Plans not resolutions

Tags

Ayurveda, dance, decorate, fitness, gardening, Health, Inspiration, joy, kirtan, New Year's plans, New Year's resolutions, Retreat, Thailand, Yoga

I went a little nutty last night. In part, I blame the fluey cold I’m slowly recovering from. But also, I blame that song that is apparently still haunting me on occasion. Haven’t heard it in ages, but yesterday at lunch I wandered into a supermarket to buy some pistachios and what do I hear? Yup. That dang song again! I’ve been hearing it for two or three years now, whenever big change is happening or about to happen. *looks around suspiciously*

I got home and had a sudden fit of de-clutterisation. Okay, that’s probably not even a word. But I’ve been living in my apartment for just over a year now and truth be told, I hadn’t really finished unpacking. My second room which is currently my practice room (I know it sounds fancy to have a room just for yoga and meditation, but it’s not exactly a very big room, okay?), has had crap piled up on the eastern wall pretty much since I moved in.

So I sorted the things I needed to throw out from the stuff I needed to find a place for. I was ruthless! There’s a couple of pieces of pseudo furniture in there, too: a small filing cabinet and my little sewing machine bench/table thingy. Plus a box of books and a whole bunch of other stuff I’ve simply neglected to assign to a cupboard or other storage spot. And I do have plenty of that, at least!

After several hours (where did the time go?) I had much less stuff in my practice room. The filing cabinet has been re-homed and I think once the books are gone, I might just have to deal with my sewing machine living in there. I’m cool with that… I’d also managed to free up some space (as yet unused) in the wardrobe in my bedroom and I even found more clothes and daypacks I don’t need that I can donate to charity. Somewhere along the line, I ended up with a lot of daypacks!

All of this has to do with one of my plans for 2010, so it’s good. Very good. I’m not trying to like, distract you here. Or myself. In fact, last night I was very focused. Not bad for a recovering sickie.

Anyway… like I said a couple of posts back, I don’t really like the word “resolution”. It’s too loaded and generally speaking, when people make New Year’s resolutions they often don’t last.

So instead, I like the idea of New Year’s plans. I figure if I can work out what I want to do, I can make a plan. And plans are things I can put it into action. Also, a “plan” sounds more like something I intend to do than a resolution.

And really, it’s kind of exciting because like many things for me right now, it’s the first time in years that I’ve even thought about making real plans for myself! Ending up in yoga teacher training last year was a bit of a happy accident – it’s not like I thought it through.

But this year… I feel like I might just have possibilities.

And so without further ado, I present my current list of plans. Some things will change for certain. They always do. But for now, this is what I’d like to make happen in 2010:

• Daily practice – yoga, meditation & pranayama. It’s time to build and explore.
• Continue with group personal training sessions for cardio fitness and being social.
• Build my jogging up so I can once again do 5km easily.
• Start teaching yoga classes and continue throughout the year. Current plans are to approach HR at my work and see if I can run a class in our boardroom. For starters.
• Continue studying Shadow Yoga (which might be the next YTT I take on). Next week, I’m doing an immersion: 5 mornings in a row of 6am classes. I can’t wait!
• Retreat in Thailand in October/November – It’s the final retreat in a seven year program we’ve been doing. Yup, seven years of spending 2-6 weeks a year in retreat. Except for last year, when we had a bye.
  Special note: this year is open to non-students. We just started doing that last year. If you’re interested, let me know and I can send you some information.
• Investigate all different kinds of yoga – I want to experience as many different styles and teachers as I can! There’s always my Guru and everything learn with him. I love Hatha and Shadow Yoga, but I want more! So I’m going to visit a range of studios to see how other teachers do it, and what else might resonate for me. To kick things off, in February I’m going to the Mark Whitwall weekend that Nadine Fawell is organizing.
• Get an MRI for my shoulder – that dang bike accident is still bothering me and one of my friends in Sydney very sensibly suggested I get an MRI. I simply don’t think of those things…
• Find a local Ayurveda doctor – I’ve tried a couple down in Melbourne but haven’t found one that I really like. Yet.
• Lose weight – seriously all the yoga, cycling and personal training I’ve been doing has not helped me lose weight. I tend to think it’s a side effect of depression and I know if I keep up the consistency, it will happen. But for now, umm… still working on that.
• Learn to cook better – I don’t have a great attitude about cooking just for myself. And I don’t think of myself as a good cook. Those things have to change. I’m thinking of cooking courses, and simply inviting more people over for dinner. I have cookbooks and perhaps if I create situations where I need to cook for others, it’ll start flowing a little easier for me?
• Travel before or after retreat – maybe see more of Thailand or go to Laos or Cambodia?
• Date/find a boyfriend – doesn’t have to be the love of my life, though that’d be nice! Just y’know… some practice would be good!
• Get real with money – It’s not something I’ve been great at, but I’m on a saving/cost-cutting adventure where possible. Less eating out, less erroneous spending. More saving money so I don’t end up broke the other side of retreat.
• Get more joy in my life every day – finding more ways to invoke happiness for myself. The following points are all directly related to this! Not that some of the above mentioned aren’t. Especially yoga, of course.
• Stay involved with the kirtan group – I love what’s happening there.
• More involvement with the writing group – I haven’t been to another writing group meet up since the first one. Shyness is part of it. So was having almost every weekend taken up by yoga teacher training!
• Do a bike maintenance course – learn how to do more than just fix a flat tyre for myself!
• Course to learn to write a novel – I feel like I need some structure and support there.
• Do some dance classes and/or head out to some salsa nights – I love to dance but it’s been a long time since dance was a regular part of my life. That soooo has to change!
• Decorate my house MORE – including framing some prints that’ve been waiting for EVER, re-staining my bedroom furniture, making some curtains, and decorating my practice/yoga room (hence the de-clutterisation, folks).
• Experiment with gardening – I’ve only ever grown a few herbs and this year I’d like to try growing some veggies. Cherry tomatoes, lettuce, snow peas etc. Nommy things to eat. 🙂

Yeah, so that’s sorta it for now at least. There’ll be edits, new additions, deletions and I’m sure, things I haven’t even considered yet. But it does feel good to be starting the year with some idea of what I’d like to do with myself…

~Svasti

Spring Clean

Tags

Boot Camp, cyclonic activity of me, fitness, Healing, honesty, personal training, Shadow Yoga, spring clean, vanity, Yoga

It’s so literal, it’s actually beyond cliché. The fires are still burning, the kaleidoscope’s whirring and I’m cleansing everything in sight with an unabated frenzy.

Someone must’ve fed me a hallucinogen or two. Or three perhaps, or maybe my water supply’s laced with the stuff.

There’s bound to be some explanation for the cyclonic activity of me.

A crazy wench demands (now that she’s relatively sane-ish), she ALSO wants to claim her body back, too. There’s vanity in there, of course. But there’s also victory, power, aliveness. A synchronisation between heart, mind, soul and body.

Thus, I found myself signed up to group personal training (aka Boot Camp) twice a week, necessitating early nights and mornings, pre-dawn cycling, sweating, running, boxing and skipping. And more. Ole!

And yes I feel like I’m dying and a small but pointed voice asks demoralising questions like So why the hell are we doing this?? Luckily the wench has an answer ready, lobbing it back quickly BECAUSE we want our cardio fitness back.

Then, the yogini signed up for yet another yoga class, an eleven week course. Her voice is loud too, but emanates from the heart, not the ego. There was a moment in that demonstration class where the pleas started. We HAVE to do this course!!! NOW!!

Oh… I didn’t want to talk about Shadow Yoga yet, as I simply don’t know enough. It’s a mystery actually like a pass the parcel prize I get to unwrap a little more each week.

Perhaps though, I can talk about how I’m doing: simultaneously undone and re-made. I scatter into a thousand rainbow shapes and, learning new alignment and strength pulls me back together. It makes me sob, but in a good way. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s something rather miraculous.

Like its moniker this work takes me inside my yoga, working from the inside out. I see angles and creases where before I only saw form. And already my body is doing things I never knew it could.

Hilariously, this is just the introduction. Not yet the preludes. There’s barely any asana happening and there won’t be, not for months. Still, I work hard and sweat and I feel it in my body.

Between regular yoga, yoga teacher training, cycling everywhere, Boot Camp and Shadow Yoga, my body triumphantly aches.

And there’s a desire to CLEAN. Everything! The twice a week early mornings are rubbing off on other days. Now I awaken freely, no alarm needed. The absolute opposite of the past few years. And there’s in-the-corners-totally-thorough type house cleaning going on. Weird.

Strangely I find myself saying things I don’t expect. Randomly, an old work mate strikes up a Facebook chat and says something like With all that yoga you must be so bendy. Must keep all the boys happy!

Says I: Boys? What boys?

Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t realise [assumes I bat for the other team]…

No [guessing her assumption], what I meant to say is, the man-drought is still in full swing…

And then this conversation leads me to openly, freely and very clearly explain exactly why that is. Initially, the man-drought being self-imposed until it became self-perpetuating! And why.

Strange. Who is this woman talking openly to another person about where I’ve been for the past four years? Undramatic. Straight-forward. Honest with outsiders. Without shame. Where did SHE come from?

Too many questions. So much movement and activity. I fire up iTunes, clean the windows and sob as my heart undergoes suction, extracting puss and atrophied tissues.

~Svasti