No longer on the run

I started this blog with the primary intent of posting ramblings about life, yoga and my journey to the 2008 Knee Knacker trail race in July. I had begun with an outline of several race goals to keep me inspired along the way to KK. Instead of a year of race adventures and accomplishments, this year so far has been about balancing work, school, injury, volunteering and trying to stay above water. As a result I have not accomplished a single event that I set out to enter this year. I believe that is a first for me! However, I am trying not to be too hard on myself - life has been busy.......and somewhat draining.

In the midst of all this busyness, somewhat of a miracle has entered our lives. My partner and I are expecting our first child in November! As a result, Knee Knacker is not in the cards for me this year. I'd really hoped that I might be able to do this race before leaving BC but as you might guess, I'm no Paula Radcliffe and doing 4 hour training runs up and down mountains is probably not the best for babe. Regardless, I had been running through this pregnancy up until the last month or so. I ran the Pacific Spirit 10km race with a friend from work - nice and easy and slow. The next day I couldn't walk - the pressure on my pubic bones was unbelievable. I had felt this a little bit after running before but nothing to this extreme. As it turns out, my pubic bones have begun to separate and upon doc's recommendations, I am not to run or do impact exercise or even walk for too long of a distance for the remainder of this pregnancy.

Normally it would be unlike me to adhere to such severe recommendations against participating in one of the few activities that keeps me sane, but of course I want to do everything I can do to keep babe healthy and strong. For as long as I've been doing it, running has been my sanity. It is also the most convenient way of fitting in time to exercise myself and my dog in the midst of a busy schedule. Right now, I just don't have time to walk the dog and exercise myself. So those of you that know how much I love my dog can probably guess that Otis gets priority. However, I have been trying to get him used to the mountain bike so we can go out together - now, that's an adventure all on its own as he is so afraid of bikes! I'll write more on this in another post.

Most runners go through withdrawal when they can not run. It's during those times of injury that you swear you'll never have a moment of being unmotivated or complain about running in the rain. I have sort of felt a bit of withdrawal but to be honest, this does not compare to anything I've felt when I've been injured and unable to run. I know I'm not running to preserve the health of this new life inside of me. That is a pretty cool feeling and I'm thankful for that. To be honest, it feels damn uncomfortable even when I try to run to the bus stop right now so I could not imagine running for any distance.

The challenge now is motivating myself to do other forms of activity (that I'm not all that crazy about) to stay active and healthy so that I can return to the trails after baby is born. I wonder how good those baby strollers would cope on the Baden Powell trail....ha ha.

So, now this chick is no longer on the run for the remainder of this pregnancy. For the next 5 or 6 months this blog will be more about the tales of a pregnant yogini chick mostly likely rambling about her growing belly.

Peace.

Have you laughed yet today?

"A good, real, unrestrained, hearty laugh is a sort of glorified internal massage, performed rapidly and automatically. It manipulates and revitalizes corners and unexplored crannies of the system that are unresponsive to most other exercise methods." ~Author unknown

"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter." ~e.e. cummings

I remember getting into trouble as a kid for laughing at the dinner table. My sister and I would get into uncontrollable fits of laughter where we were on the verge of having food fly out of our mouths or milk come out of our noses. Usually, there wasn't one thing in particular that inspired the laugh. The joy must have been so bountiful that we just couldn't contain ourselves. So...we got in trouble. That made us laugh even harder! As much as we tried to squeeze our lips shut, the sounds would squeek out and lead into another belly-aching outburst that might have ended in a race to the bathroom to pee.

I've been caught laughing in church at my cousin's baptism and at a family reunion gathering where one of my relatives was delivering a sermon. In this instance, my aunt and I were laughing so hard we had no choice but to disguise our laughter by pretending to cry - we thought tears would be more socially acceptable as it might appear that we were emotionally moved by the sermon. (As you can probably guess, this was not in fact the case). I'm reflecting on this because of all the times in my life where I've felt so joyous to laugh, I've felt pressure to contain this fantastic expression and conform to some social rules about adult laughter. Those that know me may say otherwise particularly if they've watched a movie with me. I've been known to laugh at things that the audience doesn't find nearly as funny or laugh a little after the punch line. Regardless of whether or not a laugh is timed right, why are we sometimes compelled to quell such a powerful expression?

I think this laughter suppression is why we see the rise of laughter yoga, laughter meditation, laughter therapy, humour therapy and laughter clubs. Don't you find it odd that we have to structure laughter back into our day? It's kind of parallel to the fact that we've engineered movement out of our daily routine and now we have to re-integrate exercise back into our day in order to keep ourselves healthy.

I'm reminded of all this because of my yoga class today. We closed with a laughter yoga session - the instructor suggested that we 'fake' laugh as fake laughter generates the same beneficial physiological response as genuine laughter. Blood flow increases, good hormones flood the body, and our immune response is enhanced. From my yoga mat, there was no need to fake it - after the instructor let out the most hilarious gut-busting laugh, I joined right in with pure genuine laughter. We really should not let a day pass without one of those abdominal aching laughs! I read somewhere (can't remember where now) that 100 laughs is equivalent to 10-15 minutes of aerobic exercise. Can't you just picture it ..."4 more now... ha..ha..ha..ha...okay only 96 more to go......

Let's Pick up the Phone!

Okay, I'm on a bit of a rant today. I think it started with the horribly stinky feet smell in the gym at lunch. The smell near the cardio equipment was so intolerable; I nearly gagged out loud and ended my workout early. With running being off limits as per the doc, I quelled my gag reflex and continued on the X-trainer in the quest for a little sweat.

However, the negative olfactory incident was the apparent impetus for more objectionable experiences for the remainder of the afternoon. I will refrain from providing an inventory of all my pet peeves but I will just mention one that reached a breaking point for me today: overuse of email carbon copy!! I call over users of “carbon” copying: cc happy. I don’t know if the motivation is to remove responsibility or to keep people informed but I do believe that too many of us hit “reply all” without really thinking about whether we need to send that email to 20 people. However, some believe that if you are not cc happy, you are not being transparent! Come on…we already get more than enough email to respond to in a timely manner.

On another note, if you can avoid sending 10 emails back and forth (and to 20 people 10 times), pick up the phone. One conversation can clarify a lot especially when there may be underlying tension in the email exchange. Why so reluctant to pick up the phone or walk to the next cubicle? Please, let’s bring humanity back into our offices before I go nut bar……..

Okay, I’m off to check my email…..no more rants tomorrow……..

Divinity is in Everyone

Yoga means 'union'. The goal of yoga is to create 'oneness' - within ourselves, with each other and with our natural surroundings. Yoga does not believe in divisions yet our western mind likes to categorize and segregate and classify things and people. When you pass a homeless person calling out for spare change, what do you think? When you pass heroine addict passed out in the street, are there judgments that run through your mind? If I have money in my pocket and am free of addictions, am I so different from these people. Yoga says that we are one with each other - we are a part of everyone and everything. I think I am beginning to understand this concept more and more.

Through my practicum experience this semester, I have had the fortune of meeting some amazing women. These women have had very different upbringings than me and many of them lead very different lives with numerous struggles that I could not even imagine myself going through. They are more courageous and brave and inspiring than I could ever hope to be. Yet on many levels, we are one and the same with the same needs for love, connectedness, self esteem and the opportunity to contribute. It is only the mind that points out all the differences - the heart quickly discovers that we are so similar.

Out of the storm!

School has consumed most of my time over the last two months. Endless hours of reading, web posting and paper writing have led to the scarcity of blogging of late. This kind of busyness had led to breakfasts for dinner, mounting piles of paper all over the house, growing laundry piles and basically ignoring whatever is not necessary. Even running and yoga have fallen into those categories on too many occasions. My two essential life giving practises have been overtaken by paper deadlines! Uggh!

No longer - I have come out of the storm! Hallelujah! I submitted my final paper on Tuesday – I expected to feel elation and boundless energy but instead my body became consumed with unbelievable fatigue and a great desire to sleep. Instead of feeling frustrated by my listlessness, for once I need to honour the need for my body and mind to recover from the last four months. Of course, I still have an astounding ‘to do’ list (as you may recall, I am somewhat fanatical about lists..) of all the things that I have not had the time to do over the last semester! Most of the list is filled up with house chores, gardening chores, banking tasks and the like… I had planned on scheduling these tasks on my few days off next week. At the top of the list, I think I need to focus on the ME tasks and then whatever else gets done is a bonus……sleep, eat well, do your yoga practise………read fiction (yes!)…….perhaps then my energy will surge back to what I once knew it to be.

Eternal Sitting

I wonder if there is study out there that measures life expectancy according to how much one sits or how much one sits in front of a computer. There must be a correlation because I honestly feel the life being sucked out of me the longer I sit here. The irony of all this school work is that by the time I'm actually finished my masters, there is no way I will want to go near a computer to do any work. I will then have to resort to a new career path related to climbing mountains or scuba diving or anything that does not require such long periods of sitting for extended days, weeks and months on end. All this sitting in front of of a computer is stealing me of energy and creativity and making my body rigid and saggy all at once. Yes, I chose this path.......must keep telling myself that. Oh man....... I try to live in the moment but I really can't wait for this course to be over.

Can't see the forest for the trees?

Caught up in the details of life, preoccupied with what happened yesterday and what needs to happen tomorrow, it is so easy to lose perspective and focus on seemingly important details that easily grow to become unnecessarily central to our lives. I have wasted too much of my time this past weekend worrying about what I wasn’t accomplishing (that I needed to) that I just set myself back further. While this would normally be my cue to go for a run – the computer hunch syndrome and a strange pain in my right hamstring necessitated that I opt for yoga practise instead. In lieu of running today, I fit in a short lunch hour yoga practise and evening practise to stretch out my aching body and racing mind. I just had to do a second practise because there was no way I was going to make any headway with school tonight or even consider the thought of sleeping.

The first three breaths, my mind is still speeding along thinking about the stresses of the day ………..then, somehow I find a groove. I focus on the breath. I focus on the inhale, the exhale – the pure simplicity of this nourishing oxygen slowing down the frantic thoughts and re-awakening my body. I finish the practise, with a massive appreciation for my health, the people in my life and miraculously leave the mat with a much healthier perspective.

Note to self: get on your yoga mat tomorrow.