in the soul's image

I spent a good part of January working feverishly on projects at work. In the midst of that, I participated in a goals workshop to prepare for the year ahead. I wrote about this a few weeks ago. it is always interesting and motivating for me to spend time evaluating my life and what I want to do with it. Now January is gone and I found myself this last week having to make adjustments already.

I tweaked my knee a week ago and have had to rest it. Nothing serious, but definitely a trip in the road towards my goal of running a marathon this year. I'm hoping the doc tells me today that I can return to running. He did tell me my knees look great for 50! No arthritis and no sign of wearing down...more like the knees of a 20 year old. Proof I am young and beautiful on the inside!

I spent most of yesterday creating action plans for my identified goals for this year. Having missed January, I made adjustments to begin where I am today. This is something I could not (or would not) do several years ago. If I felt I had failed somehow, I found it easier to let the goal fade away than to adjust and move forward. That "failure" would cloud my vision of what could be and send me into a defeatist attitude, therefore letting me off the hook for making the necessary changes to pursue my own dreams! The mind is a tricky thing.

The good news is I can use the mind's tricky nature to jump back into my dreams, to act as if I am beginning today, to envision the me I want to become, the life I want to live, and to adjust my starting point to today. I can't change yesterday or the week or month before. But I can choose today to pursue my dreams. I can choose to see the path and to take a step forward. At 50 what I have learned about goals is that I am the only one who can hold me back, and I am the only one who can move me forward. The way may not always be clear, but if I am open to possibilities and willing to see and do things differently, I can navigate the obstacles.

Let's take running, for instance. Running, for me never felt natural or easy. As a child I had asthma that would kick in with allergies as well as exercise. At times my lungs would feel like they were clamping shut, sending me into a near panic. However, the asthma rarely kicked in while swimming. When I think of this now, I wonder why swimming would not trigger the asthma, but running did? Did it have something to do with the controlled breathing necessary in swimming? Or was it something else?

I learned to run while training for triathlons 25 years ago. It was hard and so many times I wanted to stop, but I pushed through the initial heart rate surge and burning in my lungs to eventually get to a place where I could run 10 or more miles at a stretch. I would get into a groove and just keep going.

Starting again at age 50, I remember the discomfort involved with improving cardiovascular health, building strength, and working muscles that for the most part have waited idly to be engaged again. Yes, those things are uncomfortable, but moving my body again results in a feeling of energy so it is its own reward. No, the most difficult part of starting again, is clearing my mind of excuses, fears, and obstacles to just see the path in front of me. My mind is my worst enemy when it comes to change because it recalls previous experience and conjures a similar outcome, therefore dooming me to repeat the same experience again and again.

This is why most diets fail. This is why quitting smoking( _______ insert any habit here) is difficult. This is why change in general is difficult for humans. The same mind that can be enlightened and inspired to achieve extraordinary feats, may also be lulled into complacency, or distracted with seemingly enjoyable activity. The longer the distraction, the deeper it is reinforced as "the norm." So breaking the habit takes consistent corrective action. And convincing the mind of the value of the corrective action means re-wiring the response to a new "norm."

This is the basic premise of the" power of positive thinking", of visualization, and the power of a sudden realization, near-death experience, or wake up call. The mind is given a new option for responding. If you can see yourself making a different response, you can also create the pathway to get there. And the most powerful thing to me about all of this is the strength and steadfastness of the spirit to send the mind the soul's image of wholeness! So even at our darkest moments, we have access to an image of something different. Something that can inspire hope.

And so, full circle, I am back to my goals for improving specific areas of my life:

• Health & lifestyle
• Relationships
• Writing
• Travel
• Work
• Spiritual Practice
• Organization and decor of my surroundings

The road ahead is exciting and challenging, as each step brings me more into alignment with the Me I see in my heart and soul. And the only true failure is the failure to try.

Play, not work

Day 4

Ran this morning before work. I passed a lady walking her two dogs who stared at my bare feet. When I got closer to her, she says, "Look at you out here barefoot." I laughed and replied, "Running with shoes hurts my hips." To which she laughed and asked, "So what does this do to your feet?"

Good question!

I felt a small abrasion on the bottom of my right foot while running today. (This foot has a small bunion and becomes swollen when I wear high heels.) It didn't really hurt, in fact I thought I had something stuck to the bottom of my foot. Kyle says this is most likely from pushing off. He suggested lifting my toes first and placing my whole foot down on the ground, that the forward momentum should come from the hips and knee moving forward, and the feet remain relaxed. I will try this as I run tomorrow.

Today's Run:
Distance: .34 miles
Time: approximately 6 minutes
Calories burned: approximately 100
I felt good. I focused on staying relaxed and not bouncy.

Food:
Breakfast: oatmeal
Lunch: handful of almonds, never made it to lunch due to meetings
Dinner: chicken tortilla soup, tortilla chips
Total calories: 750
Felt: hungry at bedtime, but too late to eat more.

Did 30 minutes of yoga before bed.

Starting weight (6/22/2010): 208 lbs
Weight today: 182.5 lbs
Total weight lost: 25.5 lbs
Goal weight: 150 lbs (32.5 lbs to go!)
Target goal date: May 26, 2011 (My original goal was 50 lbs in the year)

It is nice to see the scale moving again. After almost 3 months away from exercise due to vertigo, I was seeing and feeling the results. I had re-gained about 4 lbs and was feeling sluggish and heavy again. Four days into a rhythm again, and I am already feeling motivated. My goal is to have fun with this, not dread the scale, or see this as "work". I work enough as it is, I need play!

On a roll...

Day 3

Walked barefoot
Distance: 1.15 miles
Time: 21 minutes
3.29 mph
Calories burned: 165
Felt easy, but I enjoyed the walk. It is almost easier to run barefoot than walk barefoot.

Last night I cooked a great healthy meal for myself: Grilled chicken, bow tie wheat, spinach, and tomato pasta, sauteed spinach with garlic, mushrooms and green onions, a sprinkling of fresh Parmesan cheese and piece of roasted garlic sour dough. Tasty!

Yoga before bed let me sleep like a baby and woke up energized!

Tonight will be grilled chicken over red leaf lettuce, with tomatoes, black beans and mango and tortilla chips.

Language of fun

New Year, new goals, new language

One goal I have is to take charge of my health and well-being. And part of that is through daily activity.

I recently read "Born to Run", by Christopher McDougall, inspiring me to drop the term "workout" and embrace activity instead. He gives solid scientific evidence that humans are designed for distance running, and that running shoes are a primary obstacle to doing so without injury. So here goes!

http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/27373346

I started running barefoot again yesterday. The link above is my run from today, twice the distance I ran yesterday. I will not be increasing this quickly every time, but I had energy to burn and kept going today.

Distance .34 miles
Time: approximately 5 minutes (not really sure, just started running!)
Calories burned: Approximately 100

I'll be posting my runs and other activities as I go.

In the midst of change...

At the new year I like to invest some time in reviewing the previous year. What did I accomplish? Where did I make improvements? How might I want to live, work, love differently? In doing so, I clarify and refine the direction and focus for the new year. It is a process I have been using for the past few years and gives me both reason to celebrate and a template for insightful planning for the direction I choose for my life.

I actively participate with a community of women who share a genuine desire to live authentically and with purpose. Our facilitator is a certified Wolf Clan teacher, sharing Native teachings as taught to her by Seneca Elder, Grandmother Twylah Nitsch. The Goals workshop is a process using a whole-brain approach to living, thinking, dreaming, and experiencing. It uses our senses and the cyclical nature of life to offer meaningful direction. So rather than stating goals from a perspective of what is lacking in my life, I am actively pulling from accomplishment, dream, vision, and experience to walk a path aligned with Spirit.

My experience with this process has been more successful than any New Year's resolution I have tried. One of the greatest components is a monthly check-in throughout the year. One of my downfalls in the past was to start strong and then lose momentum. And somewhere around February I had lost sight of the goal, settling into a complacency of the same old thing.

I am in the midst of this process currently and I am excited! Part of the fun is allowing both my logical, practical side and my creative, intuitive side to have a voice. And believe me when I tell you they are both talking! My goals include creating organization and balance as well as creating room for travel and writing. Once clarified, I will create action plans for each goal, the path.

Life feels so much better with this direction and focus. I am living a life I used to only dream. How cool is that?

Finding my way back

In early November, I experienced a setback to my "New me" transformation in the form of Benign Positional Vertigo (BPV.) Now, if you have ever experienced this occurrence, you know it feels anything but benign!

While performing yoga that morning, as I rolled over to open the pectorals, the room did a huge 360! I stopped, wondering what the heck happened, and the spins just kept coming. I struggled to sit up and called for my husband, sleeping upstairs. I began to feel tension up my neck and numbness in my face on one side. My fear was I was having a stroke. My husband called 911 and EMS arrived within minutes. As I tried to stand, waves of nausea and dry heaves forced me to sit again.

A ride to the hospital, several hours of tests including EKG, MRI, and blood work, rendered the BPV diagnosis along with anti nausea meds and something for motion sickness. The ER doc made it sound rather harmless and assured me I would be back to normal within a few days.

That was not the case...

A follow up trip to my doctor the next day affirmed that this might not pass quickly. She had me perform coordination tests in her office, of which I failed miserably. I had visions of "Cops" and field sobriety tests. The doctor told me to come back if the symptoms had not improved in a month, and told me stay in bed like I had the flu for the next several days.

For at least a week, I could not walk without feeling as if I would fall down. It was as if my head was not attached to my body (very disorienting!) I had to think about the movements as I made them. Any sudden turns of my head, shifting of my focus from near to far, or vice verse, triggered disorientation and that falling down feeling again.

The next few weeks were better. I returned to work and made it through best I could. Driving made me nauseated, and exercise triggered vertigo. I was missing my yoga and the barefoot running I had started before this happened. And I had to pay more attention to what I was eating, without the exercise to burn calories.

It has now been six weeks and I have experienced several days of feeling mostly normal. The good news is I have maintained the weight loss from pre-vertigo. The challenge is easing back into a daily routine of exercise. And at the holidays! I am committed to living a healthy, active life, so holidays or no holidays, I'm back!

Today I resume my food diary and will perform at least 20 minutes of exercise. The rain makes it difficult to walk or run, although if Kyle can run barefoot in the rain, so can I! And I will adjust my projected weight loss goal to reflect the time out of commission. It's kind of like a do-over without starting back at the beginning!

I know I am not alone in experiencing a setback while making lifestyle changes. We all have our challenges. This experience rocked me to my core, made me appreciate my sense of balance. And I am truly grateful to be healing. Isn't the human body amazing?

Getting there...

Traveling during the holidays? Just the thought of airports, crowds, traffic can send my stress level to the ceiling. It seems the older I get, the more I appreciate the concept of home for the holidays. When "home" refers to another state, the returning takes some planning.

Keep it simple. I cannot state this enough. Trying to see everyone you have ever known, pack gifts for everyone on your list, or work up to the time you leave for the airport will surely increase the level of crazy.

Plan the trip with these key concepts in mind:

Time can be your friend if you work with it:Remember the two-and-a half rule? Double the amount of time and add an additional half again when planning your itinerary. This will account for added traffic, lines, forgotten items, and give a cushion of down-time. So, if you think packing will take a half hour, allow an hour and fifteen minutes. And checking in at the airport...okay, you get it.

Less really is less...less hassle, less to remember, less money: Most airlines charge for baggage now. But even if you are driving to your destination, think light. When planning what to bring, coordinate pieces and colors to conserve space. One little black dress can be dressed up, or down with smaller accessories, like scarves or jewelry. Ship packages early to avoid bringing them with you.

Coordinate!: This applies to everything from arrival times, carpooling, what to bring, what to wear, and get-togethers with family and or friends. For example, I have learned to plan one day for friends when traveling back to Texas. A simple evite with a favorite restaurant in a central location to all my friends alleviates the smaller visits with each one.

All of this is assuming you have planned ahead, which may be a fairly large assumption. And of course, if you traveling with kids...well, that's a different blog.

For me, the happiest holidays are those where I actually get to enjoy the spirit of the season, the comfort of family and friends, the tastes and sounds and sights that only the holiday season can promise.

Check in next week for tips on holiday snacking 101...