Tag: challenge

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.

February 18, 2011

beings, Bikram, business, challenge, choices, doing, life, others, self, Yoga
I Can

As I look backwards on this year I am happy with the way that I stayed the course in yoga, by not succumbing to the voice that wanted me to give it up.

Between the voice and the lazy feelings that would sometimes overwhelm me, I stayed the course for the greater balance of the year, and I am proud of that.

What I intended when I began was to take better care of myself, to do something that would begin a change and to do it for 60 days.

The sixty days turned into 120, than 180 and then 240, it was then I faltered a bit and began missing a few days.

Yet even in the last month, I have done more yoga than not.

Tomorrow is the last day of the year, and the tally stands at 331 days of yoga done, (after I do today’s, which I best get going on soon) and 33 days no yoga.

I am feeling it was a successful yoga year.

A year of not listening to the voice and feelings that would have me believe, I can’t.

Learning to overcome the voice by doing, and changing the tone to I can.

December 30, 2010

can, can’t, challenge, changes, life, resolutions…, trying, voices, Yoga
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 58^th 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!

February 27, 2010

60 days Bikram, challenge, habits, mind versus spirit, Yoga
Full Power

I heard yesterday that after you say No, and the other person tries to get you to change your answer, they are trying to gain control over you.

Imagine that? I just hadn’t thought of looking at that as a power struggle or as one person looking to control the other.

Byron Katie has said, that if you can’t say no, I don’t trust your yes. Now this has a new dept to it for me.

You are as strong as your no.

I am seeing this in my challenge that I am saying no to laziness, tiredness, sloth like behavior, and instead of settling back in and laying there, I get up and move.

Each day that I say no to my old behaviors, I am gaining control. Certainly the old behaviors are like an old unhealthy friend, urging me to change my mind.

Today that feeling was almost overwhelming to just stay in bed and quit. It took effort to get up, to get moving and to begin.

That same zapping energy seemed to be present in the hardest postures, where I needed full power to power through, like Balancing Stick.

It is up to me to stick with the no and not change and follow the old behavior, capitulating under its power.

Imagine the power of no!

Saying no can change your life and bring you back to full power.

February 5, 2010

bikram 60 day yoga, challenge, no, power, self control, Yoga
Tired Lost This One.

Today was the day I dreaded, the day that I knew it would be touch and go with yoga, for I had such a full day and late night the day before.

So, the alarm goes off, it is 4:20, and I am heavy and not enthused, at all.

The dog wanted to go out, so I stepped outside with him. It is clear, crisp, starlit, moonlit, quiet and surreal. I breathe in deeply inhaling this wonder, and know that I just may do yoga, now.

My night was the most awful since we began this challenge, restless, sleepless, waking, sleeping for short periods to wake wide awake, and dreams that seemed so real back then, that I awoke more tired then I fell asleep.

And now yoga…

It was uneventful and nothing stood out except the fact that I was doing yoga with a tired body and no rest.

I kept hoping I was ‘gaining energy’ in the yoga class, recouping my nighttime loss.

The headache I woke with dissipated sometime during the standing poses, and I was simply amazed at myself when the last breath was blown out and I lay down to Bikram’s song.

I had faced the challenge this morning and won.

Tired lost this one…day 33 won!

February 2, 2010

Bikram, challenge, success, tired, Yoga
A Strong Body Will Be Revealed.

It is Monday morning a workday for me, and I have my 32^nd completed. I feel that the rest of the day will flow better now.

What I noticed today that under the extra seat cushion I have, there are muscles coming alive, and they are becoming really helpful in the floor exercises where I have to lift my legs off the ground.

Before my back tried to do this job alone, and now there is a connection between leg and back, called butt, and they are actually helping in the lift.

It was shocking to actually feel them working. I am thinking I have never had them, ever.

I wonder what is under my inner tube in front?!

This added bulk that I am carrying around really doesn’t help at all; instead it is actually in the way on lots of postures, folds and cushions of me squished or hanging out as I attempt to finesse this yoga.

It tickles me to know that muscles are being born underneath, like I am wearing a bulky jacket, but once I lose the jacket of extra flesh, a strong body will be revealed.

February 1, 2010

60 day, Bikram, challenge, muscles, Yoga
We Begin Again.

"I exist in perpetual creative response to whatever is present." Martha Beck

In yoga today, I was watching how I felt in each posture, where my attention was or my attitude, was I accepting or enduring or somewhere in the future.

Today I wasn’t fighting Bikram and the length of time he wanted me to stay with the posture, nor was I expecting me to do beyond what I did.

If I went in very mindful and controlled and had a good breathing sequence going, I was amazed at how much more I could do.

In fact I did so well on the Balancing Stick, I was eager to tell you all, but the next two were horrible, for I was ahead of the pose, expecting a perfect one before I even began, based on the prior one.

Well, the prior one was gone, it was a whole new game, and I didn’t focus, breathe or concentrate. I wasn’t in that pose, I fell out and had to chuckle at the difference between the two.

I caught the feeling of how quickly moments go by, how we have to grab and drink of each one, and not worry about the flavor of the next, or indulge to long in a past one. We have this moment, right here.

Right here, right now, we begin again.

January 31, 2010

awareness, Bikram, challenge, future, Martha Beck, past, present, Yoga
One Posture at a time.

It is here, I am half way done with the 60-day challenge, which means I got up 30 days in a row and did yoga, which to me is amazing.

I felt good today doing the yoga, I was stronger in some places, less wobbly, and was able to hold the postures longer.

I watched for resistance, and found some in weird places, just odd little muscles holding back.

My shoulder muscles for sure seem always to be zapping up energy in postures where they are not required.

Also, my jaw muscles want to get involved, and they are in the way in Rabbit and actually when relaxed make my breathing easier and fuller.

My shoulders, neck and jaw are the three places where I stored all my resentment and stress.

It is odd, that my upper body was bracing and feels stiff, and my lower body is slack and yielding and weak.

I am thinking as my legs walk my truth as I lock my knees against things that are not good for me, this will balance out. And then my shoulders can relax and as long as I speak my truth, my jaw doesn’t have to clench in frustration.

I told those muscles to relax now, that I had a better grasp on life, and that they no longer had to stand guard against things I didn’t pay attention to.

It is like my body has been bracing itself for the next assault; knowing that I would go against the body to help/be/do for the others good, not mine.

Like any broken relationship it takes time to mend and build trust, but we can one posture at a time.

January 30, 2010

60 day, Bikram, challenge, relax, stress, Yoga