The Facebook Challenge - Books

The Facebook Challenge – you’ve seen them. You get named as someone to say three things that you are grateful for, or name major influences in your life. I ‘received’ my first one the other day. An unusual one I hadn’t seen before. Name 10 books that have stayed with me throughout the years.

That certainly provoked some thought in me. What books have stayed with me? I stretched my memory back to high school and couldn’t remember what I’d read. How could I find 10 books that have stayed with me that long if I can’t even remember what I read?

So maybe I don’t have to go back that far. What did I read in my 20s that have stayed with me? As I scanned my bookshelves, there is very little that goes back that far. I have a number of cook books, books on training for athletics, and a few others.

I even remember about 10 years ago doing a major purge of my books. Ones that I had read, but no longer held an interest for me. Most of the books on my bookshelf are ones from the last decade.

The only way for me to come close was to morph the question. What are the ten most influential books on my bookshelf now (including my iPad bookshelf :)?

As I started the process, I wrote down a few books. Then I came to authors and speakers. Authors whose compendium of work is brilliant. Speakers who rarely write. So it’s a mixed bag.

After browsing through my bookshelf, I had over twenty. I tried narrowing it down, but only a few exited the list. Looking over the list what I discovered is that every one of these books changed my world. Through reading them I had new insights. Through reading them I discovered a whole new world. Through reading them my ideas of the world shifted in a big way.

The result is the list of the books that have changed my world, mostly in the past decade. So here’s my list:

• Blackfoot Physics
• If the Buddha Dated
• David Whyte (author)
• Running the Spiritual Path
• Adyashanti (author)
• Yoga Beyond Belief
• Douglas Brooks (speaker)
• Ender’s Saga
• Let My People Go Surfing
• Alan Watts (author, speaker)
• The Tao of Pooh/The Te of Piglet
• Forgive for Good
• Effortless Mastery
• Healers on Healing
• Life in Motion or CranioSacral Biodynamics
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull
• The Hidden Messages in Water
• Quantum Healing, Molecules of Emotion, Energy Medicine, The Body Remembers
• Explorers of the Infinite
• Robert Fulghum (author)
• Bhagavad Gita

 

So Begins My Days

I awake with the morning light
The sun peeking over the eastern horizon
Often I wish for another hour to sleep
Sometimes I indulge the fantasy
Bury my head in the pillow
Pull blankets over my head
At attempt back to the darkness
Soon thought Emma is there
Wanting her ritual morning belly rub.
Her pleasure met, I rise out of bed
Feel the dawn muscles
Emma is ready
She’s definitely a morning dog
Smiling, wagging her tail
Her walk is next
For me it’s an easy stroll
To stir to the day
Emma is endlessly curious
Smelling everything
Ready to chase anything
I relish and commune with the rising sun
Soaking in the warmth and waves
Marveling at the blue sky
Perhaps a waning moon hangs still
An easy loop and back home
So begins my days

Speaking the Unspeakable

So often words are meaningless

when it comes to truth,

or love

 

They can offer a glimpse

Into the heart

And then fall woefully short

 

The grief of losing

A loved one

 

Awe and wonder

At life

 

So few can do it well

Still their words

The words

Of poets

and sages

angels of all kinds

 

They are infused

with the spirit

of the universe

 

To read them

to see them

 

Really

is to feel them

with all the senses

 

So that you too

become what has

always

been

Letting Poetry Come

How to express in words

when so often

words can’t begin

to convey

truth

 

Poetry

and prose

are often revealers

 

Where the words

and the space between

have roles reversed

 

Words offering an insight

an invitation into

another world

 

The world of spaces

is

where real meaning

reveals itself

 

The next time words

fall flat

let poetry

be the guide

 

Write the invitation

let the rest

be felt

 

Edges, Yoga and The Unknown

 I am fascinated by edges, by what’s possible in this human form. How far can we push our bodies? What is the limit of our intellectual and psychic capacity? Where do we begin to meet mental limits? I am certain that we all have far more capacity than we can possibly understand and our limits are just that, our own imaginations. I know because I’ve played on those edges, and I’ve been witness to thousands of people doing more than they thought imaginable.

 

The going beyond – some is possible because of sheer willpower, another is because of doing something that matters, and sometimes it’s simply never been tried.  Beyond that is just surrendering to the moment. And then there’s Grace, and allowing things to happen, getting out of our own way. To put it another in a bumper sticker form – “Let Go and Let God” (in whatever form God means to you).

 

My perspective comes primarily from several decades of being involved with ultra-endurance sports. Cycling events that last 12, 18, 36 hours and longer; running events that are multiple stages; adventure races that span a week. I’ve been a race and participant, event organizer, race director, volunteer, coach, and trainer. I know the realms of endurance and edges and pushing farther as well as anyone.

 

When we go to edges, we go to the unknown. We can see the horizon, but to go beyond the horizon that is something else. Do we stay in what we see and know, or do we try something new, something unknown?

 

For the past several years my favorite yoga classes, primarily taught by Kelly Larson, Kirsten Warner, and Sofia Diaz, have been very hard for me to describe and put in words. They are not the flow of vinyasa, they are not the 26 pose sequence of Bikram, they are not prop-based Iyengar, they are not the quiet of yin. They have elements of Hatha Yoga, but that’s only a start. We use familiar poses, and there is always something new. In these classes we often hold poses for a longer period of time, sometimes minutes. Some of them are more traditional poses, some are ones I’m never done in any other class, some are from the Qi Gong tradition. Many of them generate a lot of heat, most give the muscles a good burn!

The teachers and the poses draw on our devotion and inspiration to shine as who we are.

 

While we hold these poses, I often hear the idea that ‘the yoga’ begins when you want out of the pose. When doing ultra-endurance sports, you inevitably reach a point during a race or a ride where you wonder ‘What the hell am I doing here? Why?’ That’s when everything changes.

 

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was during a race when I reached that point of quitting, my coach said ‘just one more mile and then you can stop.’ It was the fall of 1997 and I was racing the Furnace Creek 508, a nonstop 500 mile bike race through Death Valley. The race did not start well for me. About 14 hours into the race I was riding at night on an uphill in front my support vehicle when I just stopped in the middle of the road and hung my head. My coach was in the support van as part of my crew, so he came out and asked what was wrong. I said I was done – done with cycling, done with endurance sports, I was ready to quit and go home. His reply was simple: ‘ok, that’s fine. Just ride another mile first’. I was far too tired and out of it to argue, so I continued. A mile later apparently I had forgotten what was so important just a few minutes earlier. (I did finish the race.)

 

In a similar way during these yoga classes, the teachers know the thoughts are mounting to want to move out of the pose. The teachers invite us to take one more breath, to hold for just one more second. To remain in the heat, to feel the burn. To relax and surrender into it, and do it for something that matters. In that same instant of wanting to release from the posture you are stepping into the edge, breathing into the unknown, a place you’ve never been before. Reaching into the unknown is an element of the power of it, it is also the grace of it, and it’s a place we often move with fear.

 

Hardly anyone begins down the path of ultra-endurance sports with the idea of going far in mind. Most start small and make incremental steps. At some point most people reach there desired goal, and in fact don’t know there’s more.  And there are the handful who continue on. Of course no one tells you what you’re really in for – edges, transformation, discovering your power, surrender into the moment, finding the unknown – all in a relatively subtle, and yet fully lived, reality of the sport and the moments.

 

These yoga classes I love so much have a similar feel. It’s not a place to start for most and no one is deliberately aiming for them, but once you do one you’ll know if it calls to you. It’s difficult to describe what actually happens and why I keep going, though somehow I may have just given it a feel.

 

Almost everyone I know who has embarked down the course of these yoga classes or ultra-endurance sports is immensely enriched in spirit, in personality, in their being by their experience.

 

This is a rare piece that is cathartic in its own way for me, as I find a piece of why I’m drawn in. In that same recognition, I appreciate why some people dip their toe in and find other pursuits.

 

I’m drawn to the edges, to the unknown. As I’m sure I will always be.

The horizon is but a line to be crossed, not a limit to be reached. Hope to see you on the other side of the horizon.

 

Tensegrity - the Good Side of Stress

Such a fantastic word – Tensegrity. It’s a relatively new word in the English language coming into existence because of Buckminster Fuller less than 50 years ago. It is a combination of the words Tension and Integrity.

 

The formal definition from Merriam Webster is this: the property of a skeletal structure having continuous tension members (such as wires) and discontinuous compression members (such as metal tubes) so that each member performs efficiently in producing a rigid form.

 

The idea needs a picture first:

 

In this picture the purple rods represent the compression members from the definition and form part of the integrity; the wires are the tension members. Both parts are needed, if any part is missing the entire structure will collapse. The term started out began as a design concept for building and moved into the realm of architecture. There are dozens of structures around the world that incorporate this design.

 

This idea also moved into the realm of biology and the makeup of human biology and onto bodywork. You see, we as human bodies are also tensegrity structures. Our bones are the compression members (the solid pieces) and our muscles are the ‘wires’ or tension members. We are different from the static structures as well because we move. Tensegrity structures like the one pictured above can move, in a limited way, and the entire system holds together.

 

For us as humans to move we have parallel ‘wires’ or muscles around the bones. On the front side of the femur, the long bone at the top of our legs, are the quadriceps muscles and on the back are the hamstrings muscles. Similarly in the upper arm we have biceps on one side and triceps on the other side. There’s a similar pattern throughout the body, and more to account for all our different rotations and axes of movement.

 

For those muscles to work properly they need to be under stress, that is have a load on them. When you grab your favorite beer and bring it from the table to your mouth, you place a load on your biceps muscles. Without that bit of stress the muscles wouldn’t work. Under most normal circumstances, the muscles have a balanced amount of stress which keeps them static. When we start to move, one muscle has to activate and move direction, while the other muscle relaxes to facilitate the movement; and then it reverses.

 

Astronauts who go into space for extended periods of time know how important stress is, even the stress of gravity. After being in space, the muscles atrophy because they don’t need to be used in the same way. The bones also deteriorate as well because they don’t need to be used in the same way. The normal stress of gravity isn’t there so our structure built to work because of gravity changes and adapts.

 

If we didn’t do anything and were couch-potatoes a similar thing would happen, where muscles and bones would atrophy and become weak because they weren’t being used. So we walk and our normal things. And we exercise – which helps to support the muscles and feels good. Certainly pushing it too far and we tax the system too far.

 

So enjoy your muscles and bones and the wonder of the human body. And Bless that bit of Stress that’s needed to keep us as beautiful Tensegrity structures!

 

The Secret Life of ... You

This past weekend I watched the movie “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” To give a quick summary, without giving away any details, Walter Mitty is responsible for the negatives from film cameras at Life Magazine. For the last print edition of Life Magazine, he needs to find the negative which will be the cover photo. In pursuit of negative #25, Mitty embarks on a series of adventures that are far of his normal character and life.

 

Or at least there’s enough in the movie to make it seem that these adventures are out of character – or are they really?

 

We all have secret lives. It’s not so much that we keep what we do a secret, but most people don’t know about what we really do. After all, how can we ever describe all our adventures and what they really mean, or what it was really like. For some, even, these adventures just become part of life; they don’t seem like adventures to us, they are just what we do.

 

As part of the movie, Mitty is on the eHarmony dating site and the representatives from the site are trying to fill out his adventures and life. Mitty is a quiet character so entire trip becomes a single sentence. His big adventure into Pakistan and the Himalayas comes down to ‘hiking in the Himalayas’ in text format, but the vivid experience he had was far more than that, and had a far greater impact on his life.

 

In my life, I’ve had dozens of adventures both at home and when traveling. On a riverboat on the Amazon River, running in Tanzania, a five-day trip to Australia to meet a woman, cycling under a full moon in France – and so many more. Each one is a full tale itself – the preparation, the people, the environment, the mystery, the adventure, what it meant. Yet each one became a few words in a sentence.

 

A few people know some details about Mitty’s adventures, and a few people know some details about some of my adventures. I’m sure the same is true of you.

The details aren’t the point though. As you watch Mitty, you do see a change in who he is, how he walks, how he carries himself. The adventure is part of the journey into fullness. That’s the same for me. What kind of adventures have you had? What are the details you remember and would want to share? Most importantly – how are you different because of that? What is your secret life and what does it reveal?