Mental Maintenance

I once actually read how-to books about housecleaning. My goal, sort of realized, was to figure out the least I could do yet stay in the “normal” range.

I realized I've done the same when it comes to "mental maintenance."

Our minds are not machines, and even if they were, machines need maintenance, too.

Be kind to your mind!

Hokey as these sound, they work.

Keeping a Journal. I've done this since I was 12 years old. Spent a lot of time scribbling away, but the benefits outweigh the costs. It is the best way to learn how to write. And you think through your thoughts.

From the author Julia Cameron, keep a Ta Da List. Write down the things you did do.

Write down 5+ things you are grateful for. Some of mine -- "I'm grateful I'm not her" -- are clearly not in the spirit, but even they work. Any focus on the positive helps.

Meditation: Literally 5 minutes. Just breathe. And it’s not so much clearing your mind as it is simply trying to let your mind be clear. My favorite book on the subject: 10% Happier.

Learn Something Different: I spend about 5 minutes a day using a phone app (Duolingo) to learn a few words of Spanish. I got excited in the supermarket yesterday when I realized the people in front of me were talking about onions (cebollas)!

Exercise ... Particularly yoga ... Exercise helps emotionally as well as physically. Studies show that exercise can be as effective for alleviating depression as medications. The yoga pose half-pigeon, which is done near the end of yoga class and stretches things deep in your hips, seems to dispel stress especially well.

Sleep. It is shocking how much better you can feel simply from getting enough sleep.

Winning at Yoga

Is feeling competitive a good thing?

I used to think “Hell, no.” I used to avoid it in all things, at all costs.

I was the uncoordinated kid who was always picked last for teams. I wasn’t competitive as a kid in gym and sports, I came to loathe them, because I didn’t have a chance of “winning.”

Being forced into competitive situations then, when it didn’t fit, did harm.

I think this happens to a lot of people. How else do you explain why over 80% of all American adults don’t exercise?

So often, people have such bad memories that it leads to a lifelong aversion to any exercise, which is sad.

Who is at fault? The adults – gym teachers, coaches and parents – who get so caught up in vicarious competition that they forget the point. Shouldn’t we be teaching and encouraging all children about physical fitness?

I was lucky. I eventually discovered exercise can be fun.

Because my college had a PE requirement, I signed up for a student-taught dancercise class. (Hush, that was all the rage in the ‘80s.) The teacher, apparently a dancer, was just a good teacher, a nice person.

I wish I could remember her name. That class was life-changing, no exaggeration.

I have to laugh.  Recently, I asked a trainer at the local Y for advice.  I told him I wanted to be able to do the yoga poses that the most advanced students in my classes can do. You know, stuff like this. Which I am, incidentally, nowhere near doing.

“Wants to win at yoga,” wrote the trainer in his notes.

Yup, I’m finally good enough at a physical endeavor, which doesn’t even have to be that good, to experience feeling competitive as motivation.

Yay!

Body Language

Yoga teachers walk around the class, doing “adjustments” or “assists.” This is when they touch someone to correct their pose or help them take that pose further than they could on their own. There is a lot to this.

And sometimes, during shavasana, “corpse” pose, when you are lying there at the end of class, eyes closed, “letting everything go,” they will pick someone, glide over and give them a massage. Shoulders, neck, forehead.

They’ve done that to me. And the two or three times they have, without fail, it’s been a day when I’ve been under stress. Maybe I am waiting for a medical-test result. Maybe I just found out my dog has cancer. (Yes, that happened.)

“How do you know?” I asked one of my yoga teachers after a class when she gave me one of those (totally awesome) massages.

The teacher just smiled and scrunched up her shoulders till they were up around her ears.

Body language. There are many articles on the internet giving “tips” about how to read body language. I think there is a limit to how much of this you can put into words. I also think that people who try to manipulate body language, like that salesperson who keeps staring into your eyes and touching your arm, aren’t as good at it as they think. This article seems particularly good because it does address the limits of what you can know (it’s not as simple as “legs crossed” = uncomfortable).

And you know what? That quick little massage by the yoga teacher works. And it’s not just my imagination. Medical studies have shown all kinds of measurable effects from what is called “supportive touch.”

Cool.

Losing Weight

Yay! I lost weight!

Needing to watch my weight is a relatively new development for me. When I was young, I was a skinny-skinny-skinny eating machine.

Well … things have changed.

Several years ago, my husband lost 60 pounds. People, he reports, kept asking him how he did it, but when he told them he watched what he ate and exercised, which is what I’ve just done, they’d say, “Yeah, I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work.”

I’m no expert, but, yeah, it does … which doesn’t mean it’s easy or quick.

Things I found helpful:

Get a calorie-counting app on your phone, one that tracks calories expended on exercise as well as calories consumed.

You will need to exercise every day to keep within the calorie count. If you don’t, you will be hungry and being hungry makes you want to start killing people. And turn on the “track my activity” feature, which will minus out calories for the walking it senses you are doing.

Find exercise you will do. VERY important.

Do not let yourself get hungry. Seems counter-intuitive, but if you grit your teeth and try to use willpower to not eat, you will lose control and eat anything (and everything) within reach. Eat frequently and choose things that will keep you full, containing, in particular, protein, even though these foods aren’t the lowest in calories. Do not try to survive on lettuce.

Choose whole grains. Things like brown rice and whole-wheat pasta take your body longer to digest, leaving you feeling full longer.

Don’t make any food forbidden.  Sure, you can eat it. Just fit it into your calorie count. I drink lattes (skim milk, no sugar: an easy adjustment) and, at dinner, wine.

Be realistic: Slow and (relatively, imperfectly) steady is how this works.

My Morning Routine

I used to think of myself as a morning person.

But my husband reminded me that, when we both had to be at work early, I used to ask him grumpily, “Must you bound out of bed like a damn gazelle?”

I guess it depends on what you mean by “awake.”

If you mean curled up, in pajamas, reading and writing, yes, I can be happily awake early.

If you mean bounding out of bed, turning on the lights, jumping in the shower, no.

In recent years, however, I have had be up at 5 am and out by 5:30, to get my son to swim practice.

The only way I can drag myself out of bed that early is to know that Lola the Dog and I are going to pad down the hall and climb into my son’s bed. After a moment, my son will groan, “OK, guys, we really have to get up.” If he didn’t, Lola and I would happily go back to sleep.

It helps that I'm throwing on clothes I find on the floor.

I move toward coffee. If they are doing a “land” practice at their school, I get to stop at the coffee bar on the corner, where, let’s just say, they know me.

Driving to their old pool, I saw a Starbucks under construction. When it finally opened, I was at the drive-through at 5:45. I was alone. By the second day, however, there was a line and even people sitting out on its patio, in the dark.

Scary, how addictive Starbucks can be.

Now, the swim team is using a different pool – and I can find no lattes on the route.

I’m back to making my own.

Theoretically, I could do a 6:30 yoga class.

Yeah … no.

Whoa, Rethinking Yoga!

Been looking up Joseph Encinia, the yoga champion whose video I saw.

His life story is pretty amazing. He was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis as a child and lived with constant pain. He had a heart attack at the age of 13, probably from all the medications he had been on to control that pain.

And then he found yoga.

(The link to this video.)

Awesome.

Maybe I need to be more open-minded about the incense and the "Namaste" thing. :o)

My Impressions of Yoga

I like yoga.

I think … until about three-quarters through the class … when I’m once again peering, upside down, from between my legs, the sweat dripping down my face …

And I’m not even doing “hot yoga,” when the room’s kept at 100+ degrees.

One thing’s for sure: it’s not your mother’s yoga. Back in the ‘70s, I recall yoga being gentle stretching, then lying around.

These days, my doctor husband says his fittest patients say they do yoga.

I'm surprised to find that people compete at yoga, like this man, the 2012 world champion:

(Here's the link to this video.)

Incidentally, me doing yoga looks nothing like this.

I tried to read about yoga, but even the Wikipedia summary made my eyes cross.

This dust-up, about whether the physical practice of yoga started out as a sex cult or not, was mildly interesting.

For me, yoga is exercise that has been carefully staged to be enjoyable.

When they direct you to pay attention to your breath, it does distract you from your screaming thighs.

And I am proud of my new ability to stand on one foot without falling over immediately.

I like the aesthetics, too: the outfits, the gear, even the yoga-mat “sling” you use to carry your rolled-up mat over your shoulder like some folklore hero wandering into the village.

I like my instructors’ playlists.

I like my instructors, all beautiful and impossibly limber.

I like the names of the poses – warrior, dancer, happy baby, eagle, tree.

I even like the “Om” part. Sounds cool.

The incense I could do without.

Also, the lingo, where we all pretend to know another language, like speaking Klingon or ordering at Starbuck’s.

I’m not going to say “Nameste,” especially not while putting my praying hands up to my supposed “third eye,” I’m just not.

Finding What Floats Your Boat

My husband runs six miles a day, 13 at a clip on the weekends.

 

My husband's "toe shoes,"
worn without socks,
smell so bad, they live outside.

He’s into it, with those Vibram Five Finger shoes and an app on his phone. He reads about running.

If you ever see me running down the street, look for the person chasing me. He’ll be carrying an axe. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be running.

I’ve tried running many times over the years. It’s free, it’s convenient. And I hate it.

I’ve tried cycling. Here in Houston, you must have a death wish. Plus, I don’t like the little outfits.

I would really like to like swimming. But there’s the depilation, putting on a bathing suit, getting into a cold pool.

Some people, God bless ‘em, like to socialize while exercising. Not me.  So, exercise classes aren’t for me. Neither is exercising with a buddy.

However, perversely, I do want people around. If I had all the latest gym equipment at home, all of it would instantly become clothing racks.

Given all this, it might seem like I'd never manage to find exercise I will do. But I did and have been doing it for years.

This may sound sick to you (I can't get my husband to go), but I like going to the gym. I have a music player packed with very fast tempo songs (like the Hives). With that and the closed-caption TV and the people around me (with whom I have zero desire to interact), I’ve got just enough to engage my monkey mind.

The thing about exercise is that you have to pick something you like, or can at least tolerate. It may not be the free thing. It may not be the cool thing. But it has to be something you will do.

You might even come to like it.