Wrapped up with a Bow

Sometimes I'd like to be done with something. Like health. I'd like to be complete with health and just have it handled. I'd like to achieve fitness. I'd like to collect yoga poses and just keep them. Even a manicure. I'd like to pay for a manicure to be done professionally and just have it be done. Shaving, waxing, enlightenment, same thing. But all of these things require maintenance.

It's as though I'd like to just pause life. Just take a break over here. Have it wrapped up for a bit with no more todos and all my calls returned and bills paid and boxes checked off.

I'd like to earn the educated badge. Just know something and not have to relearn it all again next week. I'd like to know the software rules and have them not change. How about Facebook? Couldn't it just stay the way it was?

Everything's changing and growing and moving and sometimes I feel like I can't keep up. And we can't keep up with all of it, we really can't. This is where surrender lives. We have to make peace with where we are knowing that stuff, life, is flowing all around us. In addition to letting go, we also have to have effort to be focused and participate and know where we want to go, or just have the discipline to go where we've been told to go.

In yoga it's called, Abhyasa and Vairagya. Effort and focus, and on the other hand, non-attachment and letting go. It's a balance.

Sometimes I'd like it to be out of balance and just be done! I know it's not realistic and that I need to bring some tapas to my practice in that moment. I'm just sharing something that shows up in my awareness sometimes...and I have a feeling you know what I'm talking about!

Birthday Pose Again!

Wow, it seems like I just wrote about this pose. I mean, I think I'm wearing the same shirt as the last time I wrote about this. It comes back again so fast. I checked. It's not the same shirt, although it very well could be because neither of them are new, but it's the same colour, because I have adopted grey as the colour of this decade. So far. I wear a lot of grey! I like it! It goes with a lot of things! Jeans, other grey things, black, just to get started.

This year the birthday pose feels pretty comfortable. I'm feeling good with myself and where I'm at. And the places where I'm not feeling good about myself and my life, I'm gently judging and keeping an eye on as opposed to attacking them and blaming myself loudly. I'm quieter to myself about my judgements. I'm more compassionate with myself. I have been through a lot in my life and I'm going to go through a lot more if I have my way. And so compassion is the theme of this birthday. And with compassion for me, there's the freedom to have fun. So I'm having fun this birthday.

I got woken up around 6:30 on a morning when I could have easily slept in for another hour (see - I'm already more relaxed that I can even sleep in until 7:30) and I didn't get mad when this friend knew that I was probably sleeping and just wanted to make sure that they were the first one to wish me Happy Birthday.

I am also taking today as an opportunity to get rid of a lot of stuff. I took two boxes of books to my car a little while ago. That's a big deal for me. The present I'm giving myself this year is giving stuff away. Yep, I've arrived at maturity where 'tis better to give than to receive.

Oh well. I'm leading yoga this evening and I'm looking forward to that. If you're not doing anything and you're reading this in time, please come!

The Power of Water

"The power of water." That's what the woman at the clinic said when I returned to get my blood work done this afternoon. I'll back up.

I haven't blogged in a while. There's a mix of reasons for why I haven't been blogging but one of the things that's going on in the background is I've had low iron, ringing in my ears, and now pain in my joints. The joint pain has been going on for almost the past month. It's not unusual for me to have pain in my joints, but this is noticeably more than in the past. I went to see my doctor and he said it's osteoarthritis and get used to it. My 44th birthday is coming up this week (gasp) and I guess it's just my age and yea, get used to it.

I've been corresponding with a friend who's still at Omega and he reminded me of what he's going through with Lyme's disease and something went off in my head. "Joint pain is a symptom of Lyme's." I've known enough people who've had it to know I'd want to treat it early on if that is something that I had. I don't think I do but I wanted to rule it out.

So I went to see my doctor this morning, he's great - I get in to see him right away, and he fills out the requisition for blood tests and off I go. Since I was there he decided to add other tests for arthritis indicators not just the Lyme's disease so I figure it's a good thing I went.

I arrive at the clinic and I'm happy to see who's working because it's someone I recognize and my experience with her is that the needle's not bad and I'll be okay. I hop up on the chair, roll up my sleeve, and get ready. It won't be bad. I've had her before and she knows what she's doing.

She taps and pokes. I make a fist and release. I do that a couple of times. She sticks the needle in and waits. Then she asks me, "have you had any water to drink today?" Water? I don't actually drink water in the morning except in its more potent, coffee, form. "No I haven't had any water." Well, my blood won't come out. Jamine's blood won't come out.

She said she'd try something else and that got me to thinking, so I asked her, "what if I go away and drink something and eat and come back because honestly, I could totally do this at another time." She knows I want to run away and she's already filled out the paperwork and to cancel this is a chore. "What if I promise to come back?" She agrees. She said it takes TWO HOURS for water you drink to get into your veins. Interesting, eh?

I come home, drink a bunch of water, eat a sandwich and wait. When I went back in I rolled up my sleeve and she decided to go for the other arm. She punched my veins a bit and then she stuck in the needle. The blood flowed out no problem. "The power of water," she said.

Lesson learned - drink water. If I don't drink water my blood isn't flowing as much. So toxins aren't moving out. Healing properties aren't moving in. Things are sluggish. Drink some water!

Partner Yoga

My sister and I led Partner Yoga on Friday night as we've been doing off and on for the past nine years or so. I love the group that shows up for Partner Yoga. There are often some keen yogis, some people looking for something fun to do on a Friday night, and invariably somebody's bringing their boyfriend who's never done yoga before.

This Friday night someone else showed up. It wasn't a big deal at all but it was interesting given why I started this blog in the first place. One of the guys who showed up I'd met before through an online dating site. It was well over a year ago and we didn't date, we only met one time but it was funny. I didn't go up to him and draw attention to the fact that we'd met before. I didn't know what his deal was with what appeared to be his happy relationship and I thought it would be rude so I just said hi and left it at that.

It reminded me though that it's been awhile since I've branched out into the dating realm. I sort of recoiled a while ago and have stayed in that position. I get nervous and weird so I've just left it out for what I suppose is a long time.

It was nice to see someone showing up and obviously having fun with his partner in my class. One of these days I want to take a Partner Yoga class rather than give it ;)

Neighbourly Interactions

If you've read my blog for awhile, you may remember that earlier this year I had a bunch of uncomfortable interactions with some neighbours regarding some chalk drawings which landed us in the newspaper with colour photographs. Well, the other night the doorbell rings and it's the same neighbours. It's not what you think. It's worse/funnier/sadder depending on how you look at it.

These same neighbours hit my parked car. Not only hit it, but dented it. Not only hit it and dented it, but did that to the tune of a thousand dollars as the estimate I got at the VW dealership indicated in writing. Whoops.

They could have not said. They could have made me wonder for a few days who did it and how it happened. They didn't. They let me know right away, which I really appreciate. I wasn't even upset about it - I was totally upset about the chalk drawings and all of the implications - this was nothing. If you've read my blog or been in any of my teacher trainings, you'll also know I love my car. LOVE my car. So I'll fix it. They'll pay. It'll work out.

Living close to people will likely include being in relationship with them. Sometimes, something will happen and things don't go the way we want them to. And if we're in relationship long enough, things may go back and forth.

Sometimes yoga postures prepare us for the other things that happen in our lives. Sometimes we do group poses and a number of us will hold a pose together. BunBunboobooasana, for instance. It's not a big one, but it's one we get to hold as a little group for a couple of days.

Summer Reading

I know it's late in the summer, but there's still time to do some reading. I've made it even easier by posting a link to the book that you could read! And it's free if you're reading it this way. It's a classic and has practically become a yoga textbook. It's one that any student of yoga should at least know about if not have read all the way through.

This book refers to a lot of the mystical, magical things that go on in other cultures, that our western culture doesn't always see or recognize. It's something to look into and refer to even if you don't get to it all right away.

It still feels a lot like summer here even though September started today :)