Flowtation Devices

Inching toward unease

Sunday, May 1, 2011 in 5Rhythms, Adventures, Follow the Flow, Meditation, Swimming, Weekend | Tags: crystals, yoga | 4 comments

This weekend has been themed a bit around discomfort, but in positive sense (for the most part, aside from my aching back). As in, unease in taking risks, breaking out of “safe” zone, stepping out of your comfortable boundaries. Like in yoga, when we’re chilling in Warrior I and realize we can perhaps bend the front leg a little more and sink further into the stretch. Little baby steps outside of our “I feel jusssst fine” mentality.

For example, on Friday night I went to the gym for my usual 30 minutes of swimming. However, that night I decided on a whim that instead of swimming to the wall, stopping, putting my feet down, turning around, and pushing off again, I was going to try something different and do an open turn every time I hit the wall. An open turn is an easier alternative to the wall flip as a means to keep swimming rather than stop–even for a few seconds–to switch directions. You approach the wall underwater, push off with your hands to give you the force to turn your body around, and then push off the wall with your feet.

After just a few minutes of doing this, I was really feeling it. I was never one to linger at the wall before, but it’s amazing how having your feet on the ground for just a few seconds is a generous mini-break. Take those few moments out of the equation, and my heart was PUMPING. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to go back to my “normal” way of doing it, but there’s was also a part of me that was determined to flow past the initial fear. Sure enough, maybe about 10 minutes into the session, I was still feeling it but I had reached a new level of OK-ness. My brain switched from OMGWTF#(*#*&!!Imgonnadrown! to “Uff, this is a tough workout, but I feel strong!” Even crazier, when I glanced at the clock and saw I had been swimming for 31 minutes, I honestly wanted to keep on going, even though I usually wrap things up at the half-hour mark. So I continued for another 10 minutes. I was utterly exhausted when I finished, but it was such an accomplishment to try something new, kinda scary, and be cool with it in the end.

My other big foray into the New & Scary was the “Introduction to the Spirit World” workshop I attended with a friend on Saturday. To be honest, neither of us had a genuine, heartfelt interest in the subject matter; it was more of a skeptic, eyebrow-raising curiosity that led us to the event. The flier promised techniques to help us raise our vibration, connect with our spirit guides, and communicate with said guides through visualization. The program was also BYOC. That’s bring-your-own-crystal, BTW. Although I am used to meditating and have certainly felt shifts of energy and vibrations, especially after very powerful dancing practices, the rest of this program material was wayyyy out of my comfort zone. My intentions were probably 20% based on curiosity and 80% more of a dubious investigative journalist approach. An embedded blogger, maybe?

I didn’t have any crystals on hand, but my friend’s fiance had an entire dusty box stashed under their bed, and I borrowed an amethyst from the treasure chest. We didn’t spend too much time focusing on crystals, and the most we did with them was hold them in our hands while we tried to connect with our spirits. I can’t say I necessarily felt anything different, but I still gotta give crystals some credit–they do emit higher frequencies of energy. I mean, for my 5th grade science fair project, my dad helped me get a transistor radio to play, powered by nothing but crystals and some metal wires and stuff. The instructor also explained that crystals–in the form of salt–is what makes us feel so cleansed after a day at the beach in the ocean. The salt purifies our bodies, removes negative energy, and makes our bodies more open and receptive to positive energy, to connect with our source. Now, I’m not ready to go out buy a quartz tower and make my husband turn our office into an official “crystal room,” but I don’t see the harm in wearing crystal pendants or earrings. It certainly can’t hurt.

However, the majority of the workshop–the talk about the spirit guides–really made me antsy. Although I kind of understood the statement, “You are a spirit first, having a human experience,” I wasn‘t so sure about the other spirits who are supposedly surrounding me. “You are not permitted to walk alone on this planet,” the instructor said, who paused every now and then while talking, looking a bit distracted, explaining to us that she was listening to her spirit guides and that she didn’t mean to be rude. At one point, as she was gesturing with her hands, she give a little giggle, apologized, and explained that she had just accidentally poked her spirit in the eye. She told happy stories of being guided through difficult situations by her spirit guides and not-so-happy stories, like the time her spirit guide of five years decided to move on and essentially “broke up” with her. We took time to sit in stillness, increase our vibration, and try to connect with our spirit guides. Some people in the room had done this before and described feeling, say, a man on one side and a woman on the other. I experienced what I usually experience during meditation–a feeling of warmth and expansion. My palms and arms were pleasantly warm, and my body felt a bit like it was a balloon being gently filled with air. I felt it in my hands the most; they were resting palm-up on my lap, and during the deepest part of meditation, it felt as though my fingers were growing like wild plants, each digit growing and growing like Freddy Kruger claws but with the appearance of tree roots.

The instructor went around the room, her hands waving in front us like she was washing an invisible window. She praised the “regulars” for their amazing energy and clear chakras. My friend’s energy was deemed questionable. And when the instructor approached me to tune my chakras, she grew very concerned that I could not relax. It was true–we had been sitting in metal folding chairs for more than an hour, and my hip and lower back were killing me. (I hope she knew it was hip bothering me and not my first chakra!) She poked and prodded me, asked how old I was, and urged me to have a session with her. Yikes! I felt like the yoga newcomer who couldn’t even master child’s pose while everyone else in the class is up in handstand. Even the other first-timer at the program, who at first complained about not being able to feel or see or understand anything spiritual or energetic, by the end of class was describing being surrounded by four spirit guides–and was able to name them, nonetheless! My friend didn’t see any spirit guides but she did have a pretty intense emotional release that simply fascinated the other attendees and instructor. I, however, was the “special” student, who had to move to the floor because her legs hurt and who didn’t have any releases or presentations from spiritual sidekicks. But I’m OK with that, because I did have a nice meditative experience, enjoyed that brief feeling of expansion and lightness, and was happy for my friend for being able to get rid of emotional gunk that had been buried in her heart.

Lastly, I did something today that I never thought would happen: I willingly decided NOT to attend a 5Rhythms class. The decision was not an easy one, because I have attended every class at this particular location since its inception in November; I am a regular! But it’s an hour drive away, gas prices are getting ghastly, and, um, I actually listened to my body. This whole week my body has felt totally out of whack since I took a 2-mile walk in new (and now returned) sneakers. I’m not just talking about an achy lower back; it has felt like someone tried to twist my entire top half off like a bottle cap. I’ve felt crooked in downdogs, my shoulder felt weird when I swam on Friday, and my hip has been acting up again. So instead of dancing like a wild woman for two hours at 5Rhythms today, I RSVP’d “No” on the group website and texted my massage therapist in a panic: “R U available for an hour today? Please?!?!?!” Luckily she had an open slot, and thank gosh I took it: She took one look at my naked back and said I was totally off kilter. Everything on my left side was completely torqued, from my neck down to my hips.

So, as it turns out, sometimes the comfort zone is a good place to be, and finding the willpower to refrain from plowing ahead is the challenge. I was at my edge this morning and really didn’t want to creep any further off the precipice by delving into a high-intensity dance practice. Saying “no” to 5Rhythms and attending to my body first, asking for comfort, was my “discomfort” zone. And I’m glad I went there.

Mostly Wordless Wednesday

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 in Wordless Wednesday | Tags: pic post, tv | 3 comments

Bryan and I are obsessed with watching 24 via Netflix instant-watch. Since being burned by the series finale of LOST, we have difficulty watching shows in real-time anymore. So instead of watching something for 6 years and enduring the commercial breaks, writers’ strikes, and 9-month-long hiatuses, we’ll just wait until the show is canceled and watch it at our own leisure. That way, even if the finale stinks, we’ll only have wasted a few months, not years.

In honor of the show that’s been dominating our Wii, here are some 24-esque photos:

Parking garages. The scariest spots in the world, after basements.

Sepulveda Dam (with bonus chaturanga). A required location in at least one episode of every spy/crime TV series.

Must undergo full-body scan before being admitted into SD-6/APO/CTU, etc etc.

Whenever Bryan and I are deeply involved in a TV series like this, our ways of talking/interacting with each other begin to morph into the show’s theme and mood. For example, when we watched the entire Sopranos series from start to finish, we tended to curse more and spoke like sleazy mobsters, and when we watched Alias we went out and bought Nerf guns so we could have spy battles in our living room.

QUESTION: Do you tend to do this too? Do you get so involved in a TV show that it begins to infiltrate your language, interactions, and life?

Watching 24 before bed is NOT a good idea for me. I have terrorist-related dreams almost every night now! 😐

Happy places, morning rituals

Tuesday, April 26, 2011 in 5Rhythms, Dancing, Follow the Flow | Tags: heat, weather | 4 comments

Visions of days like today are my “happy places” on dark, icy nights in January, when I’m sitting in yoga class, not really 100% sure if I’m actually there for the yoga or just the 95-degree-plus-humidity climate. During opening meditation, when the teacher tells us to imagine ourselves in a place where we feel at ease, relaxed, happy, I ditch her suggested visualization of a tropical beach, hammock, and ocean and instead envision a more realistic scene that includes our kitchen, with the sun streaming through the open windows, ceiling fan making the wispy white curtains dance; our bedroom, where I wake up at 5 a.m. in nothing but a t-shirt and underpants; my car, where the windows are down, my legs are bare under my flowing skirt, my feet sockless. I imagine driving down the main road in town, the path ahead of me a clear stretch of blacktop lined with flourishing green plants and canopied with flowering trees, no longer an obstacle course of snow piles and ice patches and bare tree limbs looming over me like giant skeleton hands ready to crack and tumble onto the roof of my car.

THAT’s my happy place, and I’m there right now, folks. April has been kind enough to bless South Jersey with a little preview of summer, a preview during which the digital clock outside the bank flashes 88, the shower dial isn’t turned all the way to the left, and the frozen yogurt Bryan and I dish ourselves for dessert starts softening just a little quicker.

Mornings like this make it more difficult to decide how to best wake myself up—it feels like the opportunities are endless! Do I do sun salutations synchronized to the sunrise? Do I put on my sneakers and walk around the neighborhood as the sky transitions from dark blue to turquoise? Do I bike? Dance? Swim in the sunny, salty waters of my gym?

This is the time of year when routines are broken, when just because I planned to do such-and-such this morning, you know what? It’s so beautiful out, I’m inspired, and I’m going to do THIS instead. I went to bed with every intention of waking up at 5, doing my meditation challenge, and heading outside for a 2-mile walk, but after assessing the way my body was feeling, I decided to dance instead of walk. I had just gone on a nice walk the evening before, and I was reluctant to change out of my comfy pajamas. Meg from Spirit Moves Dance recently posted a great 5Rhythms playlist that I have been itching to try out, so this morning my way of waking up included a little bit of Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness. Forty minutes later, my pajamas were saturated in sweat, my heart rate quicker than any walk could have given me. I felt like I was partially responsible for helping the sun rise, like my 7 minutes of thrashing around in Chaos shook the earth just enough to pop the sun from under the horizon.

Although I changed my planned routine this morning, I do have morning rituals that are very hard to break. Aside from the basics (brushing teeth, getting dressed), my morning essentials include:

Drinking a big cup of warm water. Apparently warm/hot water gets the digestion tract going, and I also believe everyone wakes up dehydrated, so it’s important to get liquids in the system ASAP!
Rolling around and stretching on the living room floor like a cat, which usually involves some kind of yoga moves (downdogs, supta matsyendrasana), as well as using my foam roller to knead out muscle kinks.
Standing warm-ups, such as Breath of Joy or Empty Coatsleeves…something with a hara breath.
All or some of my physical therapy exercises. Doing the entire set takes about half an hour, so usually I’ll abbreviate each exercise or do only a few.
Showering. Even if I shower the night before and do nothing in between then and leaving for work, I still need to stand under warm water for a few minutes. My muscles aren’t the same otherwise!
Finally, meditation. This is relatively new, but I’m trying to get it to stick. I started the Chopra Center’s 21-Day Spring Meditation Challenge 10 days ago, and I’ve actually been looking forward to the 10 to 15 minutes of quiet reflection each morning. I’m hoping that one day meditating in the morning will be as easy as drinking a glass of water!

QUESTION: What are your morning rituals?

Surfin’ Sunday

Sunday, April 24, 2011 in 5Rhythms, Dancing, Follow the Flow, Real-Life Yoga | Tags: 5rhythms, weather | Leave a comment

I was so excited to see the sun today. After a mostly miserable/dreary morning and afternoon yesterday that had my husband and I in our pajamas until 3 p.m. trudging around the house like those depressed little wind-up dolls from the Pristiq commercial,

a 70-degree morning with sun blazing through the blinds and lighting up my beautiful carnations was enough to get me giddy.

I made an ambitious to-do list of everything that needs to be done before I leave for my parents’ house for Easter dinner, started sipping on my coffee, and felt the caffeine fly through my system. My body was buzzing with excitement over the weather–I wanted to frolic outside!–but I had other things to do first: throw in a load of laundry, wrap an Easter present for my mother-in-law, do my PT exercises…oh, and meditate. So there I was, attempting to do the most “still” thing ever, and it felt like I was tumbling around in a clothes dryer, my mile-a-minute brain thunking against everything thought it came in contact with. So although I was sitting there, hands on my lap, meditating…was I really doing it, or was I lost in some abyss of ungroundedness?

This mental frenzy reminded me of an analogy my 5Rhythms teacher used last week to explain the entire concept of 5Rhythms; specifically, a “Wave,” the term used to describe a linear completion of the five rhythms: Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness. The analogy, not surprisingly, was surfing.

My high school friend Wendy, now a Hawaii resident!

Surfing, my teacher explained, isn’t just “getting swept away” by the waves. Although it looks like the surfer is totally just going with the flow, allowing the ocean to do the work and the person just happily cruising along, there is a very strong connection between the person, the board, and the water. A surfer doesn’t just quickly pop up from kneeling to standing without some kind of intention, without some kind of relationship (kinetic, energetic, etc.) with the board and the swelling waters around her. When the surfer stands, she is grounded. There is connection with that board, a connection running from her eyes to her arms, to her torso, legs, feet, nerves, blood, muscles, and beyond. But to the naked eye, it’s just a big ol’ wave with a teeny tiny person going along for the ride.

Dancing the 5Rhythms is so very similar. If a newcomer stepped into a studio and found a group of people sweeping around the floor in Flowing, it would be so easy to assume that these people are caught up in some kind of mystical flow, moving around like directionless kites on a breezy day. And during Chaos? Clearly, everyone is out of their minds, possessed.

But just as I’m sure surfers would say their sport is mix of being grounded and letting go, so is dancing. Even during the most wild, sweaty, head-tossing, feet-flying Chaos, we are still in connection with something. Maybe it’s not the physical ground (especially if you’re leaping and jumping), but it’s spirit, Self, god, an intention, universal connection, so on and so forth. We are only able to let loose by staying close to something. In yoga terms, rising into an inversion or bakasana is like taking that brave step up on the surfboard, but even then during flight the yogi is connected to the ground, hands firmly pressed into the mat, core engaged, breath and mind in sync.

A very literal expression of this was done in my last 5Rhythms class. During the start of Chaos, the teacher gathered everyone in a circle, holding hands. The music was frenetic, deep drum beats, and we were instructed to let everything go, move the body, shake the feet and legs, toss the head–but to keep our hands connected. It was one of most powerful moments of Chaos I have ever experienced, even though I wasn’t flailing around the room, corner to corner, wall to wall. Here I was, confined to this space between the person on my left and the person on my right, my arms only able to move so much without snapping mine or my partners’ out of the sockets, but I was letting go, being swept away, dancing outside of my brain. The connection was what had made it so intense, being supported by those other dancers’ hands, being part of this circle in which everyone was holding on tight but simultaneously letting go.

I have a few more things on my to-do list to check off before I head out to dinner. I’m going to try my best to surf my way through them all!

Good Friday = GREAT Friday, with 5Rhythms

Saturday, April 23, 2011 in 5Rhythms, Meditation | Tags: 5rhythms, music, yoga experiences | 4 comments

There is something especially sacred about 4th Friday 5Rhythms that sets it apart from classes on other days, in other places. Maybe it’s the fact that it takes place in the evening, after dinner. The sun is lowering as I drive to the studio, and when I emerge two and a half hours later, I am surrounded in darkness and guided by moonlight. Maybe it’s because it’s the end of the work week, and what a great feeling it is to leave the office, kick off my shoes, and dance the night away, sweating away the stressors from Monday through Friday and freeing space in my heart to welcome a wonderful weekend. Or maybe it’s the physical location itself–a yoga studio tucked away in the basement of an office building, our little secret dance hangout. It’s invisible from the outside, but once you go down those steps there is a warmly lit, womb-like space with beautiful wooden floors and Sanskrit words with English translations decorating the wall trim: peace, light, breath, space. This is the spot where transformation begins, where the week ends and something new begins.

Maybe it’s because I did a powerful meditation yesterday morning on the concept of flow in the universe, about being a conduit of energy between everything and everyone, or maybe it was just the fact that I had off of work yesterday for Good Friday and spent the entire afternoon on a girls’ day out at the mall with my sister and grandmother, but I felt *charged* last night when my feet hit that studio floor, even though physically I felt somewhat drained from being on my feet all day. New students showed up; people whom I thought wouldn’t ever return came back. One of the new students had the most satisfied smile on her face the entire time, her eyes closed, her face beaming. I couldn’t help smiling in return whenever I looked at her; she looked like she was at the best concert in the world, grooving along to the music and swaying to the sounds around her.

I paired up with another new woman a few times, a Nia teacher actually (I think I may try her class!), who, I would hope as a Nia teacher, really felt the music and was such a powerful partner to work with. At one point, during a staccato number to very primal Native American drum beats, we must have looked like natives calling out to the sky or Mother Earth or dancing around a fire pit. It was so earthy, filled with passion and intensity. She flung her arms up as I threw mine down, and we alternated back and forth, a silent but dramatic language between our bodies. We were still in the rhythm of Staccato, but I’m pretty sure Chaos was banging on our rib cages, demanding to be released. Luckily the teacher’s next song was something a little less intense, because had he changed the track to something full-blown Chaos, that woman and I would have turned into banshees for sure. The fire in our eyes…it was like that transition in 28 Days Later, going from a regular human being into a red-eyed, blood-thirsty maniacal zombie.

Two hours later, during our final moments of Stillness, I found myself sitting on the floor, my hands in Vajrapadama mudra, a gesture to cultivate cosmic consciousness, believing that through connection with everything around us, we will find the trust within ourselves to do what needs to be done.

Source: Spirit Voyage

After that, my hands closed into Anjali mudra and I drew them closely to my head. As my hands approached my face, I sensed an amazing warmth coming from my third eye. Or maybe it was warmth from my energy-charged hands radiating toward my head. Either way, there was a strong attraction, and class ended with my prayer hands resting between my eyes. During the silent moment of rest between class ending and the beginning of our sharing circle, I nearly fell asleep, but I think it was just a kind of savasana, a way of absorbing everything that had just transpired and “waking me up” for the next stage of the evening.

Because once I got in my car, I was ON. I was a new Jennifer, and every song that came on the radio in that 20-minute drive home felt like it was playing specifically for me. You know that feeling–when you’re in a good mood, maybe it’s a Friday night, you just had a great date, you got a raise at work, whatever–and suddenly every song in the world is the most rockin’ beat ever, and you become enamored with whatever the DJ plays? That was me last night, blasting the stereo, bouncing in my seat to Alanis Morrissette (“You Learn”), Van Morrisson (“Brown-Eyed Girl,”), UB40 (“Can’t Help Falling in Love”), Adele (“Rolling in the Deep”), and even Pink (“F–kin’ Perfect”). I came home and just couldn’t sit still–needed.more.music. I escaped upstairs to our iPod stereo and scrolled through our music library, playing more Alanis, singing along to “The Couch” just to prove to myself that I remembered all of the disjointed lyrics, feeling totally in agreement with “One,” rocking out to “So Pure” (IT’S ALL ABOUT DANCING!!!!), and then switching over to U2 for “All That You Can’t Leave Behind,” followed by “Beautiful Day,” at which point I was truly in some other zone and changed the lyrics to “Boo-tiful Day,” because I was holding my stuffed animal pug (Boo) and making him “dance” along with me.

And then I finally got tired for real. Just like that, my body said, OK, that’s enough for now. And I went downstairs, checked some e-mail, washed the dishes, foam rollered a bit to work out some muscle kinks, and went to bed at 1. Just another 4th Friday/5Rhythms kind of night.

Flashback Friday: Finding the flow…in a kayak

Friday, April 22, 2011 in Flashback Friday, Follow the Flow | Tags: nature | 2 comments

In honor of it being Earth Day, today’s flashback takes us to 2007, when Bryan and I went on our first real kayaking outing together. It was beautiful! Kind of scary! And because I drank a whole lotta coffee before our 4-hour adventure, the excursion was not without plenty of stops to use nature’s toilet–the earth, of course.

(Originally written in 2007.)

_______________________________________________

Do you know that until today I have never peed in the woods?

I’ve squatted before — in China — so I was prepared for the act, just not for the surroundings. Bryan and I were in the boonies of Burlington County, celebrating his 28th birthday with a surprise kayaking trip along the Batsto River. It’s a 4-hour journey through the Pinelands, so I knew ahead of time that would be urinating on God’s green earth. And several times, in fact.

But I digress. Let me start from the beginning. Ever since our little paddle experience a couple of months ago along the Maurice River in Cumberland County, Bryan has been obsessed with kayaks. As in, he wants one. So for his birthday, I booked this kayaking trip with this little canoe/kayak outfitter in Shamong Township. You drive to their headquarters, hop in their van, and they drive you through the woods to the launch site, where they give you your kayak, paddle, life vest, and a “goodbye, we’ll see you in 4 hours.” When you arrive at the endpoint, there’s someone there to drive you back to the headquarters.

For two people whose only kayaking experience had been a 30-minute “test drive” on a wide and straight river, we truly learned by trial and error this time around. The river we were on today was in the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere. It was narrow, it was twisty. Fallen trees formed natural archways and road blocks. Our paddles got tangled in seaweed. The sun was so bright at times that you couldn’t see anything in your path and it felt like we were paddling into a big, black hole. We plowed into muddy banks, got wedged against submerged tree trunks, and scraped against low-hanging branches (and I have a scratched-up arm to prove it!).

We didn’t know the route, and we didn’t know precisely how long it would take us. The entire journey was an adventure into the Unknown, each turn a surprise. Every time we rounded a corner, I felt like I was entering a new mythical territory. The collapsed trees–and those near collapsing–looked like giant butresses, and sometimes I felt like I was a character in Lord of the Rings, Neverending Story, Narnia.

It was Quiet. Absolute seclusion. Whenever we took a break from paddling and just let the current carry us along, the absence of sound around us was chilling. And then when you dunked your paddle in the water again, the noise sounded like breaking glass.

We passed several small beaches, stopping for water, food, and bathroom breaks. I had to pee so badly on our first stop that when I finally did let loose, it was like that scene from Austin Powers where it. just. never. stops. The grass brushed up against my ass, and I feared spiders would get in my butt and start making a web.

Running to the "bathroom"

As far as scenery, it wasn’t spectacular. The changing of the leaves will probably start next week, so today was mostly fading green and lots and lots of pine trees. Sometimes the reflection of the clouds and trees in the water was pretty, and we did pass a few turtles. (One was doing yoga, I swear, maybe Warrior III? Its back leg was extended straight out behind him.) The few white lily pad flowers we saw were diamonds in the rough, and one beach we passed had some people on horseback mosying along. We couldn’t have asked for a better day weatherwise, though. I mean, the last day of September, almost 80 degrees, and perfectly sunny with a super-slight breeze.

Our final leg was through some marshy waters, and I got a little panicky here because it was all out in the open, as opposed to the tiny narrow wooded path we had been following. The area was so wide and expansive, and it was difficult to tell which way to go. I didn’t know where the endpoint was for sure, and, sure enough, we paddled right instead of left and ended up going totally out of our way before we got on course again. Seeing that “Canoe Landing” sign was a relief, and my hands, arms, shoulders, back, and chest screamed out, “Don’t you dare do any upper body work at the gym for the next 3 days, AT LEAST!”

Ain't no one gonna mess with a woman with a paddle.

I ate an apple during the return trip and it was the most wonderful fruit ever. It’s amazing how famished one gets while kayaking. Bryan and I rewarded ourselves with frappuccinos from Starbucks, and ohmigod the sugar and the cold and the sweet was deliiiiiiicious.

The nuisance of numbers

Thursday, April 21, 2011 in Follow the Flow, Swimming | 2 comments

I cringed as I unpacked my swimming gear last evening at the gym–swim cap, goggles, ear plus, towel–but I had forgotten my stopwatch.

Ugh, this is going to be the lonnnnnngest-feeling workout, ever! I groaned to myself. I usually wear the watch to keep track of my time; I’ll do freestyle for 10 to 12 minutes, then bust out some kickboard/freestyle intervals, and then at the 30-minute mark finish off with a few laps of just arm work. The watch keeps me on target, especially because the wall clocks are too small to see from the pool.

When I’m wearing the watch, my first glance is usually at the 6-minute mark (4 minutes until I can do the kickboard!). Then again at 8.5 (almost there!). I’ll glance down again around 10 minutes, but then I’ll tell myself, Eh, just go till 12 before starting the kickboard. So, in essence, a good deal of my workout is spent peering down at the watch, being disappointed about how little I’ve swam, and continuing until I hit the appropriate number.

But last night, with my wrist naked, I jumped into the water and began my freestyle warm-up. The water felt great on my skin, having come from a roasting 82-degree office building. The late-day sun was streaming into the windows, making the water look like fire when I came up for air. The only other person in the pool was a woman in the lane next to me, whose steady laps created a rhythmic whoosh-whoosh-whoosh that matched mine.

What I dream of every time I go to the gym: An empty pool.

When I finally stopped long enough to squint over at the wall clock, I couldn’t believe my goggled eyes. 12 minutes! I had gotten in the water at 6:10, and it was now 6:22. How did that happen? Why did I not get antsy at the 6-minute mark? Or 8 minutes? How did I swim that long and steady without feeling the urge to check my time?

I started my kickboard intervals at that point, rotating between one out-and-back with the board and three laps of freestyle in between. Out and back. Out and back. I kept going until I felt slightly fatigued, at which point the clock told me I had been swimming for 30 minutes. This blew my mind, because I still had energy to continue. And I did; I did a few more laps of freestyle and then my standard concluding laps of just arms. I had been swimming for a total of 35 minutes and probably looked at the clock only 4 times, as opposed to the 25 times I normally check my watch.

Here I was concerned that not having my watch was going to drag out my workout, but in fact the opposite held true. Unbound by numbers, I relied on my body’s intuition and natural energy reserve to carry me through. I’m not going to lie–sometimes swimming can be dreadfully boring, and having come from a hot office after a long day at work with no emergency afternoon caffeine in my system, I was certain I was going to want to bail out after 15 minutes. But I did my complete workout–and then some–and felt strong the entire time.

Can numbers be a nuisance? Of course! It’s fitting that just the other day I listened to this Radiolab podcast about ultra-runnner Diane Van Deren, who, due to severe epilepsy, had part of her brain removed. It was the temporal lobe that was taken out, the part that makes sense of time and space. Not only can Diane not read a map (it looks like nothing but random lines and shapes to her), but the concept of time–minutes, hours, days–in the grand scheme of things makes no sense to her. So part of the reason she is able to do (and complete) these insane endurance events (we’re talking days of running) is because the sentence “I have been running for 200 hours in the Yukon” means the same as “I have been running for 2 hours in the Yukon.” Numbers are just numbers to Diane, and they aren’t associated with “good,” “bad,” “hellish,” or “WHY AM I STILL RUNNING?” (Talk about the Zen Buddhism concept of non-judgment!)

I keep track of my total swim time because I like to make sure I’ve gotten in enough of a workout to benefit my heart, lungs, and muscles, but having that watch can clearly slow me down, so to speak. One thing I have stopped doing is keeping track of my laps. I used to hit the “new lap” button every time I hit the wall; go till I hit 40, 45, 50, whatever I thought was “right” that day; and go home and calculate my yards and mileage. I did that until the numbers became distressing, when I was more concerned about the total laps I was going to pound out rather than the quality of my strokes and kicks. Now that I don’t worry about laps or yards, I focus more on making sure I have the proper form, that my core is stable, and that my breath is steady and even.

It’s probably a good thing I realized this when I did, because I came home and noticed that my stopwatch’s battery is dying. Could it be the universe’s way of telling me to ditch the digits? 🙂

Mostly Wordless Wednesday

Wednesday, April 20, 2011 in Wordless Wednesday | Tags: pic post | 3 comments

Namaste, and welcome to Flowtation Devices’ yoga room!

Because it’s just me and my husband living in a house with technically four bedrooms, I didn’t hesitate to convert one of the spare rooms upstairs in my personal yoga haven when we bought the bungalow six years ago.

Here’s the view from the doorway:

The sloped ceilings limit my options for yoga mat placement, because otherwise forget high-sweeping sun salutes! On the left is a little altar for little trinkets like a Tibetan charm my friend gave to me, a chocolate wrapper with an inspirational message about dance, and a stone engraved with “Remember,” which I bought during my final days at YTT. In the middle is Buddha with some prayer flags (thanks, Richard Gere!), and on the right is a props table that also includes framed photos from my 2008 Kripalu adventure. On the floor is my super-thin Prana yoga mat, which does a superb job ripping the skin off the bottom of my toes. Seriously, it’s like sandpaper! Why do I still have it?!

From this angle you see my yoga bookcase, filled with old magazines, my YTT text/notebooks, several yoga/dance/movement-related books of which I’ve read about 10%, and my framed Kripalu yoga teacher certificate. The white poster hanging on the right is a doodle from my YTT, when we were asked to draw what our future looks like. Mine includes footprints, handprints, hearts, arrows, spirals, and traffic lights. Someday I will ask my art therapist friend what that all means.

And here’s the view from the floor. Don’t mind my “Barbies of the World” collection there on the shelves. I’m not a collector-type person, but I make an exception for international Barbie dolls. Those are just a handful; the others are sitting in a storage box behind that giant wall hanging! My first pair of pointe shoes is hanging there on the left, too. 🙂

Not pictured is the fourth wall of the room, which is just a giant dresser filled with clothes. It also houses my stereo and yoga CD collection.

Thanks for visiting my little yoga space!

One weekend in 5Rhythms

Monday, April 18, 2011 in 5Rhythms, Real-Life Yoga, Weekend | Tags: 5rhythms | 8 comments

CHAOS was the start of my Friday night. I had planned to leave work early, go to the gym, and be home at a decent hour for dinner with my husband. Instead, I hung around the office much later than anticipated, getting sucked into the world of blogs, Facebook, and all things technological. By the time I finally disconnected, it was too late for the gym and I was very bent out of shape about my time management and ability to balance computer and off-screen time, which, by the time I came home, spiraled into a complete meltdown about how I suck at life and don’t have time to even read a book or fold and put away the laundry sitting in the basket upstairs, whereas VeganAsana somehow manages to be a college dean, professor, mother of several children, yoga teacher in training, and regular blogger, Twitterer, and social media contributor. (Oh Lorin, how I envy your life management!) After much of the tell-tale signs of CHAOS (crying, sobbing, waving fist in the air), my husband finally talked me down into LYRICAL, encouraging me to go for a walk outside with him. A side-by-side walk with Bryan is always therapeutic (especially when he cracks me up by describing a certain flower’s odor as “a cross between urine and fish”), and by the time we reached the creek at the far end of our neighborhood, I was finally approaching STILLNESS.

(Side note: As a result of the meltdown, I took Erin’s advice and signed up for the Chopra Center’s 21-Day Spring Meditation Challenge to try and soothe my nerves. In addition, I’m also seriously considering enrolling in one of those Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction programs. As much as I totally GET mindfulness and its importance, sometimes I just really stink at implementing it!)

FLOWING was my Saturday afternoon, spent on the rowing (flowing?) machine at the gym, followed by strength training. As long as my hip isn’t bothering me, the erg is one of my favorite pieces of gym equipment; actually, one of the only machines I feel comfortable using (elliptical, StairMaster, and recumbent bikes are out; treadmill is iffy; stationary bike is OK). It’s easy to get into a “flowing” kind of groove on the rowing machine, and it seriously works nearly every muscle! Also, I find strength training to be very mind-centering, especially if I’m listening to inspiring music. Sometimes I leave the weight floor as focused as I am after a yoga class!

Saturday evening was very much CHAOS, starting with an overnight train fire that completely threw off our plans to get into Philly for karaoke that night. (Just to clarify: We weren’t on that train; the fire occurred the night before.) Timetables were helter skelter, our friends’ station was completely shut down, and then once we finally got into the city, the escalator underground halted to a standstill and freaked everyone out. To make matters even more chaotic, it was POURING BUCKETS, like, some of worst rain our area has gotten in years. We had umbrellas, but after walking the 8 blocks to our destination through flooded intersections, we were soaked! CHAOS!

However, once we were settled in our little private karaoke room for six, the evening was more STACCATO than anything. Exchange of good food (except for the gizzards and hearts) and drinks, having fun with friends, and holding up the microphone with confidence. My hits of the night were Ludacris (“My Chick Bad”), Tiffany (“I Think We’re Alone Now”), half of Sir Mix-a-Lot (“Baby Got Back”), some of Lady Gaga (“Alejandro”), and Black Eyed Peas (“Boom Boom Pow”).

Belting out “I Think We’re Alone Now” by my childhood idol, Tiffany!

Bryan and Sara duet to “Love Shack.”

Trying to sing Sir Mix-a-Lot with Sara’s “back” in my face!

Sara and Amanda go all out with “Thriller.”

After two hours of STACCATO, it was back to the CHAOS outside again, this time with lightning! Back at our house, we settled into a nice LYRICAL atmosphere, with pizza, dry clothes, and cartoons.

Sunday afternoon was my actual 5Rhythms class: 2 hours of Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness! My kinda new, found-through-social-networking friend Susan is warming up to the 5Rhythms, so she joined me for the 45-minute drive to class, which was a nice FLOWING experience. We have a lot in common, so we talked non-stop to and from. Sunday afternoon classes are somewhat difficult for me (I always feel sleepy?), but one of my favorite moments was during CHAOS, when I started doing really wild, jarring movements on the dance studio barre, tendus and degages that were out of control, as if saying, “Take that, ballet!” I also had a great STACCATO “duet” with one of the other students, Phil, whose moves are as wacky and out-there as mine; we look like pantomime actors engaged in some kind of dance dialogue.

After class I reluctantly headed over to the supermarket, usually a practice in CHAOS. However, this time I brought my iPod and listened to some trancey drumming music the whole time, and it totally helped keep me in a state of FLOWING. My surroundings were still CHAOS (especially that dreaded deli section!), but by focusing on the music and my own specific actions, the experience became almost a practice in meditation.

Flashback Friday: Lips and balls

Friday, April 15, 2011 in Dancing, Flashback Friday | 4 comments

I don’t know what made me think of it, but last week I was reminiscing about my junior year of college and my balls-to-the-wall attitude; specifically, the time I decided to enter my university’s Lip Sync contest—by myself, on my own, with no backup support or motivation.

The concept was as simple as it sounds: Pick a song and lip sync to it in front of a crowd of many. Winner takes home $300 cash, with $200 and $100 prizes available for the second the third place winner.

Without giving it much thought, I decided, “Sure, what the hell?” I grew up performing solo dance routines in my elementary and high school talent shows, so I was used to any potential mockery or ridiculing (as is what happens when one, wearing a sparkly green and black sequin/spandex costume, does a jazz dance number to a 2-Unlimited techno song in front of an audience of quick-to-judge “cool kids”). Besides, I kind of looked forward to showing off my “other side” to a student population who only knew me as the bookish journalism student who once actually wrote a letter to the head of residence life because the other students in her dorm were a bit on the “raucous” side and blasted music past her bedtime. This was my opportunity to say “Watch out, kiddos! I may look like a librarian in the making, but I will dance those Dewey decimals into the ground!”

So there I was, ready to make an appearance and show the campus who’s hot stuff….so naturally, I picked a Broadway.showtune. as my song of choice. I had performed in my university’s production of Cabaret the year before, so I was quite familiar with the music.

Me backstage as Kit Kat girl Lulu (third from left). Or maybe this picture was from "28 Days Later: The Musical." Yikes!

I thought the song “Don’t Tell Mama” was a great choice for my debut in the Lip Sync scene: It was slightly scandalous, focused around the innocent-looking-but-not-really theme, and was a much better showtune for this type of event than, say, “Send in the Clowns.” I was taking my audience into consideration: late-teen, 20-something, mostly frat guys and sorority girls. I needed a number where I could look sexy and end in a split.

If my memory serves me correctly, I was the only person who entered the contest alone. The remaining contestants were either part of a pair or a giant group, mostly Greeks representing their letters. There was money to win, but I definitely had everything to lose, including my self-esteem, reputation, and ability to walk around campus without being laughed at.

What I did have going for me was that I was in this for myself, by myself. No one had encouraged me to enter the contest, and no one was in the audience rooting me on. I had downplayed the entire thing to my friends (“Ehh, come if you want, but it’s really no big deal.”) and preferred going into this potentially humiliating mess alone. That’s the balls-to-the-wall attitude I’m talking about; the initiative to just get up and DO something, even if it’s scary, maybe embarrassing, with no support system waving in the wings. And I think that’s what allowed me to shine that evening—I just did it. I put myself out there, in front of a massive hootin’-and-hollerin’ crowd that looked like this:

Actual crowd shot from the contest.

The other groups got whoop-whoops and cheers and homemade posters held up in their honor. I got applause, but none of the extra bells and whistles of support.

At the end of the night, however, I DID get $200.

Yup, I won second place. “Singing” and dancing to a freakin’ Broadway showtune. Beating out fraternity groups who performed to rap songs, placing ahead of sorority sisters who acted like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. I was shocked. Stunned. And pretty damn proud of myself!

My balls-to-the-wall endeavors since then haven’t been as dramatic, and unfortunately they occur less often. It’s a shame, because things usually end up better than I anticipate, like when I auditioned for a state-wide dance festival a month after returning from yoga teacher training and was actually accepted into a piece, despite doubts about my abilities; or the time I stood in front of a group at a leaderless drum circle and suddenly became the “teacher” who attendees looked to for guidance. That’s kind of the way I am; I stand quietly in the corner, silently observing the world around me, and then without much thought just launch into an entirely different person and take the reins.

But is it really “an entirely different person”? Or is that who I really am, and this bookish Tina Fey/Liz Lemon-wannabe character is really just a façade, my layer of protection from potential humiliation and defeat?

Would a librarian in training really audition for her school’s production of Cabaret by singing “Mein Herr” while stripping down to nothing but black velour pants and a strapless bra??

(Sorry, dudes. No photo for that one!) 🙂

Flowtation Devices

Inching toward unease

Mostly Wordless Wednesday

Happy places, morning rituals

Surfin’ Sunday

Good Friday = GREAT Friday, with 5Rhythms

Flashback Friday: Finding the flow…in a kayak

The nuisance of numbers

Mostly Wordless Wednesday

One weekend in 5Rhythms

Flashback Friday: Lips and balls

About the Author

Archives

Categories

Tags

Search My Blog

Tweet, tweet!

Email Subscription

Subscribe via RSS

Member of: