On Turning 30

When singer Josh Groban turned 30 he commented,  ”My 20s have been filled with a lot of trial-by-fire moments and uncertainty, but I’m going to enjoy my 30s the way I should’ve enjoyed my 20s.”  I say AMEN, HALLELUJAH and NAMASTE to that!

Today I reach that milestone that most women (and some men) seem to approach with great trepidation, sadness and fear – turning 30.  And you know what, it absolutely is a HUGE, FREAKING, BIG DEAL!  But not because I’m sad or resentful of aging.  Instead, it the perfect chance to reflect and an even better time to celebrate all that has been learned and accomplished over the last 30 years … and let me tell you, there’s been a LOT.  (2010, I’m looking at you!)

from debslessonslearned.blogspot.com

I wasn’t planning to blog this morning, but when I got up, I noticed in the mirror that I have wrinkles. OH NOES!  Then I smiled and they crinkled up around my eyes.  My forehead has lines between my brows from when I’m concentrating on something … and from all those years not wearing good sunglasses and squinting in the light.

I always thought I would mind wrinkles, that as someone with genetically good skin (thanks Mom and Dad!) I would be sad.  But when I look at my crinkles, I feel love and pride: love for all that I’ve been through and pride that I learned, survived and thrived.  Each one of those lines is a part of my story.

Oh, and did I mention that because I’m no longer coloring my hair, I’m finding lots more grey.  ::Shrug::  Part and parcel of the whole experience.  I hope that as I get older my hair turns into that cool salt & pepper look.

I also reminded myself today, the day I turn 30, that I’m in the best physical shape I’ve ever been in: strong and flexible thanks to yoga, and running my first road race in a few weeks.  Not too shabby for someone who’s never been athletically inclined or fit.

A few months ago, one of my teachers asked (paraphrasing here) “Being the age you are now, what advice would you have given yourself ten years ago?  Fast forward 30 years in the future: what advice would you give yourself now?”

To myself ten years ago:
Cut yourself some slack and get rid of the schedule.  You won’t get married by 28.  You will not have your first child before you’re 30.  And it’s going to be just FINE.  Better than fine — life’s going to be great!  So go out there, live it, be in the moment, stop thinking/pushing for the future.

From myself thirty years in the future:
Make time for yourself.  This includes doing the things that make you happy on the deepest level: spend time with family and friends, travel, explore your neighborhood, practice yoga (and stop stressing about not meditating), cuddle, read, write, walk in the woods.  And eventually pay off your student loans.

I am grateful for my crinkle-wrinkles, my grey hair, my body, my mind and all the lessons learned. Even the painful ones.

I am grateful to have this day to reflect and celebrate.

Yoga Mat to 5K: The Countdown Begins!

Two weeks left!  I’m really starting to hope I can just finish the race without having to walk, but after this week’s run, it seems less and less likely.  I’m hoping it’s like tech week before a theatre performance: the worst performance is always just before the best.  The “dreadmill” played a huge part in creating running apathy and boredom.  Not being able to run outside is really frustrating.

Run #17
time: 31:51
distance: 2.4 miles
pace: 13:15
terrain: treadmill (ugh)
music: Podrunner Intervals; Week 7

It was supposed to be a 35 minute run, with a 5 minute warm up, a 25 minute jog, then a 5 minute cool down, but I got so bored/tired/frustrated about 18 minutes in that I just called it quits and walked the rest of the way.  Blah.

Power, Music, Thunder & Lightening: Just Another Friday Night at Yoga

HOUR OF POWER PRANA2MUSIC FLOW
downward facing dog (hold)
high plank (hold for 8 breaths)
down dog (hold)
walk to front for rag doll
spine lengthen
tadasana
Om Om Om
4 Sun As
4 Sun Bs
utkatasana twist
vinyasa to down dog
warrior II
reverse warrior
side angle lunge
extended side angle
half moon
triangle
prasaritta A
pivot toes to front of room
eagle
::wash rinse repeat::
vinyasa to high plank and hold
down dog
jump through to seated & roll onto back
bridge
bridge/wheel
supta baddha konasana
happy baby
abs with block (from the Alex Amorosi school of abs)
rok & roll & vinyasa to down dog
half pigeon
inversion
spinal twist
savasana
OM

PLAYLIST
Carbon Leaf – “Life Less Ordinary”
The Killers – “Smile Like You Mean It”
Glee Cast – “Forget You” (oh yeah, I put it in here)
Muse – “Neutron Star Collision”
U2 – “Elevation”
Neon Trees – “Animal”
Enrique Iglesias – “I Like It”
A.R. Rahman – “Jai Ho”
Dave Matthews Band – “Best of What’s Around”
Jason Mraz – “The Remedy”
Madonna – “Open Your Heart”
Ozomatli – “Let Me Dream”
Israel Kamakawio’ole – “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”
Mumford & Sons – “Awake My Soul”
The Poozies  - “Another Train”

This was my first Prana2Music and despite being a bundle of nerves I had a ton of fun!  I had a lot of support from teachers and friends, though, so friendly faces always help.  Biggest technical glitch was getting the crossfade to work.  I could get it in iTunes itself, but it didn’t transfer to my iPod, so for future classes I’ll need to work on making that better and more seamless.

After teaching the hour of power to music I taught my regular Friday night flow at 7:30 … to a GIANT thunderstorm!  We had a lot of fun with that in class.  I mean, when the blue lightening is lighting up the studio and the thunder is shaking the walls, you’ve just got to go with the flow!

It was also a great day for questions from my students.  Lots of interesting thoughts about alignment, where feet should be and a lot of “is what I’m feeling ok?”  I love these questions as it’s a chance for me to get to know the students better, to reassure them, maybe offer a helpful adjustment if needed, but really to support them in their practice.

Overall, it was a crazy fun night and absolutely captured the very reasons why I teach yoga.

Yoga Mat to 5K: 3 Weeks Left

artbywicks.com

Only three weeks left in my training. Starting to get excited and a little nervous, but feeling more prepared than I was even a week ago.  This is mostly due to a small mistake in timing I made in Thursday’s run. I’ve never had a great sense of timing, especially when it comes to judging distances.  I thought it would take me 30ish minutes to run from HBS to the BU Bridge along the river and back. HAHAH!  I both way overestimated my pace as well as the distance, and what was supposed to be a 25 minute long jog turned into a 40 minute jog.  The upshot is that I proved to myself I can jog at a steady pace for 3.2 miles (3.6 in this case).  The downside is that my legs are TIRED.  Not sore but very, very tired.  But hey, I jogged a 5k!!!  Didn’t mean to, but sometimes mistakes turn out alright!

Thursday was also the first outdoors run since December 6th.  Boston’s had a gorgeous few days with temps well into the 50s.  We’re even starting to see some bare ground!  There are still some icy patches along the trail, but most of it was clear and perfect for an early morning run.  It felt SO GOOD to be back outside.

Run #15
time: 32:23
distance: 2.67 miles
pace: 12:06
terrain: treadmill
music: Podrunner Intervals, Week 6: Mix 2

Run #16
time: 45:26 (!)
distance: 3.6 miles (!)
pace: 12:36
terrain: Charles River trail, HBS to BU Bridge and return
music: Podrunner Intervals, Week 6: Mix 3 and “Run1″ mix on ipod

Yoga Mat to 5K: Update

the only time treadmills are cool

I’m averaging one run a week right now.  Not good.  Not good at all.  Inability to run outdoors is the number one issue.  Other complicating factors are time and work/teaching schedule.  Even though I let go of one class, I’m still having a hard time fitting in my running, let alone time to practice yoga.

Here’s my question to those who live in winter climates: how do you fit in time for your running? I would especially love to hear from people who also juggle multiple work/fitness/teaching/family commitments.

This week’s run was awesome: felt great, energized and even amped up my pace a little to a little more than a 10 minute mile.  This is FAST for me

Run #14
time: 33:35
distance: 2.75 mi
pace: 12:10
terrain: treadmill to nowhere
music: Podrunner Intervals Week 6:Mix 1

 

Can You Copyright Yoga?

Another day, another news story about Bikram Choudhury.  This time he’s making waves for his ongoing quest to copyright or patent the sequence of 26 poses practiced in “Bikram yoga”.  Personal feelings about the guru aside, can you copyright yoga?

The nation of India says NO!

They are putting the final touches on a database that catalogs 1,300 different yoga poses. The goal is that “once the database is up online, patent offices across the world will have a reference point to check on everytime a yoga guru claims patent on a particluar `asana’.”

Three cheers for India!  However, the article gets a couple of things confused, so before we celebrate Open Source Yoga with many Sun Salutations, let’s clarify a couple things.

The article uses the terms copyright and patent interchangeably.  The two are not the same thing.  Let’s repeat that: copyright and patent are NOT the same.  According to copyright.gov:

Copyright protects original works of authorship, while a patent protects inventions or discoveries. Ideas and discoveries are not protected by the copyright law, although the way in which they are expressed may be [...]

So by its very history and definition, yoga, yoga poses and sequences of yoga poses cannot be copyrighted or patented.    Though this does touch on the age old debate of “what is yoga?” Is it a religion? A method of exercise? A spiritual practice? An idea? An invention? A discovery?

Even if someone (Choudhury, I’m looking at YOU)  DID succeed in copyrighting yoga, the multitude of ways it’s practiced and taught fall squarely in the camp of “fair use.”

Rather than find your own government guru, here’s a refresher:

“Section 107 (of US Copyright Law) contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:
1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

26 poses out of 1300 is absolutely fair use … if one was to go so far as to try and obtain some form of legally binding agreement to prevent anyone else using, teaching or practicing that same sequence without prior acknowledgment and monetary compensation.  Seriously??  Don’t make the Baby Buddha cry.

“But this is all in the US!” you might say.  ”What about India?”  The U.S. and India have a very close relationship when it comes to copyright and patent law. According to circular International Copyright Relations of the United States published by the US copyright office in 2010, India has participated and signed on all the major agreements of the last 83 years. (See page 8 of the report.)

So whether you practice a Power Yoga, Forrest Yoga, Jivamukti, Prana Flow, Prana Power, Bikram or Kripalu … it’s all yoga.  Maybe it can be trademarked, but it can’t be copyrighted or patented.

 

Love/Hate

I hate writing. I love having written
- Dorothy Parker

solojourney.com

I read this quote in Caroline Myss’ Anatomy of the Spirit.  Myss was referring to developing personal power and how “it feels like heaven once we’ve arrived, but the journey getting there is long and arduous.”  In the margin next to that sentence I wrote “I hate meditating/running.  I loving having meditated/run.”

When I posted the “I hate running. I love having run” statement on Twitter, there was a flurry of replies and retweets, mostly along the lines of “YES! Exactly!”

Anything worth having is worth putting in effort for, be it personal power, growing a meditation practice, training for a run, or starting yoga.  I felt the same way about yoga when I first started the way I now feel about running.  I had to bribe myself into going to class, usually with some little treat or going with a friend.  Once I got into the class, then it was self-reinforcement of “just try three more breaths.  Two more.  Last one. OK, now you can go to child’s pose.”  My yoga practice wasn’t meditative at all for the first couple years because I was keeping up a running dialog with myself, trying to keep myself going and keep myself from quitting.  The biggest reason I didn’t quit: I felt so damn GOOD after class.  There’s really nothing to describe the feeling in your body and mind after a well-balanced yoga class.  It defies description and can only be experienced.

With running I’m back to the self-bribery.  Hey, what can I say?  It works for me. I bribing myself with “run until the clock hits 20 minutes, then you can walk” or “run until this song and the next are over and then you can dial the pace down” or, my personal favorite, “run another 3 minutes and you can have hot chocolate after dinner.”  The things I do to motivate myself.

However, I love the feeling after I run.  The feel of well-used muscle, the freedom of breathing without exertion, that almost-lightheaded feeling, which I think might be “runner’s high”.  It keeps me getting back on the treadmill, despite the numerous conversations I have with myself to actually get me there.

It’s also far more mentally challenging to run on a treadmill (running to nowhere = SO BORING) than running outside, but until Mother Nature decides to stop dropping 10+ inches of snow every week, I’m stuck indoors, running to nowhere.

I hope that, in the near future, I can get back to a meditation practice.  I tried this fall and had to let it go.  Perhaps self-bribery can work for that too.  “Just sit another two minutes and then you can go running.” LOL!

What do you have a love/hate relationship with?

What I Read: January 2011

Into some serious reading mojo this month, which has been assisted by many snowy, cold Sundays spent snuggling in bed with a book until late in the afternoon.

One strange trend I noticed was an upsurge of “mold-breaking Regencies.”  I’ve been really drawn to novels (romances and mysteries) that explore the darker side of Regency England; books that stay out of the ballrooms and spend most of the plot in the gutters and back alleys.  It’s a welcome change from my usual fare of light, bubbly books.

I also got in two ebooks this month!  So far, so good with my Kindle.  The ease of download and the price point makes it a perfect tool for when I can’t get a book via my public library (a rare occasion).

Links take you to full reviews on Goodreads.com!