Don’t Fear Compromise

21 01 2012

I’m always writing about how you don’t have to be perfect and just do a little better every day.  Don’t dwell on your mistakes, just rectify them and move on.  This post is about knowing when it is okay to compromise and listening to yourself rather than worrying what other people will think.

I would consider an ideal diet for me to be all non-processed, organic vegan foods cooked from scratch by me.  And I am proud to say that I eat that diet for the majority of my meals.  But I also don’t want to give off the impression that I think it’s wrong to veer away from what you consider to be the “best” diet from time to time.  It is up to you to what level you take the changes you make in your diet and how faithfully you follow your plan.  Some people may choose to be extremely rigid and never compromise on what they eat.  I don’t find that a reasonable, or healthy, attitude for me personally in my life.  I see it all the time in others: the worry that their diets aren’t right, or aren’t perfect or that they’re eating the wrong things. It becomes an obsession of sorts.

In reality, there simply isn’t only one right way.  If it works for you, it works!  I think at that point we can stop second guessing.  Sure, continue learning and continue adjusting, but try not to let it take over your life.

Sometimes, I miss a workout.  It happens.  Life happens.  I get pulled into a last minute project or I get the flu.  Part of making this work for you is being flexible enough to make sure you can stick with it for the long term.  If you feel like you failed every time you miss a workout, you’ll be less motivated to carry-on the next day.  When I miss a workout, I simply take it for what it is and go right back the next day.  If possible, I’ll make it up by going on a planned rest day.  But sometimes it just isn’t possible.

Sometimes, I eat take out.  I just ate a delicious falafel wrap from a Mediterranean place down the street- and french fries!  Sometimes, I eat ice cream.  Sometimes I have a glass of wine.  I don’t consider these “cheat meals” or “free days” or anything like that.  This is, and always has been, part of my plan.

Even when I was losing weight, I didn’t always eat a perfectly clean, ideal diet.  But I always maintained portion control.  It’s fine if you want to have a piece of cake, but have a reasonable piece and then put it away.  If you simply must have fast food french fries- get the kid’s size.  Much as I don’t eat fast food now- I lost over 60 pounds while eating plenty.  My go-to Wendy’s meal was a Jr Cheeseburger with no mayo, small french fries and an unsweetened iced tea.  That was before I switched to vegetarian, but my point is that you do not have to be perfect at all times to make positive strides forward.

I honestly do not believe I would have succeeded if I had expected perfection of myself.  I read all these health blogs and inspirational postings, and so many of them say No Excuses, and Never Eat This,  Work Out Every Day… and I just don’t agree with that message.  It makes it seem like living a healthy lifestyle has to be this rigid dogmatic experience with no room for adjustment and I don’t think it has to be that.  In fact, I think some people take it too far and it takes the living out of life because they become so focused on food and exercise.  To me those are important and great things to be aware of, but that awareness needn’t take over your life.  I have no desire to be a person you can’t take out to eat or so worried about what I’m eating that I won’t share in a meal at another person’s home without nitpicking it apart.

I don’t always buy the organic option for produce.  I sometimes use canned beans or tomatoes.  I have plastic storage containers.  I use a non-stick pan.  I put sugar in my coffee.  Sometimes I’m tired and my effort level during my workout isn’t at it’s maximum.  I’m not perfect and that’s okay!  Guess what, I’ve lost 120 lb and kept it off for over a year.  I’ve been at this for over three years and I know it’s not about being flawless, it’s about continuing to put in that effort regularly in the long run.  I’m proud of how well I do.  I’d say I’m about 90% following what I would consider to be an ideal diet.  I don’t feel restricted and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.  I find it very doable and it doesn’t add stress to my life.

Don’t fear making compromises, it’s just another way of taking care of yourself.


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Categories : inspiration

When is Enough Enough?

7 01 2012

I was just looking at my weight history and I realized that I have maintained my weight under 170 lb for exactly one year. That’s one whole year without a significant re-gain.  I dipped down to 161 at one point and bounced back up to 174 at another, but for the most part, I have hovered between 165 and 169 pounds.

I fluctuate in and out of my “healthy weight range” according to the charts.  For a woman who is 5’8″ my cut off weight between being “normal” and being “overweight” is 167 lb.  Which is total bullocks of course.  I think there’s something about being a little bit out of the acceptable range but still choosing to accept myself the way I am that makes me feel like I’m a rebel.  Charts be damned, I will decide what my body should look like and what weight I should be.  Nobody else.

I received a message once on a weight loss site where a completely random stranger took it upon himself to suggest that I lower my goal weight from 180 (that was my original goal) to 150 because “a woman cannot be healthy at 180.”  That message punched me right in the gut.  You know that feeling you get when someone says something to you that they probably have no idea how it will make you feel, but it just demoralizes you and gives you that sick feeling… “maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m not good enough, maybe I DO need to be thinner… maybe, maybe, maybe.”

That message came at least a year and a half ago and it still stuck with me to this day, as I hover just above the normal weight range as prescribed by the medical community. And the longer I think about it the more I come to this conclusion (I apologize in advance for the swearing, but this is me and this is how I feel): Fuck that guy.  Fuck every person who has ever tried to make me or any other person feel like he/she isn’t good enough exactly the way she is.  Fuck all the people who think it’s their business to tell me, or any woman, or anyone, how they should look, what they should weigh, what they should wear, or how they should take care of themselves.  It’s none of anyone else’s goddamned business.  Nobody but me.  MY body, MY terms.

As time passes I find myself becoming more and more comfortable with the “new me”.  Sometimes I find myself wanting to lose 10 more pounds or change my body composition further.  But as time goes by those moments become scarcer, fewer, and further in between.  The more I see myself in full length mirrors or candid photographs the more I realize: I like myself exactly the way I am.

Some people lose a lot of weight and then weight loss and fitness becomes their job.  I can understand this.  It’s awfully tempting to change careers, get a degree in some kind of nutrition and be a life coach or some sort of personal trainer.  But that’s not me.  The things that I am passionate about are art, writing, politics, body image…  I have come to realize that I am fulfilling a unique position in the weight loss community.  I am showing people that it is OKAY to stop.  It is okay to decide that enough is enough.  I feel amazing, I look great, I am fit by anyone’s standards.

It seems like everywhere I look there’s a “motivational” poster like this:

Inspirational?

What is the dream exactly?  To have a body worthy of having your head cut off and objectified into a faceless torso of perfect abs?  To be that girl who guys walk by and go “Ooh Baby!”  That’s not MY dream.  My dream is to be a successful artist, a loving partner, financially comfortable, to travel the world, to have a gallery show, to make a short film, to be a good friend, to learn, and many other things.  In the words of Beauty Redfined: I am capable of MUCH MORE than being looked at.

Fitting into the prescribed mold will not bring me happiness.  I refuse to objectify myself.  I don’t think most people realize exactly how difficult it is to be okay with your body, especially as a woman, when everywhere we look there are all these messages telling us that if we tried a little harder and weren’t so quick to give up, we could have these perfect flawless bodies and the world would be ours.  That is such bullshit.  I’m NOT a quitter.  I work really hard.  My goals are just different than the ones they keep trying to tell me to have.

Look, I’ve lost 120 lb.  I could exercise until the cows come home and eat a perfect diet and I will never look like that lady.  Because I will never have surgery, I will always have flaws and scars from being obese.  I am not a disembodied torso.  I am a person with a history.  And I am trying to be okay with myself.  It takes a bloody hell of a lot of effort, I have to tell you.  It’s no wonder so many fall into the traps of eating disorders and body hatred.  It’s practically shoved down our throats at every turn.

The outward appearance of my body is not what’s important to me.  It is not the end all be all of life.  I didn’t set out on this weight loss thing to become obsessed with my appearance.  I am simply not that vain or shallow.  I am healthy by all measures, fit by anyone’s standards, and above all, I’m happy!  The obsession has to stop somewhere.  Enough is enough.

I cannot honestly think of any other blogger or weight loss person I have read who feels the way I do.  It seems like everyone is always striving for those few less pounds, those few less inches, that added definition.  It seems like nobody can be happy as they are.  I mean, if that’s really your life-long goal, to be a fitness model or competitor or some such thing, I certainly do not begrudge you that.  But can we stop with the assumptions that every woman who does not look like the above headless torso lady must be miserable about her appearance?  That’s what I want to keep talking about as I go forward: self-acceptance.  Weight loss doesn’t have to take over your life.  It is effort enough to maintain my weight, and I think I’ve done it pretty comfortably for the last year.  Can I picture myself living my life this way forever?  Absolutely.  But not much more than this.  The gym is not going to be my main activity.  I have too many other things I’d like to do.  I really don’t think I’ll be lying on my deathbed one day thinking “I sure wish I’d gotten that tummy tuck, I could have had abs.”

I’m inspired by people who help people.  I’m inspired by people who make major changes in their lives for the betterment of themselves and their families.  I’m not inspired by posters like the one above.  I find them objectifying and insulting.  I also feel that they ignore the true benefit of working out and eating right: health.  And health cannot be found in one’s outer appearance.  If you want to “be an example to your family”, there’s a lot more to it than having a low body fat percentage (and no head):

Seriously?

I am good enough the way I am.  I hope I maintain my weight for another year and many more to come, no matter what anyone else thinks of me.


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Categories : Destructive, inspiration, Maintenance

Since I Saw You Last

5 01 2012

Since I saw you last, everything has changed.  It’s a new year, 2012.  I’m a new age, turned 34 on Jan 4.  I live in a new state, hello California!  I belong to a different gym, I work in a different office… you get the picture.

I’m really excited about this change, despite the fact that I’ve been sick since last Monday with some kind of coughing thing.  That’s not particularly shocking considering all that just happened and the climate change.  Indeed, something appears to be going around my new office location.  I can hear people coughing in their offices, just like I am.

I feel like I belong here.  I’ve always said you need to give a new location at least one year before passing judgement.  It’s like a relationship really, you cannot truly know a place or person in a few days, weeks, or months.  Maybe it’s because I really didn’t like my last city of residence even after three years, but I love it here immediately.  It combines many of the things I loved about Philadelphia like being able to walk places and neighborhoods with different characters to explore and get to know, with the beautiful weather and scenery of northern California.  I’m a liberal vegetarian who likes yoga.  Clearly I belong here and not in Phoenix!

Moving is always hard and stressful.  The holidays can also be.  So I am extremely proud to say that my weight remained steady and I weighed in at the same weight the day my scale was unpacked from its box as I did the day I packed it.  But I’m not surprised either.

I’m just so different now than I used to be.  There’s no way I’m going to use any sort of stress as an excuse to pig out on junk food.  I know better.  I know that a much better way to handle stress is to eat as well as possible in present circumstances and to get some physical exercise as often as possible.  Making yourself feel worse will never make you feel better.  Doesn’t that seem incredibly obvious?  I wonder why it takes us so long to get it (us being overeaters, drinkers, smokers, and other sorts of addicts).

As soon as we got here we went grocery shopping.  In the past, I would have used moving as an excuse to eat out as many meals as possible.  But now, I prefer to eat out as little as possible – too much restaurant food and I start to feel icky.  I like knowing what’s in my food now.    We joined a gym 2 days after we arrived and I’ve been 3 times in less than a week- despite aforementioned illness.

People can change.  This is the new me.  If you’re looking to be a new you – you can.  It just takes time.

Happy New Year!


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Categories : Health

My Own Personal Fat Camp, Phoenix Arizona

20 12 2011

When I was offered a job transfer to Arizona from Massachusetts over 3 years ago, my general attitude about it was “why not?”  I wasn’t particularly thrilled with Massachusetts, I didn’t know much about the American Southwest, and it seemed like my skills would be better suited to the work in the Phoenix location (they certainly were).  I started looking into it.  Interesting landscape, crazy weather.  Let nobody try to tell you otherwise: a dry heat is definitely more pleasant than a humid heat, but 115 degrees is murderously hot no matter what.  You simply cannot do anything outside during the day in the summer and summer lasts from June until October (or November if it was this year.)

One of the first things I thought when I considered moving to Phoenix was “If I’m going to live somewhere that hot, I’m really going to have to lose weight.”  Hot is so much hotter when you’re fat.  In fact, this year I really did not mind the summer half as much as I did the previous two years, being at a healthy body weight.

Sometimes I feel like Phoenix was my own personal fat camp.  Much like the contestants on weight loss TV shows, I was completely out of my element.  I did not have any of my old family or friends around me.  I had no obligations but work.  All of the sudden there was nobody asking me to go out to the bar, nobody coming over for brunch.  It was just my boyfriend and me.  He wanted to join a gym, so we did that about 2 months after settling in.  And the rest is history.

I know what an amazing advantage I had in this cross-country move.  Many times it is our friends and loved ones who make it difficult to change ourselves.  It’s not that they don’t love and care for us, it’s that they are used to us the way we are.  I can’t imagine how infinitely more difficult this would have been around some of my best friends back in Philadelphia.  Not that I blame them.  They just made it that much easier to keep making poor choices… and in all honesty it was pretty fun.  I’m not sure what would have happened if I had not moved.  With not much else to put my effort into, changing my lifestyle became my main focus.  And I had a helpful coach, my boyfriend.  Thankfully, his best coaching technique was to let me do my own thing then answer questions if and when I asked.  He never pressured me to lose weight at all, and he never tried to discourage me either.  He’s the very definition of “supportive.”

Fast forward to now, I’ll be 34 in a few weeks and I’m saying goodbye to fat camp.  I’ve had my current job for going on six years, and I’m transferring again to the SF Bay area in California.  My general attitude about moving to California is “Oh hell yeah!”  I’ve wanted to move to CA since I was about 13.  Moving to Phoenix always felt like I made it 90% of the way to where I was trying to go.  Just a minor three year detour.  I’m really grateful for the detour.  Now I’m moving to the place I want to be as the person I want to be.

On the left: me three years ago taking a photo of my new rental home in Phoenix.  On the right: me 2 weeks ago taking a picture of my new apartment in Redwood City (which by the way costs quite a bit more than my house in Phoenix, but let’s not talk about that.)

I'm leaving something behind in Phoenix: about 120 lb.

I could tell you the reasons I don’t like living in Phoenix.  They extend well beyond the weather.  But I didn’t just lose weight in Arizona, I also found out how life-changing it can be to focus on the positive and let the negative pass me by.  Overall, I have enjoyed my time here even though I knew it wasn’t permanently for me.  So instead I will tell you the best thing about the place besides the extremely low cost of living: the sunsets.

amazing sunsets in Phoenix Arizona


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Categories : Maintenance, Weight Loss

Weight Maintenance – What it Really Looks Like (Charts!)

23 11 2011

Well, this is a first for me on this blog: I’m writing to tell you about a weight gain.  In the process of thinking about this, I decided to share with you my weight maintenance chart thus far.  I didn’t want to write about this during the 30 day challenge, even though I realized it was happening a few weeks ago.  This is not a big deal and I didn’t want it to take away from what I was getting out of the challenge.  No need for condolences.  It’s all par for the course.

You see, I don’t expect my weight to remain perfectly steady at all times, but I don’t want to take trends too lightly either.  I’ve only been at this weight maintenance thing for about 8 months and it’s something I’ve never done before in my life so I’m still figuring it out.  I know there will be challenges and changes along the way because life is not constant and nothing in life remains perfectly still.

I think a lot of people mistakenly think that weight maintenance will look like this:

idealized weight maintenance

So I am here to tell you it does not.  I weigh myself almost every day unless I’m traveling or I forget for some reason.  Then I record that weight using an iPhone app that’s meant for tracking your menstrual cycle called iPeriod.  This may sound a bit obsessive to some people, but I think it’s very important for me to remain engaged with what is going on with my body.  Perhaps someday this will be unnecessary, but not at the moment.  I have learned that my weight will fluctuate daily and I am not bothered by this.  Recording those fluctuations helps me see the overall trend that’s so easy to lose in the day to day ups and downs.  It also helps me in situations like now, so I can look back and see exactly what changed and when.

Here is my weight chart from this month:

one month

Keep in mind that these charts look dramatic because of the scale.  You’re looking at a range of 165 to 172 lb, so not a huge difference but this is clearly up from my maintenance range, as the next charts will show.  This is the month of the 30 day challenge during which I did no exercise other than yoga.  I counted calories for the first 2 weeks, but that quickly became boring so I quit.  I noticed my weight range was higher about half way through the challenge and I kept weighing myself but recorded it less because I was trying not to focus on my weight at that moment. Yoga, wonderful as it is, doesn’t elevate my heart rate or burn calories the way running or BodyPump do.

Now let’s step back a bit.  Here is the chart for the past 3 months:

three months

I’ve divided this up into colored sections for easy understanding: yellow is when I was following Jamie Eason’s LiveFit trainer for 1 month, blue is a period of time during which I took two trips (Philadelphia and San Francisco) and was off my schedule both in terms of eating and exercise, and the purple is the 30 day challenge.  So you can see that the trend upward started right after I stopped following the LiveFit trainer, about 2 months ago.  The yellow line is my all time low weight, of 161 lb.

six months

If we back up even further, the trends are much clearer.  This is why I think keeping a weight chart is so helpful.  The green area is a period of time when I was maintaining pretty effortlessly.  I had myself in a routine of working out about 6 times a week- three days of BodyPump and 3 days of cardio and I was basically just eating whenever I was hungry, Susie Orbach style.

overall weight chart

Finally, this is my weight chart since I started keeping it in January.  Prior to that, I weighed myself daily but only recorded the lowest weights.  Orange is the end of my weight loss efforts.  I decided to start maintaining in April and the rest is history.  I drew in the red line representing the overall trend.  This would be impossible to see without keeping track in some way.  I feel empowered by the knowledge.

Having lost over 120 pounds, I know just how important it is to catch these things before they get out of control, so I’ve tried to maintain a balance between vigilance and going with the flow, which I think has been pretty successful.  A lot of people would be absolutely panicking right now about this weight gain, but I am not.  I made changes to my routine, and those changes made changes on the scale.  It’s just data.  It works for me.  I am not a slave to it.  Only if you can keep this kind of attitude toward it can it be healthy to weigh in daily.  I know many people find this is not possible and that they become obsessive about that number.  For those people, perhaps a different strategy is in order.

So what am I going to do about it?  Well, I really don’t feel like counting calories at the moment.  It takes some of the joy out of eating and I feel I eat so well it isn’t really necessary.  I believe that if I continue eating as I have been and add my gym exercise back into my routine, the weight will probably take care of itself, possibly quite quickly.  I will pay extra attention to eating when I am hungry and stopping when I am full, which is how I maintained my weight during the “green” period.  It’s been fun experimenting with different plans, but I’m kind of happy to go back to the tried and true, body pump and cardio – doing my own thing as it occurs to me.  Of course I will continue practicing yoga a few days a week as well.  Now that I have been away from my routine, I am hoping it will be even more effective.  I’m not going to be too hard on myself either.  I’m moving in a little more than a month to a different state and I know that means a lot of my time committed to moving prep.  Being in my comfortable gym routine should be just about perfect during this time.

Now let’s get it going in the right direction again.


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Categories : Maintenance, Weight Loss

Blissful Yoga 30 Day Challenge – Day 30!

22 11 2011

30 days

Finished off the challenge with Tracy’s Hot Flow 2 class tonight!  That’s 30 days of yoga and 30 days of blogging as soon as I hit “publish”.

Practicing yoga every day is great.  I enjoyed every single class.  Anything negative I’ve said about doing this was more about what I have had to miss to do it, such as other classes I love at the gym or my usual cardio workouts.  If I had a less demanding job or there were somehow more hours in the day, I would love to practice in a class setting every day.  Unfortunately that is not the case.  It has been a challenge to make it every day, but I am proud of myself for doing it and I know it has been very beneficial for me.

I see lots of improvement in my practice, from strength to balance to simple understanding.  Mentally I feel less stressed and I definitely appreciate the gift of taking time for myself daily.  I have also learned that if I dedicate myself to doing something, I can and will do it even if it is inconvenient.   Here is a run-down of the classes I took during the 30 days:

  1. Bliss Flow
  2. Candle Light I/II
  3. Yoga Sculpt (wall)
  4. Candle Light
  5. Hot Yoga II
  6. Yoga Fusion (core)
  7. Power (vinyasa)
  8. Yoga Fusion (core)
  9. Bliss Flow
  10. Yoga Sculpt (wall)
  11. Yoga Sculpt (wall)
  12. Restorative
  13. Hot Flow I
  14. Intro to Meditation and Philosophy of Yoga
  15. Yoga Fusion (core)
  16. Hot Flow II
  17. Yoga Sculpt (wall)
  18. Hot Flow II
  19. Restorative
  20. Hot Flow I
  21. Power (vinyasa)
  22. Bliss Flow
  23. Hot Flow II
  24. Yoga Sculpt (wall)
  25. Yoga Sculpt
  26. Restorative
  27. Hot Flow I
  28. Toning the Pelvic Floor
  29. Bliss Flow
  30. Hot Flow II

A few things I learned about myself and yoga:

I LOVE hot yoga.  As soon as it got a little chilly outside, hot yoga became extremely appealing (that happened on the 13th class).  I love the sweat, I love the humidity, and I love how much more flexible the heat makes me.  When I move, I may be checking out some studios that are only Hot classes.  I feel like the ideal thing for me would be a few hot classes a week, as early in the morning as possible.

I dislike restorative yoga.  It’s slightly more appealing after a margarita, but generally I find laying there doing not much of anything very, very difficult.  My brain goes all over the place.  I also find it brings out my aches and pains- especially my back.  Maybe my back just doesn’t like those poses for that length of time.  Perhaps I’m just not in the right state of mind for it at the moment, with so many thoughts going through my head.

My hips are the most in need of help when it comes to flexibility.  Because of this, I am planning to incorporate hip opening poses into my day daily.  Just 10-15 min before bed probably, but I need to open up my hips if I want to progress forward.

It’s tempting to immediately challenge myself to do something else, but right now I need to dedicate myself to preparing for moving.  I will continue going to the gym and yoga classes, but I need to be flexible because I have a lot of travel and work ahead of me this month, not to mention the holidays.   But I have some ideas in mind for 30 day challenges I would like to try in the future.

Blogging daily has been challenging as well.  Making words come when I don’t really feel like it isn’t something I’m accustomed to doing.  I blog because I have things to say, so when I don’t have things to say, I don’t blog!  I hope to continue blogging more frequently than I was, but again I need to be respectful of my time and how stretched thin I already am.

So there, it is, 30 days complete!  I feel accomplished and I’m really glad I did this


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Categories : Yoga

Blissful Yoga 30 Day Challenge – Day 29

21 11 2011

Day 29

I have the entire week off work this week, so with no other obligations, I went to Margie’s 9:00 Bliss Flow this morning, which was lovely of course.  Tomorrow is the final day of the challenge and I’m excited to be so close.

There is another book I have been reading that deserves some words from me.  I’m not really reading any of these books cover to cover, I’m kind of skipping around whatever feels interesting at the moment.  The book is called The Heart of Yoga – Developing a Personal Practice by T.K.V. Desikachar.

This is a good book for someone who wants to understand some of the basics of developing a yoga practice, written in a clear and uncomplicated way.  I think this would be an ideal companion book, especially for someone who tends to practice alone and not in a class setting.

“Anybody who wants to can practice yoga.  Anybody can breathe, therefore anybody can practice yoga.  But no one person can practice every kind of yoga.  It has to be the right yoga for the person.”

That is an integral message of this book.  There is no one “right” way, there’s only what is right for you.  All of us have different physical and mental strengths and obstacles.  There is no way to have one program that would be ideal for each individual, that’s what is meant by a “personal” practice: the practice that is right for you.

So many times we find ourselves wondering if we are “doing it right”, in many areas of life.  But what is right?  Perhaps what works wonderfully for one person does not work for another.  There is nothing wrong about this, it’s simply that we are all at different points in our lives with unique challenges.  I think this is so important in the journey to being healthier.  There’s no one right way.  There’s no wrong way.  There’s only your way.  Even missteps bring us closer to understanding what we need to reach our goals.


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Categories : Yoga

Blissful Yoga 30 Day Challenge – Day 28

20 11 2011

Day 28

And now for something completely different, I attended Kat Myer’s Toning the Pelvic Floor workshop this afternoon.  This is the description:

Acupressure, QiGong, Chopstick Acupuncture and Body Rolling for Vaginal Patency, Bladder Tone and Libido. The biological definition for Patency is “the state of being open, expanded and unblocked.” Learn how to Maintain and Build blood flow for internal strength, health, sensitivity, pain relief and patency.

It was very interesting.  There were many props involved.  (if you have  a naughty mind you are probably now letting it wander into some treacherous territory, but no, no… nothing like that!)  If you’d like to know more about your pelvic floor, I’m going to leave you to the googling- so go ahead and if you’re on a public computer you might not want your boss looking over your shoulder when you click on “images”.

You may want to start here: Pelvic Floor Health

See those foam white things in the photo?  One thing we did was lay on our backs on one of those.  And let me tell you, at the end of the class after laying on that thing, I felt like my whole back contacted the ground more than it ever has.  Usually I feel like I’m propped up on parts of my back- tailbone, shoulders.  After laying on that, I felt like my spine straightened out and I could be flat on the ground.

There was a container of cards to take and this is what mine said:

labels

Which is interesting to me, especially with this 30 days of blogging I have undertaken.  If you’ve been following along (thank you!) you have seen that some days my writing is fuller than others.  Sometimes, it just takes a lot of effort to twist experiences into words, and sometimes I don’t think it’s beneficial.  This doesn’t mean there’s nothing happening or nothing to write about.  It just means that some things aren’t ready to be solidified into sentences, more experience is needed before it’s ready to share, if it’s ever ready to share.

Attaching labels to things is something you learn about as an artist very quickly.  When we attach a label to something, it becomes a symbol and you cease to really see it anymore, instead you see your concept of it.  Take an “eye” for example.  The symbol for an eye looks something like this:

eye symbol

And when people are beginning to learn to draw from life, you know they are not “seeing” when they draw something like that, because a real eye looks something like this:

realistic eye

Which you can see, is not symmetrical, has a much more complex shape, and subtle detail that gets left out when we make what we see into a symbol.  That’s the point of a symbol – it’s a simplified representation, easy to understand.  So back to the quote, when you attach the label, things become shallow and lifeless.

This applies to writing as well.  Perhaps not all things ought to be funneled into words.  Writing each day for 28 days, so far, has shown me that I do not want to write every day.  I hope it will lead me to write more frequently, but not to feel obligated to transform my experiences into words that will make sense to all of you.

And now that I’ve posted that thought, I feel a lot more like drawing than writing.


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Blissful Yoga 30 Day Challenge – Day 27

19 11 2011
Day 27

day 27

I have always liked the number 27.  Not sure why.

Hot yoga this morning, it was nice and hot.  I was up early to pick up my vegetables from Bountiful Baskets Food Co-Op.  I had vague thoughts about  going to both hot yoga this morning and John Salisbury‘s extended ashtanga class this afternoon.  But my body is telling me no- too much.  So, I just did hot.  I’m feeling a bit fatigued in some areas, lower back especially.  I don’t think I would have enjoyed the many upward facing dog poses and forward folds in that class.

I am officially on vacation for the next 9 days, thank goodness!  I have so many things I need to do in preparation for moving, but I also just need a break from work.  I haven’t had a vacation in a long time, so this is overdue.  My plans for the week are to get some of that move-prep done, cook, practice yoga, go to the gym, and get a little shopping in before the official start of the X-mas shopping season officially starts, at which point I will have to ban shopping.  I am totally not into the whole X-mas celebration of capitalism extravaganza.  I am irritated by X-mas music.  Bah Humbug.  I’m really not a holiday person in general.

This Thanksgiving, we are going out to dinner and I’m actually very excited about that.  I mean, how could I not be when the menu sounds like this:  Cartwright’s Sonoran Ranch House Thanksgiving menu (PDF).  I’ll be having the vegetarian version, of course.   But I know my boyfriend is excited about that turkey.  Win/win!


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Blissful Yoga 30 Day Challenge – Day 26

18 11 2011

day 26

I changed my mind about what class I would take today several times.  First I was going to go to Yinyasa at the new Scottsdale studio.  Then I realized I could get to an earlier class- Hot Flow.  Then I had a margarita at lunch.  Then Hot didn’t sound like a good idea anymore.  Finally, I settled on Restorative at Arrowhead, which I believe was improved by the aforementioned margarita.

This doesn’t directly have anything to do with yoga, (I suppose I could muster up some sort of mumbo jumbo to connect it… let’s just skip that.) but I’m watching a really fascinating show on Science called To See or Not to See.  It’s all about eyesight and other senses.  One really interesting thing was the connection between sight and taste.  They gave these culinary students colored drinks and asked them to name the flavor.  The trick was that the color did not match the flavor.  And a lot of them were completely wrong about the flavor because the color fooled them.  Cherry cool aid doesn’t taste anything like cherries, for example.  But it is red.

Pretty fascinating stuff if you ask me.  Check it out if you get a chance:

To See or Not to See?


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