I M Perfect lady

Tag: bikram yoga

  • Felt Its Worth

    Before beginning yoga today, I cleaned the mirror I stand in front of, it was layered with weeks of dust, and I appeared fog like behind it. Today I felt the need to wipe it free, as I did so the line from a song arose in my head, “I can see clearly now the pain is gone…”

    Then into yoga I went.

    I was on the third part of the Awkward pose, where I go from standing up to squatting down, and Bikram asks us to descend slowly, and I lost my control and fell into a squat and smiled as I did so.

    This smile took up my whole face, my cheeks, my eyes and my mouth rose into a delightful bend, and inside I felt its wonderful wave of joy.

    I smiled at my rendition of his yoga; I smiled at me and the transformation of my face and received fully my smile about me.

    A smile about me isn’t something I have any memory of ever receiving.

    I was shocked first at the way this smile changed my look, and even more stunned to receive its full value inside.

    To feel myself worthy of a full-blown smile.

    I froze for a half of second to feel such sheer delight inside myself.

    My smile quickly disappeared and I struggled to smile while tears of sorrow dampened my face.

    Imprinted in my minds eye is my smiling feeling being over swept by sadness as memories flung themselves upon me, one on top of the other.

    A 50 year long life review flashed before my eyes, all the places where I mistook myself for being bad, wrong, and despicable, how I had not seen my own worth or how I had lost sight of myself inside myself.

    The simple fact that I was unworthy of a smile from me about me is so harsh and tragic; yet it was never my smile I sought. I didn’t even know I was missing my smile for me.

    The mouth I tried to change was my mother’s.

    Before putting my words to paper, I spoke to my brother and then did some mindless cleaning, and it came to me what love I had for my mother.

    I literally gave my soul, my insides away in order to bring a smile to her face and to keep it there.

    How tragic that she wanted my smile more than she wanted my tears and my sorrows, and even more dreadful for a little girl to be left with such sorrow inside, such darkness.

    In denying my abuse, she left me in the dark.

    It is funny in a sad way, how I wanted her to have a smile, more than me.

    I could cry a river of tears for the little girl who wasn’t allowed to feel her sorrow out loud, to be heard and valued as abused.

    Valued as abused and not having to hide this fact.

    I can see I took up my mother’s view of me.

    My mouth and facial images reflected hers in my mirror and even more tragically inside.

    Inside I knew my mother blamed me.

    I took away her sunshine, I stole her lovely story, I was darker than the darkness that abused me.

    I changed her smiling face to anger.

    And it was my job now to put her smile back.

    And I tried and danced, and pranced and worked and slaved and toiled to bring it back, and to keep it in place.

    When I was tired of holding up those cheeks, when I simply didn’t have anymore to give, or when I tried to tend to myself, I heard her angry response, “How dare you Beth Ann…” and up I got and began dancing again.

    Six years ago all my dancing for her was over, done, finished, the end.

    I stopped where I stood and in the middle of the darkness began to see what I did for me and what I did for others.

    Life offered up to me a million situations for me to choose again, their pleasure or mine, their smile or mine, their feelings or mine.

    Each and every time I found the strength to disappoint my mother and chose me; I opened up inside, made room for that smile.

    Today, I feel that I have made it to the other side, to the side of worthiness, or at least I have felt the wave of joy lap at my feet, I feel that I am worthy to now frolic in the ocean and swim to its depths.

    I look forward to seeing another one come out of me and shine upon me and for me to welcome it in!

    I have been waiting in vain for her to arrive and tell me that I am a good girl, that I am of value, and that the abuse didn’t change who I am, in her eyes.

    I wanted her to smile that it was okay that I was abused, it didn’t matter to her, and she loved me any way.

    Again, the smile I sought was hers and the one I found was mine.

    What I love is that the first smile I was able to receive was mine!

    A smile in full acceptance of all of me, the darkest dark and the brightest bright.

    I smiled at me and felt Its worth.

  • 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! 

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • 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.

     

     

     

  • 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.

      

     

  • 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!

     

  • Perfectly Me

    I heard someone say that unexpressed feelings from childhood are time travelers; they continue to follow us along, until they can be released.

     

    I don’t really know where they are all stored, or when or how they appear, but when they appear it is like a fog that fills my insides overtaking my nowadays reality, and bringing in a volume of emotions and feelings that have little or nothing to do with what is happening today.

     

    Fog of yesterday’s unexpressed emotions arise, float in, filling you up on the inside, catapulting you back to when these emotions were supposed to be felt, but you were unable to safely do that, like an apparition you feel these ghost like feelings appear in your life.

     

    You feel yourself as yourself a long time ago.

     

    It was shocking to me to know that I was a good girl.  It was the key that will release now many other feelings that have been locked down.

     

    I would have thought the feelings under lock and key were ones of negative connotations, but instead behind the locked door is my self-esteem in its rightness.

     

    The fog hid from my view my goodness, my efforts of trying really hard and succeeding as far as a little girl is concerned.  My trying harder and harder to be a better little girl, always, was because the fog blocked from my view, my goodness.

     

    I still haven’t caught my breath on that, my insides feel strange, instead of having this thirst and desire to always please to become better, I am sitting with nothing to do, nothing to prove.

     

    There is no argument inside of me.

     

    When I said that I am doing the yoga now to feel better, I would not have guessed that fogs would arise, that I would be flung backwards into my childhood feelings, that even dreams would participate to help me feel that which I have never felt before.

     

    And in feeling those long ago feelings, a correction is made; I am one with the reality even way back there now. 

     

    I also felt in yoga today that I had said that I wasn’t a little girl and I wasn’t a mom, and that is right.  I was a little girl being a mom.

     

    My childhood was a little girl being a mom.

     

    I used to be so disconnected from the little girl, and couldn’t see me as a mother, but to see the combination; that I am a little girl being a mom, sounds perfect.

     

    I AM a perfect little girl, acting like a mom.

     

    I am a perfect little girl, is what I didn’t know.

     

    Imperfect childhood, imperfect little girl, but it is perfectly me.

     

  • From Feeling Bad To Feeling Good!

     

     

    I awoke shortly after 6am and in no mood for yoga, the sun was just lightening the horizon, I couldn’t find a reason to begin.

     

    In a place between doing it and not, I think I would have felt perfectly fine just sitting and waiting for the sun to shine in my face, starring mindlessly without having to expend one ounce of energy, suspended in a land where yoga never lived.

     

    After letting my yoga buddies know that I would be taking their energy, down the stairs I went.

     

    I wondered how this would work, me empty but willing to try.

     

    Bikram didn’t know my feelings at all, he began with his full energy and didn’t spare me a bit, and I followed along, perhaps better than ever, just about doing every pose until he said, ‘change’ or ‘enough’.  Incredible!  I didn’t have the energy to protest.

     

    In the Eagle, a thought came in, that without pain what would keep me doing this, what is the purpose for me doing this, if not to alleviate pain?

     

    “Feeling good” landed in my body, to feel good?  Wow. 

     

    It felt odd to acknowledge that I was doing something for me that felt good for me, that I felt good carrying around the rest of the day, and it was also sad, that I haven’t done things simply to feel good.

     

    I am almost positive that I have never done something where the agenda was for ME to Feel Good, only ME! 

     

    Somehow before Eagle I was wondering what it would take to maintain this daily grind, what kind of energy I would need to keep up this regiment.

     

    This regiment is to keep feeling good!

    Isn’t that insane?

     

    I call it a regiment, a hardship, a struggle, when what I am doing each morning is setting the tone, I am working to keep a set point of feeling good!

     

    How in world is this so twisted upside down and backwards, that I am feeling a struggle to maintain a feeling good feeling?

     

    And let me tell you all, I am feeling good, I am feeling a body that has muscles, that is stronger and looks better, clothes fit better, I walk straighter, head held high, and with good energy! 

     

    I have stated, that there is no ill side affects to this yoga.

     

    And here is the deal, yoga makes you feel better, gives you a new body, a new mind and a new life, according to Bikram and I!

     

    Yoga is the counterbalance to feeling bad, it will spring you ahead, not drag you back, even if it feels like you are going against the magnetic pull to begin, that all forces are against you starting, it is then that it is most critical in order to continue to feel good.

     

    My maintenance routine or ‘regiment’ is to keep back the bad feelings, the dragging body, and no energy weighing down my life.

     

    Inside I feel good about my inside and outside body!

    I made it over the line, from feeling bad to feeling good!

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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  • Testimonial for Bikram Yoga Dallas

    Karen calls me her Remote Student, because I live hundreds of miles from a Bikram yoga studio, and without stepping into a Studio, I have completed the 60-day Bikram challenge.

     

    My remote studio is my basement.

     

    There isn’t a set class time, no teacher to monitor my comings and goings, no one making sure my room is heated, I am all things in my home studio.

     

    The hardest part is keeping my word to myself, making sure I get out of bed to stoke the fire, moving around while the rest of the family sleeps, stealing the first section of the day for Bikram and myself.

     

    I stand alone in the mirror, just my body and me; no one is there to see my humble renditions of each pose, as I struggle valiantly to hold my balance, and fail, only to try yet again.

     

    In silence my amazement rings out when I am successful and some times tears in moments of sorrow or tears of gratitude that my body still responds.  In this quiet time, I am forming a new relationship with my body, my mind and Soul.

     

    How exciting it was to feel for the first time muscles I didn’t even know existed, and to feel the steadiness grow in my balance, to witness the affects of releasing unexpressed emotions that seemed to pour out of screaming joints. 

     

    Each day there is a morsel of difference in a pose, a snippet of improvement, a bit of hope and the thrilling feeling that I am doing it.

     

    I am leading the charge.

     

    I am bringing my body to the yoga mat, and following Bikram and my body is responding in spades!

     

    The 60 days have given me a great foundation, a second chance at a relationship with my body, a way to be kinder and more aware of what it really needs to be at its optimum health.

     

    In all areas of my life these improvements follow me, for I am the common denominator in each thing I do.

     

    Being a ‘remote student’ isn’t for everyone, but it is for those of us who do not have access to a studio.

     

    When I was inspired to do the challenge, I mentioned it to a few people, and soon we had a yoga buddy email list.  It is those inspiring individuals on the list that is my source of motivation and inspiration, when my own fails.

     

    What I want you most to know is that 60-days of yoga will change your life, and there is no excuse for not doing the yoga, all you have to do is get to a mat, a teacher or a Bikram CD, and begin!

     

     

    (My brother introduced me to Bikram yoga in 2001, when my arm hung useless.  In doing three weeks of Bikram yoga, the neck and shoulder muscles unknotted and I had zero pain.  I then began an on and off again practice.  When pain arrived, I knew where to go, to Bikram yoga.  I am happy to have the time/space and energy now to devote myself to working this into my every day life. At 51, this body was showing signs of neglect.  In the 60 days of doing the challenge, all aches and pains have disappeared, I am not stopping now, I have just begun!)

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Start Running!

    I began a discussion yesterday about the benefits of yoga, of how amazed I was that I could literally see the affects, like muscle growth by doing 90 minutes each day.

     

    Immediately one lady said, “I do not have 90 minutes to spare,” to which another replied, “That is nonsense, you make the time.”

     

    We make the time; we add and remove things in our lives to make room for something we find important.

     

    "I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be."
     ~ Einstein

     

    As my yoga session was winding down, a thought came to me that I am already feeling the ‘World chasing me.”  The benefits of doing yoga, has health already chasing me!

     

    Bikram says that if you can do Cobra, Locust, Full Locust, Bow, that you don’t have to chase the world, the world will chase you. You don’t have to chase, love, love will chase you…. 

     

    I felt the tides changing direction, I felt I was no longer the one reaching, seeking, but instead the waves of life are chasing me! 

     

    I caught a glimpse of the affects coming towards me, my efforts being echoed and returning to me, in waves of gratitude and excitement I see muscles, feel muscles and strength! 

     

    My efforts work, my taking 90 minutes each day gives me back my health. 

     

    I am not certain I am expressing this correctly. But before I was sitting in a spot ‘hoping’ my health would improve or at least not worsen.  Now I am leading my health, I am out front doing pose after pose, day after day, building and adding layer upon layer of health.

     

    And guess what, health is growing and it is coming right behind me.  I feel it lining up behind me; I love that feeling of how selflessly It follows behind me.  Like I am the master and it is the servant. 

     

    For 51 years I waited for health to come to me, never knowing that it was waiting for me to begin.

     

    Failure to start will stop health from chasing you, you begin the race, you have to start running!

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