Ain’t got time to bleed

You said yogis don’t bleed?  We practice and sweat and work ourselves to the bone (sometimes).

Today I opened up some old wounds, literally – the physical kind, not the psychological – and bled on my mat.  I can honestly say in over 13 years as a yogi, I have never done that. Not even from a nose bleed.  I think I’ve made it through some sort of right of passage.

Don’t judge me.

Tell me your best yogi-injury stories below. 

Sidenote: While searching for a photo for this post, because the one I took of my butchered elbow just didn’t work, I found this one. Who would have thought they’d have luxury bandaids? Oh. My.

The P90X: Injury Included?

In the past few weeks, dozens of people have asked my opinion about the newest craze in fitness programs: the P90X Workout.   The DVD series includes a yoga program which users were curious to get my expert opinion on.

My answer: My first impression of the program was a good one because it pitches yoga as a challenging addition to your fitness regime.  The program itself works your butt off, as many yoga classes do, but I would caution first-time yogis regardless of fitness level on the potential for injury.

Why? Because the program involves vinyasa or flow components.  Sun salutations (think Chaturanga- Upward Dog-Downward Dog- Repeat) which are  intregral to Ashtanga or Power Yoga styles of yoga are included.  For the yoga newbie these sequences of yoga poses can spell trouble for the body, especially for the shoulders.

Fast forward a few weeks: I’ve now heard from three separate people who have tried the program that they are suffering from various types of yoga-related injuries.   A shame, since yoga can have many positive benefits.

The moral of the story: Learn how to do the poses safetly FIRST with the help of a certified yoga instructor. Develop the strength, body awareness, and mobility it takes to practice each individual posture alone and in sequence.  Afterwards you’ll be ready to tackle P90X Yoga, and other similar yoga programs, safely and effectively.  Don’t and you may end up with more pain than gain.

Silverback

I’m fascinated by guerilla marketing.  Maybe it’s because it gets my creative juices flowing or because I enjoy seeing other’s creative minds at work.  Wit is an attractive quality and the people who manage to express it well make me weak in the knees.

I’m a little turned on right now since I found this Career Builders campaign on WebUrbanist.  I like the add because I can empathize with the state of mind its target audience is facing, plus I appreciate the  the extremes which with Career Builders approached the idea.

To pay homage to this and other brilliant adds our there, I’ve devised my own  guerilla marketing campaign in the form of a contest. Good luck!

My greatest fear…

…is that at the end of this life I will have been merely mediocre.

How’s that for an ego?

Don’t judge me. 

Because even yogis need a psych up song

Intrinsic motivation was never my forte.  I have hard days when I need a heavy dose of motivation from someone else.

Some days it’s best to go back to an old fav, tested and true: Van Halen

Don’t judge me.

“Right now is harder than it looks.”

All You Need is Love

When I give myself a physical challenge, the same old self-involved, mental struggle rears its head.  This mental struggle can only be coughed up as my ego taking a heavy pounding.  But as Lance Armstrong once said: “Pain is temporary, quitting lasts forever”. So this past weekend while riding my first century, I dug deep and finished.

Still, while I was complaining for the hundredth time on Sunday that my shoulder/back/ass/knee/stomach hurt, in another part of the world people were grieving. Over the past weekend while I was feeling sorry for myself, Norway was mourning an unimaginable loss. At the time I was riding, I hadn’t heard the news of the Norway massacre. If I had, maybe I would have gone a little easier on myself.

It’s difficult for me to keep things in prospective sometimes.  My ego thinks it’s a big deal, but big deals hit you when you least expect them. True pain and grief can’t be found on a highway shoulder. True grief comes when hate rules.

My heart goes out to the people of Norway.   I can only hope we can keep our faith in humanity and remember Yoga’s first Yama: Ahimsa or non-violence. Whether its to ourselves or someone else, be nice to each other, will ya?

“Our answer is more democracy, more openness, and more humanity – but never naivety.” – Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg

(WOLFGANG RATTAY/REUTERS)

In the “Red Light” Zone

It’s officially true. I suck at time management.

I’ve feared this for some time now, knowing deep in my gut that I had a serious problem.  I recently took a quiz that clearly proved my worse fears.  The quiz was created by the lovely Susi Hately from Functional Synergy to determine a person’s time management skills. Susi offers useful and eye opening business courses and resources geared specifically to yoga entrepreneurs.  This time the eye opener was my score on her time management quiz.

You the know kind: a quick ten item questionnaire where you rank your answers from 0-10, 0 being “I’m so far off the deep end on this item I’m drowning” to 10 being “I rule the school”.   Add up your scores and voilà, you get a score on how proficient you are at time management.

If you do the math, the highest score you can attain is 100. The lowest score is a big fat zero.

Susi provides an overall ranking of how you did with a score of less than 50  being what she calls the dreaded “‘Red light zone’: You’ll want to make some changes quickly or you will continue to struggle.”

My score? 27.

Good. Lord.

To Susi: No, the writing of this blog was not pre-scheduled into my day.  But it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

The irony here is palpable.

Now, what was I supposed to be doing…?

Rhymes with mascara

I’m the first to admit I’m not perfect (see the title of this blog).  I have my own idiosyncrasies, bad tendencies, and vices.   My saṃskāras show themselves in full force when I’m off guard or when my practice has taken a trip to Vegas and forgotten to leave me a ticket.

What the heck are saṃskāras?  Saṃskāras – three syllables, rhymes with mascara – are our emotional and mental patterns, those little, or not so little, bad habits that pop up when things get tough or when we’re taken out of our comfort zone.   Sometimes they manifest themselves through our actions, for example eating a tub of ice cream while watching a marathon of home design shows, or as physical stress or self-deprecating thoughts.  In more serious situations the lack of an ability to cope with our mental patterns can lead to serious addictions.   For me, my emotional habit is to send myself into panic mode where I feel the need to vent my frustrations and “get it all out”.   Facebook is a perfectly good avenue for this, right??

Yoga nerd alert: Yoga Sutra (II.16) states, Heyam duhkham anagatam, or “Future suffering is to be avoided.”

I joke the best way to nip these saṃskāras in the bud is to drink your weight in wine.  I’m not sure this is what was meant by Sutra II.16; I’ve felt the wrath of a post future-suffering-busting wine binge.  Suffering often begets more suffering.

A much healthier, mature way of breaking our tendencies is to 1) become aware of them (others are really good at helping with this, just ask your spouse), 2) let go of your attachment to them, ask yourself, “Are they really helping me?”, and finally 3) break your habits by creating new positive tendencies, “When this happens, I’m going to do this instead of that.”

Keep it up and you’ll soon find you’re feeling a whole lot better and enjoying some serious emotional growth.

Sidenote: When I Googled saṃskāras while looking for an appropriate image for this post, I found this:

http://creativebinge.co.uk/blog/samskara/

Apparently funk can help too.

The Oprah Cult

It’s the end of an era.  After 25 years, boyfriends and husbands everywhere will no longer have to hear the words “I saw this thing on Oprah today…”

I’ll admit, I’m part of the Oprah cult.   Not the crying until your head blows off hysteria shown by some Oprah guests (see SNL skit) but the altruistic, do something that makes your heart sing and does the world good philosophy.

On her final show, Oprah said this:

“What I knew for sure from this experience with you is that we are all called. Everybody has a calling, and your real job in life is to figure out what that is and get about the business of doing it.” -Oprah

I believe  in what Oprah is saying.   So much so, I’ve struggled with depression, self-loathing, and thoughts of suicide in my 30 odd years all because I thought was I was doing was bullshit, an example of doing what’s easiest, not what’s best.  I knew in my bones that life could be about something much better.

But checking out of life and feelings of self-loathing don’t help anyone, least of all yourself.

I’ve turned many pages since and know I’ve found my calling.  My feelings have switched to self confidence and happiness with a sprinkling of self-doubt and fear.  There are still darks days but the difference now is I work to keep my courage up to plug ahead.  Because it’s not the destination that matters but the journey you take to be and do better.

Thank you, Oprah.

Where Did I Come From?

I am adopted.  But so is Po.

Yoga Ninja Kim (as I am nicknamed – guess that’s another confession) and the coolest panda in movie history have something in common.