Be the change you want to see.

wow.
this weekend I went with my friend Chelsea to a 3-day workshop for the dance form we both study in, called Open Floor, or Five Rhythms...
it was such an amazing experience, that I still can't, partly don't want to, wrap words around it.
the kind of time that feels like you'll break the spell if you try too hard to describe it, too precious to try to explain.

Here's the KIND of weekend it was though: flirty fun floaty flowy.

I danced and moved and explored and stretched and didn't take long breaks for the entirety of the session. Fri 7-10 pm, Sat 11-2 and 3-6, Sunday 2-7 with a break at 4:30-5.

So call it thirteen hours of being carried along by the dance and the moving and the community and the exploration of what my physical self is capable of. Beautiful, ugly, silly, boring, all of it, range of motion, all the different moods and impulses that the music and our teachers encouraged to come out.

Aside from emotional and self esteem shift-change-improvements, the physical improvements are tremendous.
my shoulders feel totally liberated, I can move them n all kinds of directions, watch my collarbones be mobile (what??)
and late on Saturday I had THE most painful kind of muscle cramp, in my low right abdominals, at first I was like, shit I overworked them but I dug my fingers into the muscle to try to support them (through the deep belly fat) while they cramped, breathed and hollered a little (I was actually sat down in the loo when this triggered, heh)

but when the cramp finally released me and I was able to stand up again, there was this... only way to describe it, freedom, open space, liberation? in my belly and my hip and leg and belly and back were straighter, looser, more limber... I had a new rotation in that hip, as I discovered when we returned to the dance floor, a new violence was possible in my movements, explosive and HUGE.

I need to move this some more, because it's immense and gorgeous, after seventeen years after the initial injury, this precious body has found strength and release and liberation.

I wasn't larger than this body, or smaller than this body, but exactly body-sized; and everything was full of flow and amazement.

I have a completely different belief about what I'm physically capable of now, and the crunchy painful fear and worry has softened and melted and released and ALLOWED.

...Right now, if you're reading this: for just a moment, roll your neck gently, move your shoulders around in circles, twist your torso, wiggle your hips, flex your feet. If like me, you tend to sit a lot, take a moment to check in with your body and love it with some movement.

and that's what I have for now. Got a busy day today, looking forward to it.

Yesterday I was due to meet my seester at the gym, we were going to work out together. She had car trouble and had to cancel; I was kind of proud of myself for not finding an excuse not to go, but I already had woken up, gotten dressed, had something to eat (a couple handfuls of Cheerios, but still) and had found my shoes. So when she texted me I decided to just go anyway. I'm at the point where, after having neglected to work out for over 8 weeks, shit HURTS. my lower back has been sore like it used to be, my surgery knee has been tender and a bit wibbly, my shoulder is cranky and crunchy, and my middle back makes cracking noises when I touch my toes.

bad news man.

So I haul ass over there. Took the new car. Weird to feel like "I" fit in with the shiny Audi, Porsche, Prius, etcetera in the parking lot, but I did. I blended. (WAT)

And I go and get on the not the treadmill, but the elliptical trainer, because I wanted to have the option to work my arms, back, and get a bit of a twisting stretch in. I needed it. It felt good.

I got tired and bored pretty quickly. The last few times I have been to the gym I was either meeting my trainer, who definitely keeps me engaged and interested (I am a bit sad she isn't working there anymore), or I've been meeting tshuma, wrenb, or I run into angelkatharine and at least have a bit of a chat. But twenty minutes on the elliptical is considerably less fun when you have nothing to do but be in your brain (now granted, I mentally wrote some more for NaNoWriMo) and nobody to interact with. And I got fatigued after only about six minutes. I blame my not maintaining the habit of regular movement. Expect that there's lactic acid or stress chemicals buildup in my muscles and bloodstream.

(Side note: I know the body excretes waste chemicals in something like six ways: through sweat, tears, piss, shit, and from the genitals via ejaculatory fluid or weeping. that's only five, I wonder if I will remember what the sixth is or if I am misremembering. Point being, I wake up nowadays, sometimes, with my eyes just LEAKING. It's weird and a little disconcerting. But I'm guessing it's because I haven't been working out to a sweat very often recently, so my body has to find another means.)

Anyway, I do make myself do the twenty minutes, and then I go to the foyer where there's exercise balls and foam core rollers and mats, and I start doing some flexibility work for my hips, rolling big slow circles while seated on one of the exercise balls. Felt pretty good, and I was waking up my core muscles too.

And then I see Etty. She's the trainer that my former trainer Tal had told me I might enjoy working with. And we get to talking, and I was *sure* I had sent her an email or a text telling her I had an interest in training together, but she said she never received any such text or email. And I shrug, I don't know if I forgot or not... But it turns out she had an appointment be cancelled for the space that starts in ten minutes, and would I like to work out, gently, as a getting to know you kind of assessment and do we work well together. I'd been debating if I wanted to go in and explore the weights again like I had the last time; and I figure, sure! And she's willing to comp me the hour as we get acquainted. It was like the serendipity fairy came by and sprinkled serendipity dust all over us(me) to get me back into working out regularly!

We have a good getting to know you chat where I fill out the goals for working out worksheet and I find out that Etty also used to teach (and she says Israeli kids don't respect teachers the way kids here do, and I didn't disabuse her of her notion, which was maybe kind, maybe not) but she really likes teaching one on one, so physical training is a good gig for her. I tell her I have joined NaNoWriMo and a little about what it does, and she says, "maybe you should be a writer!"

and I think, maybe I SHOULD be a writer.

And then we go work out a bit, she has me do lunges and squats and moving stretches and checks my form (which is almost like I forgot the million little corrections Tal used to give me, in just over two months) and we talk about how important it is to have correct form, which I couldn't agree more on. I make sure she understands about my surgery leg and the tension from all that adaptation my body had to do while it was injured and uncorrected. And I just realized yesterday that I passed the third anniversary of surgery on Nov. 1, and how good my body feels in retrospect, now. So many little things that really add up. Fuck that first surgeon who tried to tell me that I didn't need surgery, that lots of people do just fine without an ACL, because now I can move and dance and work out and I. DON'T. FUCKING. HURT. ALL THE TIME. Not anymore. Seriously, fuck that guy. I'm so glad I got bk2wto recommend his surgeon, that guy was PHENOMENAL.

(end digression)

so we try me on plank position and i can't hold it long, and I keep shifting around trying to hold it and she asks me to hold still, and I make it about another three seconds before I just FOLD. dammit. welp this is where I am now, just need to know where I am now so I can set goals appropriately and then work to meet them.

and then we try my pushups ability in a couple different form factors, and she puts me in this frame to have me hold myself up and lift my knees up for core work and wow that was hard, so we try it on a weight bench lying down instead, like swimming instead of like bicycling I realized after I was doing it wrong. More core work for me! More EVERYTHING for me. *sigh* Okay. Need a little work to get back where I was. And to meet my goals of being able to do inversions and maybe start doing some circus arts work. Fun, playful goals. I need fun playful goals. And having a smart trainer who understands about teaching, is a damn good thing.

So I signed up for a new package with Etty. We start next Friday morning at ten, and I'm looking forward to it.

The last three weeks or so have been really tough for me with regards to getting to the gym on a regular basis. There was a gap where Tal wasn't working one week, and since I've cut back my sessions with her from twice a week to once a week, it's been difficult to motivate myself to haul ass over to the JCC for a minimum of two days of movement per week, and my joints and muscles are COMPLAINING. Seriously, yo. There is no bullshit here, I'm not sad or cranky or disappointed, because it means I have, to borrow a phrase from karenbynight, Upped My Game. Body has accustomed itself to enough regular movement and strength building exercise that it puts me on notice when I do not do that thing.

And that's precisely the kind of asskicking I require. Good.

Since I've had trouble getting the minimum of two-three hours healthy movement per week, I wanted to return here, and chain my habits together again. The good habit (writing) should support the struggling habit (movement and strength-building) until I can get back on board with regular gym visits and other things.

Benefits of regular movement include:
* mood elevation/evening out
* physical strength has increased
* decrease in regular back pain and other bodily pains
* increase in flexibility of body and mind
* increase in ability to focus for long periods of time at a task (like making art or jewelry)
* improved digestion, appetite, and food choices
* increased stamina and agility and self confidence
* investing in my own future self, my aging in strength and health.

please feel free to comment on this topic, as I strive to improve my habits it's good for me to engage in conversation with others who have similar interests.

\o/

I forgot/ran out of time to blog Wednesday's workout, and yesterday's workout, well, I got slammed by busyness afterwards.

1) had to go over to the framer's to sign my collage-paintings for the county fair because I had forgotten to do that
2) had to grab some kind of quick lunch that turned out to be just fruit and tea, because I...
3) had promised to come volunteer with Anastasia, the Waldorf school gardening teacher, and help the third grade plant All The Grains.
(oh that was fun... and I got to plant and water in a row of amaranth, which are just gorgeous tiny purple seeds, squee!)

So.

Results of workouts are:
1) the hamstring I pulled/strained on Monday during dance class is a bit more flexible/capable now, and hurts less
2) my ANKLE muscles are hella sore. Like all the way around my ankle is sore. I keep waking up and rotating my foot/feet and they're still sore.
3) I'm starting to see muscle definition in my forearms again, even underneath the fat I still have. I have pleasing curves going from wrist to elbow, and the hollow place at the inside of my wrist is longer and more defined than it was.
4) I'm learning that when a muscle is sore from the workout, I need to do more with it later that same day, intentionally, to keep it from going all stiff and inflexible. Stretch AND work it. Oy, my pectoral muscles. I had to stretch and work them last night before I was able to sleep
5) I can do more than I think I can. Speed and bounciness of legs/ankles/calves varies by day and by how much those muscles have already been worked.
6) Tal does a good job of helping me feel like we are doing choreography drills at least some of the time. She also does a good job of finely judging how far to push me, and we have been finishing JUST before I fail, i.e. muscles haven't yet given out in the middle of a set.
7) I have discovered I like free weights MUCH better than machines. And Tal confirms my belief that free weights are better for more all-round muscle strength, since you have to use more of the little muscles surrounding the major muscles to control free weights properly. Dynamic stability!
8) the sides of the long leg muscles (calf and thigh) need some more concentrated work. I think hiking in uneven terrain would be a good job for them. Again, Dynamic stability... and working the overall system rather than the specific large muscles.
9) Tal helped me specifically stretch shoulders and pecs in a way which I can't do. She groks partnered stretching. I may yet be able to consistently have open shoulders and reach my arms directly vertical over my shoulders, and I may yet be able to open my hips enough to have my knees flat on the floor when I sit pretzel-style (and maybe even someday in half-lotus or proper lotus position for yoga class!)
10) I told Tal that I have a personal goal I expected her to say was ridiculous, which is to do unsupported headstands and maybe someday handstands, and a) she was impressed when I told her I'd sorted out how to do yoga style shoulderstands, and she said your body can do anything you set your mind to do.

Tal gives me hope.
I shared with her that I used to have "a relative" who was so sarcastic in how he spoke to me that I had internalized his voice and used to speak very unkindly to myself. And I also said how I had to learn how to stop that voice from being how I spoke to myself, and had to learn to speak kindly and encouraging to myself.
I was to embarrassed to say that the relative was my dad. =(

But she's been great about listening to the little snippets of personal stuff that come out when we are working out together. She's great at correcting my form so I do the work correctly, and at encouraging me gently.

I have hope of gently reshaping this body and coming into pride in self that I haven't had in nearly 20 years.
For the right reasons, this time, not for fitting into a wedding dress.

I'm doing it for ME this time.

Dinner helps everything be better.
Steak, tater tots, a lovely Zinfandel, some blueberries, should all help with my recent case of anemia.

Made it to the gym tonight!
Not a super long session, but I did some cardio, some weights (I have to eat greens and fruit only before next session, I ate buttered rice with cheese and herbs and got a very acid stomach) and finished up with light stretching.

Been over a week since my last gym visit, and the bod has been complaining about the lack. Got turned on to the chance of a blues dance event not far from here, every Thursday. I've never done blues dancing before, though I've watched others dance ( thinking of tshuma and dougygyro at Lark camp, and it's lovely, flirtacious, and sensual. Should be great, though taxing on thigh muscles.

Gotta date tomorrow. Really looking forward to it.

More dating, more dancing. Life is good.