Wrapping up 2012 with some final thoughts

This post is one of those where I just let loose and it’s quite a bit like just a stream of con­scious­ness writ­ing style.  So here goes…

I learned a lot about myself phys­i­cally this year.  My phys­i­cal aware­ness has shot up like never before.  I had always been very big on self aware­ness.  For most of my life, self aware­ness has always been a highly men­tal expe­ri­ence. I used to do energy heal­ing vig­or­ously.  I used to make a liv­ing out of it.  It was a med­i­ta­tion for me and a way for me to help oth­ers through just cul­ti­vat­ing and feel­ing pro­found love.  It was so much of a men­tal expe­ri­ence that I would pur­posely dis­con­nect from my phys­i­cal body.  Well, now that I’m 28/29 years old, I’ve dis­cov­ered new sports such as the trav­el­ing rings and board div­ing and slack­lin­ing.  I ramped up my yoga expe­ri­ence, tak­ing at least 80 classes for 2012. All these sports stressed my body in new ways.  I got more rav­aged in my search for under­stand­ing gym­nas­tics.  I found that gym­nas­tics is one of the most com­plete body work­outs.  I also dis­cov­ered that tram­polin­ing skills are trans­lat­able to skills needed in board diving.

But wait, back to the energy heal­ing thing.  For most of my 20′s, all I did was focus mostly on med­i­ta­tion, breath­ing, energy heal­ing and doing every­thing by feel­ing.  But now… since my phys­i­cal self-awareness has been ramped up thanks to yoga and other sports, I feel like I can go even deeper in my men­tal med­i­ta­tion.  If I do energy heal­ing while doing mov­ing med­i­ta­tions rather than just sit­ting, I feel like I’m bound to expe­ri­ence a whole new level of aware­ness I haven’t reached before if I keep this up.  I could be in a med­i­ta­tive state all the time, poten­tially.

Stretches that used to feel great, just feel nor­mal now.

You know what’s inter­est­ing?  I remem­ber when I first started doing yoga, sim­ply rest­ing in childs pose was the most mar­velous pose ever.  I remem­ber when I would raise my arms straight up, put my palms together and bring them down in front of my chest like a prayer posi­tion, that it would feel absolutely mar­velous too.  It still feels good, but now these same posi­tions don’t feel like they do much because my body has opened up and got­ten used to them.  So won­der­ful it is to real­ize that there is progress.  These minor changes are often imper­cep­ti­ble in our daily lives but I am happy to real­ize that I am indeed, pro­gress­ing all the time.

Hip Flex­ors, Y U NO STRONG?

I learned that because I have been rid­ing my bicy­cle all the time for about 5 years now, my hip flex­ors are really tight and weak.  I’m not a per­son who does a lot of sit­ting, but cycling just so hap­pens to be done in a sit­ting posi­tion, so the mus­cles that shorten the dis­tance between your torso and your upper thighs stay in a con­tracted posi­tion and don’t really do much and get tight and weak.

Tight and weak.  That reminds me.  Another thing I learned was that a mus­cle could be weak because it’s short due to it always being in a contracted/tense posi­tion.  Or a mus­cle could be weak because it’s always stretched out.  And if you think about how you sit all day, you are prob­a­bly slouched with your shoul­ders for­ward, that means our back mus­cles are stretched and weak and our chest mus­cles are tight and weak.  We have to con­sciously lower our shoul­ders (RELAX YOUR SHOULDERS) and bring your shoul­der blades down and back. This one phys­i­cal ther­a­pist rec­om­mends prac­tic­ing the “Da Vinci Pos­ture” which is funny because it is actu­ally the equiv­a­lent of the yogic tadasana (moun­tain pose).

I found out that doing a yoga flow ded­i­cated to stretch­ing the hip flex­ors is a really cool solu­tion. Thanks to Philip Be for rec­om­mend this flow: down dog –> 3 legged dog –> pigeon pose –> 3 legged dog –> war­rior 1 –> cres­cent moon (really sink into the hip flex­ors here!) –> war­rior 2 –> bound side angle pose –> trikonasana).

Slack­line, lalalalalla

Learn­ing to bal­ance on a slack­line and even­tu­ally walk on it has been a pro­found expe­ri­ence.  I started learn­ing slack­lin­ing in the sum­mer.  It took a (non-cumulative) cou­ple of hours of stand­ing and falling and stand­ing and falling to be able to bal­ance on one leg for more than three sec­onds.  Then three sec­onds became five sec­onds.  Then five sec­onds became TEN.  And I was ecsta­tic.  I remem­ber the day I was able to take my first step.  Just yes­ter­day, lit­er­ally yes­ter­day, was the first day I was able to take a sin­gle step back­ward with­out falling.

The coolest thing my brother taught me about the slack­line was that: To be able to stay on the slack­line, you have to NOT think.  So that too, is a sort of mov­ing meditation.

Basi­cally all these new activ­i­ties (tram­polin­ing, board div­ing, traveling/still/flying rings, slack­line, etc) really forced me to work on my bal­ance, hand-foot-eye coör­di­na­tion, core and upper body strength.

Root of Stress = (The Per­cep­tion of) Not Enough Time

In regards to time, I think most of our stress comes this idea that we don’t have enough time.  We don’t have enough time to do what we want to do.  We get stressed out when we’re stuck in traf­fic, because it’s tak­ing up our time and we’re going to be late to some­thing.  We get stressed out when we’re going to be late to a meet­ing. If the due date for a bill due date is get­ting closer and we don’t have he money to pay for it yet, we start to freak out a lit­tle.  A lot of stress comes from this idea that we don’t have enough time.

I’ve also noticed that a lot of peo­ple get dis­cour­aged when they find the learning/training curve of some­thing is really high.  The still rings, for exam­ple, have a very high train­ing curve.  All we have is time in regards to learn­ing these things.  You have to mas­ter a few foun­da­tion moves (which are very dif­fi­cult) before you could do more things.  But when you start get­ting it, that opens up a whole new world of skills.  And that ded­i­ca­tion becomes all worth it because it pushed your com­fort zone some­where new.

So don’t be dis­cour­aged that it may take months or years to get good at some­thing.  If you like what­ever that is, then a least you’re spend­ing the good years of your life doing some­thing you like.  And this doesn’t just apply to sports.  This applies to very long, drawn out, aca­d­e­mic things too like learn­ing lan­guages and earn­ing school degrees or play­ing the piano.  How many peo­ple do you know that don’t pur­sue their school degrees because they don’t like how it will take time a lot of ded­i­ca­tion and time?  Or to learn a new lan­guage?  There’s no rea­son to put your­self in such a posi­tion that you don’t have enough time to do the things you need to do to enjoy your life.

Gym­nas­tics, why did I ignore you when I was 12?

I quickly learned that gym­nas­tics required three things: lots of flex­i­bil­ity, sig­nif­i­cant amounts of total body strength and grace.

Flex­i­bil­ity, that’s a big deal.  When I orig­i­nally started doing yoga a few years ago, I didn’t really under­stand what was going on.  I was fol­low­ing the moves, but I wasn’t very aware of what the point of them was.  All I knew was that it was extremely dif­fi­cult, it reaf­firmed that I was inflex­i­ble, and I felt great after doing it.  I’m happy to know that you’re con­sid­ered a begin­ner for the first 10 years of your yoga practice.

Ever since I was young I couldn’t touch my toes with­out bend­ing my knees.  For the longest time I’ve (over 10 years), I’ve been want­ing to be able to be flex­i­ble enough to touch them.  I will never for­get: It was in the mid­dle of Novem­ber, after doing yoga every­day that week, I was on the grass at the rings, stretch­ing, and I got a shi­atsu push from Shanti (I love you Shanti; OM) and I was able to touch my toes.  And when I came out of the posi­tion, I real­ized I had released a gal­lon of sweat from my head.  Also, it was a whole new level of pain.

Yoga Erry­day.

Which reminds me, I tried doing yoga every­day.   Some­time around Octo­ber, I cleaned out junk out of a room that was full of boxes of stuff we were sup­posed to throw away or donate any­way.  I setup a TV in the room and hooked up a Playsta­tion 3 to it.  Then I con­nected it wire­lessly through the wifi net­work to be able to play videos off my com­puter.  I was able to play this Rod­ney Yee video (begin­ner to inter­me­di­ate level).  On my PS3, I also sub­scribed to a bunch of YouTube chan­nels (just down­load the YouTube app on the PS3 from the PS Store for free and sign in to your youtube account.)

So I basi­cally ded­i­cated a lot of time to being able to do yoga in the com­fort of my home.  I printed a cal­en­dar, and put it on the wall next to my com­puter mon­i­tor. For every day that I did yoga, I marked a big X over the day.  Every time I made a new X, I didn’t want to break the chain of X’s, so I did yoga quite often.  I found that if I did it early in the morn­ing, I was pretty use­less for the rest of the day.  I had to do it in the after­noon or evening where I had already started being pro­duc­tive.  Maybe that will change with time.

My brother and I had an epiphany in regards to the Indian yogi’s one day.  I said they were prob­a­bly really flex­i­ble because they didn’t have a lot of mus­cle tis­sue (they were extremely thin) because they were veg­e­tar­i­ans!  The more mus­cle there is, the more mus­cle belly there is to have to soften, the more mus­cle scar tis­sue will be built up, and the less the nerves can eas­ily glide between the mus­cles. Flex­i­bil­ity has noth­ing to do with the mus­cles not being long enough, it’s about a flurry of other things.  Women, for exam­ple, have a lot less actual mus­cle tis­sue than men.  When we think of flex­i­bil­ity, we often just think of the anatomy of the mus­cles we are stretch­ing.  We are more than just our mus­cles though.  There is a fas­cia cov­er­ing over all of them with nerves that run through and in between all of them.  The more dif­fi­cult it is for these nerves to glide with move­ment, the less flex­i­ble one could be.  And these nerves can run the length of your entire back.  Ten­sion in the neck will con­tribute to ten­sion in the lower back. (I wrote about this fur­ther in my tight ham­strings post.)

These sports have alerted me to the impor­tance of mas­sage.  No mat­ter how much yoga I do, I can’t get the same kind of loos­en­ing in my back that is pos­si­ble with a deep tis­sue mas­sage for an hour.  The mas­sage not only feels good but breaks up mus­cle scar tis­sue and gets rid of mus­cle knots.  This is also the rea­son why I fell in love with my foam roller as it was an inex­pen­sive way to get rid of a lot of knots.

I’ve been try­ing to under­stand why I can’t sit cross legged and keep my back straight at the same time. And it traces back to the same pesky weak hip flex­ors!  I learned that side planks may be the magic bul­let to hip mobil­ity.  They weren’t exactly the magic bul­let for me, but it did help nonetheless!

I also learned that flex­i­bil­ity is decreased in the win­ter months.  If it’s warm out­side, it’s so much eas­ier to feel loose and flex­i­ble. This is why divers go into a jacuzzi after a dive dur­ing a com­pe­ti­tion to keep their mus­cles warm.  This is also why hot yoga is always com­mended. Also, this is one rea­son why I’ve real­ized I enjoy warmer weather more than cold.  Sure there’s a lot more sweat­ing involved, but every­thing has it’s pluses and minuses.  C’est la vie.  Feel­ing free and loose is so much bet­ter than hav­ing tons of lay­ers of clothes on and feel­ing restricted.

Clothes are a big fuck­ing deal

With all this increased phys­i­cal self aware­ness, I also real­ized that the clothes you wear affects whether one is going to develop a mus­cle knot and how free they feel.   When I wear a shirt and tie, I could feel how the tie and col­lar com­bi­na­tion makes my traps super tight and my upper back feel stiff after­wards.   I can’t even lift my arms up to stretch my shoul­ders with­out the clothes get­ting scrunched up and that dri­ves me bananas.  Even a belt around my waist causes knot at my lower back (at the top of the glu­teus maximus).

I can’t believe every job I had between the ages of 16 and 24 required me to wear a shirt and tie day in and day out and I had never felt this.  I guess that’s the magic of being young (so much obliv­i­ous­ness, haha).  Nowa­days I could feel that even wear­ing a sweater with a hoodie drags down my shoul­ders.   I think it’s because the mus­cles are always under ten­sion any­way (called tonus) and when cloth­ing touches it, it makes it con­tract more and over­time stiff­ens up.

I feel par­tic­u­larly bad for women because they have to wear bras and they tightly wrap around their mid back and maybe over the shoul­ders.  And then women also have to wear heels to cer­tain social events (because flats would be unac­cept­able), which sucks because it is not good for their body, anatom­i­cally or bio­me­chan­i­cally speak­ing.  Imag­ine a world wear every­one had to wear vibrams.

So what now, my love.  What is in store for 2013?  Who knows, my friend.  Who knows.  Thanks for read­ing my blog.  You are my anony­mous reader.  Leave a com­ment and show me you exist.