Just wanted to note that since I've cut refined sugar and white starches from my life to practically nil, I have been feeling much better and have more energy. The night before last I allowed myself some cookies from a gift from my son's girlfriend, and I woke up feeling like I had a hangover. Though my scare turned out to be just that, a scare and not an actual problem, I have continued to eat as though it were real because it so easily could be, and that consequence from a very small cookie binge just proved that sugar really is like poison to me. I'm physically happier without it.
(Facebook readers, click the link at the end of this note to see pics and video)
I like doing yoga. I like that you do the moves in a flowing, stretching, almost dancelike way. I like that the classes that I go to use relaxing, meditative music. And I love coming to the end with Savasana, the Corpse Pose, where you just lie there in tune with your body, relaxing. Yoga has become a replacement for what I would sometimes get at church, but the benefit of yoga is that you're never made to feel guilty, or like you're not measuring up to God's standards. Yoga is about listening to yourself, to the rhythm of your body, and paying attention to the sensations. It quiets your mind so that you can go deeper within to a place of calm and peace. When I'm doing yoga regularly, I can cope with my life better.
It also helps to put the right nutrients in my body, and though I haven't lost any weight since my last post about loving myself, I feel so much better in my mind because I've replaced a lot of bad foods with good ones. I've discovered that cherries are the perfect food for me when I begin to crave sweet foods. And I bought a bag of clementines the other day. Those are so delicious! As I peeled the first one over the sink, I realized that the smell of tangerines is Christmas to me, which is probably why I love them so much. I love the taste, of course, but when I smell them, all the things associated with Christmas flood my mind. That's also why I love chocolate covered marzipan. It's a Christmas treat, so to get it in the middle of the year gives me a feeling of my favorite time of the year.
Anyway, eating cherries and tangerines makes it easier to stay away from the sweet stuff, though I have an allowed limit of 3 Hershey's miniatures a day if I feel I need them. The last 3 days I definitely have. The time of the month approaches soon.
Yoga, though, isn't so easy because it requires some discipline. There's no discipline involved in going to the refrigerator and grabbing some fruit instead of going to my stash and grabbing some candy. In fact, I keep it hidden so that my daughter isn't tempted, and I can't just go to it any time I want because she could discover the hiding place, so that helps to keep it from me as well. But in order to do yoga at home, I have to push the coffee table out of the way, make sure the floor is swept and mopped, pull out my mat and block, and then set up my computer so that I can either watch a yoga DVD or put on my special music and do my own sequence of moves. It's so easy to let other things get in the way of doing yoga at home.
But I'm going to show you how easy it is for me to go to yoga class, as well as it's being a delightful place to go. It's called The Lotus Pond, and you won't see the inside or the back on my video, so here are some photos from their website. Through the windows inside you look out onto the pond, which isn't in their photos, and I don't know why because that's a big draw of the place. The room you see is their great room. They also have a smaller one, the lobby, the office (where I have a feeling a kitchen is also located), and a loft. It was originally someone's home.
This is from the front looking over to the right side of the building. If you go on around you'll see their organic garden and the pond, and then you can look back to see the back of the house:
The dark part of the house on the right is the great room, which has windows all the way around. This view looks out onto the garden (which is about where the person taking the picture must have stood), and the end view at the right looks over the pond. I always try to position myself so that I can view a statue of buddha out on the pond as my center point of vision for when I need to focus.
Those are the windows that look over the pond, and to the right are the windows and a porch that you can see in the previous picture. And now to show you how easy it is to get there.
I've been mulling this over for a couple of days, whether or not to blog about it, and if so, how to approach it. I already wrote a long post about being reborn. I didn't know how to put it any other way. I believe I mentioned that turning 50 wasn't as bad as I'd feared, and instead was rather freeing. It could be that turning 50 and the culmination of the experiences of the last few years simply coincided, but the fact remains, I have this inner voice that occasionally wants to shout, "I'm 50 now, and I can do anything I want!" I know it's silly. I could always do anything I wanted, really, but there are so many things you just don't know until you've lived through stuff, and once you have, things that used to be of such dire importance simply aren't.
And what do I want? To love myself. What it comes down to is this, is what I'm doing an indication of how I show myself love? If it isn't, it's not worth doing. This doesn't mean indulging my every whim and desire, of course not, any more than giving your kids candy every day shows your love for them. You try to do what's right for your kids, you stop them from engaging in harmful behavior when you can, and you limit how much you indulge them (or most decent parents do). So this is the mindset I've begun to use for myself.
I used to have what I called a Be Kind to Arleen day. Every once in a while, when I felt overwhelmed, I would declare such a day, and I would take care of myself in a good way. I'd do things like soak in the tub, give myself a manicure, go somewhere alone to chill, whatever. It's not that I never did those things anyway, but by stating that ON THIS DAY those were the only kinds of things that I would do, remembering that I needed to recharge myself if I expected to have anything to give to others, I was doing something to show myself that I really did love me. But it's so easy to let too much time go by in between my Be Kind days.
Well, I've decided to make my life be a Be Kind life in a way. Diets don't do it for me. Knowing that I could end up with diabetes quite easily doesn't scare me. Understanding that physical activity and right eating are the only things that will in any way lessen some of my aches and pains doesn't give me the motivation to do them. But when I look at it from the point of view that all my bad habits are like saying, "I don't like you very much, and I'm going to do everything that I can to make you miserable," now that, for some reason, has captured my heart. I'm worth loving, and it's high time I did just that, loved myself. When I pass the chocolate bars at the checkout counter, instead of all the silly things I tell myself, like "sugar is evil" I can simply say, "Will getting one be an act of love?" Sometimes, the answer is yes because this isn't about denying myself, it's about loving myself. Mostly, of course, the answer is no, and I'm finding it so much easier to deal with each bad habit decision this way. It's been a week now since I started doing this, and so far, so good.
And it isn't just about food. It's about my daily activities, too. Am I loving myself when I sit in front of my computer for two hours and when I look up I shudder because I don't like what my house looks like? The appearance of my house has an effect on me. That's not to say I've suddenly become Mrs. Clean, it just means that I know I'll feel better if I put away this or clean that instead of wasting time on the computer, so I'll do it and feel better. I won't do it all the time because some days, it's the two hours on the computer that will be what I need. Capice?
Yeah, so, we'll see how it goes, and I'm turning this into a blog category because maybe I'll give updates. All I know is that so far, loving me is giving me tremendous satisfaction. Have you loved yourself recently?
This is from the front looking over to the right side of the building. If you go on around you'll see their organic garden and the pond, and then you can look back to see the back of the house:
The dark part of the house on the right is the great room, which has windows all the way around. This view looks out onto the garden (which is about where the person taking the picture must have stood), and the end view at the right looks over the pond. I always try to position myself so that I can view a statue of buddha out on the pond as my center point of vision for when I need to focus.
Those are the windows that look over the pond, and to the right are the windows and a porch that you can see in the previous picture. And now to show you how easy it is to get there.
