welcome mat

This is me two years ago, when yoga and a healthy diet were a normal part of my life.

Today I'm a good 25 lbs plumper than this photo.  I can still reach my toes but... yeah, things are different.  I'm posting this photo as a welcoming back to my yoga practice and a motivation to get vigilant about my diet.  Because I miss the combination of calm and energy that my yoga practice renders.  And I would love to live in that lean, limber body again.

little reminders

 

ex·quis·ite

   [ik-skwiz-it, ek-skwi-zit]  Show IPA

adjective

1.

of special beauty or charm, or rare and appealing excellence, as a face, a flower, coloring, music, or poetry.

2.

extraordinarily fine or admirable; consummate: exquisite weather.

3.

intense; acute, or keen, as pleasure or pain.

4.

of rare excellence of production or execution, as works of art or workmanship: the exquisite statues of the Renaissance.

5.

keenly or delicately sensitive or responsive: an exquisite ear for music; an exquisite sensibility.

vision board

nourishing day

Today I

• remembered that I love to color, especially mandalas
• strolled over to the park for some sunshine, wood chips, and mud
• made a big batch of lentil veggie soup
• made a batch of guacamole & snacked on it all afternoon
• got a coffee from my favorite barista
• enjoyed a snuggle with him too
• watched some serious excavation work around the neighborhood

and overall enjoyed a mellow, nourishing Saturday with my best boy.

radiant goddess check in (week 2)

In last Sunday's post I went through each of the healthful living areas that are addressed by the Radiant Goddess course.  This week continued much the same, including the challenges I'm having with meditation.

I'm of two minds about it.  When I meditate (or at least when I meditate well) I am more clear, calm, open, and resourceful.  But I avoid doing it because it seems like a waste of time.  Sitting still, quiet, doing nothing, maybe listening... I have stuff to do!  My uninterrupted alone time is very limited!  All the distractions and tasks chatter away in my mind convincing me not to meditate or crowding my peace of mind when I do sit still for five minutes.

I'll keep trying.  Maybe first thing in the morning isn't the best match.  I really enjoy having that little sliver of time to chat with L over coffee in bed.  Maybe the five minutes between when I get home from work and when I go to get Little N will be a better window.  A chance to bring myself home from the stresses of the office and prepare for the interests and pace of an energetic 4 year old.

radiant goddess check in

In last Sunday's post I wrote about returning to my version of the Radiant Goddess course.  It's been a good experience so far and I'm eager to continue it this week (it's intended to be a 3-week course).   Here's a little bit about how the program is progressing for me:

Meditation:
This is an area that was weak for me last week and that I am recommitting to as a priority.  When I was a bus commuter, it was easy to settle in for a guided meditation or a listening meditation while making the trip to the office.  But now that I have a driving commute, I need to set aside time for this to happen.  This week I'll trying listening to a meditation when I first wake up, before I'm out of bed.

Yoga:
I missed 2 out of 7 days last week.  On one day I substituted a couple long walks.  On the other I was simply stuck at the office and didn't exercise that day.  I'm pleased with my commitment to doing yoga on this program.  This week I'm working with a more challenging routine.

Food:
I'm on a good beginning.  I only strayed from my food plan a couple of times.  Once, when I got stuck at work and didn't have enough healthy food packed, plus I was stressed out, and then yielded to chips and candy.  The other time was at the potluck following ritual.  I had a taste of everything - and it was all good!

Prioritizing:
Choosing 3 most important tasks for each day helps me to clear my mind and focus.  I would like to develop this practice into a consistent habit for myself.  But meditation is a more immediate and challenging goal right now than this type of prioritizing.  This may take a more central focus in week three.

Affirmation:
The primary affirmation I am using is "lighter & brighter."  I try to return to that when I'm making choices throughout the day, for example about my attitude or food.

Grounding:
I didn't highlight this in last Sunday's post but it is intended to be part of the course.  In the past year I've learned several grounding techniques that work well for bringing me back into awareness of my body and for remaining attentive, clear, and respectful of myself and others.  Similar to meditation, it's difficult for me to schedule time to practice grounding and was very inconsistent about it last week.  I mainly know how to practice it in the moment when I'm starting to feel stress.   I'm not sure where it fits in my day, as a part of general healthiness.  Maybe in the evenings before bed.

So for this week I'm continuing with good food and regular yoga and I'm being attentive to consistent daily meditation.  I'll also continue with the prioritizing and grounding, but am less concerned about how regularly I hold to them right now.

I feel good.  I feel like this program clearly identifies aspects of daily life that support me physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.  It brings them all together in a do-able way.  When I'm in the mindset of doing this program, I find I complete more of the things that are important to me.

Imbolc

Imbolc is a holiday recognizing Spring and the return of light and growth to the land.  It's celebrated in the Northern Hemisphere on February 1st or 2nd.  Back in the day it was a holiday about pregnant ewes and newborn lambs.  Contemporary celebrations hold that same rejoicing and relief in spring but urban types are less about livestock and more about growth and change in our lives.

One of the first things I learned about the contemporary form of this holiday was that it calls us to remember our resolutions for the year and really dig into them.  Along with this was an invitation to a diet of early greens and other vitalizing foods.

This year, in honor of Imbolc, I'm returning to my adaptation of Goddess Leonie's Radiant Goddess course.  The average day incorporates: meditation, yoga, a commitment to 3 priority tasks for the day, an affirmation, and a healthy food plan.  (The original program is vegan/raw but that's too intense for me right now.)  The program is not about how much weight one can lose in 21 days.  It's a complete set of activties that support lighter and brighter living.  For me, that means helping me to eat healthfully and mindfully as well as reinforcing my yoga practice, and generally fostering a positive disposition.  

In the last week I've said good-bye to the cookies, pizza, margaritas & nachos and my long list of guilty pleasures.  I've composed a handy list of non-food, encouraging treats, like a hot bath or a mommy-date with a girlfriend, or just a new magazine.  I gave L a grocery list for healthy meals and snacks.  I'm even stepping up my yoga practice to a more intense routine, starting today, and I'm feeling it!

This year Imbolc for me is about recognizing the next steps out of my long depression and into the light of self-care and vitality.  I wonder if the depression will ever really go away and be healed.  But I'm grateful for these holidays that call me back to myself, call me back to the life I want to be living, and call me back to the best parts of being human in this particular place and time.  I so easily slide away from all these things.  It's good for me to have a calendar of special days, and group of people to with whom to note them, to call me out of the dark creases of my own mind and into the engagement, work, and gifts of living.

light & life in our kitchen window

HAES (health at every size)

I've been lurking on HAES blogs for the last couple of years.  Simultaneously, I've been committing and recommitting to weight loss goals.  The two focuses don't really fit together.  I think something in me is done with fighting my body and arbitrary restrictions of dieting.

full-figured yoga

I finally read a couple of the primary HAES resources: Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon and Lessons from the Fat-O-Sphere by Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby.  Bacon's book is very informative but kind of dull and clinical.  Harding & Kirby write with a lot of personality and they include lived experience that helps the reader to envision and embody HAES principles at the size she is today.

something to move in

I've finally acknowledged that weight loss requires vigilance.  It demands persistent attention to restricting carbs, counting calories in and out, wrestling with dieting fatigue and the inevitable rebounding numbers on the scale.

Now imagine redirecting all that into my yoga practice instead.  I won't likely reach an ideal number for my height and bone structure... but maybe I'll cultivate some physical and personal strength, comfort, and peace.

fit, flexible and focused

So I'm starting 2012 with the intention of making some peace with the weight & shape I am. 

I'm trying to accept this weight range that I live in.  I'm paying more attention to feelings of hunger and fullness.  I'm eating delicious, nutritious foods and even some treats.  I'm making time for the activity I really enjoy and appreciate, yoga, regardless of the effect it will or won't have on my weight.  I'm dressing in clothes and colors I love.  I'm nixing my own dieting talk and hope to share a little love of today's body with family and friends who've shared the same struggle.

Samhain's gift of Joy!

Sunday evening's Samhain ritual included a guided meditation through an experience of death and rebirth.  In the meditation we recalled the great loves and delights of our lives as well as our offenses and mistakes.  We were led to know them and then release them.  The words are flat on the page here but within ritual the experience was vivid and visceral.

When the meditation ended I had a clear directive, Go forth in Joy!  Four days later and the message remains.

My current program of reinvention stems from an uncomfortable convergence of two opposing (yet equally crummy) beliefs about myself.  One, I am too old, my life and my choices have already expired before I reached for them.  Two, I am too young, lacking the experience and authority to speak and to act with confidence.  But these are arbitrary judgments based in - fear? desire? (a list of things too long for a blog post?).

When we laid down our memories in the meditation we also released what they meant to us.  We released the praise and the criticism.  All the judgements disintegrated.  Nothing remained.  Then we were invited to begin anew. Go forth in Joy!

Maybe my best years are before me.  Years of marriage and mothering, of writing, friendship, spirit and confidence.  Maybe those years are already within me and all around me in this very moment, right now.  I enter these bright new years and they find their expression in me when I go forth in Joy!

reinvention: role model

self-portrait Sunday

family trip to the park

This is our first weekend since L started full-time work.  It means we're all home together for the weekends!  Family goes to the park.  Family bikes to the woods.  Family watches preschool edutainment about animals.  It also allows for individual-time more easily as well.  One parent hangs out with Little N and the other one can do yoga or surf the web or write or nap. The possibilities for family and for self-care are expanding for all of us.

I know that this is normal for so many families but it feels like a big deal, like a luxury, to me.  This new schedule is the result of a big changes - choices - that L and I have made and that's got my world upside down.  Because in the deepest kernel of my brain I still believe that being a mom means that you don't get to make any more choices for yourself.  That everything is a matter of suck it up and endure.  That you are bound to only what is safe and popular.  At least, that I am bound to those things.  So to discover that a conventional job at an up-and-coming company wasn't right for me and then choosing something else feels... selfish, wrong, luxurious, inappropriate.  On par with opening a burlesque school or joining a Vanagon caravan of homeschooling new agers. Different.

I understand that that isn't true.  I can peruse the evidence on-line and in life and understand that there are many ways to be a good mom.  Slowly but surely the lies and half-truths in my mind are getting shaken loose, turned upside down and inside out so something true can be perceived and acted upon for me and for my family.  Like this first weekend together.

gratitude Wednesday

I am grateful:

• Little N is thriving and enjoying his days with Miss K and Little D.
• L has started full time work after 3 1/2 years away from it and doing a terrific job.
• I have given notice at the not-so-fabulous-for-me job and making a big change.  I start part time work at the old company in a totally different role on September 26.  
• New beginnings and trying to see living differently.
• L supporting me and encouraging me to make a change in employment and our roles that effects our family and our daily lives in so many ways.
• Our dear Miss A has returned safely from her pilgrimage with lots in her mind and on her heart.
• My therapist keeps turning my beliefs upside down in useful, livable, liberating ways.  
• The real possibility of being able to get together with friends.
• The real reality of having my husband at home more.
• Creative ideas and the time and energy to develop them into creations.

Self-Portrait Saturday

what's going on out there today?

another at-ease Saturday for Little N & me

My 50-day practice is barely holding on. My job is persistent drain on me. My mind is preoccupied with questions and worries. But for Saturday.

Our weekly island of calm. Tidying, order-making, mommy-soothing chores like laundry and dishes. A long walk in the morning sunlight. Coffee. Hours in the living room with a wild mix of toys. Breezes through the blinds. A little boy's nap. A little time alone in quiet.

I feel like we're swinging rung to rung on the monkey bars these recent weeks. Grip. Swing. Reach. Slip. Hang. Swing. Reach... until I settle two feet on the ladder called Saturday. Catch my breath. Turn around. Survey the current landscape and perspective. And then... Reach into a new week.

Big changes coming for us again. L starts full time work this week. Little N will go to a friend and her child for babysitting. I'm negotiating a job change for part-time work. Reach. Grab. Swing. Reach. Grip. Slip. Hang...Hang...Hang. Swing. Reach. Please, let the other side of this be different. Maybe a longer pause. A different pace to this Swing & Reach. Or a new game altogether.

Some folks love the momentum and speed of these particular monkey bars. I see them at the office where I work. Energetic and energized by the game and the other players swinging and clambering around. It's good for them and they should have it. But I'm a little different from them. It's not good for me; it doesn't excite me and move me rung to rung like it does them. I should and will do something else.

I know it can't all be Saturday. Even Saturday wouldn't be Saturday anymore if every day was Saturday. But they can't all be Sunday night either. All weariness and dread for the week ahead. So I'm surveying a place to make a pause, like Saturday, and plan my next Reach.

Self-Portrait Saturday (ahhhh)

finally, a nice, normal, Saturday

A bowl of fruit for breakfast while Little N drives trucks, with vividly accurate sound effects, along the end of the kitchen table. Laundry started. Yoga and core workout done. Wind rustling and rattling through the blinds. Happy sigh.

My 50-day practice has languished, but not surrendered yet. I've managed to hold onto pieces of it, and return to pieces of it even in the midst of challenging days. Like choosing yoga to resolve a stressful spinning in my head. Or making two out of three meals gluten-free by avoiding the free bagels at the office. And enjoying a long walk with L and Little N at the end of a roller coaster day.

I still have 13 days until my birthday weekend. So I'm recommitting to my practice now with a focus on these things:

• listen to a meditation in the morning
• some kind of movement every day - a family walk counts
• grounding - by taking 10 minutes away from my desk in the afternoon
• speak up about the additional resources I need to do my job and ask for them
• gluten-free, lush hydration, low-sugar, low-salt, fresh fresh fresh!
• write down what I am grateful for - and what I am enjoying and learning

There are some big decisions ahead of my little family in the next week. Anchoring myself in my practice will help me perceive answers and commit to choices. Wish us luck!

(day 37 of 50)

Self-Portrait Saturday

My intention these days is, "Show me I can do hard things."

I'm studying for my product certification at the new job. Mima stays with Little N while I go to the library for a few hours each morning to practice my demo. It's gradually coming along; gradually understanding what I'm doing; gradually memorizing the point-and-clicks.

And I'll be glad when this hard thing has passed.

(day 30 of 50)

Gratitude Monday

Today I am grateful for creature comforts:

• a gentle little yoga routine after a week away from it
• lemonade
• L getting an early release copy of the new book by his favorite author
• soy chai lattes
• quinoa tabbouleh at the healthy food store
• blue jeans and a super soft t-shirt
  
• a 5-day weekend starting on Wednesday
• the smell of fresh sheets on the bed
• a quiet apartment to myself for a little while
• a quiet nearly-empty library on my lunch break
• cool evening breezes

There's really so very little that I can control. But I worry it and worry it like a loose tooth that just isn't ready to come out. Creature comforts bring me back to my senses - smell, sound, sight, taste, touch - and the real world I inhabit.

(day 25 of 50)

Self Portrait Saturday

The very tired mommy.

Kiddo went down for his nap. Do I take some time for myself? Maybe I'll lie down for 30 minutes and then still have a little time for myself.

I woke up 2 hours later.

It was a long week. Much of my 50-day practice fell aside this week. I managed to hold onto my eating plan and some grounding but meditation and yoga were neglected. I focused on nutrition, hydration, prioritizing, and then sleep.

With the benefit of some deep rest and time with Little N the fog of rushing starts to clear from my head. I can see what I've learned in the last couple of weeks about my work and about myself. I can make next time (which is soon!) a little better.

(day 23 of 50)

Gratitude Sunday

Today I am grateful for:

• the good sense to catch myself mid worry and grouchiness and change my mind for a better weekend with Little N
• "Little N, where did we go today?" "See Baby C." " He was pretty funny to play with..." "So happy."
• L's silly photo of himself emailed to me for giggles and love at the end of the long Saturday
• friends who haven't seen Little N for a while noticing how well his speech is developing. He tells us what he wants and needs, he greets friends, he puts familiar words and ideas together in new ways, he's conversational. It's more and more fun!
• making the time for yoga.
• little bamboo trellises for the Morning Glories on the deck.

(day 17 of 50 - one third completed)

Self-Portrait Saturday

ugh

a long day of this...

trying to get to this...

Little N and I enjoyed a good morning out, but the rest of the day was anxiety and preoccupation with work-stuff. It was late in the day before I figured out what was going on. And then - shook it off somewhat.

Worrying the job of next week robs me of these rare hours with Little N today. And thepresent moments with N are what I do the work-week for in the first place. Kiddo is so bright and responsive to a little attention. Blooms and beams.

Composing lists of "to do" and questions will have to assuage my worry until I'm back in the office and can actually do something about anything. Given the last two weeks, I think everything is prepared anyway. Now for the last minute verification (worry), carting things to sites (don't forget!), and execution (know it all and have it all at your fingertips).

(day 16 of 50)

Gratitude Sunday

Today I am grateful for:

• Super Mima flying to the rescue - mom is coming to stay with me and Little N for a week while L goes home AR
• L going to AR - the circumstances are sad, but I'm grateful that he will have the chance to say good-bye to his father, visit with his mom, meet his nieces, and all the other pieces of a trip home after years away
• N has a preposition - "Let's go on the park." "The truck is on the water." Just the one is enough for growing sentences.
• catching up with a friend I hadn't seen in months and finding renewed resonance between our lives
• a tomato cage
• quick simple recognition from my boss, "You're doing a great job keeping all these balls in the air," at the end of a long week.
• Learning my job better so that I can keep all these balls in the air, moving, know when to set them down... etc.
• making good connections - thoughts to feelings to experience to my body to the glimmering foundation of the future
• big trucks left at the park for any child (Little N) to play with
• good variety in the bulk section at the market next door
• kiddo's mischievous giggling delight at spraying mommy with cold water

(day 10 of 50)