IMPERFECT Lady

All the Gifts Awareness Brings!

One hundred and four days into a new habit, the habit of being aware, of being responsible for my response to life, of knowing that I will always get the results I want depending upon my actions.

 

My actions in the past 104 days has been to do yoga daily, to make it a priority to take care of this body, by giving it my attention, by moving stretching bending and stretching it into becoming more and more flexible and strong.

 

I can’t get the results I want, without doing the action step.

 

The action step is to get out of bed, to carve out time and space in my day to work on my body, to begin sculpting it into a new design.

 

There seems to be only two habits in the world, the mindless effortless sleep habit or the action based awareness.

 

I am making it a new habit to be aware in all things.

 

It makes life alive and very responsive and I have the best seat in the house to experience and feel all the gifts awareness brings!

 

 

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! 

 

 

I Just Didn't Know It!

“Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was.”  ~Margaret Mitchell

 

After a morning of verbatim census training with me doing the reading and leading, I eagerly went to one of my favorite places for a good sandwich.

 

Taking it to the waterfront I enjoyed the silence as I sipped my soda and starring mindlessly swallowing bite upon bite of wonder.

 

When the afternoon was over and I was heading home, I glanced in the rearview mirror and low and behold the traces of my soda on my upper lip.  Red.

 

You know when you see the children with a mustache of milk; well mine was a bow like looking thing where my upper lip was sucked into the neck of the soda bottle!

 

I laughed out loud picturing me in the afternoon class of 9 strangers, me seemingly so professional while the whole time I am with a poorly applied soda lipstick! 

 

So much for keeping up appearances, my cover has been blown!  I can relax now and be myself for I already was, I just didn't know it! 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

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.

  

 

One of a Kind Piece of Life.

”At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.”  ~Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Imagine there will never ever be another one of us, ever, who traveled as we traveled, done as we’ve done, lived as we’ve lived, expressed themselves as we have, it is up to us to do ourselves well, for no one is coming behind us to do us better.

 

This is our only opportunity to be ourselves, this is it, as the saying goes, ‘Life is not a dress rehearsal’.

 

We don’t get the chance to practice this day, we get one chance to live this day, to express, experience, to feel, to be to engaged in this day, this moment with whom ever it is that happens upon our stage, this is the real deal, right now, we don’t get another chance to live today. 

 

There is no re-do or do over.  It passes and is forever gone.

 

We are a one of a kind being living this one day, neither to be repeated ever again. So do it your way, for you are the only one being you!

 

We are living life without a delete or backspace, once we do it, it is done, so take a pause and put down in your life what it is you want, and make it an expression of you.

 

Adding the flavor of you wherever you go and leaving a trail, a wisp of you behind.

 

Like a fragrance from a flower, the scent of spring, or the incredible colors of a sunset, we too carry our own personal one of kind imprint.

 

Just as fingerprints are unique so are me prints, a one of a kind piece of life!

 

 

 

 

The Consequences are nothing.

 

“To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.”   

         Theodore H. White

 

 

Today a sister has a birthday…I am silent.

 

I will go against the usual Happy Birthday banter and say nothing. 

 

Saying nothing matches the flavor of our relationship, which is nothing.

 

To pretend that we do have something between us seems pointless to me, to drop our nothingness for one moment to utter ‘happy birthday seems sacrileges.

 

We both agree we do not match, there is no pretending between us, so it seems even odder to step out of our nothingness to act in a manner of being ‘something’ to each other, and then retreat back into nothingness.

 

It doesn’t feel heroic, but sad that my relationships between them and me were so easily changed to nothing.

 

Nothing is what we are to each other.

Not sisters or friends, maybe more like strangers we once thought we knew.

 

Standing in the truth of nothingness feels better than wanting something from nothing.

 

I know that I am the one who changed severely, who went against the dominant way of thinking, what I didn’t expect was that, that act alone would relegate me to nothing.

 

It takes a heroine to be nothing, to stand with yourself, your truths and your perceptions, knowing you are heading against the current and will suffer the consequences.

 

The consequences are nothing.

 

Happy Returning To Life.

On Easter we all are thinking of Resurrection; how it means to rise from the dead or return to life. 

 

As I returned to my life, it has taken me on a wild and exhilarating ride, one that has taken me from the depths of hell up to the heights of Heaven, while tearing down false idols, correcting misconceptions, up righting upside down ideals, and bringing my self back to my life, a resurrection.

 

Returning to awareness in my life has also been a day of reckoning, owning up to all the places where I had not been in my life; I now was facing the sins of the past in the present.

 

I had been taught to believe that I could have my sins forgiven and forgotten, by merely saying a few words, and all would be well with thee, and that they had been transferred to someone else, like to Jesus.  And I would then be whiter than snow, clean, perfect a new slate. 

 

No action was expected, just had to mumble a few words, admit that I had sinned. And like magic another could wash me clean and I didn’t have to do a damn thing.

 

In my head perhaps this worked, but in real life it was a train wreck.  Inside of my head I was clean and perfect, in the reality of my life all the affects of blinking away my sins lay in their ugliness unchanged.

 

I am not a historian nor was I ever deeply religious, but try and explain the applications of this sin and forgiveness thing to a child of say two.

 

How does this work?  Can a little child pass off his bad deeds to another?  Where does stealing go when you confess?  Will a bad word evaporate and become unspoken, a hurt rendered hurt less etc? 

 

As I sit on this Easter morning, I see the sheer volume of how religion has life so wrong, and in fact how it finds way to escape life instead of returning to life.

 

Easter to me means returning to your life, being 100% responsible for all things you do, not schlepping off your negative traits, wrong actions, and weaknesses onto another person, but instead learning and exploring your whole self, being present in all aspects of life.

 

Happy returning to Life!

 

 

A U-Turn In Your Life!

“A bend in the road is not the end of the road... unless you fail to make the turn.”    

  ~Author Unknown

 

Each morning a bend appears, as I contemplate doing yoga another day.  I really only face this one day at a time.  So early each morning upon awakening, I take inventory to see if I have all I need to begin.

 

I think there is a part of me that is exhausted by this yoga every day, one that wants me to revert back to the ‘good’ ole days.  It wants to slip back in to unconsciousness of being lazy, to go back to sleep in comfortable do nothing.

 

Challenging that idea is another part of me, the one who enjoys being awake, aware and alive.

 

At this point I am faced with two roads, one leading back a comfortable bed of lazy, or the one who is forging a new me.

 

When life is at its busiest, when my time seems so limited, it would be so easy to find an excuse, for they lay scattered all about.

 

Each excuse can be a sign that says, “Turn back.”

 

Who knew that excuses were directional signs?

 

I do now.  So each time an excuse pops up it is telling you to turn back into the old person you used to be.

 

A U-Turn in your life!

 

 

 

 

Relaxation Response.

When I began doing yoga 92 days ago, the view was to make it to 60 days, yet I knew that 60 days of doing yoga and then returning to my old life, wasn’t what I needed.  I needed to add this to my life daily, for it to become a way that I treated my body, a habit, and not just a fleeting experiment in my life. 

 

I didn’t know how I would endure this 90 minutes of Bikram yoga each day, but I wanted the results. 

 

The requirement of me is do get to the mat each day, to challenge myself when things are the busiest, when time is crammed full of things to do is when I need this the most. 

 

Once I begin my focus is on my breath, this pose, this second, and it enables me to then bring the same to my life outside of the yoga mat. 

 

Below is a great example of why to do yoga daily.  I want to remain out of the flight or fight pattern, and in to the relaxation response!

 

”The autonomic nervous system is divided into the sympathetic system, which is often identified with the fight-or-flight response, and the parasympathetic, which is identified with what's been called the relaxation response. 

 

When you do yoga - the deep breathing, the stretching, the movements that release muscle tension, the relaxed focus on being present in your body - you initiate a process that turns the fight-or-flight system off and the relaxation response on. 

 

That has a dramatic effect on the body.  The heartbeat slows, respiration decreases, blood pressure decreases.  The body seizes this chance to turn on the healing mechanisms.”  ~Richard Faulds

 

 

 

 

Present Training.

 

As I sat in a room with four other people, one was leading the class and the rest of us were to follow along.  It seems an easy task, to sit and be led, to sit and absorb, to be one with the whole class.

 

Yet I found myself not following along, but going against the other students. 

 

One wanted to know what was up ahead, had to know, what would come next, and couldn’t relax in this chapter, worrying about the unknown.

 

The other two wanted to either change the way things were being asked of us, or stepped into the past operation regaling us with stories that had nothing to do with where we were going.

 

Their nonsensical behavior was like a loud horn blast coming in and interrupting the flow, their worries/concerns/thoughts of past and future events bleeding into the now.

 

What a great thing to witness and a frustrating thing to be part of.

 

I seen how their minds kept leading them away from the task at hand, like pre-school aged kids they needed to be rounded up and brought back to class.

 

I just never thought that the hardest part of ‘teaching’ someone is to keep them present.

 

Their attention span was limited and as the afternoon progressed it became worse, and the more they stole time from training, the longer training became.

 

My patience of idling along in the present, while they played out in the past and future wore me out.

 

To sit and observe this behavior is so intrusive and rude to the present.

 

It is the ultimate battle in each situation, between what is now and what was or will be.

 

As I sat on the sidelines frustrated, I too was battling with what is, for I expected us to all remain in the present training.