Weirdly, I sometimes end up eating calories I do not need or expect.  Food, just magically appears.  It pops into my mouth without explanation.  I chew and swallow.  I am accountable to no one but my undisciplined self.  I regret.  So, I plunk salty, sweet or scrumptious and forbidden provisions immediately, tout de suite, back into my own portal of self-defeated continuum in order to ease the self-inflicted guilt.

Sound familiar or am I the only one who has emotional issues with food?  I cannot control the world or others but since I am a control freak – here is where I can persuade my arm and hands to aid me in my own self-destructive ‘control’.

I can understand why they tell you not to weigh yourself everyday.  I can fluctuate five pounds on any given weekend or holiday end.  Bingeing is normal during stressful times, isn’t it?  Doesn’t everyone overeat between Halloween and New Year’s?

It can take me up to one year to lose those five to ten pounds (and that’s being diligent-with no cheating).

Is it my age?

What does my body want, need?  And… Am I willing to give it what suffices? Or just what my anxious greedy self desires?

I long to carve out time for self.  Not the self-indulgent self either.  The other one.  The self that works on improving, bettering, educating and staying actively involved in her own skin and life.

I intend to pause before I automatically search out, pick up and place Holiday goodies into my mouth this year.  I AM responsible for what my hands and fingers do and what they touch.  I AM in control. duh? What a concept.

Affirmation:  I support my transformation and wish myself the Best of Luck!!

Nothing gets me out of my funk faster than to write in my Gratitude Journal.  And nothing  can pull me out of self-pity or ‘the blues’ quicker than doing something for someone besides myself.

In my Journal, I write five things I am grateful for.  I used to do this nightly.  When I am in a troubled, lonely or depressive state, I have listed one hundred things I appreciate about my life.  Classical music, for instance or the fact that I can still enjoy listening to any music at all considering how close I have been to amplifiers at numerous rock concerts, ears ringing all the way home, for over forty years.  Or Art I never would have even cared about if it wasn’t for the Art Masters program I volunteered for in my kid’s elementary school days.  We learned about the artist and the techniques in order to be better equipped in the classroom and it helped me appreciate artists like Piet Mondrian and Lichtenstein who I would have ‘pooh pahd’ before with my ignorance.

Also, if you can’t get to sleep, it helps to run through the alphabet and envision someone, something or some moment you are grateful for to accompany each letter.  Just like the jumprope song we used to chant: A my name is Abigail and my husband’s name is Andy.  We come from Alabama and we sell Apples.

A – I am thankful for Art and all it encompasses and represents

B – I am thankful for Bells because I love to hear them ring

C- I am thankful for Crayons and being able to Color

D- I am thankful for Delicious Delights in the Daytime

E- I am thankful for Elizabeth, my youngest, sensitive and affectionate, super smart too

F- I am thankful for Friendship and Fine Food and Family Fun

ETC.. you get the idea

In this week of special grace  – May you remember and be reminded to be grateful.

I know I am grateful to be reminded of the things I need to be thankful for.

Looking behind, I am filled with gratitude

Looking forward, I am filled with vision

Looking upwards, I am filled with strength

Looking within, I discover peace – Quero Apache Prayer

The past is revealed

Battling between my ears

And I don’t want to linger

What’s the lesson?

What have I learned?

Move on

Be prepared

Difficulties are Challenges

Now build my character

I am not a victim

I must take the action,  I must think the thought, I must do the deeds

That complete me honestly –   Cecilia

This is the path I follow.  This is my Peace…Knowing I have done the Best I can and then releasing it – letting it go.  Knowing that the Truth always comes out, I seek my truth.  I do not defend the Truth, for it just is.  I do not have to advertise the Truth for it promotes itself.  It multiplies. And once you know the Truth, you cannot go back and hide from it nor not be aware of it anymore…it’s just out there now…as the new normal.  As your Truth.

Occasionally, I recognize I have just been given what I call  – a God shot

1. It’s the realization that a miracle has just occurred in front of your eyes

2. A prayer has almost instantly been answered

3. Under the guise of a stranger’s words or deeds you hear or get exactly what you need to hear or get

Sort of a synergy that occurs only for you and you connect to it knowing full well you were supposed to be aware of it. Getting chills?  You know if you are even half alive, awake and intuitive – YOU have experienced this too.

Yesterday, I walked into a gym, was given a tour by a sweet, persuasive, young woman, and walked out of there fired up, feeling spiritually and personally validated.  I had been searching to get physically better under doctor’s orders plus I knew I needed to get moving again, of course.  But I went to different gyms and fitness centers and just wasn’t feeling it.  I blamed myself for being such a lump; lazy, unmotivated, your basic loser self-talk I engage in way too much.  

I parked in front of a place I wasn’t even going to check out at all ever and it even took me awhile to find.  I didn’t have too much hope but I didn’t want to leave, as the saying goes, any stone unturned.

“If not now, then when?” The pretty gal asked me.

“Well, I have a fear of being in the midst of a class and hopelessly not following direction” I confessed.

“It’s always uncomfortable the first time and then you keep coming back and eventually you pick it up and love it” She persisted.

“But what if I can only do five minutes or I just can’t do it?” I exclaimed with a tremor in my voice.

“Why wouldn’t you be able to do it?” She countered.

“Because I am not fit and I feel vulnerable and I will probably just make an ass out of myself”, I said to myself but to her I said out loud, “I just don’t feel like I can do it”

And as if she heard my thoughts – she added, ”You can absolutely, positively do this.  Maybe you stay for five minutes at a time but you can keep at it and you will feel invigorated and get better each time and then you will have more self confidence and your endorphins will soar, “etc. she went on….

A Thomas Alva Edison First Edition naked bare light bulb hanging from a high ceiling of a dark closet with a chain that I literally pulled, lit up above my head.

Three things I know about myself:

1. When it’s broken down into pieces that I can follow step by step at my own pace – I feel more comfortable.

2. When you tell me it’s ok  – just try it again, I probably will.

3. When you tell me this is normal, most people feel this way – I get to acknowledge my part as a flawed human too.  And then I can have compassion for myself.

Today, I took a yoga class at the gym with an instructor that mirrored my own teaching style, said almost the exact same reassuring words I have spoken and let us be one with the moment in a creative, safe yet strong flow.  I felt like I had given the very same class, many times before and what a gift it was to receive.

Another God shot.

In the last few weeks of searching for a place where I could feel inspired as well as nurtured or at the very least take a well designed yoga class, this has not been my experience (far from it and more on this rant some other time) and it restored my faith in myself enough to stimulate and invigorate a sincere desire to take the ‘scary’ dance or pump style classes as well. 

I now have renewed enthusiasm for:

1. Taking responsibility for my own health

2. Finding a new health/wellness home in the most unlikely of places – a commercial athletic facility

3. Knowing I am always being taken care of by the Universe

And if you needed encouragement today, reading this is your God shot

It’s always gratifying to read  – but to plunge into great books and to then share fine works with others has also been a great pleasure, like enjoying a quality meal together or  swapping family heirloom recipes with a fellow cook.

Here are some wonderful yoga books I consider gems and I frequently refer to or re-read from time to time.

Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace and Ultimate Freedom by B.K.S. Iyengar – A Master reveals a lifetime of wisdom – He writes: “Many people try to think their way into an asana, but you must instead feel your way into it through love and devotion.”  Dedicated and highly sensitive, this great yogi who brought props into the yoga room, was a great human being.

This is just a drop in the bucket.  As I sit in my dining room with over who knows how many yoga books I devoured around me – I realize I have lots more to tell you…..

Bringing Yoga to Life: The Everyday Practice of Enlightened Living by Donna Farhi – this international yoga goddess is highly respected and loved by yoga teachers – She writes: “Spending time around others who are fully engaged and focused can be one way to learn the necessary attitudes and ethics required for whole-hearted living.”  She is the queen of surrender and of letting go of attachments.

Living Your Yoga: Finding the Spiritual in Everyday Life by Judith Lasater, PhD.,P.T. – Since 1971, Lasater has taught, observed and written about yoga, anatomy, physical therapy and psychology – She writes: “…we cannot control the behavior of others. And, more important, any attempt to do so will backfire.”  She speaks of awakening, widening and embracing your body, your life and your soul in the most practical of terms.

If you haven’t seen Argo or Flight – go soon!  Both feature superb performances by the leading actors, Ben Affleck and Denzel Washington, respectively,  as well as amazing, gripping at the edge of your seat action/suspense.  And especially important, they make you think.

Recently,  we went to see a small play How to Rewrite the Bible which was unexpectedly gnawing.  It took uncomfortable subjects like death and religion and complicated relationships like mother and son and riveted the audience with its smart script flashbacks and comic relief.  This weekend, Jeff Goldblum in Seminar which should be rather interesting considering it is about a writing class teacher and his students.

If you haven’t already gotten on the bandwagon – Downton Abbey will be back on Masterpiece Classics on your local PBS station in December and you can watch the first seasons on NetFlix.  The new Upstairs Downstairs Season just finished. Also, recommended for its beautiful cinematography, dialogue and costumes.

If you own a Kindle – I suggest downloading Elizabeth Street, a novel based on the author’s Italian grandmother’s true story – riveting!  Based in Little Italy, NYC and the Southern tip and islands of Italy back in the turn of the 20th century.  Also, if you liked Eat, Pray, Love you may enjoy The Bindi Girl.  It’s basically the diary of one woman on her quest in India.  It is not as good as Elizabeth Gilbert’s version but if you want more single girl goes to India in search of self, it is passable.  These two e-books were only available on Kindle at the time of reading.

Mystery:  Just finished Evil under the Sun by Agatha Christie.  Her dialogue moves the story along as always and her characters/plot intrigue and inform at a fast pace.  Hercule Poirot is her crime solver in this puzzler set on the coast of England.  I always imagine PBS’s David Suchet  playing the small mustached Belgian.

Just beginning Original Sin by PDJames.  I also place the actor from the PBS series in my mind’s eye here as well gingerly portraying  Inspector Dagliesh.  

I will list some great memoir and yoga books in tomorrow’s post. So stay tuned.

And then I wonder where all my time goes?

It can be painful to write (as I write this again after not saving the draft- arghhh – is this what they call irony?).  Most people just quit – I need to have Courage with a capital C. Again.

It took me the last three and a half months to process and a lifetime to commit to the fact that : I am a writer. I love and hate to write. I must write. I think about writing all the time. I love to read other people’s writing. I write.

Anne Lamott, a writer who writes for writers, clearly states in Bird by Bird that writing is torturous and that many writers don’t pursue their love of writing because it is so painful.

Imagine 1) opening up a vulnerable part of you, 2) describing it as best you can, 3) allowing others to step inside your head and then let’s do 1,2,3 once more.  All the while, you are literally scraping off the scab of some buried wound you find delight and disgust in revealing, wallowing in the stench, humiliation or ecstasy of it and returning yourself back down to earth to magically produce it for some unforsaken reason for all the world to scoff, adore or revile it.  This sort of endeavor is not for the faint of heart.

That’s not how I felt when I entered my adult writing class in the Fall of 2011.  I expected to learn how to create, write and publish my memoir.  Instead, we were instructed (or this is where I took it) to reach back into our childhoods, back into all our past mistakes and dig deep into ugly and self-defeating moments of our lives.  No wonder I had lapses in memory.

Our assignment is always only allowed to be three pages long.  It took me ten weeks to remember, prepare, re-write, cry over, exhaust my closest friends with past drama, bore my family agonizing over the right word, re-live that period of my life over and over,  hate it, back away and recoil from it and then, finally – be brave enough to read my first story to the class aloud (with a microphone pinned to my blouse so as not to miss a word or nuance in my voice)  up in front of the classroom.  Needless to say, I was in tears when it was over and shocked when everyone was nice enough to say it wasn’t half bad.  Five weeks to cook up story number two and three weeks to birth the third.  Progress.

It’s like children.  With my first born I only went to Burger King/McDonalds for special occasions and play dates.  With my second child, I would drive the van through the drive-through, keep the kiddie meals up front on the passenger seat and make them wait til we got home to eat –  but by the third one, I was throwing the french fries into the back of the van full of children tied into their protective child seats to make them  stop crying and whining. I learn as I go.

In response to my own demons and desires, I am back on the page.

Although Good4uyoga.com was originally conceived as a yoga update/forum for my fellow yogis – I am expanding its usage to write about everything and anything.

Yoga – literally means to yoke as in the uniting of mind, body and spirit in movement, time and thought.  I take poetic license here and I will run with it.

Nothing will be punctuated well – but – Everything will spring forth from my pen.

Hopefully, here and there – it will touch you somewhere and somehow.

Thank you and feel free to comment, add your own two cents and participate in any fun discussions/surveys/lists I will be offering up.  Your feedback and involvement validates the existence of an audience for our unique and varied voices.

Namaste, Cecilia