Gardening and Yoga

Yesterday I spent 4 hours weeding and tilling a community garden plot that we recently became tenants of. Occasionally I would stop and check in with my body for back pain, any sort of repetitive motion pain, etc. I seemed to suffer no ill consequences, and was a bit surprised. In previous times in my life whenever I did something like garden for a period of time, I would have severe lower back pain and find myself needing to quit.

Even after coming home and collapsing into a deep-sleep nap from the fatigue I woke up refreshed and not feeling any physical ill consequences whatsoever.

"How does your body feel?" I asked John.

"Fine. I'm surprised that I don't have any aches or pains," He
replied. We both looked at each other....

"Do you think it's the yoga?" I mused.

"That's probably a big part of it, I'm sure." We both do yoga regularly. I do my 1-2 hours a day, and John does the Power Yoga by Rodney Yee maybe 3-4 times a week, tai chi every day, running 3-4 times a week, and then he has an Alexander session once every two weeks. The amazing thing about yoga is that it seems to be building not only my strength and flexibility, but also my endurance.

It was 10 o'clock last night before I could get my wiped-out body and mind back into the present and do my Power Yoga. I had a great, strong workout. How my body could endure 4 hours of gardening and then 60 minutes of power yoga baffles me. I think we totally underestimate the potential that is in our bodies.

Watching your breath

This morning, still having sleep issues, I found myself awake at 4:00 and staring at the ceiling.  We have been reorganizing the house in preparation for my mother moving in, and I moved my meditation room to a corner in a cubbyhole in the bedroom.  I got up and sat on my meditation cushion to quiet my mind.  As I sat there, with my mind wandering, I found myself searching for ways to focus and calm it.  I thought about Rodney Yee's Ujagi (sp?) meditations, where you extend your exhales longer and longer, and breathe with ease.

I began to do that a bit, and then gradually allowed myself to stop the instruction of trying to extend the exhale, and I began to just breathe, but keep the same frame of mind where I'm concentrating on my breath.  I was pleased to find myself sinking deeper and deeper, and finally reached that state of clarity that I occasionally reach when I've had a "good" meditation.  I don't know how long I sat there, but eventually I got up and went back to bed.  My dog was waiting for my return, and he snuggled up to me with his head on my chest.  I kept that state of calm and clarity as I lie in bed, and eventually floated into a pleasant slumber with the waterfall-like sounds of a puppy snoring on my chest.  It was quite a beautiful morning.

My Yoga Story

In 2001, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  I lost both of my breasts and spent the next year undergoing cancer treatments.  Two years later I had uterine bleeding and, because of the risk of uterine cancer from the cancer treatments, I opted for a salpingo-oophorectomy (lost uterus, fallopian tubes, and cervix).

 

I tried to have breast reconstructions, and the pain from the expanders and the subsequent implants was so intense (felt like I was having a heart attack every time I breathed), that I went to my plastic surgeon one day and said "take them out".

 

So....  today I have nothing that in the past has defined me as a woman.  It's been a VERY VERY long 8 years, and god knows I've suffered from every possible ailment since then, I believe because of the cancer treatments -- depression, ulcers, diverticulitis, arthritis, diabetes, terrible hot flashes, back pain that was so severe my back refused to hold my body up....  If you were to see me naked, you'd see how terribly deformed my body is.  The mastectomies left my chest not just flat, but hollow, all the way through my armpits.  I can put my hand over my heart and actually feel my heart through my ribs.

 

I'm telling you this not because I want sympathy, but because I want you to know that whatever happens to you and your body, you'll find that it's all ok.  I could lose an arm or a leg today and I know that, other than the pain-in-the-butt it would cause my life, as far as my image of myself, it would not be a big deal.  It would never make me feel any less about myself or embarrassed or ashamed.  Anyone who makes me feel that way, it's their problem not mine.  It took a LONG time for me to get to this place, so it didn't come for free.

 

One of the things that I've learned throughout this entire process of redefining who I am as a woman and as a human being is that the "strength" that it takes to accept yourself is there.  You don't think it is, because you never had to tap into it before.  And you can look at other people and think "they have what it takes, but I don't".  But it's not true at all.  To get what it takes to gain this acceptance of who you really are, search.  Your answers will be different from my answers, the means whereby are not important.  What's important is that you find your answers.  Someone or some group or some web site or some book -- even a store clerk somewhere -- is there with your answers.  You just need to be there paying attention and listening.  And once you find someone whose message speaks to you, then you can keep investigating until you come to a deadend.  Then backup, and keep searching until you find someone else.  All of these things that you learn will help you build a toolkit to live by that's customized just for you.

 

Yoga is one of the things that I've put into my toolkit.  I started doing yoga about 8 months ago.  My husband John was doing Richard Hittleman's "Yoga in 28 Days" book for his back.  That book has a statement to the effect that "if you do these 28 days of yoga religiously, you'll find that you can never go a day without yoga again".  Getting through those 28 days was tough -- I couldn't even do a cobra pose when I started.  But I found that Hittleman was right.  I began to expect my yoga workouts every day.  It was more than the flexibility and strengthening, it was also the amazing calm that it presented in my mind when I did my meditations.

 

After continuing with Hittleman's maintenance routines for a couple of months I decided to graduate to something more intermediate.  I graduated to "Moving Toward Balance, 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee".  Again, it was a challenge for me.  1/4 of the poses in the book I couldn't even begin to complete.  The rest of them were just plain hard.  After I finished "Moving Toward Balance" once or twice, I bought a DvD called "Power Yoga with Rodney Yee".  At first I could only do 15 minutes of that DvD.  I did my 15 minutes of the DvD in the mornings, and continued with the "Moving Toward Balance" book in the evening.  I kept with the DvD, and added a pose at a time as my body learned to do the poses, until I could do the entire 65 minute routine.

 

Now, 8 months later, I do anywhere from 1 to 2 hours of yoga every day.  I either do the DvD or I do one of the routines in "Moving Toward Balance" chapter 8 -- and occasionally, if I have time, I'll do both.

 

I always thought of yoga as just a stretching thing and wondered why I would want to make my workouts just stretching with no aerobics or strengthening.  I never saw the need for something like yoga -- maybe a little stretching, but the full yoga seemed like overkill, and for people who had more patience for that sort of thing than me.  The amazing thing that I've learned is that by some incredible miracle yoga provides me with everything.  I live in a town whose streets are mainly hills, so bicycling around town requires lots of hill training.  Before my yoga, if I wasn't hill trained, it would take me months before I could comfortably bicycle the hills around town.  After yoga I discovered I can get on my bike with no conditioning and tackle the hills with no problems whatsoever -- standing on my pedals up the long hills even.

 

I recently climbed a mountain that in the past left me out of breath when I peaked.  This time, before I knew it I had made the round trip, and I felt like I could easily have done it again.  There's no end to the discoveries I'm making in what my body can do now.

 

When I scuba dive, my tank lasts forever.  My yoga makes my underwater experience completely meditative and calming.  The breathing that I do in my yoga seems to give me such a huge aerobic capacity that it feels like my body is optimizing every single breath and I don't need to strain at all to get oxygen.

 

After my cancer treatments, I was told I could never lift anything more than 5 pounds again for the rest of my life, because of the risk of lymphedema from loss of lymph nodes in my armpits.  For 7 years I babied my arms with paranoia, and they became flaccid from lack of use and lost all of their strength.  After 8 months of daily yoga routines, I can now do the 20 or so full pushups from the Power Yoga DvD.  I can do the two 30-second handstands from my Chapter 8 routines.

 

At the time of my cancer diagnosis, as I was recovering from surgery, I found that I had also developed a frozen shoulder.  I went through many months of fairly painful physical therapy and finally got my arm to the point where it was about 85% of its full range of motion.  I recently discovered that my right side had been starting to get the same frozen shoulder issue.  I don't think I ever would have noticed the problem creaping up on my right side if I hadn't been involved in the intense self-awareness that yoga gives me.  I've been working on that for the past month or so, and that arm is recovering.  At this point, both of my arms are at 100% range of motion (as far as I can tell).

 

I can go on and on about the things that work for me in my life -- The Body Ecology diet (www.bodyecology.com) which has been the foundation of the rules that I live by for nurturing my body through paying attention to the foods that I put in it;  my spirituality which has allowed me to define how I will live the rest of my life so that when my time comes to die, I will know that I fulfilled my life's purpose.

 

So, yoga is not EVERYTHING to me, it's just one of many things in my life that has been critical to helping me lead a healthy and happy life. 

 

I have love in me to bestow on my family and friends.  I get up every morning and look forward  to my day with eagerness and energy.  I can catch myself the very minute I start getting overstressed and recognize "ok, that was the pizza I had for lunch", or "such-and-such a situation is stressing me out", or "I'm overworked", and instead of letting it fester out of control, I can reach into my toolkit and do something about it to nip it in the bud.

 

Even though I've always abhored the phrase "cancer has made me a better person", deep down inside, because my cancer has given me the challenge to step up to the plate, I have to admit that it has provided me with the motivation I needed to straighten up my life and make my life worth living.  Yoga has been one of the products of that challenge.  Instead of being 10 years older, yoga has made me 10 years younger.  I didn't start off by wanting to be younger or wanting to be skinnier.  I don't think you ever get these things by seeking youth or weight loss as a goal.  I got these things by just wanting my life to have meaning and purpose and joy.

Changing my yoga routine, and learning about twists

I have changed my routine slightly.  Instead of doing Power Yoga every morning, I'm now doing Power Yoga on weekend mornings and cycling through the lessons in Chapter 8 of "Moving Toward Balance, 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee" on weekday evenings.  Doing evening workouts fits in better with my schedule.  I am weaning myself off of sleeping pills, and I can only do that by planning my schedule to accommodate just that one goal.  That means allowing myself to go to bed when I'm sleepy (instead of trying to force myself to bed when I think I should), and allowing myself to waking up late, which means skipping my morning workouts.

 

So my daily schedule is more like, (1) wake up and do some sitting meditation if I have time (2) do morning pre-work preparations (3) go to work (4) come home and cook and eat, (5) let my food digest for an hour or so, (6) do my evening yoga.  Most of the time it means starting my evening yoga at 9:30 or later and ending at 11:30 or later, and then going to bed and reading and falling asleep naturally when I'm exhausted.  I'm also drinking a glass of green drink after my yoga workouts to flush toxins.  I'm trying an experiment and committing myself to doing that no matter what time of day my yoga workouts occur at.  That means getting up frequently during the night...  which also pushes my getting out of bed time to later.  It's a bit of a strange sleep schedule, but so far it seem to work better, because it removes imposing rules, which in itself I think causes me stress which makes the sleep issues worse.

 

One of the things that I'm liking about doing Chapter 8 routines instead of Power Yoga every day is that my body gets a lot more variation in the different workouts.  For instance, last night was twisting (my arch nemesis workout).  The Power Yoga with Rodney Yee DvD only has one true twisting pose, which is very short in duration.  True, the triangle, side angle, pyramid, warrior I and such are forms of twisting, but for the forms that really focus on the twist, the DvD only does the cross-legged twist.  Chapter 8's twist routine does about 5 or 6 different twists, which end in Lord of the Fishes, which really gets deep into my body.

 

Now that I'm getting more time with my arch nemesis, twisting, I'm concentrating on really understanding them.  Lately I've been just starting with barely any twisting at all.  Just starting with my back straight and shoulders back, and then VERY VERY slowly, with each breath, easing into the twist and feeling the space around my spine releasing at I very gradually twist more.  I'm finding that this is allowing my body to have a much better understanding of what it is supposed to do.  Up until now I think I've been trying too hard to get into the twist, and finding it frustrating, because then I feel my torso slumping more, which I know is not the correct posture for the twist.

 

As an aside...  another interesting thing about my new routine of no Power Yoga every morning --- my daily back ache seems better -- as though I'm giving it time to recover.  Possibly the variation in the workouts is healthier for my body.

Treating my Body as a Holy Temple

The last few days back at home from travelling I've been feeing drained and ill.  Last night I came home from work and collapsed in front of the TV and spent the evening watching a movie.  I'd been attributing this to jet leg.  But now I'm beginning to realize that these are my classic detox symptoms.  Two weeks away from my normal diet has cost me.  I've been gradually coming to a philosophy of "eat less and make what you eat REALLY count".  That means organic, lots of fresh veggies, no candies, pastries, or other sugary foods, no red meat, no eating like a pig.  I violated all of those dictates.

 

One of the things I'm beginning to realize is, yoga has made me really view my body as a holy temple.  I used to hear that a lot when I was involved in the Christian movement, many many years ago.....  but it takes education to understand how to convert that to something practical that you can implement in your own life.  And I think that it's different for everyone, so what works for one person does not work for another.  The trick that I haven't learned is how to treat my body as a holy temple when I'm out with others or not in my routine.  This is a serious path of growth that I need to incorporate into my life somehow.

I can't go without my morning yoga!

I've spent the past few weeks travelling. When I came, I packed my Power Yoga with Rodney Yee DvD, but didn't know if there was a DvD player here. I also brought my book, "Moving Toward Balance: Yoga in 8 weeks with Rodney Yee". On the first morning away from home, I couldn't find a DvD player, so I decided to try to "wing it" through the DvD by memorization. I was so happy with myself. Having done the DvD every day for the past 6 months or so, I did the entire 65 minute routine by memory.

In the meantime, I did find a DvD player, but I continued to do my morning routine by memorization. Doing the routine without the DvD takes about 1 1/2 to 2 hours, since I make use of the luxury of getting to spend more time in poses. One of the problems with the DvD is sometimes I reach the point where I think "Yes, I get it!" And my muscles juuuusssttt start to begin relaxing into a pose when Rodney says "come up, right foot back..... blah blah blah" and mentally I think "damn him!" :)

Since leaving home, I realize something new about my yoga. (There is no end to what you're learning about yoga) My morning yoga is like morning coffee is for other people. I watch the people around me racing to the local coffee shop for a coffee and pastry. They say "I can't go without my morning coffee and pastry!" Then they spend the rest of the day talking at a million miles an hour and getting stressed out. My yoga does exactly the same thing to me as coffee and donuts do to them, except I find myself doing a lot more listening throughout my day and a lot less talking, and taking more deep breaths instead of getting stressed out. I can't go without my morning yoga!

The other day I climbed a local mountain. It's a fairly short hike, about 4 miles round trip to the peak and back. I wondered how much I'd be able to do without getting winded, since I haven't been doing much climbing or walking. I found myself reaching the peak before I could even begin to be out of breath. Before I knew it I had made the round trip. If it hadn't been getting dark, I'm tempted to believe I could have done twice the distance. Is it that yoga is aerobic, or is it that yoga makes my body so strong? I haven't yet been able to answer that question.

And now I don't wonder why 1/2 of my suitcase is consumed by my yoga mat, books, DvD, strap, headband, and sweatpants.

I miss home so though.....

Downward Facing Dog and Upward Facing Dog

My frozen shoulder  issues seem to be getting better.  I'm amazed at how it could be healing so quickly.  I can only imagine that yoga has caught the problem before it has actually become a full-blown frozen shoulder, and also that yoga has allowed my body to learn quicker by being more readily agreeable to relaxing into the pain.

 

My yoga growth seems to never end.  Lately Downward Facing Dog and Upward Facing Dog have taken on new meanings.  It used to be that I'd get into Downward Facing Dog, and in my mind I'd be thinking, "ok, I'm here...  so what?".  That was the first stage of my DFD growth.  Then, I did more reading and studying of the pose, and realized that I should be pushing into my legs so that my calves were getting stretched.  So I worked on pushing into my legs and getting those calves loosened.  I interspersed that with stretching my arms and back.

 

Now, though, I find myself being a lot more fluid in my DFD's.  I get into the position, and stretch my ankles, and stretch through my right side, and then my left side...  and then it becomes as though I was doing a huge yawn through my entire body.  When Rodney Yee says to stay in DFD for 30 seconds or 1 minute in "Moving Toward Balance: Yoga in 8 Weeks with Rodney Yee", I used to get into position and stay there, and it would feel like forever.  Now I get into position, but then stretch here, and then there, and then do a huge "yawn" through my spine, and the entire pose is like stroking myself as though I were a dog and master as the same time.  I find this transformation in my perception and abilities quite nice.

 

The same enlightenment has come to me about Upward Facing Dog.  There's something in my back that "cracks", when I'm starting to loosen my spine through doing this pose.  It's most evident in the Power Yoga with Rodney Yee DvD, where you do a gazilion of them.  Once I've reached this loosening stage, then the pose becomes one of stretching and tractioning my spine, and feels so exhiliarating.

 

I can't miss a day of yoga now.  It's etched into my being.  The day that I skip my workout, I can feel my body doing virtual flips all day long.  "Huh?  where....  what....  where's my stretching?  Where's my mind grounding?  What's up?  What's down?"  It's discombobulated.