Life of Joy

This morning I did well in the gym. I made it through my entire leg workout and biceps workout in good form, with all exercises, and almost all sets.

This is a ROUGH workout, but strangely, I feel much, much lighter and better after I do it.

It was kind of odd being surrounded by so many 50-ish and 40-ish guys in the heavy weights section. They mostly looked like they could use a lifestyle makeover. They were clearly pretty surprised by me, but *I* would have been surprised by me: a smallish chick doing a really intense old-school bodybuilding workout with pretty heavy weights and a "Not That Kind of Doctor" T-shirt. Pretty odd, I admit.

I don't think any of those guys had geek cred.

They were all like, "What??? Huh????"

At the gym this morning I saw John, my coach. He walked over said, "A really good-looking man came up to me yesterday and said, 'Hi, you train my wife." He's very fit and I could tell he's a really nice guy."

I grinned and said, "Yeah, that's Michael. He's beautiful inside and out."

John smiled and said, "I'm glad for you. I told him you were very, very strong."

It feels great to know that other people can tell how good my man is right away. He just shines.

It also felt good to know that John recognizes my strength. It's a source of happiness for me---I've always wanted to be strong inside and out.

Right now, I'm working on endurance. That's new. For example...

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John is killing me with exercises and sets! He rightly points out that I am strong enough and I need to define and cut.

This requires a tremendous amount of energy and endurance. Right now I'm having to separate out each bodypart and just do that every day, mixing it with cardio. I find I need to limit what I do while I learn each move well enough to depend on body memory. So I've figured out that this will be a gradual process of building up.

I just can't do this kind of massive set/rep approach for two bodyparts at a time while integrating the new moves *and* doing cardio at the same time. No way!

This week and probably next I'm just going to do one bodypart at a time until the exercise are all second nature and I can dance through them with unbroken focus. At that point, I'll try combining two bodyparts at a time again, and then work through a whole-body cycle once a week.

When I've got that down, I'll see if I can step up to cycling through twice a week---no, probably, twice every week and a half.

I think it will take me two to three months to work up to that level.

That's good. I like long, carefully designed, cumulative improvement projects.

By the end I should be both strong and in possession of scads of endurance.

In the past, I've often noticed how much easier it is to clean up my eating when I'm working out consistently. I've talked to others about this and it seems to be a widespread phenomenon. When you're training consistently and steadily, it seems crazy and counterproductive to keep eating unwisely.

Likewise, it's hard for me to eat consistently well *without* training. It's almost as though both pieces are needed to hold each other in place. Acting on one without the other is so much harder: maybe it's because I'm attempting to go against the grain of my current internal alignment. When both pieces are in place, I'm feeling aligned and clear and I can move forward steadily.

Maybe the real insight here is that it's difficult for me to move forward in any part of my life when I'm insufficiently internally aligned in my feelings about it.

Too many warring impulses and contradictory feelings translate into either no action or weak, insufficient, and unsustained action.

Only when I've achieved some kind of overall internal agreement about something can I consistently move forward with it.

In terms of health, I think this means bringing a lot of different parts of myself to the table and hammering out a common vision we can all get excited about.

Hmmmmm.

I worked with John again today. He taught me a shoulder move that I have never seen before. Not only have I never seen it before, I have never seen it referenced in books or mentioned or described in written form.

He showed me this compound exercise because he forgot I've been doing this for a couple of decades and he tried some beginner moves on me. Today, his first modifications of the beginner moves were no big deal, because I already knew them, and I already knew the controversy behind the old-school version of the move vs. the new school versions of the move.

"Why don't I quickly show you my shoulder routine before we get started on the next exercise?" I asked, attempting to be diplomatic. John looked at me and said OK. I showed him my moves, he assessed where I was, and said, "OK, I'm going to show you something nobody else does. It's a move I got on the Olympian powerlifting team. I promise it will be new."

"Cool!" I answered. "Show me."

He proceeded to take me to the high cables and show me an elaborate cable-based combination of front shoulder/top shoulder/rear shoulder moves that involved grabbing the cables, spinning around, crossing them to start and doing a set of modified side shoulder pull-downs followed up by bent-over shoulder pull-downs.

You have no idea what I am talking about.

That's because you have to see it to understand it. Then you have put your body through it a few times to even start getting the feel of it.

It was weird.

It was also hard. Really, really hard.

I am in pain already, and it's only been half a day. Not the bad kind of pain---just serious delayed onset muscle soreness.

John is worth every penny I am paying him.

There have been a few moments of squee in the last few days, thank gods.

One of them happened this morning. I was bench pressing the bar and I heard someone next to me say, "Hi...I saw your name on my schedule. I was wondering why I hadn't seen you in awhile."

I sat up and saw John, my much-wished-for coach and personal trainer. "Yeah," I said. "I signed up for a re-evaluation on Friday, and afterwards, I'm buying a package of eight sessions with you."

John grinned and said, "OK. We'll start with legs and biceps, so don't work them till then. And I'll throw in one free session at the end, because I'm that kind of guy."

SQUEE!!!!

SQUEE!!!

Just spent some time writing out a nice, long, private entry that really helped me work out some inner thoughts. I also went and did 30 minutes of cardio---reasonably light---which, predictably, lifted my mood way up. I wish I could remember that for me, exercise is an almost infallible path to peace! I keep forgetting, even after all these years.

Things are constantly changing in the world, both inside and outside of my being, and writing is the (second) best tool I have for getting a handle on all those changes.

Exercise + writing = balance and understanding. Balance and understanding lead to wisdom. Wisdom brings peace.

Peace shapes right action.

Sweet.

he drops onto the carpet and starts calling out the names of his stretches as he moves:


"Downward dog....." [He bends into the typical upward V of this pose]

"Upward dog..." [...then lays flat on his belly and curves his upper body into a Cobra-like position]

"Barking dog..." [...as he yells 'woof, woof, woof' at the top of his lungs.]

Got up early, made it to the gym this morning. So happy and pleased about this!

A quick post about balance: one of the more challenging things I've been attempting to do over the last year or so is balance all this internal growth with the other areas of my life that need attention. I've written about it several times, mostly just as a way of grappling with it.

I've noticed that it's been a little easier to manage since I got back from Beltane. I'm still the same woman---waaay too much to do---but either I'm more at peace about it or I'm handling it better. Not sure.

What's been really good: things have been going well at work, I've been connecting with 1-2 Blue Star students a day and catching up there, and I've even added a couple of people to the mentorship roster (yes, this is foolish, but one is O and one is a dissertation emergency---I can't turn them away). I'm back to focusing on Element Money and dealing with book promotion and distribution, both of which are very important to me.

Michael and I took most of a day to bring order to our place. This is really good for me, emotionally. I thrive in a clean, uncluttered space, and having this again on two of our three floors is soothing and beautiful to my soul. Perhaps the grounding, solidity and structure I always crave is overtly manifested as a clear, orderly life: a clean, open space, a nice-smelling, full refrigerator, and orderly, well-managed bank accounts. There's something about this graceful way of life that's very soothing, healing and healthy for me. When my environment is peaceful, I can really thrive and focus on what I do best: loving the people around me.

Now I want to add in regular workouts again, so I can get my daily dose of ecstasy. Must have it for optimal happiness and enhanced sanity. Finally, I need to start sleeping more (earlier) and eating more consciously: I've been maintaining a good weight, but I feel better when I'm putting lots of clean protein (chicken, fish, soy, legumes) and veggies into my body, with some whole grains to supplement. Over Easter-Oestara, we brought a lot of candy into the house and I just want to throw it all out. It's so, so bad for me! I won't toss it, because Michael likes it and Trent loves it, but I need to stay away from it, which means substituting something else in its place: probably luscious fruit.

We'll see.

May this beautiful, sane balance continue...

Something else I've been thinking about---all the internal changes I've been making are having interesting external consequences. Over the last few months, I've been steadily losing weight. Some of it is about the stress of change---when I'm nervous, it's harder for me to eat.

Some of it, though, has been about something else. Historically, I've always loved refined sugar and sugary treats. I mean, they're yummy and delicious---and who am I to turn down sensory pleasure? OK, I have no ability to turn down sensual pleasure unless I'm feeling cautious and threatened. And sweets certainly qualify as sensual pleasure!

But strangely, the transformational process has changed my craving for sugar. I don't feel the need for it anymore, at least not in the way I did only a few months ago. Now, I can walk away from it for days at a time.

This week, I stopped eating it entirely when my body demanded that I do so (to be fair, my body hates sugar as much as I love it, and that helps me walk away).

Consequently, I dropped even more weight this week and felt better than I have in ages.

So...I think this is my body's way of saying, "Hey girl, you go right ahead and experience more pleasure. But sugar isn't what you really want, so don't be fooled. Go and get the sensual and emotional pleasures you're really after, and leave the sugar alone."

The more I think about it, the more I'm interested in listening to my body/mind when it speaks to me.