Today I’m grateful for the music of Jim James, specifically “Tribute To” which I’ve started listening to while doing yoga.
Jim James aka Yim Yames. Image from Wikimedia
The gentle music plus the gentle motion brings me peace.
Today’s yoga view
now must loosen my muscles
with guidance of rocks.
Food ✔
Water ✔
Highlighters ✔
Pen & sticky notes ✔
Manuscript pages ✔
Yoga mat for kneeling ✔
Space to talk aloud to myself ✔
THE END of this first draft within striking distance ✔
Emma hogging all the room on my yoga mat.
Woke up this morning feeling low,
nothing specific driving my blues.
More like a muffled blanket of sad
wrapped around me.
I forced myself out of bed for:
stretching
yoga
hooping.
Slightly better
but still wanted
to crawl back under the covers.
Grabbed some coffee and breakfast
along with my YA project notebook and pages.
Got to work.
Slightly better
but still blue around the edges.
Trying to use it to my advantage.
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
~ Duke Ellington
For much of my life I believed I was an extrovert because I enjoy meeting people and having conversations, making people laugh. But I can only do that for so long before I feel drained of energy. I learned that I need alone time to recharge my batteries (which is what defines an introvert), whereas extroverts recharge their batteries by being around other people.
The past several days were filled with socializing. Zippy and I had family and friends in town, which meant lots and lots of talking and laughing and laughing and talking. By the time we got home yesterday evening, I was wiped out. The strange thing was, I didn’t realize how far gone I was until I was in my jammies and on the couch ready to watch some Netflix. It was too much being in the same room with Zippy and I needed to be completely alone. So I closed myself off in our room.
from The Quiet Revolution (www.quietrev.com)
Today was spent refilling my well.
Lots of quiet time.
A couple naps.
And it wasn’t until this evening that I had the energy
for a little yoga and some hoop dancing.
I finally feel like me again.
The white pipe cleaner is MIA, but these two remain on the floor as toys.
If you look closely you can see Marcel’s white hairs on the pipe cleaners, (and if you have really good vision, the kind that sees across the miles and through walls, you’d see white hairs on my shirts, shoes, futons, hardwood floors, bathroom vanity, . . .)
Marcel woke up when I came down to photograph the scene of the crime.
**Confession: I thought I’d made up a word but then looked it up and discovered I was inadvertently legit.
This was me in February 2009 as I embarked on Flexibility Quest:
This was me in January 2010 eleven months into Flexibility Quest:
This is me after neglecting regular yoga practice for the past eight months or so:
image from morguefile.com
Don't be a fool:
If you're doing something that makes you feel good
and is good for you, keep it up.
I'm here to tell you that rusty joints ain't no fun.
1) I have a piece up on Commentarista.com today. HEAVY METAL MOUTH chronicles my experiences as
a brace-face adult, and I hope you stop by to laugh at my expense.
2) Today is graduation day at Red Rocks and our friend Brian is graduating. He’s actually three weeks
Have a colorful and varied weekend, friends!
Last night I realized I felt pretty crappy.
My neck was stiff, my head hurt, and my entire body felt tight.
Wait, I thought, I recognize this feeling.
It’s how I used to go through most every day.
In fact, I felt that way for most of my adult life until I started a daily yoga routine,
and then I became relaxed and loose.
And that’s how I’ve been for the past year and a half: relaxed and loose.
Last school year I’d get up at 6:00, put on my yoga togs, wash my face,
and then feed my kids and pack their lunches.
Zebu and Wildebeest were out of the house by 7:05,
and I’d go straight into my little "yoga studio" for my session.
I did not pass GO,
I did not loiter in the kitchen,
and I most certainly didn’t get lured to the world wide web.
I did what needed to be done.
(And then I passed GO, stuffed my face, and surfed the web).
This school year, the boys’ schedules are scrambled and by the time they’re out the door,
I’m hungry.
Really hungry.
I don’t want to do yoga, dammit.
I want food and coffee.
And now my body is suffering from a yoga-deficit.
So I’m trying to establish a new routine,
one that allows for flexibility (pun NOT intended).
I’m telling myself it’s okay to eat in the morning and
it’s okay to do yoga at 11:00.
Really, it’s okay to do yoga at any time during the day.
And the same goes for my writing which is also suffering a disruption in routine.
It’s okay to write at any time during the day, as long as I write.
Because in the same way I now know/remember how crappy I feel when I don’t do yoga regularly,
I know how out of sorts I feel when I don’t write every day.
So.
Routines are great, until they’re not.
And then it’s time to create new ones.
Routines that can bend and flex with my daily needs.
Last February I proclaimed to the world (um, my little Live Journal circle of friends)
that I wanted to focus on flexibility in 2009.
I hoped to touch my head to my knees by the end of the year.
I’m not quite there.
But as you can see by these photos, I’m definitely making progress:
February 2009 January 2010
Most every morning I start my day with my litte Kundalini Yoga workout dvd.
I love it and not only because it’s helped me become more flexible.
I love it because during the hardest-for-me pose, the "narrator" says PREVAIL!
This year rather than a running goal,
I have a flexibility goal: By the end of the year,
I’d like to touch my head to my knees.
You can see I have a ways to go.
Yoga, do your stuff.
Tracy Abell 