IMPERFECT Lady

Expressing its Self

Here it is day 59, and as I made my way downstairs I had a slight feeling of unease.

 

By the time the first breathing was over, a softball size ball of nausea settled in my belly on the left side.

 

It stayed there making all the poses harder to maintain, and caused me to sweat harder, literally drenched in what felt like a fever breaking moisture.

 

I was so happy to lie down, even though I was able to do all standing postures, some were sickly looking and feeling.

 

When I did the poses on my belly I felt I was squishing that ball, and compressing it reducing it in size.

 

As I came out of the first Fixed-Firm there was a cramp like stitch on that side, and by the second one, the nausea ball was gone, fever broke, me more or less normal, but spent.

 

I marvel at the body’s capabilities to do yoga, feel nauseated and breathe.  And I am thrilled I can be with nausea ball and do yoga anyway.

 

In the past, all it would take is the teeniest discomfort and I would hang it up, put it down, stop it, and go lay down.

 

Instead of using nausea or any discomfort as a blocking point, I am using it as a hurdle to get over, walk through, and conquer, not giving it power over me.

 

I didn’t know what would eventually happen, would I get too sick and have to stop, would I even be able to do posture after posture, I was walking into the unknown.

 

As I continued forward, the nausea eventually went away, now I would not have known that had I stopped or had not even started.

 

I don’t know what the nausea was for, where it came and where it was headed, was it something bad I ate, all I know is that we honored each other and continued on doing what it was we both felt we had to do.

 

My body is expressing its self.

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!

 

More from Deepak Chopra....

" Children's brains have neurons that mirror the brains of adults in their surroundings.  These so-called mirror neurons are responsible for the way children learn new behaviors, so the theory goes. As they develop, young children don't have to imitate their parents in order to learn something new; they only have to observe them, and certain brain cells will fire in a way that mirrors the activity.  For example, a baby being weaned from breast-feeding watches how her parents eat.  As they reach for food and put it into their mouths, certain areas of their brain light up.  Simply watching this activity leads the same areas to light up in the infants brain.  In this way the newly forming infant brain learns a new behavior without ever having to go through trial and error.
 
This model has already been tested in monkeys and theoretically extended to humans.  It provides a physical explanation for something as mysterious as empathy, the ability to feel what someone else is feeling.  Some people have this ability; others don't.  A few saintly individuals have so much empathy that they can hardly bear it when someone else is suffering.  Research with MRI's and CAT scans suggest that brain function plays a major role in empathy.  A child's neurons mirror the emotions of the adults around him, leading the child to actually feel what their parents feel.  So if a youngster is surrounded by unhappy adults, his nervous system will be programmed for unhappiness, even before he has any cause for unhappiness himself.
 
Why doesn't every child learn empathy?  Because brain development is wildly complex and never the same for two babies.  When we were infants, all kinds of brain functions were being programmed at the same time, and for some of us empathy was only assigned a minor role.  This is a troubling inequality, and it extends to happiness.  When you see the brain has a set point for  happiness, traceable either to genetics or childhood influences, it's all too easy to conclude that nothing can be done about it.  However, this would be a mistake, because neither the brain nor your genes are fixed structures; instead, they are in process every minute of your life, constantly changing and evolving.  You are still being influenced at the genetic level by new experiences.  Every choice you make sends chemical signals coursing through your brain, including the choice to be happy, and each signal helps to shape the brain from year to year.
 
In the overall picture, research has shown that the brain's set point can be changed by the following:
 
Drugs that act as mood elevators, which work only in the short term and have side affects.
 
Cognative Therapy, which changes the brain by helping us change our limiting beliefs.  We all tell ourselves stories in our heads that provoke unhappiness. Repeating the same negative belief over and over, ("I am a victim, I am unloved, Life isn't fair, something is wrong with me. etc" creates neural pathwayss that reinforce negativity by turning it into a habitual way of thinking.  Such beliefs can be replaced by others that are not simply more positive, but are a much better match with reality (I may have been a victim in the past but I don't have to remain that way; I can find love if I chose better places to look for it, etc)  In treating patients whose lives are dominated by negative beliefs, psychologists have found that altering really fundamental beliefs can be as effective in changing brain chemistry as prescribing drugs.
 
Meditation, which alters the brain in many positive ways.  The physical effects of sitting quietly and going inward are amazingly extensive.  it took a long time to unravel the puzzle.  Researchers had to work against the Western assumption that meditation was mystical or at best a kind of religious practice.  Now we realize that it activates the prefrontal cortex  the seat of higher thinking- and stimulates the release of neurotransmitters, including dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and brain opiates. Each of these naturally occurring brain chemicals has been linked to different aspects of happiness. Dopamine is an antidepressant; serotonin is associated with increased self-esteem; oxytocin is now believed to be a pleasure hormone (it's levels also elevate during sexual arousal); opiates are the body's painkillers, which also provide the exhilaration associated with runners high.  it should be obvious, then, that meditation, by creating higher levels of these neurotransmitters, is the more effective way ofchanging the brain's set point for happiness.  No single drug can simultaneously choreograph the coordinated release of all these chemicals.
 Deepak Chopra - book "The Ulitmate Happiness Prescription"

I Can

It is day 57 and I am still in the game, still doing one day at a time towards the 60-day mark, with just three to go, I am astonished that I have done this consecutively and with surprising ease.

 

How thrilling to see that I can do this, and I have to wonder what other things I have not explored, what other exciting, new, different, challenging, life changing items are out there waiting for me?

 

I am heading for 101, and so after the milestone of 60 days in a row, I will just get up the next day and tackle the next 41. 

 

When you put your mind, your desire and your soul into something, I am thinking it can’t help but happen.  We seem to move mountains of fear and piles of “I can’t” when we simply just focus on what it is we have to focus on.

 

I am thinking the mind has a bottomless pit of excuses, a room filled with reasons to keep all challenges at bay, and our biggest challenge is to keep our eyes on the ball, our sights on the prize; getting our muttering mind to the mat, and our feeble excuses can drag along as we lift our arms and begin.

For somewhere buried deep within us is this new identity arising, I can do it, I will try it, I am willing, I am able, out shouting all of the weak excuses. 

 

I love my new voice, “I Can!”

 

Happiness Prescription

In Deepak Chopra’s book, “The Ultimate Happiness Prescription, he writes;

 

”The roots of unhappiness are often invisible. This is especially true of the conditioning that creates toxicity in a person’s life.  The most powerful conditioning exists at a subtle level of the mind.  It begins in the first year of a child’s life, as the infant brain learns how to think, feel and behave from influences in the home.  Conditioning becomes he dominant feature in all of us by the time we are toddlers.

 

This is when we set lifelong patterns into our brains. Even today you are replaying scenarios you learned when you were two or three.  Consider a small child out with his mother.  He sees a giant lollipop and wants one.  What does he do?  The most common pattern is the following: First he is nice, asking in a cajoling voice if Mommy will buy him a lollipop.  If this tactic doesn’t work, he tries the opposite, acting nasty.  He whines and cries and makes a scene. If this doesn’t work, the next step is to become stubborn and indifferent.  He refuses to pay attention to his mother, who wants him to stop being unhappy and difficult. This is a subtler approach than nice or nasty.  If stubbornness fails, the last scenario is to play the victim- poor me, no one loves me enough to buy me a lollipop.  When the mother finally gives in, her child becomes conditioned, thinking he’s discovered something that ‘works’.

 

Simple as this emotional cycle might sound, millions of adults continue to act it out, using the same belief that their tactics “work” to get them what they want. The problem with this conditioning is that my manipulating others, you never really get what you want, which is greater love, peace and joy. Because conditioning trains the brain into a false sense of happiness, you are actually manipulating yourself.  You become the kind of person who doesn’t know how to be anything other than nice, nasty, stubborn or a victim.

 

Conditioning is the subtlest form of toxicity.  You cannot reach true happiness without escaping your mental conditioning.  In our society there’s a wave of interest in leading a life that’s more natural, free of toxic substances.  Purification of every type can be beneficial.  But the secret to detoxifying your body lies more in the mind than anywhere else.  There are seven steps to ridding yourself of toxin at the subtle level.

1.    Take responsibility for your present response.

2.    Witness what you are feeling.

3.    Label your feelings.

4.    Express what you feel.

5.    Share what you feel.

6.    Release the toxic feeling through a ritual

7.    Celebrate the release and move on.

 

These seven steps apply whether you are trying to change a toxic emotion, habit, craving, or relationship, because your past conditioning lies at the heart of all of them.

           Deepak

 

 

 

Yoga makes it better.

With a yucky belly I began yoga, like bad breath this sensation lingered during most poses, at times the pose would eclipse the feeling, only to return when I relaxed.

 

It seemed to replace any resistance, for I was stronger, more balanced and more determined; yet my belly swirled.

 

Times I felt a black or gray curtain coming in from the sides, like losing consciousness, but it faded back as I breathed deeply and focused.

 

My body continued to do yoga well, even with this rain cloud present inside. 

 

I thought for sure the floor postures would stop me, but they actually seemed to really push back the nausea, like squeezing toothpaste from a tube.

 

My insides felt quivery when I was done. 

 

You wonder what ‘sickness’ really is, is it our psyche body that is sick, for my muscular body seemed way good.

 

It feels just like a nervous belly and yoga makes it better.

 

 

Time for me.

“Fall down Seven times, stand up Eight!”  Japanese Proverb

 

As I look backward over the 54 days, I can see the pattern of yoga and me; I see me doing this each day, making it my priority, and even when I felt weak, sore, tired, uninterested, I did it anyway.

 

This reminds me of the attitude I sometimes had doing for others, when I didn’t say no.  I love how the same tenacity is working for me!

 

Interesting that I am saying yes to me, often at times when I am feeling no; no I can’t, no I don’t want to, no I don’t feel like it, but I headed downstairs and do it anyway.

 

Our patterns emerge behind us, as they gather in numbers we can see the overview or as they say, ‘hind-sight is 20/20’.

 

As I look in my rearview mirror I do so with much pride, to see that I have kept my word to me, I see a 54 days of doing yoga stretched out like a magnificent winding path, complete with no spaces, no empty slots of where I stopped.

 

Amazed that I continue on, adding to the ever-growing pathway of taking care of me.  It is so unusual for me to put me first, to take the time, to make the effort, to just do it, for me. 

 

Me, I am taking the time for me!

 

"You cannot believe in anything or anybody if you do not believe in yourself".     Bikram

 

 

 

Back to Peace.

“I am responsible, but not in control!” 

 

Isn’t that an oxymoron?  How can you be responsible for something you don’t control?

 

That is what happens when you feel responsible for another’s behavior or action or inaction even.  You feel responsible, yet unable to control them!

 

As a little girl in my childhood home, this is exactly how I felt, that I was responsible yet not in control. 

 

It is like being responsible to stop a waterfall half way down, knowing those who will get hurt below as the water falls from above, yet unable to stop it.

 

The parents at the top keep dumping stuff over the falls, and it rains upon us all.  Instead of being down on the bottom, I stood mid way, trying to stop the rain!

 

As a child and then an adult child I carried this hopeless responsibility and made it my life’s work.

 

This job was so time consuming, it kept me from my own life, but firmly into yours racing between your behavior and the affects.

 

Since it never really stopped the abuse and neglect, this midway kinda sorta life I lived was all for naught.

 

The only way you can stop abuse from raining down is to stop the man at the top of the falls, or get the children out of the way.

 

Neither happened in our family.

 

Somehow the children in the falls believe it is their responsibility to stop the top, to work harder, be better, do better so this bad behavior wouldn’t fall down upon them.

 

Little do they know they are not the cause, just the ones who get rained upon, the residual collateral damage.

 

This collateral damage then sets forth in life trying to control things that are impossible to control and giving responsibility for their happiness to others.

 

A life set in motion without control, just like a flimsy doll in the rush of Niagara Falls.

 

It is only when you can separate this all out and put control and responsibility where it belongs do the falls turn into a millpond.

 

A millpond, which emotions pass through, ripples arise now and again, and settle back to peace.

 

Me.

“Greatness is not in where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it -- but sail we must and not drift, nor lie at anchor.”  Oliver Wendell Holmes 

 

I am surprising myself that I have continued to sail, although I haven’t met really strong head winds, just a few strong breezes in the past 50 days.

 

I have 50 more to go and I don’t know what each new day brings, what winds will blow into my day, but so far I get my sailing done first thing in the morning, I make that leg of the journey perhaps before the winds begin to blow in the calm waters of the dawn.

 

This is so not like me, I used to be the martyr and nibble on the leftovers of the day, the few crumbs of time and the bottom of energy tank, and those I chose for mine.

 

Usually there wasn’t much there to do anything with, but sleep.  I slept to be a martyr again.

 

As I now take from the top of the tank, I feel that I am stronger within myself and that is what I now bring to each situation that arises.

I used to have a shame muscle that would operate if I were to focus so much on my self, to take the time off the top for me, to use my time and my energy for me.  How dare you, it would say!

 

How dare I not.  My body is so much better, my disposition feels calmer, and my whole life feels more in control when I am in control of me in my life.

 

It has taken me 51 years to realize the only one who can take care of me is me and if I drain my tank without first filling me up, we all suffer.

 

My tank is full, the day has begun, I now have something to give to my day, Me!

 

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!