42 Days

Just before Christmas I began 30 days of yoga after being inspired by a conversation over Thanksgiving. Really I figured once I got past about 20 days, getting all the way through January would be doable and make it an even 6 weeks straight of yoga every day. What a great experience it’s been!

I laughed, cried, and smiled.

Surprisingly, I danced several times.

For several classes, I was a completely dripping – hot yoga is not my favorite thing.

Getting up at 5:30 for a yoga class is not my favorite thing either.

I was able to do a whole bunch of poses I’ve never even seen before, much less tried on my own.

A hot yoga class after a root canal does wonders.
More than once I was the only male in the class. And at least once I was the oldest.

After a while I started to be able to find a flow at home doing yoga on my own.

I learned to get over being self conscious about taking my shirt off when it was hot in class.

For an entire class, I felt complete stillness and how amazing that was.

Learning to pace day after day was part of the learning and challenge, and I believe I mostly worked it out.

A two and a half hour class is a lot of yoga – and I was able to do it.

And two classes in one day is also a lot – and it was fun.

Everything about my practice is different – I can bend, twist, and stretch more than before. I can breathe deeper and in more places. My core is stronger. I know I feel different from six weeks ago though I couldn’t exactly say what the difference is – but I like it!

I’m grateful to all the teachers and studios I experienced over the past six weeks – Amy Benton, Nikki Rogers, Jeff Bailey, Steph Uvalle, Stephen Uvalle, Jeannie Manchester, Brenda Wong, Angela Grace, Barb Beard Passalacqua, Michelle Anderson, Camden Hock, Livia Shapiro, Sasha Cohen, Patrick, Jack, Valerie D’Ambrosio, and Sofia Diaz.

A special thanks to Kirsten Warner for such great support and insight.

Now it’s time to wash some clothes and my mat! And as much as I’ve enjoyed this, I’ve missed running, so it’s time to put on those shoes and head back onto the trails and balance out running and yoga.

The Lady with the Dragon Eyes

We sat together, facing each other, she and I. We looked into each other’s eyes, something beyond staring and more than gazing. To be part of a deep revealing and connection. She slipped into my soul to be witness to the story of the spirit that lives, for now, in this human body. Communing and relating with an internal environment hardly contained by physical form. Feeling the sovereigns unmarked by time. Savoring the puzzle pieces still not fitted into form and place yet. Discerning a whole picture devoid of layers of consciousness.

While she looked, I noticed too. A feeling that time and space stopped or didn’t even exist or intermixed. Light became twisted and fuzzy, fading, focusing, returning. What was I really in this moment? Countless lifetimes from so many realities danced through my perception. Each revealed for an eternity of an instant to be fully experienced and then departed. A story weaved together, exploring edges for so long. Each building and building and building – to this life.

Those eyes, her eyes – I know those eyes. They are the eyes of dragons. The dragons I challenged in battles and wars. Some would best me, and some I would slay. Each clash would reveal the burning, bright eyes of a brilliant soul sharing deep reverence and admiration for the other. And … the dragons who were my dearest companions , brothers and sisters of the heart. The ones I rode on the backs of across so many starry nights and brilliant days; the ones I rode with into so many contests. Those eyes breathing Namaste.

The discoveries – a being crawling right from the rich dirt of this Earth, leading with a knowing, offering new sheaths of energetic ensembles. A child still with more to say and express. Water spirits of desire and power heard, but not felt. Beliefs to be released. Fullness and richness to be offered. A heart filled soul traveling the untrodden, but true path.

To the lady with the dragon eyes, I offer the breath of Namaste once again and a little Rumi.

Look at your eyes, how small they are, and yet they see mountains and stars and the infinite sky. In this circle of love the universe is one.
- Rumi

Diamond in the Rough

Lyrics to a song I wrote ...

In that moment

All you are is now

The past disappears into the shadows

The future is but a dream

Here is all that matters

Her smile reveals the title

Her touch weaves a story

Her eyes are clear and open

Her soul is bared to you

Feeling, knowing, twisting, being.

In these rare moments, you own soul

Is mirrored on all sides

For she reflects all that you are.

She’s the words and the expression

You … are … the … story.

Your own depth goes deeper

still deeper

And you know your own brilliance

A diamond in the rough

That isn’t so rough anymore

Sparkling, loving, shining, living.

Another layer is gone

And another new beginning

A diamond’s journey is never through.

In that moment

All you are is now

The past disappears into the shadows

The future is but a dream

Here is all that matters

Every Day ...

Every day I feel the most exquisite love flow through me.

Of friends of loved ones. For an astonishing life. To humanity and this universe we live in.

Every day I my heart is broken into a thousand pieces.

Every day I open my heart again … and again … and again.

Every day my faith crashes away and I feel the crushing weight of being left.

Every day I carve my faith again, renewed and fresher.

Every day I come to the two roads diverging in the woods.

Every day I take the one less traveled.

Every day I breathe – into my belly, into my back, into my body.

Every day I release something old, something that is no longer needed.

Every day I am the moth nearly scorched by irresistible flames.

Every day I am back for more.

Every day anger burns through me.

Every day alchemy turns it to love and compassion.

Every day fear rises up in my way.

Every day courage reveals new strength.  

Every day impatience sets its course.

Every day I set one of my own.

Every day I feel an unshakeable peace live in me

Every day I feel all the attempts to rattle it.

Every day I awake thrilled to be alive, living in this time.

Every day I awake ready to start all over again.

Zero Degrees Kelvin

This past week there was an article about scientists demonstrating a negative temperature in an experiment. Here’s the article - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/04/absolute-zero-record-setting-negative-temperature_n_2404666.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false.

A little background first – we usually think of temperature as a measure of hotness or coldness. It some ways it may be more accurate to say that temperature measures the amount of movement and interaction of molecules. If there’s no movement there’s no interaction. But when there is movement, there is interaction and every interaction involves a release of some energy as heat. Where there is absolutely no movement that is considered zero degrees Kelvin, where Kelvin comes from the scientist Lord Kelvin. The Kelvin scale and Celsius scale are closely tied where every 1 degree equates to 1 degree Kelvin, the different is that Celsius was meant to be more convenient and relatable to everyday interactions. Hence 0 degrees Celsius is the temperature at which water freezes or goes between solid and liquid, and 100 degrees Celsius is the temperature at which water changes between liquid and gas. Minus 273.15 degrees Celsius is equivalent to 0 degrees Kelvin.

As I’ve read more, like many topics, there are layers. Like when we learn physics equations seem in pure form, and then we learn about friction and other small factors that turn simple equations into complex formulas. The simple equations demonstrate the concepts which the full-blown equations are needed for more detailed areas. Temperature is like that as well where 0 degrees Kelvin is no translational movement in the classical model. Now I’m not sure what the classical model is, but there are clearly other dimensions of this.

Now the experiment used precise fields of lasers and magnetics to align molecules and generate a new energy state. This also begs the question – are our ideas of temperature wrong? Or need adjustment? And what about forces.

As I thought about this, I also wondered about force. There are four types of forces – gravity, electromagnetic, weak nuclear, and strong nuclear. The weak nuclear and strong nuclear are present within the nucleus of an atom. Gravity is an attraction between matter, and electromagnetic that is everywhere. Scientists don’t fully understand the mechanisms of these forces – how they work, how they exist, but clearly they do. Is it possible to have no movement or no energy while these forces exist? How is it that a single molecule could have no movement and no energy – after all it have the energy of the weak nuclear and strong nuclear force to hold it together? Or how is it that two molecules could remain completely stationary given there is a gravitational field between them?

I have no answers, only a curious mind that was blown open by this article and the idea of temperature loops and ‘negative’ temperatures. Science continues to amaze me!

I am not a runner

I’ve borrowed this title from my friend Lara Robinson and her Saturday Morning Zen blog. Lara recently wrote about not feeling like a runner. It got me to thinking … and I want to take it in a different direction.

In Lara’s blog she questions her status as a runner. She hasn’t run much in several months and voices the loss she feels.

I can relate to this feeling. At one point I was cycling five or six times a week with long rides on the weekends. I considered myself a cyclist. Then I went over the handlebars smashing my face, I don’t recommend this maneuver by the way. The recovery from the facial injuries and brain injuries took two years and for perhaps a year of that, I did very little exercise. My body wouldn’t let me, and thankfully I listened. I felt the loss of my identity as an athlete, as a cyclist. It was even more than that, I slept a lot and in general didn’t have much energy. I hardly went out with friends, I wasn’t very productive at work or at home. My identities as a productive person, as a friend, as a social being – and many more – were challenged over and over.

I didn’t know who I was or how to describe myself. My definition of who I was was dependent on what I did.

We all feel this and we feel this as loss because we hang our confidence and our identity on words and ideas. We are attached, and perhaps with good reason, to these identities; what or who would we be without them? For me, the sense of attachment is greatly diminished, one of the brutal lessons of losing your identities.

So as I read Lara’s blog, a different thought and feeling came to me. Running is an expression of who I am, but it doesn’t define me. Cycling was an expression of who I am, though I don’t express myself much that way anymore. Dancing, singing, playing music are artistic expressions of who I am. Doing bodywork and writing software are completely different expressions of who I am. As a friend, I convey myself in a particular way. As a lover, my heart and soul expresses in a beautiful tangle of bodies and hearts and energies.

Each of these, and more, is an expression of who I am. Each piece is like a hologram, where each piece of a hologram reflects the whole. They flow through me fluidly and easily (mostly).

So, no I am not a runner, but running is a genuine expression of my being and my soul. And it’s sure fun!

Committing

Currently I’m on day 12 of 30 consecutive days of yoga. The inspiration came from a conversation at a Thanksgiving dinner when a woman I talked to briefly revealed that she had done 30 consecutive days of yoga and how profound it had been. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but it stuck in my body.

For about two weeks I didn’t think much of it, and then the idea returned. Soon I was having thoughts about doing so. I would look at yoga studio websites, I thought about getting some one-on-one coaching to help, I thought about intentions, and so on. The odd thing was I had never decided or committed to do this, yet it seemed like I was fully on the way to doing it. This got me to thinking about committing, and I thought of different types of committing. So here goes.

A goal

This, to me, would be the most common. You lay out a goal for yourself, a resolution perhaps, and then you go for it. It could be small or big, but it’s a goal. The endgame is the goal.

An announcement

This is a good one – this is when we announce to several people, or maybe the world, what we are going to do. It’s similar to a goal, but because we’ve announced it we are now on the hook and accountable to get it done. We don’t want to have to tell the story of why it didn’t happen. It has deep external motivators.

Prove something

This is one I have some experience with. It’s when we decide we are going to do something come hell or high water, we have something to prove. It’s a fighter’s fight. We go in headlong, full of steam and get it done. It’s a lot of energy and often doesn’t have the real results we want, but damnit we’ve proved what we could do.

Go with the flow

I would describe this as exactly what I experienced setting up for my yoga stretch. The idea stuck in my body, it seemed my soul wanted to go for it. I didn’t need to commit because it was already happening and I just had to ride the wave (and oh yeah, not resist).

All-in

This one is rarer, and it’s thrilling. This is where everything aligns – body, mind, spirit, soul, being – where everything all at once says with the biggest scream and smile – ‘I’m all in’. The word commit almost doesn’t even seem to be big enough for this. Whatever the idea or action, it has complete alignment.

I’m sure there are others – what else comes to mind for you? How else do you commit to something?