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| Then and now |
There is an ebb and flow to a big huge effort to change your life. You know how about 3 days after New Year's Eve's big promises you, well, ebb. This go round I'm going with the flow - even if I crash into a rock or two and get hung up on the shore for a day or two. I'm just going to keep diving back in until the change is no longer a change, but is me.
Today I have been busy at work on a website for a non-profit for which I am a volunteer board member. Hours had passed when I stood up to get my power cord in the other room. Yeah, well, I tried to get up. It wasn't pretty. By the time I had righted myself, my husband walked in with the mail and on top of the stack was my monthly issue of Yoga Journal. Unlike most months in the past I immediately opened the issue and began reading.
Thirty years ago I did yoga all the time and loved it even though, back then, people thought it was pretty weird. I'd stop for a while but always come back to it. Eventually I got to the point of practicing 90 minutes a day. It was so invigorating and, at the same time, calming. I'm not a church-type so for me yoga was my prayer and meditation - prayer and meditation with my whole body. If I missed a day or two of practice everything felt out of kilter.
Slowly, jerkingly coming to a full stand today reminded me how I have totally and purposefully lost connection with my body. Just like one stops listening to someone who nags or irritates, I try to shut out the aches, pains, stabs, tightness and weakness of my body by ignoring it as best I could. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the overeating was a form of self-medication to ease the pain or at least distract from it.
The plan in my head since I begin this blog/journey has been to return to yoga, but it has never quite moved out of its comfortable territory in the back of my mind. Today it "slapped me up side the head with a two by four" (a lovely Southern phrase). As I look at this magazine I am thrilled that I have kept so many of the back issues. I wonder if they have a column on yoga for those like me who are trying to do aging differently. I don't want to fight aging and I don't want to pretend I'm young. I want to savor all the good things that come with time - perspective, experience, forgiveness, a dash of wisdom. Part of the deal is that the body starts to, well, you know. But, the problem is that today I felt like I was 83 instead of 58, and I felt like an 83 who hadn't worked out in 50 years if ever.
Just this very minute I had a flashback to 1965 (no, not that kind). I took piano lessons from a woman who lived next door to a boy in my class. She was elderly, clearly in her 80s, but there was something different about her. I seem to remember purple, which was pretty odd in our very chi-chi, not hip, part of town. One day I arrived for my lesson to find her standing on her head. Standing on her head! I want to be in my 80s and standing on my head!
So, let's see where I go with this. Maybe I'll even get to the point where I'm comfortable using pictures of me instead of pictures of strangers I found on the Internet. Maybe I'll get to the point where I'm comfortable in by body again. I will if I just do it.
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Good for you! Good luck.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the articles. I started up again when a dear friend was becoming a certified Iyengar yoga teacher. She needed practice students and I am still her diligent student. I much prefer Iyengar over other styles I have dabbled in. Everyday for 21 days, however.... you are braver than I, Blythe ;) (teacher friend averages 2h a day! -- And that is just a side activity next to her "real" job.) I am exhausted just typing about it. Namaste! xx
I love Iyengar. Years ago when I was developing a website for children with sickle cell disease he designed a series of poses specifically for the children. Unfortunately, back then (late 90s) nobody thought that African American kids would ever get into computers and I ran out of funding. My how the world has changed! Thank goodness. I always thought it was extraordinarily generous of him to do that for the kids. Thanks for writing!
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