2013. What kind of year is that? What good can come in a year named 2013?
I resolve not to make any New Year's resolutions. I'm still scarred by my experience from a few years back, when I wrote up my resolutions and ended up with a list of 31 Do's and Don'ts, ending with "Be less hard on myself." And it took me several days before I saw the irony.
So, this year, in this badly named year of 2013, I resolve not to resolve. I Resolve Simply To Be. Just to be. To be: to breathe and to enjoy breathing. To be: to see the divine in the daily. To be: to recognize and even to rejoice in the fact that the highlights of my year will be the new seasons of Downton Abbey and Doctor Who. To be: to invite friends over on the spur of the moment and not to worry about the state of the house or whether there's any dessert. To be: to be as anal about responding to social emails as I am to work emails. To be: to allow myself more time to cook and to bake. To be: to remember friends' birthdays. To be: to go for long walks and to find a yoga class that doesn't drive me nuts. To be: to call my mom more often and to enjoy the calls. To be: to. . . to . . . .
Oh fuck.
Showing posts with label yoga. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yoga. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Thursday, September 27, 2012
A Moment in a Marriage
The pinched nerve still has Keith in its grip. Pale and pained, he steps gingerly, as if he expects the floor suddenly to crack open and tumble him into the abyss.
Meanwhile, my decision to resume my morning walks against the podiatrist's advice means I'm now limping; my too-enthusiastic return to yoga has triggered a massive three-day-and-counting headache, and the vulvodynia continues to lurk. Crippled on the bottom, burning in the middle, aching on the top. Pathetic.
The living room looks like a cross between a sex toy shop and a physical therapy treatment room, littered as it is with weights of varying sizes, heating pads, lavender-scented microwavable neck buddies, freezable gel packs, and the vibrator-wanna-be massage tool.
We update each other on our symptoms, exchange prescription ibuprofin and muscle relaxants, and watch massive amounts of tv. We kiss chastely, celibate siblings-in-pain. "We are not this old!" I tell him. He smiles. We take more drugs.
Meanwhile, my decision to resume my morning walks against the podiatrist's advice means I'm now limping; my too-enthusiastic return to yoga has triggered a massive three-day-and-counting headache, and the vulvodynia continues to lurk. Crippled on the bottom, burning in the middle, aching on the top. Pathetic.
The living room looks like a cross between a sex toy shop and a physical therapy treatment room, littered as it is with weights of varying sizes, heating pads, lavender-scented microwavable neck buddies, freezable gel packs, and the vibrator-wanna-be massage tool.
We update each other on our symptoms, exchange prescription ibuprofin and muscle relaxants, and watch massive amounts of tv. We kiss chastely, celibate siblings-in-pain. "We are not this old!" I tell him. He smiles. We take more drugs.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Ebbs and Flows
The ebbs and flows of marriage fascinate me. You'd think, after almost 22 years of married life, that we'd settle into some sort of stasis, no more ebbing and flowing, just you know, a pond that sort of sits there, quiet, with barely a ripple on the surface--except without the algae and moldy odor that that implies. Or maybe that we would sort of drift along gently like the inner tubes in those quiet water park rides, the ones that carry you softly along a well-defined path, far from the screaming of the water slides and wave pool. But no, life keeps doing its thing and so we change and the marriage changes too. To demonstrate:
As a result of my botched foot operation two Christmases ago, I can now no longer walk very far without a certain amount of pain. Sometimes walking even just a wee bit, like the distance from the bedroom to the kitchen, poses great difficulties. Foot pain, I have discovered, makes a daily aerobics workout rather tough. Running, jogging, walking, and even doing the elliptical at the Y have all become distinctly problematic. And, because the pain slices through the ball of my foot, the exact region that presses down on the pedal of a bike, bicycling does not offer much of an option. I could swim, I suppose, that is, if I could swim as opposed to doggy paddling rather ineffectually.
Anyway, the point is, while I sit with dicey foot (and sit and sit and sit and. . . .), Keith continues to pursue his somewhat fanatical "dammit I may be about to turn 60 but that doesn't mean I have to be fat" program: vigorous basketball and tennis several times a week, supplemented by running, walking, and weight-lifting. He's never been in better shape. It's great--he's thin and hard and energetic. But it's the matter of timing. We both get home around 6 or so. He then goes off to do his sporty exercisey fitnessy stuff. I, tired and starving, pour a glass of wine and pull out a box of Triscuits. A couple hours later, he returns, all sweaty and virtuous and healthy, whereas I, by that point, well, I'm slightly (or, depending on the day, totally) looped, as well as saturated with salt.
It's not a winning combination. In the ebbs and flows of married life, it's definitely on the ebb side. One does not like feeling sloshed and salty and soft. One then tends to take one's feelings of inadequacy out on one's sweaty and virtuous husband. And then one has another glass of wine, followed by something involving saturated fat and sugar in vast quantities. And thus, in the ebb and flow of marriage, one ends up not only ebbing but in fact stuck in the noisome mud of a trash-strewn bank while scaly creatures bite and tear at one's limbs and large flying insects lay their eggs in one's eyeballs.
Maybe a return to yoga is in order.
As a result of my botched foot operation two Christmases ago, I can now no longer walk very far without a certain amount of pain. Sometimes walking even just a wee bit, like the distance from the bedroom to the kitchen, poses great difficulties. Foot pain, I have discovered, makes a daily aerobics workout rather tough. Running, jogging, walking, and even doing the elliptical at the Y have all become distinctly problematic. And, because the pain slices through the ball of my foot, the exact region that presses down on the pedal of a bike, bicycling does not offer much of an option. I could swim, I suppose, that is, if I could swim as opposed to doggy paddling rather ineffectually.
Anyway, the point is, while I sit with dicey foot (and sit and sit and sit and. . . .), Keith continues to pursue his somewhat fanatical "dammit I may be about to turn 60 but that doesn't mean I have to be fat" program: vigorous basketball and tennis several times a week, supplemented by running, walking, and weight-lifting. He's never been in better shape. It's great--he's thin and hard and energetic. But it's the matter of timing. We both get home around 6 or so. He then goes off to do his sporty exercisey fitnessy stuff. I, tired and starving, pour a glass of wine and pull out a box of Triscuits. A couple hours later, he returns, all sweaty and virtuous and healthy, whereas I, by that point, well, I'm slightly (or, depending on the day, totally) looped, as well as saturated with salt.
It's not a winning combination. In the ebbs and flows of married life, it's definitely on the ebb side. One does not like feeling sloshed and salty and soft. One then tends to take one's feelings of inadequacy out on one's sweaty and virtuous husband. And then one has another glass of wine, followed by something involving saturated fat and sugar in vast quantities. And thus, in the ebb and flow of marriage, one ends up not only ebbing but in fact stuck in the noisome mud of a trash-strewn bank while scaly creatures bite and tear at one's limbs and large flying insects lay their eggs in one's eyeballs.
Maybe a return to yoga is in order.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
At the Y
Part of my New Year's resolution is to resume exercising, so I did so yesterday, just one day into the New Year. (I've decided I am now Chinese. Or Vietnamese. That works too.)
The problem with excercise is that I seem to be coming apart at the seams. I do want to exercise, I really do, and I actually enjoy it, well, some forms of it. . . can't stand team sports which totally negate one of the best things about exercising--the opportunity to withdraw completely into yourself--and bring back horrific memories of junior high and high school P.E. classes. Dear God, those volleyball drills, surely now condemned as a violation of human rights.
Anyway, team sports aside, and also any of those extreme activities that involve actual agony, I do like physical action. It's just that my body doesn't. I used to run, and really, truly, I enjoyed it; then my knee gave out. OK, I walked. I love walking but since my botched foot surgery I can hardly get through an hour's stand-up lecture without limping out of the classroom. So swim! say well-meaning friends. Great idea, say I, except I can't swim because, well, I can't swim, I can only do a kind of awkward dog paddle, and also chronic vulvadynia ensures that after just a few minutes in chlorine, my nether parts burst into metaphorical flames. So that leaves bicycling, which is totally groovy, if you ignore the Helmet Hair and the fact that because of my wrist problems my hands go completely numb within fifteen minutes, plus bike seats and tender vulvas don't always harmonize well. The weak wrists make tennis a no-go area. They also problematize yoga (all those doggy poses involve a lot of wrist action ) but that's ok as I can't stand yoga. I know it's a moral fault, I know Good People Do Yoga, but all that omming and centering. Gah. It's just so boring.
Which brings me to the Y and the weight room. It seems a good option. I can sit. Careful selection of machines reduces wrist pain. No teammates. No pressure on the old vulva. No omming (tho' an enormous amount of huffing and panting and grunting from the He-Man crowd).
So there I was in the Y, at the start of the Chinese New Year, ready to conquer my body and the world. I straddle the machine, I push up the weights--and oh my! At every machine, every repetition, such a crunching and popping and snapping and crackling. I kept waiting for those three little elves from the Rice Krispies commercial to show up and pour milk all over me, or for the He-Men to tell me I needed to take my old-lady rickety-rackety-causing-such-a-ruckus joints up and outa there. But they were kind. They just smiled, grunted, and moved out of range.
The problem with excercise is that I seem to be coming apart at the seams. I do want to exercise, I really do, and I actually enjoy it, well, some forms of it. . . can't stand team sports which totally negate one of the best things about exercising--the opportunity to withdraw completely into yourself--and bring back horrific memories of junior high and high school P.E. classes. Dear God, those volleyball drills, surely now condemned as a violation of human rights.
Anyway, team sports aside, and also any of those extreme activities that involve actual agony, I do like physical action. It's just that my body doesn't. I used to run, and really, truly, I enjoyed it; then my knee gave out. OK, I walked. I love walking but since my botched foot surgery I can hardly get through an hour's stand-up lecture without limping out of the classroom. So swim! say well-meaning friends. Great idea, say I, except I can't swim because, well, I can't swim, I can only do a kind of awkward dog paddle, and also chronic vulvadynia ensures that after just a few minutes in chlorine, my nether parts burst into metaphorical flames. So that leaves bicycling, which is totally groovy, if you ignore the Helmet Hair and the fact that because of my wrist problems my hands go completely numb within fifteen minutes, plus bike seats and tender vulvas don't always harmonize well. The weak wrists make tennis a no-go area. They also problematize yoga (all those doggy poses involve a lot of wrist action ) but that's ok as I can't stand yoga. I know it's a moral fault, I know Good People Do Yoga, but all that omming and centering. Gah. It's just so boring.
Which brings me to the Y and the weight room. It seems a good option. I can sit. Careful selection of machines reduces wrist pain. No teammates. No pressure on the old vulva. No omming (tho' an enormous amount of huffing and panting and grunting from the He-Man crowd).
So there I was in the Y, at the start of the Chinese New Year, ready to conquer my body and the world. I straddle the machine, I push up the weights--and oh my! At every machine, every repetition, such a crunching and popping and snapping and crackling. I kept waiting for those three little elves from the Rice Krispies commercial to show up and pour milk all over me, or for the He-Men to tell me I needed to take my old-lady rickety-rackety-causing-such-a-ruckus joints up and outa there. But they were kind. They just smiled, grunted, and moved out of range.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Declaration of Intent
Earlier this week Keith and I and a group of friends went to hear Neal Conan from NPR's "Talk of the Nation." Conan has always struck me as incredibly witty and sane so I figured it would be a great talk. It wasn't. It wasn't bad, mind you, but Conan said nothing that we all didn't already know. Of course, maybe I hang out with an incredibly sophisticated, educated, and articulate crowd. Anyway, afterward, everyone headed to one of the friend's houses for drinks. Except me. I went home to bed.
I do not like being The Person Who Goes Home to Bed. The person who has trouble staying awake past 9 pm. The person whose first reaction to any kind of invitation is to think, "Do I have to?" The person whose idea of an especially good time is to be alone with a big bowl of vegetarian chili and a Doctor Who episode.
All evidence to the contrary, I really am not that person. The real me loves to spend time with good friends. The real me has a passion for politics and intense conversation. The real me enjoys exploring and engaging and experimenting. It's just that the real me has somehow gotten encased in, swallowed up by this carcass, this husk that seems to consist of nothing but aches. Every morning I wake and make plans, blueprints, reallly, for how to construct the day so that I am really me. And every day the husk makes a mockery of those plans, distorts the blueprints.
And it's really pissing me off.
My yoga instructor ends every class with this meditation: breathing deeply, she intones, "Embrace, affirm, accept your body, just as it is, just where it is, here and now, at this moment." Right. Not a chance. There's me and there's the husk and between us is the line in the sand. I have had it. I hereby declare war.
I do not like being The Person Who Goes Home to Bed. The person who has trouble staying awake past 9 pm. The person whose first reaction to any kind of invitation is to think, "Do I have to?" The person whose idea of an especially good time is to be alone with a big bowl of vegetarian chili and a Doctor Who episode.
All evidence to the contrary, I really am not that person. The real me loves to spend time with good friends. The real me has a passion for politics and intense conversation. The real me enjoys exploring and engaging and experimenting. It's just that the real me has somehow gotten encased in, swallowed up by this carcass, this husk that seems to consist of nothing but aches. Every morning I wake and make plans, blueprints, reallly, for how to construct the day so that I am really me. And every day the husk makes a mockery of those plans, distorts the blueprints.
And it's really pissing me off.
My yoga instructor ends every class with this meditation: breathing deeply, she intones, "Embrace, affirm, accept your body, just as it is, just where it is, here and now, at this moment." Right. Not a chance. There's me and there's the husk and between us is the line in the sand. I have had it. I hereby declare war.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Further Adventures in Yoga
Return to gentle old-lady yoga. Substitute teacher. Looks about 13 years old.
Tonight I am to "honor my body's own unique rhythms." But what if my body marches to the beat of chocolate cupcakes and epic stretches of watching British television series on dvd? A problem.
Even more problematic, as always, is the end-of-class relaxation/meditation session. Gentle Substitute dictates, "Breathe into any place in your body still holding tension and create a bubble of warmth around that place." Oh dear. Desperately try to figure out how to breathe into the nape of my neck and my forehead and my jaw line and my knees and my arthritic foot. Haven't even approached the matter of creating warm bubbles around all those spots, when Substitute Teacher demands--gently-- that we now extend that warm bubble all around the entire body. Mad scramble to create warm bubbles and then somehow meld them into one all-embracing bubble--without, obviously, popping any bubbles. Difficult. No warm bubbles anywhere. Ruthless Gentle Substitute presses on. "Now extend that bubble outward; let your aura touch your neighbor's." Ahh. Enlightenment. "Warm bubble" = Aura. Not that this particular enlightenment has any practical application, as my Aura and I are on distant terms, at best. And now things get really sticky, because my yoga neighbor happens to be someone I know and like very much from my church. I want my Aura to touch hers; I really do.
I fail.
Somehow I always come out of yoga class feeling like I did in junior high when I'd join my group of ostensible friends at breaktime, and gradually realize I didn't get any of the jokes or references because I hadn't been invited to the party they'd had over the weekend. I bet if I'd had an Aura they'd have invited me. Geez. I probably would have been a cheerleader.
Tonight I am to "honor my body's own unique rhythms." But what if my body marches to the beat of chocolate cupcakes and epic stretches of watching British television series on dvd? A problem.
Even more problematic, as always, is the end-of-class relaxation/meditation session. Gentle Substitute dictates, "Breathe into any place in your body still holding tension and create a bubble of warmth around that place." Oh dear. Desperately try to figure out how to breathe into the nape of my neck and my forehead and my jaw line and my knees and my arthritic foot. Haven't even approached the matter of creating warm bubbles around all those spots, when Substitute Teacher demands--gently-- that we now extend that warm bubble all around the entire body. Mad scramble to create warm bubbles and then somehow meld them into one all-embracing bubble--without, obviously, popping any bubbles. Difficult. No warm bubbles anywhere. Ruthless Gentle Substitute presses on. "Now extend that bubble outward; let your aura touch your neighbor's." Ahh. Enlightenment. "Warm bubble" = Aura. Not that this particular enlightenment has any practical application, as my Aura and I are on distant terms, at best. And now things get really sticky, because my yoga neighbor happens to be someone I know and like very much from my church. I want my Aura to touch hers; I really do.
I fail.
Somehow I always come out of yoga class feeling like I did in junior high when I'd join my group of ostensible friends at breaktime, and gradually realize I didn't get any of the jokes or references because I hadn't been invited to the party they'd had over the weekend. I bet if I'd had an Aura they'd have invited me. Geez. I probably would have been a cheerleader.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Old Lady Yoga
Today I returned to yoga class after a long hiatus. This is not tone-your-butt and streamline-your-thighs yoga but rather gentle yoga. Stretch and be at peace yoga. Old lady yoga.
Even so, I'm really bad at it. I have never been flexible--physically, I mean. (OK, right, probably any other way either.) When you sit on your mat with your feet straight in front of you and the instructor says to fold forward as far as is comfortable, well, my torso remains at a 90 degree angle to my feet. Everyone else, even the actually old old ladies, collapse on themselves, nose to knees, like living dinner napkins. Me, I'm like a textbook illustration of a right triangle.
But I'm also really bad at the mental/spiritual part of yoga. I'd like to be a good, deep-breathing, at-peace-with-my-innerness yogi; I really would. I do regard our materialist, empirical way of looking at the world as limiting and impoverished and I do absolutely believe that meditation and yogic practice and mindfulness would enrich my life. It's just that I fail so completely. I try, I really do, but when my yoga instructor, a petite cutie with a headful of dark curls and the right blend of intensity and laid-backedness, tells us to look through our third eye, I'm sorry, I'm blind. I'd settle for third eye near-sightedness, but no, I appear doomed to total blindness in my third eye. And when she instructs us to breathe into that space we've created between ourselves and the breath around us, there I am, floundering, peering wildly to my left and to my right, trying desperately to find that space I've created but, damn, it's just not there. And at the end, when we lie in our savasana pose and she guides us through relaxation imagery, and I'm supposed to be floating through the cosmos, sigh, I'll admit it, I'm composing my grocery list or trying to figure out what went wrong with that lecture this morning.
I wish I could leap unreservedly into the yoga pool of bliss. But that means letting go of the mind and honestly, there's not a chance. The life of the mind--I didn't know those words but good lord, I knew the reality, the exhilaration, the incredible possibility and power of it from the day I read my first book. all on my own: Ballerina Bess, a cardboard-covered book from the racks in the grocery store checkout line that, amazingly, I convinced my mom to buy for me one day early in the fall of my first grade. "I want to jump, said Bess. I want to dance, said Bess. I want to be a ballerina, said Bess." And damn, so did I. Because I was Bess, there, in my mind and I knew, I absolutely knew, standing there in the checkout line, that reading on my own meant I could be and do so much more.
And yet now I know, I do absolutely know, that the inability to shut off the mind explains so much of my insomnia, my anxiety, my limitations as a sexual partner, and yes, my failure at yoga. I would like to be transcendent. And deep-breathing. And able to fold up like a dinner napkin and see through my third eye. And oh, I really would love to float through the cosmos, a tiny speck-- but a totally balanced, mindful speck, a speck that is at peace with one's speckedness and at one with all that is and was and will be.
But really, cosmically, that's as likely as a toned butt and stream-lined thighs.
Even so, I'm really bad at it. I have never been flexible--physically, I mean. (OK, right, probably any other way either.) When you sit on your mat with your feet straight in front of you and the instructor says to fold forward as far as is comfortable, well, my torso remains at a 90 degree angle to my feet. Everyone else, even the actually old old ladies, collapse on themselves, nose to knees, like living dinner napkins. Me, I'm like a textbook illustration of a right triangle.
But I'm also really bad at the mental/spiritual part of yoga. I'd like to be a good, deep-breathing, at-peace-with-my-innerness yogi; I really would. I do regard our materialist, empirical way of looking at the world as limiting and impoverished and I do absolutely believe that meditation and yogic practice and mindfulness would enrich my life. It's just that I fail so completely. I try, I really do, but when my yoga instructor, a petite cutie with a headful of dark curls and the right blend of intensity and laid-backedness, tells us to look through our third eye, I'm sorry, I'm blind. I'd settle for third eye near-sightedness, but no, I appear doomed to total blindness in my third eye. And when she instructs us to breathe into that space we've created between ourselves and the breath around us, there I am, floundering, peering wildly to my left and to my right, trying desperately to find that space I've created but, damn, it's just not there. And at the end, when we lie in our savasana pose and she guides us through relaxation imagery, and I'm supposed to be floating through the cosmos, sigh, I'll admit it, I'm composing my grocery list or trying to figure out what went wrong with that lecture this morning.
I wish I could leap unreservedly into the yoga pool of bliss. But that means letting go of the mind and honestly, there's not a chance. The life of the mind--I didn't know those words but good lord, I knew the reality, the exhilaration, the incredible possibility and power of it from the day I read my first book. all on my own: Ballerina Bess, a cardboard-covered book from the racks in the grocery store checkout line that, amazingly, I convinced my mom to buy for me one day early in the fall of my first grade. "I want to jump, said Bess. I want to dance, said Bess. I want to be a ballerina, said Bess." And damn, so did I. Because I was Bess, there, in my mind and I knew, I absolutely knew, standing there in the checkout line, that reading on my own meant I could be and do so much more.
And yet now I know, I do absolutely know, that the inability to shut off the mind explains so much of my insomnia, my anxiety, my limitations as a sexual partner, and yes, my failure at yoga. I would like to be transcendent. And deep-breathing. And able to fold up like a dinner napkin and see through my third eye. And oh, I really would love to float through the cosmos, a tiny speck-- but a totally balanced, mindful speck, a speck that is at peace with one's speckedness and at one with all that is and was and will be.
But really, cosmically, that's as likely as a toned butt and stream-lined thighs.
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