Day 52 Frequency, Intensity, Precision
These are three ways to improve your yoga practice, according to guru Ida Ripley, who nearly killed me last weekend, in her hot-hot-hot Master Class. I can’t really increase my frequency of practice, seeing as how I’m going every day, and I’ve already experienced a double-class day for the first and last time.
Intensity, well, I’m pushing about as hard as I can in my postures. Since I’m feeling pretty strong this week, I’m working into deeper backward bends and I can feel it.
Precision, that’s something I can focus on. When I actually listen to the instructions and breathe into the postures, making subtle adjustments to align my hips, keep my knees parallel, flex my thigh muscles, everything feels different. My postures are cleaner, I can feel joints releasing and ligaments and tendons lengthening.
But it is really subtle.
“Lock your elbows, Roxanne,” Anthea tells me when we’re doing Half-Moon pose. “Keep them against your ears.”
So I move them up a scant inch, from my temples, up against my ears, and what do you know, I can feel my chest open and my sides lengthen.
“Beautiful!” she says immediately. And hearing that, I can hold it for another second, just barely.
“Forehead down, Roxanne,” Randee told me in Half-Tortoise. And it made a difference.
“Heads up, look forward into the mirror. Heads up. Heads up. Roxanne! Keep your head up!” said Colin, when I was cheating in my seated forward bend, curling down, instead of keeping my back straight for a pure hamstring stretch. And, yes, it made a difference.
Frequency, intensity and precision are important, but there’s one thing that is even more important: good instructors. I wouldn’t have made it this long without their feedback and encouragement.
But some days, I still think they’re going to kill me.
Day 51 Muscles Need Fuel
If you’d have told me in January that I’d be tackling a 60-Day Bikram Yoga Challenge as soon as we got back from Maui, I’d have snorted rum through my nose. I knew I’d be getting back into it, and I’d even tossed around the idea of a 30-Day Challenge, but 60?
And now I’m almost there. YAY ME!!!
Of course, this past weekend, I almost threw in the towel, so I better not get too cocky just yet.
It’s reassuring to have a strong day, especially after a few rough ones, and now I’ve had two strong days in a row. I did all my postures yesterday and today, even Camel, the deepest backward bend. My problem areas right now are my lower back and my right knee, who knows why. I haven’t hurt them, that I remember. Parts just seize up for no apparent reason, it seems, once you’re in your (ahem, late) forties. My hamstrings, of course, are still very tight, but they loosen up quickly in class. Will they ever stay more flexible? I doubt it. I spend too much time at my desk for that.
I find I’m less concerned about my weight – which still hasn’t changed much – and more focused on function and form. My back-fat and meat-flaps are still there, but they seem longer, distributed over visible muscles. I’m definitely leaner, according to the fit of my jeans, and lean and strong is good. Let’s face it: if I really want to lose weight, I have to eat less and I just don’t want it that badly.
If anything, I’m eating even more. I recall going through this earlier in the challenge. If I wasn’t in my (ahem, late) forties, I’d suspect PMS but that excuse is no longer reliable. I’m ravenous, especially at night. The other night, I got up three times between midnight and 6 am, because my stomach was hurting, I was so hungry. (Some yogurt first. An hour later, a half a banana. Two hours after that, a glass of milk, a fig bar and the rest of the banana.) Probably I wouldn’t have noticed if I’d been asleep, but that’s another joy of the peri-menopause stage: insomnia.
Anyway, I put those restless nights to good use, thinking about what I want to eat the next day. So, I’ve got a luscious lasagna bubbling in the oven right now, home-made with fresh pasta sheets, extra-lean ground beef, diced Italian plum tomatoes, ricotta, loads of spinach, and a mixture of Italian cheeses. Also, a loaf of two-cheese sourdough to go with it. Oh, and a strawberry-rhubarb pie for dessert.
Don’t judge me. I told you. I’m hungry.
Day 50 What Do You REALLY Want?
There’s an old folk tale about a woman who is cursed to be a hideous crone by day, but beautiful by night. There’s all sorts of stuff in this story: knights, kings, peasants, a peasant who gets raped by a knight, but I can’t remember how all that goes and you don’t really care, do you?
Anyhoo. Somehow or other, rapist-knight is sentenced by the king to wander the country asking the question: “What do women want?” Which has a lot of merit, as a sentence, don’t you think? He gets all sorts of answers: beauty, riches, men, men who put the outhouse lids down, rich men who put the outhouse lids down. But when he meets the hideous crone, she tells him the true answer:
“Sovereignty.”
It’s a big word. I had to look it up. Today, we’d say something like “autonomy” which is basically the ability to run your own life. Independence. Decision-making ability.
Leap forward in the story. Rapist-knight marries hideous crone (I forget how this particular merger was arranged, because I can’t see either of them working up much enthusiasm) and is given the ability to partly change her curse. It can stay as is, leaving her fugly by day but hot at night – which would work for him – or she can be fugly at night, but hot by day. This would probably further her career as a public servant, plus he’d get some arm-candy at knight events, but at home, he’d still be handing her a bag for her head. Hm. Which is better for him? Which is better for her?
But hurray! Rapist-knight has learned his lesson. He humbly says he can’t make such a decision. It’s up to his wife. It’s her life, after all. And poof! Instantly, the spell is broken! Hideous crone becomes beautiful woman, day and night, permanently. (I assume rapist-knight has by now been totally reformed into a fine, upstanding family man as well.) Butterflies. Rainbows. Happily ever after.
Although I’ve butchered this story pretty thoroughly, what I like about it is that, at its core, it’s about each of us being the master of our own destiny, the star of our own show, the main character in the story of our life.
A wise therapist told me once, long ago, that “it’s more important to know what you want, than it is to get what you want.” And underneath everything, what we want most of all is to have the power to choose, for ourselves, what is best for us.
As I continue my midlife quest to redefine myself, I come back to the questions I posed here, with permission from Seth Eisenberg of the PAIRS Foundation.
- What do I want that I am not getting?
- What am I getting that I don’t want?
- What am I giving that I don’t want to give?
- What would I like to give to you if only things were better between us?
- What am I getting that I do want?
I think the answer, for all of us, is autonomy, just like the loathly lady said. We want the power to live the lives we’ve chosen, with the people we love, doing the things that we believe in and find meaningful. Yet we often slip into days and weeks and years of obligation, going through the motions because someone else wants us to, or it’s expected of us, instead of following our own passions.
I think that, in intimate relationships, the biggest challenge is to remain a whole person, in your own right, while still being half of a couple.
So, what are you waiting for? What do you want?