Listening and Limits

I've been grappling with some issues lately, worsened by my irritating habit of believing that will is a skill and by god I'll push it until I achieve whatever it happens to be that I set out to achieve.  After spending a few Saturdays in bed quite literally curled into the fetal position frustrated by my inability to manifest change while Ari stood guard I decided I needed to stop moping and get outside and run.  

I settled into the soothing sounds of Jay-Z and took off.  Ever since my hip surgery a year ago I can feel when I'm not running "right".  Also, when a storm is coming.  I'm a human barometer, or like an old arthritic lady.  This run was no exception, almost immediately into my jog a dull ache decided to join the party.

This did not please me, and I pushed through.  Then a thought quite literally bubbled up into my head, "Jenna, what did that injury teach you?'

I ignored the condescending "teacher" attitude my inner voice had decided to utilize, and considered, "When I need to stop."  

The smug voice bubbled up, just as omnipotent, "And did you?"

"No."

"And what happened?"

"I really f-ing hurt myself.  I did real damage by ignoring the pain and not stopping."

"Sounds familiar…doesn't seem like you learned anything.  Have fun continuing to inflict damage on yourself."

My mind returned to its normal chatter.  But I couldn't shake the feeling that "the" voice was right and feeling a little disconcerted by the fact that I just got bitch-slapped with obviousness by my inner self.  

In some spiritual practices its thought that life throws out "tests" to see how you respond and the same test will keep coming up until you "pass".  People will date the people with the same destructive personality type over and over.  People will solicit partners or friends that imitate people from your past.  Until the issue is resolved it keeps coming back, life keeps giving you a chance to pass.  Around and around until you clear the hurtle and transcend to the next lesson you are meant to learn.

At the end of my run I had settled into a walk.  I couldn't let my internal conversation go.  

It had nothing to do with running through hip pain and everything to do with a self-destructive pattern.  My hip was just a literal physical manifestation of failing the lesson, but I was failing the same lesson in my personal life again and again.  All the issues I have-work troubles and social frustrations, all of it was driven by pushing through and not acknowledging the hurt that was being inflicted both by myself and others.  And by not knowing when to stop and respect my own limit.  

When I got home, I returned to bed, not to mope…strangely I didn't feel like moping anymore, but I was tired.

As I dozed off, all I could think was, "Thank you".

When I woke up on Sunday morning I was completely calm, almost devoid of any emotion whatsoever, I knew that "I" had finally "heard" the message.

But can I listen?

Yoga "Bliss": A Drowned Dolphin

I'm a pretty avid exerciser.  With a marathon under my belt, I deviated in the past couple years from a run-centric regimen to trying my hand with weight circuits and Pilates reformer classes.  Given my problems with moderation, when I commit to a fitness style I commit to mastery, abandon everything else, and plateau.

I decided this year to try several new fitness classes to "mix it up"-and destress.  My friend volunteered to take me to her hot yoga class.

I hate extreme temperatures, I spend Texas summers in some semblance of seasonal induced misery by being forced to stay indoors so I did not expect to enjoy being locked in a 105 degree room.

I arrived with my mat-but no towel.  Rookie mistake.

I slipped and slid out of poses that I should be able to hold no problem-it was work to hold the pose.  I was disturbed by the instructor who didn't sweat.  I looked like a drowned dolphin on the other hand by the end of class.  Sopping wet.

I stayed away for a month.  I was not into being hot.

Then I had a meltdown at work.  Not sweat running down my back, but a full on crying/stress panic attack breakdown.  As I drove home from work, I noticed a yoga studio a block from my apartment with a sign offering a free week.

This time I arrived with a towel, water, and I knew what I was getting into.

The instructor of this class did sweat, which I found reassuring.  He also told us to focus on "smiling", that between holding the pose and holding a smile we would push the other thoughts out of our heads.

He was right, and in the past 3 weeks I've been back 15 times.  To sweat the stress out.

The Butcher on 5th Continued

After coming to following my oral surgery I was vaguely aware that it felt like my body was levitating, that I hadn't eaten in 24 hours, and that I was still enraged at Dr Beefcake over on 5th Street for sentencing me to this still not yet over ordeal.  I grouchily allowed myself to be rolled out of the office by a staff that was thrilled to see my crying hysterical self go and only warned me to "make sure I kept taking the pain medication every 4 hours as opposed to every 6"-presumably to prevent me from reigning down with my hysteria and going after the Beefcake with a set of pliers.

I sulked the entire way home while I checked work email on my phone and rued my swollen jaw and enormous chipmunk like cheeks that had swallowed any remnants of cheekbones I'd had that morning.  

Amanda aided my walk into the apartment and was a little surprised about my barren cupboards-a depressing bi-product of 6 months of pedal to the medal with my job.  She ran to the grocery store and returned with jello, ice cream, tortillas, guacamole to join the lone jar of apple sauce in my fridge.  She patted me on the head before leaving me to my own devices and the company of the cat.

I sat on my sofa scowling for another 20 minutes or so while drinking some Gatorade and eating a pudding cup-stroking my cat like a Bond villain while I directed bad juju towards the Beefcake until I passed out on my rug.

I got up dutifully throughout the night chomping down on codeine and anti-nausea medication and ate guacamole by the spoonful, turning to ice cream after listening to the Beefcake's "check-in" voicemail.

The following day I tried to work from home and after addressing several ridiculous requests, my parents called me to warn me of the dangers of pain killer addictions.  

As I sat in my pajamas from the night before, I succumbed to a pity party.  Being Type-A, I needed a scale to properly communicate my misery.  After considering for awhile I dubbed it the 4th worst experience of my life (not including deaths or romantic breakups)

1.) Lay-off/coupled with minor medical crisis circa 2009

2.) Finding out the person I loved was a filthy rotten cheater 

3.) Getting pants'd in gym class in High School while being taunted by a pack of cliquey she-devils circa 2002

4.) Tooth Extraction nightmare, circa 2013

5.) Running the marathon, miles 19-22, circa 2011

With the scale in place, I didn't feel quite so bad about still being in my jammies nor the fact that I consumed an entire pint of ice cream in a day.  That was the prescription for recovery for all of the Top 5.  

With that settled, I settled in for 3 days of sleeping, DVR watching, and not washing my hair for 3 days.  I wasn't allowed to work out, and the medication had some awful side affects that rendered me in a fetal position for much of the weekend and left Ari guarding me from a distance as he was afraid to go near me.  

It was a banner time.

Weight Loss is Boring, Health is Not

Over the years my personal pinnacle of unattainable perfection was my size.  

When I was young I wanted to dance, and my curves put me on the outs of a passion and made me feel foreign in a family that possessed women who were sinewy thin in their youth.  My curves were sexy, something I didn't feel belonged to me--a nerd who was passionate about straight A's and reading.  I dressed for my body, all v-necks and form fitting cotton, but I was playing a part.  It didn't feel like me.  

When I began to fail in college for the first time at my carefully constructed identity I didn't cope well.  I drank and put on weight like a bear preparing for hibernation, and after gaining 25 pounds in a 3 month period-I suddenly found purpose and accomplishment in fitness.  I thrilled in weight loss.  A concrete, measurable, attainable goal.  My element.  Moderation not being my strong suit I became obsessed.  Obsessed.  After I lost my last 5 vanity pounds, I went after the next 5 and so it went in pursuit of that sinewy thinness that to me suggested belonging, until I found myself glaring at a Dietician who dared to suggest to me that I might have a problem.  

Over the course of the past 6 years, from that couch in an office in East Lansing to the one where I sit typing this in a tank and skivvies I've come a long way.  From seeing health and fitness as a means to an end of some unattainable perfection to seeing it as a lifestyle that makes me feel energized and connected to the world around me.  Slowly learning about myself along the way, and with that learning came first an appreciation, then a love.  But I didn't realize how far I'd come until I found myself out one night with a friend.  A friend who had recently been on a weight loss bender-and she was thin to begin with.  It was all quinoa/spinach all the time.

 

I was proud she wanted to get healthier, but when she went on a 20 minute diatribe in front of some friends about the final 3 pounds she couldn't get off I realized something-vanity weight loss is boring-and for years this is what I had sounded like.

Weight loss for the sake of your health is exciting, it implies that you are moving to a healthier and more positive future.  Fitness to achieve a goal is admirable and fun.  Weight loss for vanities sake, for conversation's sake to draw attention to yourself, pounds no one notices but you-those actually demonstrate that you want to shrink away from the world.  And if you want to shrink away from yourself, won't others as well?

I could feel my eyes glazing over as the conversation went on and on, a veritable odyssey of the 7 pound journey.  

Was this what I have sounded like over the years?  How in God's name did I delude myself into thinking my goal was about health and not about attention?  Was going cold turkey on all forms of fat while consuming vodka drink after vodka drink really someone who wanted to get healthy?   

I think that conversation, and seeing the extreme in someone else, an extreme I was personally familiar with reminded me of how important moderation is, and why its something I am consciously bringing into my life.  

Because moving from an extreme obsession with size to an appreciation of my body and a desire to be healthy is really when my life and my perception of it began to change.  

So what do you think about weight loss? Moderation?  Fitness is there such a thing as fitness for attention instead of fitness for health?

Progress: Accepting my best

I love to run.

At one point I hated it, the whole being unable to breathe thing wasn't high on my list of favorable feelings, and my competitive self loathed being passed by everyone including a Mom pushing a stroller and a morbidly obese man who was quite literally smoking as he passed me by.  But as I was home for the summer with my parents at the time (almost 8 years ago) it got me out of the house, I didn't have anything better to do and I was becoming a little concerned about the fact that none of my pants fit after a 5 month drinking bender overseas (Ahhh, to be 20 again).  

Over the next few years, running became my solace.  My time with me, time away everyday I didn't feel guilty about taking.  Running kept me company when I lost my job, when I lived in Boston and knew no one, when I felt lost in bad relationships, when I moved to Austin and didn't have a space, when I celebrated my everyday victories.  Running is my place.  It's a place where I can process things, where my mind can mull things over or go blissfully blank to everything but the sound of my breath.  

I lost that after my marathon and my surgery.  Moving hurt.  So I leaned into my injury and the excuses.

15 pounds later, I found myself in a remarkably similar position as I had been in 8 years before.  Except, thank God, I wasn't living at home.  I had to reacquaint myself with my pace.  With the discomfort of being passed.  With that wretched out of breath feeling.

I hated running.  I hated feeling foreign in what was supposed to be my goddamn element.  

Then one strangely cool day in Austin, I laced up and began a 3 mile stretch of trail, and I remembered.  I remembered my pace.  I remembered my space.  I ran 9 miles, and I didn't do it for the accolades, or to push myself, I ran because it felt like coming home.

Rewarding the boldness of others. Or ending up murdered, whichever.

My sister routinely accuses me not nurturing my "Bitch Face".  She gets a little uncomfortable when people in elevators offer me fruit, come in from the street to try to hold my hand, and when gypsy women barrage into coffee shops to tell me that my aura (purple and green) can be seen from the street.  According to Amanda, if I had a bitch face people would keep their weird to themselves.  

I don't know about that, but I'm starting to wonder if she is right.

I was running on the trail to the Austin Trail of Lights.  My hair was slicked back under a baseball cap, my tank was emblazoned with my running bib, and I was wearing my headphones so as to avoid any interaction with the outside world.  I was in a happy zone, and by all accounts about as undone as it is possible for me to look.

When in front of me a lanky looking blonde guy began jumping up and down and waving at me.

I paused mid-jog, pulled off my headphones, and looked at him ready to tell him what time it was or provide directions and looked at him expectantly.

"Do you want to get coffee with me sometime?"

I stared at him blankly, not quite getting that he flagged me down from 10 feet away to ask me out.

"I would like to go out with you-for coffee, tomorrow?"

My confusion continued, "I'm sorry.  I'm confused.  I'm Jenna, you are?"

"Adam, and I want to take you out for coffee."

"Ok.  Umm, do you do this all the time?"

"What pick up girls on the trail?"

"Yeah."

"No, you're the first."

I kept looking at him like I expected a candid camera to jump out of nowhere.  When none did, I agreed to get coffee.

What the hell, right?  and since I pledged to be bold this year, shouldn't I reward others endeavors at boldness as well?

I don't know.  I just hope I don't get turned into a lamp shade and murdered.

Shut Up Self: Hoo doo Voodoo and Hypnosis

My first foray into hypnosis was at a Senior All Night party in high school where my Dad was chaperoning.  A hypnotist was called upon for the evening's entertainment and I was selected as one of several to "Go to the beyond".  Alledgedly I climbed into a male classmate's lap and pretended quite convincingly that I was Jane of Jungle.  My Dad to this day chuckles at a memory I have no recollection off.  As such I've spent the past 10 years being suspicious of hypnotists and magicians.  

Over drinks one day, a friend mentioned that his Mom was seeing a hypnotist about quitting smoking.  

I was fascinated by the idea of addressing a detrimental habit consciously and with the subconscious-a dual attack that could drive results.

I decided that in addition to the reading and meditation I was doing to become acquainted with my inner critic/meanie I was curious if hypnosis could motivate some changes.

You guys, hypnosis is real.  

Without getting too much into my personal business, I met with the hypnotist/meditation expert for 2 hours.  The first hour was spent discussing my history and what I hoped to accomplish (shutting up my near constant inner critique) and when/where/how this criticism gets worse.  We spent some time discussing the conscious versus unconscious brain and meditation.  Then she talked me through hypnosis.

That shiz be cray.  A veritable bliss seizure.  I cannot remember the last time I was that relaxed, seriously, my sister saw me two days later and asked if I'd gotten laid before lunch (Nope.)

And it wasn't just immediately after either, for the next month I could very easily calm myself down, didn't really give a flying F*ck about stupid stuff at work, and fell asleep right away nightly, and my critic-well she chilled the hell out too.  It balanced me out.

Of course the problem is that now I want to go back for another hit of relaxation and self affirmations.