30 Days of Yoga: Conclusions

I've blinked and January 2013 is gone.

I succeeded in doing 25 yoga practices this month.

The Erin from 2011 would berate the Erin from 2013 about this failure.

But 2013 has brought a different perspective.

25 practices in 31 days (plus some running) ain't too shabby.

On the whole, I feel stronger and more aware than I did a month ago.

Aware enough to linger over a wonderfully made cappuccino at a newly discovered coffee shop.

Aware enough to realize that regular yoga practice is essential to my sanity.

Aware enough to be grateful amid my life's chaos for the beautifully windy day that was today, the last of January.

Namaste, friends.

Ice

On Friday afternoon, the wintry weather mix predicted earlier in the week swept in and, over a series of hours, coated everything with a not unsubstantial layer of ice.

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I am no stranger to ice; my hometown gets more of it, the evil shapeshifter cousin, than snow.

Where an evening snow falling creates a hush, a sealed capsule of silence, an evening sleet is percussive - at times sounding deceptively like rain, at others, a hiss that is the embodiment of its peril.

The winter before I turned 16, I fractured my leg stepping onto some ice from a sidewalk halfway between my and my carpool driver's house.  One moment I was vertical, the next, horizontal. I tried to stand and couldn't; I watched, helplessly, as the water bottle from my lunch bag rolled down the street. It was rather comical, really; especially when my savior arrived in the form of a passing motorist, a man many decades my senior.  I had had no idea there was any ice on that corner - it was the refrozen remnant of an earlier icing - but this invisible sheet instantaneously taught me what it felt like to fracture a bone. Because I knew it was fractured, even before the ER doctor grasped it, even before they X-rayed it.

Eight years later, a freak ice storm derailed me from a plane trip and stranded me in St. Louis. The next morning, I laced up my hiking boots and (very cautiously) trekked to Queeny with my camera. Because, though insidious, ice can nevertheless make the ordinary extraordinary. The day after the storm was a dazzling day; a couple of daredevil cross-country ski enthusiasts even tore past me on the trails.

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Friday night was dark and cold; I battened the hatches with beer, frozen pizza, and a book.

Saturday was even colder. The roads were relatively clear but everything else - grass, trees, roofs, cars, mailboxes, signs - was coated in icy shellac. The temperature hovered below freezing and my small town laid still well past noon. I practiced yoga alone, read my book, then practiced yoga with a friend and stayed for dinner with her family.  On the way home from her house, a thin veil of clouds covered the sky, allowing the moon to cast a corona.

For the first time this season, I am feeling winter in my bones.

This morning dawned gray and cold. I read for a bit, hoping the forecast was correct and the sun would break up the grey clouds. The sun, she did not disappoint. By mid-morning, the sun was out, trying her mightiest to melt the ice remnants. I bundled up appropriately for my first and only run of this week.

And what a fine run it was.  The air - still below freezing, but dry and calm - shimmered with cold and reverberated with the sound of ice sliding off roofs and hitting the pavement as it melted from tree-tops. My breath rose in clouds but my feet soldiered on, five miles, ten miles, twelve miles.

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Times like this morning, when my mind is wandering the earth at a far faster speed than that of my body, words cease to have meaning in their traditional sense. Piecing the experience back together for this blog, for posterity's sake, it a bit strange. Cumbersome.

I've been writing this post for several hours, taking breaks to thumb through notebooks of quotes, to look out the window at the rising full moon. I stumble upon this:

" 'What do I love?' musing on it. 'Very little. The earth. The stars. The sea. Cool classical guitar throbbing flamenco. Any colour under the sun or hidden deep in the breast of my mother Earth. [...] And storms...and the thunderous breaking surf. And the farout silent waves....and o, dolphins and whales! The singing people, my sisters in the sea...and anything that displays gentle courage, steadfast love. The still brilliance of garnet, all wine, water of life and bread of heaven and grave shimmering moon...' " (Keri Hulme, The Bone People, page 423)

30 Days of Yoga: 25 Days In

Hellllllo, people of the interwebs. Thought I'd fallen off the earth, had you? Fear not! I am here with the energy of a thousand suns!

I am happy to report that I have been fairly successful with the 30 Days of Yoga plan. The key has been allowing myself to do short sessions when time has been crunched and enjoying lengthy sessions when time has allowed.

I've surprised myself in this short period of time by being able to perform poses that I've avoided out of fear or frustration - i.e. parsva bakasana with extended legs. Face planting and/or breaking my wrists during even the beginning stages of this pose has been a major (albeit exaggerated) concern of mine, but apparently there are yoginis out there that can guide even spatially-challenged me into this complex pose with relative ease. (Thanks, Christine Price Clark!)

During this last week of January 2013, I look forward to finishing out this month of meditation, of strengthening, of deepening. I also look forward to getting back to a regular running routine.

Because before I know it, it will be spring.

My Tribute to Emily Macauley: Walt Disney World 20th Anniversary Marathon

On Sunday, January 13th, I witnessed thousands of men, women, and Disney characters run across a finish line. My sister Emily was among those thousands.

An alternate title for this post was "My Sister is a Bad-Ass."

Because I was so proud of her.

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The Disney marathon attracts a specific type of person, a specific type of runner. Many of the runners are either a) first time marathoners, b) Disney fanatics, and/or c) Brazilian. (On note C: I think every few minutes someone came across the finish line carrying the Brazilian flag. By the end, the MCs decided the Brazilian flag needed to be added to the official Run Disney wall. And no joke, those people are nuts. The winner this year is an eight-time champion and has the seven Mickey Mouse heads tattooed to his arm as proof.)

Let me start by confessing something: I was a total crank about Disney in the months leading up to the race. I found the website to be incredibly confusing and was a bit taken aback by the cost of everything. However, when it came to the weekend, I was incredibly impressed with the friendliness and courteousness that all runners, spectators, and staff showed everyone around them; while time had to be allotted for transportation, everything ran smoothly and we got from point A to point B with no problems; and while expensive, at the end of the day, I didn't have to think much about anything. Above all, though, never have I seen such a group of people be so supportive of each other. "Congratulations!" and "Good luck!" peppered every audible conversation.

I can see why so many people return.

Emily decided to run this race a full year prior to the event. In the months leading up to the race, she trained hard, running multiple races and inspiring a lot of her friends to tackle their own endeavors along the way.

When race day came, she was ready. Unbelievably, she was ready to get up at 3 am.

She, her boyfriend's mother Karen, and boyfriend's brother's girlfriend Carly all got up in the middle of night to allow for transportation to the race, which started at 5:30 am.

25,000 other people did the same thing.

I have no idea how many thousands more got up - like myself, my sister Colleen, my mother Janet, and the boyfriends Joel and Dave - at 4 am to ensure we could hoof it to the Magic Kingdom to see our runners go through the castle.

 It was rather beautiful. Even for a cynic like me.

 

The hours between 7:00 and 10:00 are a blur of reading, watching the live results, and eating back at base camp, waiting for our runners to come in.

We took up our seats in the grandstand to wait to spot our ladies.

Waited rather anxiously, actually.

You see, Emily is like me - fair-skinned and sensitive to the heat. Couple that with the fact that she lives in and had been training in Chicago's fall and winter weather and you can imagine how nervous she (and we all) were when the forecasted temperatures were going to soar well above the normal temperatures of Orlando in January and the comfortable zone for marathon running, period.

Sitting there in the grandstand, feeling my face and arms begin to burn, I couldn't help but think about Emily, wonder what mile she had crossed, wonder how she was feeling, wonder if she had run smack into The Wall or if she was still smiling.

After watching Carly and Karen cross the finish line, we waited for Emily. After a while, I couldn't stay in the stands and I made my way down to the barricade.

I scanned the faces as they ran by - a bearded Snow White, girl Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dums - and found myself fighting back tears.

I realized that when I did see Emily, she was mere yards from crossing a finish line that signaled 26.2 miles of running. There are many times a big sister looks at her little sister with pride when she accomplishes something that you have already done.

It's an entirely different experience when you watch her tackle something you've been too scared and too undisciplined to do. The level of pride and joy nearly bursts your heart.

When Emily did come cruising in, she was smiling, ear to ear.

She played it smart, ran a good race, and had a magical time.

And it was downright magical to be there for her, too.

30 Days of Yoga: 1 Week In

Eight days and seven yoga practices in, 2013 is off to a bang.

Here's how it looks so far:

Day 1: "Just One Dance" - 30 minutes
Day 2: "Come As You Are" - 63 minutes
Day 3: Running with "Cosmic Dance" - 23 minutes
Day 4: "Moon Salutations" - 60 minutes
Day 5: Running only
Day 6: "Remembering the Source" - 75 minutes
Day 7: "Coming Home" - 30 minutes
Day 8: Running with "Cosmic Dance" - 23 minutes

I have to admit, I'm rather surprised by my discipline this go round.

(But is it calm discipline or just a sheer spit and spite to make this happen?)

Whatever it may be, my body is definitely enjoying the benefits. Despite soreness in places I had forgotten, I am also rediscovering strength in the same places.

And using, stretching, and strengthening those muscles feels good.

2012 Year End - DailyMile

Fun graphic from DailyMile!

Ain't too shabby.

2013: 1000 miles, here I come!

Wow.

2012. 366 days. 366 seconds. from Jonathan Britnell on Vimeo.

Amazing video. Super catchy song. Thanks, Heather, for posting. Lyrics:

I see you hidden in the night I found you
I see you separate from the others
Bent crooked in the light around you
Bathing in the sight of the others

Chorus:
I couldn't say what I was thinking
My heart shrinking
Two sad sparks blinking in the sun
Wait one minute
I had to listen for it
It was hidden in the fall
Waiting on love to call

I met you in the dead of winter
I stood stranded in the water
Dug deeper than a crooked splinter
I turned away from all the others

Chorus

Sad hopes I'd hidden under
Tangled inside of me
You spoke like broken thunder
Deep into the center of me

Chorus

I hear it call in the center of it all
You're the love of my life
I hear it all in the center of my heart
You're the love of my life

Day 4: Savasana

"Some say that savasana, corpse pose, is the most important pose because this is when our body begins to integrate what it has learned. So close your eyes and let go." - Clara Oss-Roberts (Moon Salutation class)

After nearly eight years of practice, I am still amazed at how hard "letting go" - truly relaxing, deeply, allowing all of your muscles to release, including your jaw, your eyelids - can be.

And, even if I succeed at this task, there is still my mind to tend to. Quieting it can be even more daunting.

The final pose of most yoga practices, savasana is a study in this challenge.

Clara's right, though. While we, as yoga students, often take more pride in our ability to open beautifully into that perfect trikonasana or reaching our heart skyward in a graceful ustrasana, savasana is a humbling pose. It reminds us that practicing the art of non-action is as important as practicing the actions of deepening, strengthening, and opening.

Savasana is a funny pose. At times, I find that my mind is racing in time to my heart (some vinyasa classes, especially hot ones, set your blood a-pumping!) as I come into the pose, and I struggle to reign in my thoughts as they leap-frog from one topic to the next. Ten minutes of resting feels like ten years.

Others, I feel the peace wash over me like a wave from the moment I exhale into the pose and the minutes fly by like seconds, my mind temporarily taking leave of my body to fly around the moon, hang on some stars.

Savasana can be the sweetest of poses, if you allow it. The feeling of your prone body, lying atop your mat, on the earth; feeling the length of your body, from the crown of your head to the heels of your feet, pressed into the mat as your chest gently rises and falls.

Feeling your breath, you are in this moment, on your mat, in your home alone or at a studio surrounded by fellow students. You feel the weight of your breath, feel the air fill the nooks and crannies of your lungs, and you can almost imagine the blood as it enters your heart and goes back out to the tips of your fingers, your toes, your nose.

Savasana allows you to remember and focus on one thing: you are alive and able to practice movement and breath.

And stillness. 

Day 2: Come As You Are

The rain came yesterday with twilight and continued throughout the evening and into this morning. As the day wore on, the rain dissipated but the sky remained gray and a mist rolled in. The temperature dropped and chilled me.

It was an appropriately wintry day.

Since the very idea of running made me shiver and I wanted to wallow a bit in the coldness of the day, I thought I'd stray from my beloved Clara - whose classes are full of beautiful movement - and turn inward, slow down, and take a class with Christine, a certified Anusara instructor.

A Hatha yoga school, Anusara classes are taught with a focus on proper alignment in the poses. When I was first taking yoga classes 2006-2007, I stumbled upon an instructor who was inspired by this school and found her verbal and physical adjustments in these poses to be tremendously helpful and physically inspiring.

Draw my shoulder blades on my back and open my heart? Tilt my sit-bones back, lengthen my side-waist and breathe? Flex my feet, ground my thigh and pull my leg back into my hip?.....Oohhhhh, yes, that's nice.

Since alignment is so important in Anusara, instructors tend to have students pause in poses for longer, giving verbal cues on how to adjust deeper into a pose. I find when I am stressed and holding tension in my muscles, taking a class like this will help me breathe deeper and release those muscles.

Anusara classes will also begin with the instructor giving a meditation on a story or idea.

Christine's class today was appropriate as one of my first classes of my thirty days of yoga.
She says, (and I paraphrase):

No matter how we come to the mat - and there are usually two reasons -
We come to celebrate, when we feel good.
We may also come to lift us again, to bring us back again to the goodness in us, to the goodness in life.
Come as you are.

Resolution 1: 30 Day Yoga Challenge

Namaste, friends.

And what does Namaste mean? 'The gesture Namaste represents the belief that there is a Divine spark within each of us that is located in the heart chakra. The gesture is an acknowledgment of the soul in one by the soul in another. Nama means bow, as means I, and te means you. Therefore, namaste literally means "bow me you" or "I bow to you." '

Coming live from the mat, Happy New Year!

In 2013, I will turn 30. Therefore, I thought it very appropriate for me to open the new year by participating in the 30 Day Yoga Challenge.

You may remember seeing it on last year's resolution list.

2013 will have no list. But goals will abound. This first month, I want to take time to hone my discipline. And with that, I started practice. Nothing fancy today, just thirty minutes with my favorite MyYogaOnline instructor, Clara, and her vinyasa practice "Just One Dance."

I'm not sure what to expect this month. The only intention I'm setting is to bring myself to the mat, every day, no matter my mood or my energy level.  Bring myself and be present for practice. Breathe.

And while there, pause and let the world go on, in all its mysterious ways.