Clinging to Good Times

Daryl!

We arrived home from Sedona (OSP) the other day. We were tired from road food, so we sat down to a couple of warm, watery beers and frozen dinners and watched an episode of The Walking Dead before heading to sleep.

When I awoke, I was conscious of being so content. I am not prone to mood swings, so when I notice feelin' something other than my consistently OK nature I try to take notice. The day just seemed.... expansive. I would have breakfast with the man-type and read the Margaret Atwood novel I just started while sitting on the sofa. When I got hungry, I'd go pick a few things up from the store. And it would still be early in the day!

The morning started off just as I thought it would. I read, but then familiar thoughts started seeping in. "You should check your work email!" "You should get the store over with now." "Why aren't you at yoga, lazy?" I failed to bat them away and found myself scrolling through the dozens of work emails that had piled up while I was away. Before I knew it, I was at the grocery store, ambling through brightly-lit aisles, tossing products I didn't really need into the cart. By the time I was home, my brain was already racing with ideas I could use in the classroom, assessing how much work I needed before the semester started.

Really, it's OK that I'm back in work mode. It's especially palpable now that the first week of classes is over. But there's something so wonderful about that sense of expansiveness that can come in when we set aside our responsibilities to connect with the people we love and to the world around us. I've been told that there are ways to remind us of those good times.

They say that the reason we enjoy vacations so much is because we've invested time into planning them. By the time we get there, it would be foolish to complain about the food or lodging, or to not appreciate every wonderful moment there is. I've been told to put effort into remembering good times by creating a place of rotating photos, of eating in restaurants that remind us of a fun night out. I'll have to think about that.... right after I check my work email :-)

Double Bed

I just read a “Signs You Might Be a Type A personality” article on Facebook (thanks, La) and was reminded of how much I hate sleeping away from home. Or sleeping at all, really. When the Man-type first moved in, I could hardly sleep a wink with him in the same bed. Finally, I gave in and dropped a grand on an enormous king-size. We could both be having a fitful night and the other wouldn’t know a damn thing about it, the bed is so flippin’ huge.

The only drawbacks of the delightful Canyon Wren in Sedona is that they only offer queen sized beds. I figured, what the hell? It’s a romantic getaway, right? I wasn’t that much of a princess, was I?

I swear, the bed was a double. A double! 

Now, I’m an affectionate person by day. I like to hug, kiss, and enjoy intimate moments with my Man-type. But at night? When it's time to sleep? You better get away. GET AWAY. And stay on your side, dammit. 

And how was I going to enjoy these beautiful vistas if I was cranky from a bad night’s sleep?

How would I learn about the Sinaguans and their matriarchal societies and their cliffdwellings and communal living spaces if I only got four or five hours?

How were we going to have a—ahem—romantic getaway in OSP (Our Special Place) if my dude is tired from my tossing and turning all night? 

Fortunately, after we enjoyed an incredible dinner of pork cheeks, steak, and grilled corn at Elote, and after we scared ourselves by watching 28 Days Later, I was lulled to a restful Sedona sleep by the babbling fountain nearby. And I got to enjoy those crazy vistas after all. 

 

 This is in Boynton Canyon.

Boars and More

It’s been a year and a half since I blogged. While I make no promises (threats?) to resurrect this tired trash heap and add to it on a regular basis, I feel compelled today, and I really truly would like to get back into the habit of it.

The Man-type and I have settled on Sedona as Our Special Place (OSP). Despite the drive, it’s a convenient enough getaway for a three or four night stay. We depart from our tree-lined community and cross seven hours’ worth of desert. The drive sun-bleaches away our routines and stress as we talk and listen to the Man’s ‘80s music or old reruns of Loveline.

 The Canyon Wren grounds,  photo from Tripadvisor

During our first two visits, we stayed in Forest Houses, a series of older cabins located on a gorgeous property north of Sedona in Oak Creek Canyon. Because it was unavailable, we ended up booking a little cabin at the nearby Canyon Wren, a small bed and breakfast that avails itself only to couples or solo travelers. Upon arriving at 7:00 the first night, I walked car-dazed toward the office to check in as the Man unpacked the car. I ambled forward quietly until I was stopped by snorting, chuffing boars.

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit.
  

OK, it was explained to me that the two giant pigs that ran in front of me were not pigs, really, but javelinas. The owners put out dog food each night to deter them from eating the plants.

But just look at the picture. You tell me if that’s a “peccary” or some sort of rabid porcine beast. Indeed, we were later told that they could kill a small child or an elderly person.

I spent the rest of the trip trying to get a photo of the buggers but could capture nothing more than a shadowy figure. The Man-type wouldn’t dare walk around the property after dusk, so I will torture him for years to come with this javelina wall hanging we picked up at a store called "World Famous Art" in a place called Gila Bend.

More on OSP soon.

Conquering the Control Freak Demon

The following is a piece I wrote for another purpose, so it may read just a bit more formally than my usual shtick. It does fit the theme of the blog, so please have a go! :-)

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I’ve been doing yoga since I was 16. I’ve done therapy, studied meditation, and worked with other anxiety-reducing techniques. Though the benefits are many, there’s one demon I am not even close to conquering: I'm a control freak. 

“To relinquish the futile effort to control change is one of the strengthening forces of true detachment and thus true love,” meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg writes. “Relinquish the futile effort to control change”-- That's beautiful stuff. What a lofty goal to work toward. I'm going to get on that one--right after I take an hour nap, followed by a 45-minute swim, a dinner during which I have one glass of wine, a cheeseburger with onion rings, and then a few pages in Peter Mathiesen's The Snow Leopard before turning the lights out by midnight.

The tight schedule above is a bit of an exaggeration, but in all honesty, the desire to control is a driving force in my life. Bikram yoga, with its rigidly outlined series of postures, feeds into my control freakiness. I like the consistency: 26 postures, two breathing exercises, taught with virtually the same dialog. I'm also enough of a control freak that I don't mind it when my boyfriend plans to cook our pizza and I end up doing most of the work. I like doing it my way!

I could do a cognitive reframe on this, I suppose. Perhaps I'm simply organizationally inclined. But that label wouldn't take into account my most recent, desperate attempt to control the universe. 

About a month ago, my boyfriend and I decided he would move in. Everything had been going swimmingly between us, but the week before the move, the impact of the change on the horizon hit me. I had lived alone for almost four years. Before that, I lived with my father in a giant house, and we orbited each other, interacting only infrequently. It became apparent how wedded I was to my personal space. Although I loved my boyfriend and knew the move was the right one, I was anxious. 

The boyfriend and I had decided that Saturday was to be the big day. The boyfriend, completely at ease with the whole move thing, dropped his stuff at the house in dribs and drabs. (To be fair, he didn’t have much stuff. Like, at all.) With each load and trip to IKEA, my anxiety mounted. Instead of being able to address my anxiety head-on, encompassing the complex (and understandable) emotions that come with such a life change, I funneled it obsessively into one tiny avenue: the bed. 

Now, to say I'm a light sleeper would be an understatement. I've wrestled with sleep issues since I was old enough to remember. Going to bed is like going to war: I equip myself with ear plugs, and eye mask, a queen bed, and a bedtime routine that would have a normal sleeper in a coma 20 minutes in. And now, a man was going to enter this precious space? I was terrified. 

I made the bed my focus in the week leading up to the big day. What would I do if I couldn't fall asleep? Would I toss and turn, risking waking him up? Would I relegate myself to the guest bedroom to ensure we both got a good night's sleep? After a yoga class that week, I stopped at a consignment store nearby and thought I'd found the answer to my prayers:

Ugly chaise

This sofa (a chaise, if you want to get technical) is ugly as sin. I figured, well, I could put it in the bedroom, have it set up, and then if I couldn't sleep in the bed I would be just across the room. Everything with this move in would now be OK! And all for only $110! And all I'd have to do to get the thing to my house is borrow a friend's truck, get my boyfriend to take a couple of hours off work, and find some way to get the thing down into the bedroom.

The boyfriend, bless his heart, was very supportive about the whole thing, and arranged to take the time off work. Upon glancing at the couch, however, he said, “OK. Fine, but you're not sleeping on that until you get it cleaned. It's filthy." He was right. It was filthy, ugly, and would be a pain to get into the house. But still I pressed forward, on an exhausting journey involved our carrying the chaise around the entire building, as well as a $65 cleaning bill.

At every step, my yoga and meditation honed insight told me to relax, that this couch thing was completely unnecessary. I knew I was taking a leap into the unknown, and this was scary. At the same time, though, I was fueled to move forward with the move because it felt like the right thing. This is love, isn't it? Why can't I relax into this? Why must I try to control this change? 

It’s now been a month since the couch was moved into my house. It sits, ugly as ever, covered by a sheet, dominated by my three cats. I’ve yet to sleep on it. 

We take many steps in our journey toward mental well-being. At times, we manage face our doubts head-on and are able to prevent our anxieties from getting the best of us. At others, they do get the best of us, however, and giant, lumpy reminders stay with us, reminding us to that we need to keep working to abandon those “futile efforts to control change.”  

Examining the Narrative

"Sometimes, you gotta break out of your own narrative," said Bruce Springsteen when he left the E-Street band years ago.

This Saturday will mark three years since returning to Bikram yoga. Reflective anniversary posts may not be the most thrilling, but I think pausing to "take stock" and observe the unfolding of the years is worth doing, so long as it doesn't descend into rumination ;-) What narrative are we in now? How has this story come to be? In what was do we hope it will evolve?

First, what hasn't happened in three years. I still have high blood pressure, which kinda sucks. I'm also tempted to be frustrated by what appears to be stagnation in the postures and in my stamina. In today's class, I lay on my mat, exhausted, dehydrated, as I sat out the second set of the final four postures. Y'know, come to think of it, I skip postures often. I even leave the room occasionally. If you'd asked me during the first year of practice where I hoped I'd be by year three, I might have said something like, "I'd like to pretty much always do the entire class, no sitting out poses, and never leave the room."

It's easy to focus on what hasn't happened. But predicting what benefits we'll receive out of any discipline is probably not the best place to put our energy. As Pema Chodron says in the recent issue of Shambala Sun, "to look for progress is a setup--a guarantee that we won't measure up to some arbitrary goal we've established."

Pema's words ring true to me. At the same time, I recognize that goals are what drive many people into any discipline. We feel a need to get fitter, to calm down, or to feel more energized, so we join a gym/cleanse/diet/juice/meditate/pray/etc. Some of us have serious health issues that we hope will improve with a disciplined practice. The downside of clinging to this list, though, is that we can get frustrated when we don't check those goals off the list. More importantly, we can fail to notice other, equally important changes simply because they fail to fit our chosen narrative.

Dart Board

In some ways, I guess I've been lucky all around here. I actually have met some of my self-prescribed "goals." These are some of the "measurable outcomes" (oh God, did I actually just write that?): A minor thyroid issue no longer afflicts me. I can enjoy a glass or two of wine without getting a migraine. As a matter of fact, I no longer live in fear of getting a migraine--they've reduced in frequency so dramatically that I'm surprised when I get one. As the end of the semester nears and the piles of grading mount, I no longer get the throbbing tension in my upper back and shoulders, and I can concentrate more deeply and for longer periods of time. I still have difficulty sleeping, but when I lie awake at night the dread that used to fill my body and mind is now nothing more a quiet whir in the background. I appreciate my strength, flexibility, and a pretty forgiving metabolism.

More impressive but less quantifiable are the emotional and mental benefits of yoga. When I started, I had moderate social anxiety and would not go out more than once or twice a week--doing so was so taxing I needed a day to recover, to build the stamina for another go-around. Having people in my home left me fraught with anxiety. There is something in this practice, though, that encourages you, bit by bit, to be OK with who we really are, and now I find social engagements energizing instead of enervating. As I write this post, a man is readying his things to move in, something I would not have thought possible even two years ago. I look forward to this move, to both the joys and challenges it will bring us.

These are the changes I really didn't anticipate. I could almost say that there's been a personality shift in the last seven months or so. This is what can occur when we "allow it to happen," as my yoga teacher often says. Goals are fine if you need 'em to get you in the door, but what ultimately happens can be so much more. "We practice letting go of our idea of a 'goal' and letting go of our concept of 'progress,'" writes Chodron, "because right there, in that process of letting go, is where our hearts open and soften--over and over again."

I understand that as we age we evolve (hopefully). I can't contribute all changes on this list solely to Bikram yoga. But it does deserve a big chunk of the credit. There is something about a regular, mindful practice that encourages expansiveness in one's mind. Increased awareness of the body's and the mind's doings urges us to shift our perception and to make wiser, more compassionate decisions--from the mundane to the life-altering. Talk about breaking out of one's narrative!

The Payoff

I want to talk about payoffs.

Every month, I put $100 into a retirement account. The hope is that 35+ years from now I will withdraw those monthly donations, and that with interest I'll have accumulated a nice little nest egg. (Do you hear the sound of me blithely ignoring the stock market as it drips steadily downward? Ignorance is bliss.)

There are other types of payoffs too, of course, and perhaps they offer far more than monetary value. Several times a week, many of us drag ourselves to the hot room, believing that our efforts will bring us rewards in the form of a healthier body, a saner mind, and a purer spirit. Effort takes the form of therapy, prayer, and meditation, typically done with a sort of "goal" in mind: we endure what is often a "grim duty" in the hopes that we'll achieve a sense of peace.

The struggles that push me into these activities are not unique to me. I get worried. I'm tightly wound. I have difficulty sleeping. And when I do sleep, anxieties persist: even my dreams reflect my mountain of insecurities back to me. "Life is a journey, not a destination," I tell myself to make it through a tough moment, pleading with myself to stay in the present.

One thing I think we can all agree on, though. The destination can be pretty sweet.

I took the time to pause and savor one of those destinations just last night.

Jamul, Hollenbeck Canyon

Every year, I go out to "the country," Jamul, which is located about 20+ miles east of San Diego. Each April, I celebrate the birthday of a dear friend, whose wife invites dozens of friends out to their sprawling property to explore, eat, drink, and dance to a band's rendition of Tom Petty, Santana, and The Doors.

Oh, and people also ride dirt bikes and ATVs.

I've been going to these Jamul parties for about five years now. Whenever I arrive, the hosts, Jerry and Cindy, offer me a drink and the keys their ATV, also known as The Rhino. Always I have declined, unless I happen to be with a guest that wants to jump into the driver's seat. I have ridden shotgun many a time around Jerry and Cindy's sprawling country property, always content to be in the passenger's seat. Whether it is from fear or simply from the result of resistance to new experiences, it never even occurred to me to grab the keys myself.

But there have been changes 'round these parts these last few months. Years of yoga and deep spiritual and emotional exploration have tenderly prepared the soil for new growth. A new man is at my side, a trellis that encourages those new tendrils to sprout upward. I was ready to start a new tradition at Jerry's party.

"Where are the keys?" I asked, not long after I arrived. My partner bravely entered the vehicle and gripped the dusty handle for dear life. Off we rode, bumping through ruts, nearly tipping over into brambles, streaming through mud puddles, and reversing down roads to avoid territorial guard dogs.

To say it was fun would be an understatement. As I steered us through windy country roads, I felt as if I were putting the miles between me and my old self--the past was, for once, going to stay put. A few moments of freedom, speeding steadily forward.

I know I'll keep on toiling away in the hot room. I will continue to sit until our sits bones are sore, and I'll dutifully deposit the money into my retirement accounts. But the payoff? When it arrives, I promise to love it. We should all spend a few moments reveling in that gloriously muddy, dusty destination.

Avoid the territorial canines

  

Enjoy the ride in the Rhino

Triumphant, Uncomfortable, Still employed, and Groggy: A Week in Review.

Looking back on my little post on living in the "discomfort zone," it seems like quite an optimistic rallying cry. I love getting the positive feedback, of course, and I'm overjoyed if it brought an ounce of happy to your life. It's good to be reminded that things can feel that right.

So. One week down. How's my list of resolutions going? Admittedly, a couple of work crises, a pile of papers weighing on my shoulders, and a cold rainstorm this weekend have dampened my spring-filled spirit just a titch. As I write this post, a pack of coyotes fill the wet air outside my window with childlike yips, rejoicing over a kill. It's an ominous note to end a Sunday on.

In looking back on the week's events, I realize the fatal flaw in my play to intentionally step out into the discomfort zone: The world will present you with discomfort at every turn. You don't need to seek it out. Darn that hasty post! How rarely we have the energy to actively seek out challenges.

All that negativity/self-doubt stuff aside, though, I think these resolutions are ultimately a good thing. 

As the first of two work crises raised its ugly head earlier in the week, I watched my old patterns flair up--anxiety, a need to pull into my shell. At one point I felt a desire to rescind a commitment to a social obligation in favor of some Netflix and an early night. I remembered this idea of the discomfort zone--simply doing seemed to steady myself. I ended up having a great time at said social outing.

So, highlights from this week (well, the ones that I will mention on a public blog ;-) 

• Got up during a sleepless night and scoured the internet for laughs from happyplace.com. Got some kind consolations from a fellow insomniac on Facebook. Woke up feeling triumphant, if a bit groggy.
• Had some really tough conversations with coworkers--the kind that make me feel like an eight-year-old girl dressed up in her mother's heels, just waiting to be called out. Still employed.
• Said no a couple of times. Said yes often. Loved it all.
• Did something loving for a relative. Uncomfortable. But ultimately, a good move.

In Bikram, we do 30-day challenges. On New Year's, we write our resolutions. Some pledge to love Jesus, Buddha, and Allah. I guess the benefit of these commitments is that they serve as a compass: remind me of the path.