Second Thoughts about Continuing with Rodney Yee (and first experience with Kundalini)

I had a heart to heart with myself over the weekend, pondering whether I should quit the Rodney Yee yoga program I've been doing (morning Power Yoga DvD and evening "Moving Towards Balance: 8 weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee").  Part of me is concerned about whether concentrating on just Rodney Yee is compromising the balance in my body's strengthening -- making me strong and flexible in certain ways, and leaving other areas week.  The reason I worry is because of the soreness I feel in my legs, back, and neck, and I found that if I twist my foot inward (instead of outward, which is how it is inclined a large number of the poses), it seems tight.  Still, these are vague issues, not really enough to actually KNOW that bad things are happening.  They could be related to improving and my body's scar tissues breaking up.  After all, I've not been flexible nor had strong core muscles for many many years, I'm guessing as much as 30 years.

 

I bought a Kundalini Yoga DvD  (Kundalini Yoga with Gurmukh) and did it on Sunday morning as a change.  "Shake out the anger!"  I heard her saying that as I desperately threw my body left and right in a frenzy, trying not to collapse from the pain and motion sickness of it all.  If that's what Kundalini Yoga is, it's....  well, different, that's for sure.

 

So....  not being in the mood to shake out my anger for 40 minutes this morning, I went back to my old standby, Power Yoga with Rodney Yee.  I was pleased to feel completely refreshed and rejuvenated and totally rewarded by doing it.

 

I wonder if the second thoughts I had all weekend were just a signal that I'm progressing to the next level in my practice.  hm.

I'm grateful for me

I woke up late this morning and decided to skip my morning power yoga practice.  I think I've done it every day for the past 5 weeks.  It was probably time for a break.  My legs were beginning to feel sore.  So as not to lose the peace and calm of my morning I kept my date with my meditation room and did 13 minutes of meditating.

 

I'm filled with gratitude today.  Gratitude for being given another chance at life after my breast cancer, gratitude for my life and my job, my husband, my dogs, and maybe most importantly gratitude to myself for being who I am.  I spend so much time feeling guilty for appreciating who I am, as though it was somehow making me a selfish, self-indulgent person.  This morning I thought about who I am and what I've done in my life, and the work and persistence I've invested in becoming the person that I am today -- breastless, uterus, ovaries, and fallopian tubeless, childless -- yet my life is incredible, and so fantastically much richer than I could ever imagine.  From a childhood with a dictatorial perfectionist for a father through to my cancer, through to everything that's happened since my cancer that has caused my health to slowly decline to the point where, two years ago, I was suffering chronic depression and dysfunction from just about every spot in my body -- I've overcome all those things which wanted so desperately to see me wither away into an insignificant ball of nothing and die.

 

I'm nothing short of an amazing person, and I'm grateful today for me.

Pulling my Yoga Practice into my Day

The other day, after our bicycle ride, I leaned on the car to take off my shoes.

 

"Stand on one foot and take off your shoe, you shouldn't lean on anything," John said.  I realized John was right.  There are so many opportunities for us to do our "yoga practice" throughout the day that we miss.  This morning in the shower as I leaned against the wall to wash my feet, I realized that it never once dawned on me until now that I could do this on one foot.

 

One of the beauties of a daily yoga practice (twice daily for me) is you do find it spilling into the rest of your day in so many physical and mental ways.  If I'm not completely focused when I practice, then I find that I'm not doing my poses correctly.  In the morning I do 40 minutes of Rodney Yee's "Power Yoga" DvD.  If I'm not 100% engaged, I miss poses or find myself doing the wrong poses, or find that I lose my timing and then have to rush to catch up.  In the evening when I do my practice from my "Moving Towards Balance: 28 days of Yoga with Rodney Yee", if I'm not 100% focused on what I'm doing, I do the poses incorrectly.  I find myself tensing up my muscles in the wrong places, lifting my shoulders out of their sockets, or tightening my waist instead of letting it elongate and be loose and elastic.  Each pose requires me to check in on my body, scanning for anything out of place or ignored.

 

The need to be 100% engaged means that for those couple of hours a day that I'm doing my yoga practice I'm not thinking about the problems of the day or any of the other things in my life that would so love to be the most important thing for me to fixate on.

 

I think the impact of all this is that instead of my external stresses encroaching upon my yoga practice, my yoga practice is encroaching on the rest of my day.  And that's a good thing.  How wonderful it would be if, when my boss says "how are you doing on your schedule?" instead of everything in my body tightening up and my teeth clenching, my mind automatically says "take a deep breath, shoulders down, chest and back wide, forehead smooth, smile."  :)

Mike's Blog: "... the world needs people who have come alive."

Mike's Blog: "... the world needs people who have come alive." This is such a nice quote: "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -- Howard Thurman

Quote of the day

"Do not believe in what you have heard; do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations; do not believe anything because it is rumored and spoken of my many; do not believe merely because the written statement of some old sage is produced; do not believe in conjectures; do not believe merely in the authority of your teachers and elders. After observation and analysis, when it agrees with reason and  is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and  live up to it."

-- Buddha --

Living in a world of true understanding, and how it defines "beauty"

Today I thought about the word "beauty".  What would the world be like if we all had this supernatural gift of understanding each other, similar to the way you begin to understand a character in a movie as the character develops and you see, for instance, how a seemingly common person behaves under an extraordinary circumstance.  What if we all were able to "see" each other for those underlying capacities:  the eloquence that comes out of a person who on the exterior looks to be completely uneloquent;  the poise and control that might come out of someone under a situation of intense pressure;  perhaps the lack-of such eloquence or poise that might come out of someone who on the outside is extraordinarily beautiful.

 

How would a world like that be different from todays world?  Would we still have a world that worshipped external beauty and fancy clothes and possessions?

Finishing "Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee"

I finally finished my very last lesson of the "Moving Toward Balance: 8 weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee".  It was refreshing, (first half of) the meditation practice was to take a walk.  Even though I walk all the time I used it as an excuse to go take another one.  I wondered whether I should let the dogs out to go walking with me -- I usually spend most of my time being paranoid that I will hear the screeching of wheels as a car careens into one of my dogs, so I'm constantly hyperaware of where they are.

 

As is usually the case, I gave in to my reservations and let them out with me. My little one, Sid, who usually walks with me came down a couple of houses with me and then disappeared, and Mac the Lab as usual hung out near the house.  So for most of my walk I was alone, which allowed me to think about the lesson -- walking with my chest open and my arms and legs swinging freely.  I love the "listening" that yoga requests me to do to my body.  As a software engineer, my body is usually the last thing on my mind, which is why I think that after 30 years of this abuse my body has taken such a downward spiral.

 

My mastectomies and radiation treatments have wreaked havoc with my upper chest area, from scar tissue damage around my heart,  lungs, and arms right up through my neck where my port-a-cath was inserted.  So I find that my shoulder and upper arm really work hard when my chest is open.  Every couple of seconds I need to check in with them and make sure that they are moved down, and not tensed up as I am naturally inclined to do.  I liked the concept of timing my breathing to my steps, because it did add a breath-awareness to my walking, which converted my focus from outward and daydreaming to inward and attentive.

 

I walked for about 20 minutes.  My street is in a very dark rural neighborhood.  With all of the autumn leaves covering the street and lawns, the world seems abounding with clutter, and with my flashlight and listening for the clink clink of Sid's tags, I still could not see where he was or hear him.  When I got back to the house, I walked up the driveway and there were Mac and Sid, sitting on the back lawn by the deck stairs, commisserating and watching me.  "'Bout time you got back to let us in!".

 

Two years ago, John and I went on a meditation retreat for Thanksgiving.  Even though I was very sick during the retreat and spent most of my time walking the halls trying to get through the weekend, I loved the sense of thankfulness and love that I felt.  I'm hoping that we can do a similar retreat this Thanksgiving-- maybe a yoga retreat this time.