Lessons on the mat

I decided, at the end of April, to become a yoga teacher. I have wanted to do the training for years because I always learn so much when I train to do something, but never could justify the cost. Now, I figured out a way to incorporate it into my coaching work with teens/tweens thanks to the modeling of Believe In She‘s work found in Yoga Journal.  Incorporating yoga with coaching is such a natural step for working with girls and their body image/self-esteem. I’m very excited about this and am doing my training through Yahweh Yoga in Arizona. Also, I am going to various studios 4-7 days a week to learn as much as I can from a variety of teachers and styles.

That said, I am learning so much. Maybe it is because I am older now. When I started yoga years ago I pushed my body into poses and made it really work. Now I am letting go. I rest often. I don’t go as deep and am focusing more on the alignment v. how it looks. My muscles are still shaking at times and I’m always sweating so the “work” is still happening at this more relaxed centered pace.

I truly think that this process is transformative and will enable me to worship God more deeply, to be still before him, to trust more and not push so hard to make things happen. Going to the mat, especially when I am tired or low energy is training me on all levels. I breathe in God’s peace and let go…

My hope is to carry all this to every area of my life.

Hiking, Yoga and Devotion

 

I woke up at 4am for some strange reason, so I decided to go walking up the “mountain” trail with the dog at 5:15.  That is the coolest part of the day here. It was about 90 degrees, I think.

 

It was wonderful! Took time to praise God, pray and breathe in the beauty. As I gazed at the chaparral on the black rocks at sunrise, I realized ALL our worrying, stresses and fears are pointless. Really, all that matters is the LORD. We have to lose our life to save it; like the Buddhist idea of non-attachment (kinda). If I screw up, I screw up. If I do it big time, so what. Small time, so what. God still loves me. AND is WITH me.

 

I think my prayers during and for my yoga practice, to be able to worship God and learn new ways of being, are starting to be answered already. I really think it is part of my physiological healing. Yesterday in Bikram, I felt anger, irritation, etc during part of the practice. The heat & humidity with the difficulty of it allows my body to release that stored tension. I don’t understand it all, but I’m going with it!

 

Does that type of thing ever happen to you when you practice yoga? Or something else?

 

On the road again…

On the road again…TRAIL, on the trail again! (imagine that 70s song, “on the road again”, please)

Today, I drove to the gym and walked into a relatively quiet and dark room. No lights. Hmmm… Ah, no power! Since, I have been feeling really antsy to go running outside on the trails again (I think my last time was last fall?) I decided to try it. Admittedly, I was a bit scared that I wouldn’t be able to do it; that something would hurt so badly I would have to stop, like on my last trail run; that I wasn’t really healed, nor had done enough strengthening in the gym. You get the idea.

The grin on my face as I was racing along (for me an 11 min first mile pace is fast on the trails) was large. I kept waiting for the hammer to fall, some sharp pain to slow me down, but it never came so I sped up and worked on keeping a relaxed, well-postured form. I felt like I could go much farther, but I was cautious and just ran the 3 miles. Amazingly, still no pain!
As I sit here typing this I am feeling twinges, but that is probably because I was vacuuming downstairs for an hour.

Sweet relief. I am so encouraged.

Hitting the gym tomorrow morning before work.

Yea! I’m running on trails again!

I’m lagging on getting posts!

I have been on many runs since my last post and many more before it, but I’m having a hard time getting to the blog. I write witty and amazing blogs while I’m running, but then it all evaporates by the time I can get to this site. Sigh. I have written a bunch of entries in my paper spiral but that doesn’t help this process at all. lol.

So running has been going well. I overdid it in April and logged 44 miles (my most ever) and did my longest run ever (7.25 mi), but it was a bit much too fast and I’ve had to scale back. This past week I ran every other day (3 x 4 mi; 1x 2 mi), but haven’t gotten in a long distance run in a few weeks. I’m sore from running at times, so I know I am pushing myself. My times have increased 2-3 minutes per mile since the beginning of the year, which is great considering all factors.

My knees hurt a lot from running. I hope that as I lose more weight that will abate. I never had knee problems before. I wonder if I should start taking glucosamine or something like that? hmmm…

I signed up for two challenges on dailymile.com and I’ve got to pick it up if I am going to make it! Gotta do a long run and a bunch of 4-5 milers this week. It’s raining now, so we’ll see how that goes…

Happy Running people!

Back on Track

I’ve been in a slump the past 2.5-3 weeks. I pushed too hard to fast (not just with running, but with diet also) and I wore myself out. I needed to coach myself out of it (and get some encouragement/reality checks from my sister!).

Deeper issues were pushing the slump and awareness is the first step in dealing with that. I’ve realized how my healing from depression is playing itself out. The process is important so that my mind is changed, my habits are transformed and I makes choices that result in a new homeostasis–a new set point.

I have much to say on this topic, but needed to just do a quick update to get the release started.

Ran 4.3 miles today on the beautiful trail by the ocean. It was a good run!

How long can your intervals be?

The doctor reminded me yesterday that I need to do intervals to maximize weight loss. I can’t always be meandering about at my slow and steady pace for miles and miles (ok, for a few miles!). Later, I realized that I usually run negative splits on my long runs, so my question is, How long can the intervals be to function for max weight loss?

It was a good change to make today, running intervals on the muddy trail. I alternated between faster running, medium running and fast walking. I did this for 54 minutes with an additional half mile warm up/down.

Running faster than normal, breathing heavily, felt good. Usually, I run slower to conserve energy so that I can run as far as possible. (I want to run my first half marathon SOMETIME this year!) I loved pushing hard knowing that the chimes would sound soon on my Podrunner Intervals so I could slow down!

My legs were burning the last 20 minutes of intervals. I didn’t have much energy left at that point, so it was mainly willpower.

Anyway, there are longer intervals on the Podrunner program (get it on itunes), with 10 minute intervals. Would that still have the same effect as 90 second intervals? Or does it go more into burning your fat stores?

Oh sage runners out there let me know your answers!

Strong Roots

Today was my first trail run in over a month. It felt good to be out in the sun breathing the ocean air.  I have to map my run on dailymile.com to see how far I went, but it was somewhere around 3 miles. I ran the second half 2 minutes faster than the firs, which was hard because of so much uphill.  I was reminded again of my theme for this year, which God has been speaking to me about: Perseverance.

Ahhhh, yes. No matter how many times I stumble around obstacles or am waylaid by injury or sickness, I get back up and go run again. It’s the same old story pounded out step by step. In the past, I would get sidetracked by long standing struggles which would take so long I eventually ended up distracted by other choices. For example, I would work out for 5 months straight (almost daily) and then end up doing nothing for months. Distractions such as stress from work or travelling, etc would lead to a loss of the healthy habit.

In my coaching training and while being coached, I learned lots of great strategies to minimize these problems, but ultimately it comes down to my WILL to move forward, to not give up. Perseverance is a mental muscle that needs exercised. Just as with running I am building more muscles fibers, I’m deepening the connections for my mental muscles also. To mix a metaphor, I view it as growing deep roots so that eventually the inevitable distractions and hardships that cross my trail will not send me completely off my path.

On the trail today, after a big storm with 50-60 mph winds, a big tree was felled across my path. As I ran around the tree I noticed that although it was toppled, it still had the bottom of its trunk next to where it had been growing with the others. Because of the connectedness of all their roots underground, the rest were still standing. As perseverance is more deeply rooted I think the easier it is to call upon it when it has been neglected. Or maybe, it just “grows back” more quickly like a dormant plant.

I’m too distracted right now by the 5 year old girls needing attention to develop this thought!

The life of the running mom…duty calls!