I M Perfect lady

Tag: Bikram

  • Only Way Through It.

    I am back doing yoga on a fairly regular basis…and in the last few weeks, my left hip seemed to straighten out, allowing me to walk straighter.  However, with this adjustment, it seems that my left lower back now is feeling the pressure.  It reminds me how connected we are.

    The lower left back seems to be out of alignment and in many postures it is very uncomfortable.  Yet, if I relax with my breath in them, it seems to release the tight muscles.  It almost feels like these muscles have been clenched and balled tight, and now I am asking them to release and strengthen.

    Instinctively, I want to either back out of the pose or grip even tighter, when what really works is to relax, breath and go deeper.

    I am sure this is how we are in all of life's tight spots. It seems un-natural to be with, and to find comfort in pain…to push in further, to breathe and to engage with the pain.  

    In yoga, my tender back and jolting nerves are a bit skittish going into poses, but if I take my time, go steady and slow, and enter into the painful spots, I loosen them up and my flexibility expands and my muscles grow stronger.

    If I were to follow my fear, I would turn away from my pain.  Doing so would leave me with a body that isn't in alignment and would even deteriorate further.  

    Going into the pain is the only way through it…

  • A broken Heart can open you up to you.

    I made it to the yoga mat today, the third time in a week.  I was surprised that my yoga was waiting for me, that my poses were pretty much where I left them.  

    I was a little stiff, and a bit wobbly in locking my knee, and my middle had bulked out some, which didn't make that much of a difference.

    Today, when I went into the first floor exercise, and lifted my left leg, the pain in my hip or joint area was very intense.  As in the past, I began asking it what was its source…and when I said the word guilty, immediately I began to sob.

    It felt like I was left feeling guilty for being abused, that I was carrying the guilt and it constricted me, made me curl into myself.  I began doing what David Hawkins suggested, to cancel the guilt beliefs about myself, and breathed in the knowing of innocence.

    As I do the floor exercises my belly button hernia sometimes bothers me, so I was rubbing that and wondering what belief or what message the body was delivering with this bulging of my guts. How did this develop… I asked was it that I was "spilling my guts" and nothing happened.  I then pondered if I hated my guts, if I as disgusted with myself, and again immediately an emotional response.  I acknowledge this wrong belief, feeling the innocent me getting this wrong…and then did the cancelling breathing and adding that I recieved the message from my body, that my belly no longer has to gain my attention.  I will continue to do this in yoga now and see how things improve and change.  

    It is so telling that as children in our innocence we believe things due to the lack of adult supervision and correcting our distorted beliefs, and it becomes something we re-inforce as we unconsciously don't fully embrace ourselves.

    We have to see where our innocence left and then make a correction in order to make changes in our minds.  Our Spirit can recognize the place where we veered off the path of innocence and it too can bring us back.

    What a very healing yoga session…working my body and correcting my mind.

    Then, I went to do a Valentine Quilt, but what came to me was to work on the one Lady Quilt that was a work in progress.

    My Valentine Lady is much more pensive than what I had pictured…perhaps I had to get this one out of the way, and then do one that represents a very much in love with herself Lady.

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    The Hearts say, "Broken – Open" and  "Self – No one" and the bottom one says, "Self Love". 

    I see her as trying to protect herself from heartbreak, and yet her hearts break.  

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    By feeling the loss you can become whole.  Very interesting to me how this lady turned out.  A broken heart can open you up to you. 

     

  • Taking care of myself.

    It is disheartening to feel and watch my body in yoga after a couple month break.  In places where I used to be able to easily touch my toes, I have to strain, stretch, breathe and hold on, barely.  

    Today was my second day and the postures seemed just a bit less brutal, and I had regained a little of my flexibility…I felt kinder to me, less annoyed with the lapse I let go by.

    The path forward I have traveled before, so I know I can reach places that now are just a memory, but with consistency it can be done AND it is all up to me.

    I have to make the effort, plan the time out, put it on the list.

    I fell away from the routine, and got sloppy with my time, and my body paid the price.  

    With the repetitive nature of my job, sorting mail and putting it in boxes, my arms, neck and shoulders tighten up in muscle knots.  My legs and lower back pay the price as well for either standing all morning or sitting all afternoon.  By the end of the day without yoga I am ouchy.

    What surprises me is that I know the cost of not doing yoga, yet I drag my butt getting to the mat.  I feel better doing yoga, yet I don't eagerly run to do it each day.

    It was good to see myself in the mirror taking care of myself…

  • An Old Friend I outgrew.

    I went and did yoga this morning, and it felt sooo good.  My body yearns to be stretched, my neck and jaw are so tight, that I could stay much longer in the postures that are pulling on those muscles.  My arms also are sorely in need of being put in awkward positions as to stretch the bunched up overworked muscles always going in one direction.

     As I work sorting mail my left arm is bent to hold a pile of mail, this arm was painfully stretched out and that felt so good.

    Towards the end of my hour and a half routine, it came to me that my programmed self needs a body that is sluggish and asleep, in order to pull a quick one on me time and time again. 

    So, there has been a struggle within me, as my awareness becomes more aware, the odd twist between my ‘treats’ and how they feel are coming to light, and their gig is up. 

    I believe that the more brainwashed you are and the more confused you are about what feels good and what is bad…the more you need to have a shut down body.

    Perhaps a clear mind starts to crave foods that will help the body be a clear signal reader too. 

    I just feel that the mindset I had matched the shutdown foods that I ate.  They swayed in harmony together, holding each other up. 

    Yoga is a health food in my day; and I don’t like the way my body feels when it misses this.

    It also came to me while mowing the grass…We never ‘miss’ a sweet treat, or short ourselves on chocolate, or cheat and only eat a half a candy, but when doing yoga, I am tempted to stop early or doing anything that is truly good, we tend to slough off…but the old reliable bad stuff we are faithful to.

    Just interesting to notice where we cut corners and when we take more than our fair share.

    Perhaps soon I will be a yoga hog and glutton when it comes to fresh fruits and veggies and my old sweet treats will become an old friend I outgrew.

     

  • Keep Me Down

    As I did my yoga after work, a frivolous task I labeled it, since I opted to do this instead of a domestic chore or something of a higher priority, I just went ahead and took the liberties of time for my self without thinking too deeply…just quickly changed and started the CD, before a list of other things jostled this idea out of my head.

     

    Even calling it frivolous seemed odd, but yet right, that I was cheating responsibility and jumping into frivolous. 

    While in yoga I pondered this word and what it meant to me and how it was that I called doing something that was good for me frivolous. 

    The yoga that I do is very hard and requires my utmost attention, it is working very hard to restore my body to great health, and I called it frivolous. 

    It then came to me; it wasn’t the yoga that was frivolous, but the usage of time.  I was using time frivolously by taking care of myself. 

     I then felt deep sorrow at a girl who thought it frivolous to care for her self, to be with herself doing something that benefits her greatly, and she feels its frivolous.

     I looked up the meaning of frivolous to make sure that I had it right.

     

    1.                     not worth taking seriously: lacking in intellectual substance and not worth serious consideration.

     

    This is exactly the meaning I had in mind, I was not worth taking seriously or with serious consideration.

    I know that this has been my greatest negative pull that seems to be tied by a rope of great width, that keeps holding me down, a belief that is strung through each of my cells.

    I have claimed that my biggest hurdle is that I am too responsible, and yet what is more true, is that I am not worth taking seriously or using serious consideration.

    I take life and others needs very seriously, but my own are considered frivolous not serious.

    I felt pushed upon the mat by the sorrow of understanding, that it isn’t the things that are frivolous, but that I am not worth having them.

    My world is very short of frivolous, from the time I spend, to the items I pass by, for I can’t drum up a reason to bring them in.

    Flipping frivolous to serious has been a long six years struggle, to upend this belief and get me into serious consideration.

    Even though I have been serving me lots of time, big chunks in a day to be used for just me; from writing, to yoga, to art, and blogging, to unraveling my past.  I have been yanking and pulling on this ‘frivolous’ thread, kinda sorta believing it  was serious work, while not completely sold.

    The tables turned today, I can see that what I have been doing is putting my self on the list for serious consideration going against generations of voices that have been trying to keep me down.

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  • Many years of pain.

    Yoga is the opposite of junk food for the soul and when done, I get left with a wonderful feeling, a relaxed stretched out calmness…a great way to begin my day.

     

    What I marvel at is that I drag my body to the mat, I slowly exit the bed, and begrudgingly tossing the quilt aside, I almost angrily put the heater going, like preparing for my death or torture. 

     

    And it is torture to take this neglected body and bring it back to life, to make the muscles strong, as they should be, or the joints as flexible and mobile as is their nature.

     

    I have noticed in the past few months, when I have been doing just a few yoga sessions a week, that I have fallen backwards in how my body moves.

     

    I can see how we become stiff and weak.  It is by far easier to stay beneath the covers and not make the effort.  But we will have pain either way… as Bikram says, “90 minutes or 90 years.”

     

    By making the difficult choice of getting out of bed, I struggle or suffer for 90 minutes and that will save me many years of pain. 

     

  • A New Legacy to Begin.

    “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
    Soren Kierkegaard

    I did yoga today, only the second time this week, and I felt the stiffening up of my body, the tight joints and the way I seemed to have drifted away from the presence of me.

    I fall quickly into a world that has little of me in it…for without taking the time each day, I slip away unnoticed.

    My body pays the price; my essence gets left in the background and to the forefront arrives all kinds of reasons to leave it there.

    My weakening resolve plays with any lazy excuse and before I know it a week has passed and I have not spent any time with me just for me.

    What came to me in yoga today (which is another reason to do yoga, great insights) is that we are greeted into the world and then ‘told’ or highly suggested how this world operates and are then programmed to fit in. We learn life from the eyes and perceptions and actions of our parents.

    Imagine instead if we were left to explore on our own, to see freely and build ourselves from the inside out?

    Instead our insides desires and passions, questions and interests are put aside due to the ‘knowledge’ our parents have about life.

    Instead of us gulping up and witnessing the fresh look at life when babies arrive, we stifle it and bend it and hurt it so that the child’s view of life matches our own.

    How backwards and how growth stunting this is to take new fresh energy and make it look old and stiff.

    On my mail route I deliver mail to what we would call ultra conservative families, where the woman are dressed as they did on the wagon trails out west, bonnets and long flowing calico dresses.

    As this bonnet-wearing woman answers her door, there are children of each age at her legs, and I am amazed that she has gone along with this dress code and submissively is led to live as they did 100 years ago…yet what I know is that each generation before refused changes, refused to see progress and actually applauds the legacy that has held strong regardless of progress all around them.

    The youngest ones smile freer, the bit older ones look in awe but with a tinge of fear as they hang back, but the littlest ones meet your eyes and smile wildly for they react naturally untaught.

    Along the route are various degrees of ultra conservatives and what I see the most is the absence of children being children, for they are like young adults, doing adult jobs with adult responsibility.

    In Alice Miller’s books, her main trust is the lost child, how adults greet it with all their issues and steal away the innocence, the lack of pure enthusiasm, love, peace and joy, and fill it up with all things opposite.

    As I completed my yoga, I thought what most of us are craving and thirsty for is the freedom and innocence of babies, to be able to be set free from our parents legacy, to give back our ‘inheritance’ and go it alone.

    Imagine a world of grown up newborns…all living life from what they feel and experience instead of what is acceptable by their parents.

    The parents are our biggest detriment to society and yet they can also be the biggest factors in change…for by changing my attitude and by me seeing my children, my children will see theirs.

    The chain has to be broken in order for it to be fixed.

    You can’t fix things at the same level they were created at, says the wise man Einstein, and I agree.

    I told my daughter yesterday, I had to leave my family in order for the abuse to stop; I had to leave my family in order to save my children. I had to do what was best for the child, not the legacy of the family

    That old legacy had to end in order for a new legacy to begin.

  • New old natural way…

    I am strong enough to become weak and vulnerable.

    I am now open to receive instead of standing in defense, to look at life with an open chest instead of hunched over in protection.

    As I did yoga today, in the postures that required me to have my arms wide open and breathing deeply opening my chest, I visualized me receiving.

    Opening up like a flower bloom to welcome in the Sun.

    Receiving is something that I have forgotten to do for me, yet inside I feel the urge to receive.

    I am not sure what, for it is different than wanting or desiring, it is much easier… just being open and soft and welcoming.

    My hardness was for self-protection and as I discovered my voice, spoke my feelings and set up boundaries, my hardness began to soften and become supple.

    I was growing stronger and softer, exchanging old tired overworked defense muscles for the unused scrunched up receiving ones.

    In yoga I notice you have to relax one muscle and tense up the other, it is letting go and pulling, that in order to go deeper you relax one set and flex the other.

    Inside I feel strong enough to relax and grow soft, to weaken my hyper alertness for trouble and to heighten my awareness for joy and beauty, to be open to trust and love life in a new old natural way.

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  • Where we lead…

    In the past two and a half months, my yoga practice has been very spotty, it has boiled down to two times a week, and I am now understanding the sentiment of caring for your self or more importantly what it feels like again, to not care.

    Without care or interest, to be indifferent to the bodies needs. To feel myself almost going to sleep or in a daze and be too tired to begin.

    What we fail to notice is that when we are too tired to do something, we are actually playing to indifference; we are feeding the lack of care.

    It finally came to me what I have been doing, I have been leaving myself alone.

    Leaving the care of my body, walking away from what it needs and just sitting down.

    I could feel the waves of indifference, what I used to call being lazy, with no umph is actually the expression of indifference.

    You become indifferent to what it needs for its optimum health.

    What I find so intriguing is that when my daughter’s abuse came in and I experienced posttraumatic symptoms, I left my self-care.

    It is strange that when our body needs us the most we are the farthest away.
    It wasn’t that I was disconnected from the stress and wasn’t dealing with life, but what I failed to do was treat my body, to care for its needs.

    As I did yoga yesterday I was surprised that my body still remembered the poses, that it did it’s best with stiff and sore muscles, and that it tried to keep up to what I was asking of it, and I felt its struggle for it wasn’t used to this routine.

    The body’s forgiveness is pure nature; it simply follows where we lead.

    (What I know for sure today, is that by not doing yoga I am feeding indifference. So when I sit and feel unable to get up and do my yoga, I know to whom I am dancing with, what music I am hearing, I am hearing the beating of the drum being led away from me.)

  • Life Unfolds.

    Well, I quit the yoga challenge. It became more about the numbers and less about me, somehow I got lost behind the counting, the doing and forgot about me.

    The me that needs the yoga, my body, mind and soul. I forgot to view this from me; instead I was outside of me doing the yoga.

    It was a step ahead of me and I was nowhere in yoga.

    I have taken a few days off, to cleanse myself from the doing of a challenge to get back into being a lady whose body loves yoga.

    Whose body needs the yoga to feel flexible and strong, whose mind opens and breathes, and my life has a balance with yoga.

    It is about me and yoga, not yoga and me.

    This is true in all levels of my life.

    I am not sure if I can explain this correctly, but in the past all that I did created who I was, without doing I was nothing.

    I was defined daily by what I did, the doings created me.

    What I have now discovered is if I do something for reasons that are not birthed within me, I am lost from my life and in some foreign land most likely called your business.

    I believe that when my daughter’s life was in crisis, I hopped out of mine and into hers and it way threw off my balance. And during this time the yoga challenge beckoned me daily to join it, no matter my inner state of being.

    One thing led to another and it led me away from me.

    I had fallen out of my life.

    Now I am gathering me back to me.
    Letting my daughter have her life, her choices, her responsibilities and at the same time refocusing on regaining the balance within me.

    I know that my body and my day run better when I take the time at the top of the morning and breathe and work my body.

    I know that I feel best when I stay in my life and live from the inside out.

    I will selfishly bring me to my life and I will selfishly bring me to yoga.

    I arrive and life unfolds.