     

    When you do yoga – the deep breathing, the stretching, the movements that release muscle tension, the relaxed focus on being present in your body – you initiate a process that turns the fight-or-flight system off and the relaxation response on. 

     

    That has a dramatic effect on the body.  The heartbeat slows, respiration decreases, blood pressure decreases.  The body seizes this chance to turn on the healing mechanisms.”  ~Richard Faulds

     

     

     

     

  • I Have A Life!

    “To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves — there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.” Joan Didion

     

    Today was the 78th day in a row of doing Bikram yoga, and I am still stretching into places I have never been before, with my body, mind and inner knowing.

     

    It is crazy to have ridden around in this body and not really used it to its fullest potential; I have lived backwards in so many areas or upside down and sideways.

     

    I am feeling freedom and innocence that I have never felt before 

     

    My previous relationship with self was for others, and had little do with me. Imagine I was not living for me!

     

    I was living for your good approval, your wellness, happiness, comfort and the whole while neglecting my self!

     

    Abandoning it while using it.  Which seem really pathetic.

     

    How can I save you while I am dying?  How can I teach you to take better care, while I am a wreck?

     

    Doing this yoga each day for the last 2-½ months, has brought my attention, focus and care back to me.  I am for the first time ever spending time each day for my body.

     

    A few days ago, I realized “I have my own life!”  I said it out loud and more than once, “I have a life!”   

     

    Feeling that I have my own separated life is like being cut free from a bossy Siamese twin!  I am free!

     

    Yoga turns you right side up and sets you free.

     

    I have a life!

     

  • ‘Their inner knowing….’

    I decided I was doing my 75th yoga class at 7am this morning, my nosebleed said, “It will be later.”

     

    Last night I went to bed to go to sleep, my mind went to bed to wrestle with other people’s lives, and we were both losers.

     

    The mind likes to be the party planner, the event coordinator, and the one in charge, when it is only the guest.

     

    Yoga means ‘to yoke’ and what I feel it is doing is trying to yoke the mind. 

     

    “To bring your mind back to the body for 20 seconds, which is the hardest thing to do…” Bikram

     

    Bringing the mind back to the body is to bring the mind to reality, to this present moment and your body, not somebody else’s body, to yoke it to your life.

     

    It seems impossible that the mind isn’t with you and for you at all times, but watch. 

     

    Watch and see how often you miss what is in front of you while you are off in another’s land.

     

    And once your mind looks about in their land, you want to decorate, plant, arrange, toss out, add, do many things YOU feel they are lacking.

     

    I am so damn grateful that I won’t allow those foolish ideas to pass my lips, now. 

     

    The old me would have tossed out orders like a drill sergeant to get that persons life in order.

     

    What is equally insane is this mind comes into my world and does the same to me, trying to move me out of my present moment. 

     

    Oh and you know when someone else has lost their yoke (mind), for they will come into your world with great orders of things YOU need to do.

     

    Inside of us is this inner knowing, which doesn’t live in the mind, that will lead us where it is we need to go.

     

    Trust that inner knowing, trust that it will lead the way, for it is always about you, never about another.  It moves you!  It is not our job to move another!

     

    Otherwise it would be called ‘their inner knowing’….

     

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