Queen of Swords

My apartment complex now has an on-site fitness trainer. CK is a resident who has worked out a deal with management whereby she can use the weight and exercise rooms to teach classes and do personal training, she gives other residents a nice discount off her usual prices, and the apartment can advertise having an on-site trainer. It's pretty much a win-win-win for all parties.

I went to my first class on Wednesday night with a lot of trepidation. I've almost never been involved in group classes, and I had grim visions of embarrassment and exhaustion. As it turned out, I was the only person there, the instructor is a gorgeous young woman with the same frame as I have who used to be as out of shape as I am, and who put me through a fitness assessment for which she usually charges $99 but I got for the $12 price of the class. Then she put me through a moderate workout that left me feeling pleasantly exerted and just a bit sore.

What was amazing to me was her affirmations of my body and my connection with it. I consider myself essentially out of touch with my body most of the time, but CK kept telling me how good my form was, and she was impressed by how I knew I'd do better if I did a particular sequence barefoot, was able to stay in touch with my center, and was more flexible than she expected. I mentioned that I've done yoga off and on over the years (although my only formal class was my freshman year of college), and she said that it was clear that I had. In fact, in a follow-up email she mentioned how "incredibly in touch with [my] body" I was.

It was definitely a paradigm-shifting experience on multiple levels -- and it felt so good to be "honestly" tired rather than simply ground down by the pressures of a day in the office. I'm actually looking forward to going back to class, and am optimistic about starting to develop some better habits and better physical health.

Went for a 2.19 mile walk.

Got a two hour massage.

Met alfrecht and erynn999 for a good conversation at a cool Pagan bookstore.

Had a nice dinner out, even though a friend had to cancel on me at the last minute and the restaurant screwed up my order the first time. Fortunately I was not in a hurry.

Tried to get to my evening appointment but was significantly delayed because I had not reckoned on most of downtown being blocked off for the Torchlight Parade. Fortunately I was not in a hurry.

Went to a playparty and had a good time with a new friend.

Bought a gorgeous rapier-foil at the party, perfect for a pirate captain.

Got home a little after midnight, went to bed around 1:30.

Woke up all too early this morning and could not get back to sleep.

I was scheduled to walk with watcher457 this morning, but I think it's going to be just a "kick back and chat" session instead. I'm going to need a nap before I'm up for any additional activity.

Tonight I went to my first Nia class since my knee injury sidelined me. (I got the permission of my physical therapist first.)

It was great!
In fact, not only had I forgotten how pleasurable it was, I was delighted by how quickly the moves came back to me. I had a bit of trouble with a combination step, but other than that, I remembered both the techniques and the patterns/rhythms.

Now I'm feeling pleasantly sweaty, with my whole body stretched out and alive.

Can't wait for next week!




Here's a video that does a good job capturing what a class can be like. Tonight's routine was much slower than most of this.


I'm also working on adding tai chi to my schedule. I like trail walking, but I'd like to get involved in more activities that get my whole body involved in a systematic way.

Now for a late, light supper and then some Buffy with Wolfling.

I haven't been posting about it a lot, but since mid-March I've been using the SparkPeople.com site to help me with weight loss. My progress has been slower than I would have liked, but the community aspect has helped me to persevere through plateaus that would have prompted me to quit in the past.

Each morning I weigh myself and enter my weight in my SP tracker. (You don't have to weigh yourself every day to do their program; it's what's best for me.) I watch the line slope gently downward on my report, and the little ticker move to the right on my sig line tracker, but I hadn't been "counting down" the pounds in my head. Every so often I'd do some simple mental math, but not think much about it.

Today my weight finally dipped down again after a several week plateau. I was delighted. I thought that *maybe* I'd lost about 15 pounds, but I wanted to check. So I got out the calculator and entered the numbers.

No, not 15.

25.5

I boggled, re-checked my numbers from the site, ran them three more times. Same result.

25.5 pounds down.

*happy dance

I've walked 10 miles in the past three days.

I am proud of myself.

From my SparkPeople blog:

Despite -- well, maybe because of -- my frustrations of the past six weeks or so, I decided to go ahead and enter Stage 3: "The Lifestyle Change Stage." One of the tasks is to select your personal motivational motto. It didn't take long for me to choose mine.

I've always enjoyed collecting motivational quotes. The ones I save tend to be *very* lofty. I like quotes about touching the stars and etc. But I've found that those types of quotes don't often actually help me. They're inspiring, but they haven't made much of a difference in my actions. Plus, I'm a perfectionist. I used to call myself a lazy perfectionist, but I've dropped that label. In the past, if I couldn't be perfect right out of the gate, I decided that there was no point to continuing.

The motto that's been keeping me going through the last six weeks, the motto that's helped me stick with it until the scale started moving down again (something I've never done before!) came to me in a SP motivational quote email:

"Fall down four times, get up five."

Who wants to think about falling down? I sure haven't!
And yet, I finally realized that I *do* fall down on a regular basis -- and that unless I keep getting up again I'm going to stay on the floor. Not where I want to be!

All those lofy quotes I've been collecting haven't given me room to be human and make mistakes, get tired and frustrated, or simply have days when I don't care. The mountain didn't move, the stars are out of reach, so what's the point? Why keep trying if there's no point?

Fall down. Get up. The path is still there. The goal is still there.
I can start moving forward again, even if I've gone backwards for a while.
But only if I stand up.


All this holds equally true for my business development and my priestess path, of course.

My apartment complex is surrounded by public trails (more than 20 miles worth), but I haven't explored them much in the past few years. The Eowyn Challenge is giving me incentive to get outside and walk, however, and this afternoon I picked up my trusty walking stick and headed over to one of the closer trailheads, Eagle Trail.

Despite the inspirational sound of the name, it proved to be a flat track through a narrow greenbelt/wetland between housing developments. It was about as boring as an outside walk could be. Even I was wishing for some company. Of course I was thinking about my Eowyn Challenge, but even my vivid imagination was having a hard time conjuring images of Middle Earth in this nondescript area. I had to push myself to keep going -- not because I was tired, but because I was bored.

Then a petite, white-haired woman leading a bay horse came out of the foliage to my right, stepped carefully down the small hill, and joined me on the path. Robin and Pistol were out for a walk. Pistol is a show horse, and Robin likes to get him out of enclosed spaces and rings to liven up his day and accustom him to dogs, cars, kids, and etc. We started walking together and having a pleasant chat. When we stopped at a crosswalk, Pistol leaned toward me as if to get acquainted. I held up my hand and he snuffled it in a friendly manner and I got to pet him a bit.

The trail went on straight, but Robin's route led around the residential area: the high rent residential area. She invited me to come with her, promising our path would bring me back around to my trail. Much preferring her and Pistol's company to solitude, I agreed. It ended up being about twice as long a walk as I had set out on, but that was okay. And I had the opportunity to see a very little boy (maybe two years old?) get to see and touch a real live horse for the first time, which was charming.

When we finally got to Robin's neighborhood, she showed me where her part of the trail had started. "Go through there. It will lead you to a cul-de-sac on a street. Follow the street to the left. You'll see the lake on your right. Go to the lake, and go left. You'll see the place where the trail branches off to go down to where you were."

I stared at her, disbelieving. It sounded very complicated, and I have a very bad sense of direction and equally bad memory for verbal directions. She repeated it twice, and I repeated it back. We said goodbye, expressing mutual wishes to run into each other again, and I set off, ill-at-ease.

I feel a lot of stress about getting lost. Even in a perfectly safe neighborhood, in broad daylight, where even the trails almost never took me more than a shout from a home, I was worried. I finally told myself that worst case scenario was to find an intersection, call my folks on the cell phone, and ask them to rescue me.

As I set off down the first part of the path, I heard Lohain saying something to the effect of Well, you wanted a more interesting walk. He was amused. He also pointed out that since being lost was a major stress for me, the walk had turned out to be something of an "edge" experience. Then he took a certain amused satisfaction in using my spiritual director's naming me an "edge walker" and applying it to the situation. Thank-you, dear.

I was relieved to find that Robin's instructions remained clear in my mind, and the landmarks were fairly close together, so I got back to the main trail with a minimum of effort. Once I was there, I was reasonably certain I was headed in the correct direction, but I was grateful for the landmark posts (set up to guide emergency response teams). Lohain chided me for not having paid sufficient attention to the land itself to be able to tell whether I was going the right way or not, and I resolved to do better at observing and remembering on future walks. The only landmark I recognized today was the mangled wreckage of a car -- and I was very grateful to see it.

As I mentioned above, the area is wetlands, and it rained most of last week. There were several places where the path was submerged in water, and the ground was boggy for several yards on either side. I was most of the way back to the trail head when I had to jump through a large puddle that had a raised mostly-dry spot in the middle. But despite my care, my tennis shoes got muddied during one of my attempted detours and mud inexplicably splashed almost to my knee on one side when I was jumping the puddle. I didn't think I'd landed with enough force to splash that high -- but I heard Lohain chuckling. I'm sure he was pleased that I was getting a bit dirty, and I wouldn't put it past him to have done some of the splashing himself.

By the time I got back to the trailhead I could feel blisters coming up on both feet, and had found out that my old tennis shoes were not sufficient to a long walk. I have my hiking boots from my canyon adventure, but those are too much for gentle trails like this. Time to invest in some sturdy walking shoes. I'm hoping that the blisters aren't bad enough to prevent Wolfling and me from going up to Whidbey on Sunday as we had planned.

According to my pedometer, I logged 2.88 miles, putting me at 4.56 miles in Middle Earth. I'm almost to the point where Frodo and Sam enter Tookland.

The road goes ever on and on. . .

Three weeks or so ago, I joined SparkPeople.com, and it's been a wonderful tool for improving my eating and fitness habits. Not only are the tools for setting and tracking goals easy to use, the overall site is perfect for an introvert. I don't necessarily want "workout buddies" and I practically broke out in hives when I tried attending Weight Watchers meetings, but I'm enjoying their robust community forums where I can share thoughts and feelings on my own terms. I also appreciate their extensive articles on all kinds of health and fitness topics and their workout videos. And it's free. If you're looking to make some fitness-related changes, I highly recommend it.

This morning I found that a SP friend had joined a group called "The Eowyn Challenge" -- and being an LOTR fan I had to click over and find out what it involved. It turned out to be a "Walk to Rivendell" group. According to the Atlas of Middle Earth it's 458 miles from Hobbiton to Rivendell. Participants in the group use the Fellowship's journey and landmarks as inspiration and goals to fuel their walking. There are many smaller landmarks along the way, detailed here, and the group now has the entire mileage of the trilogy broken out into segments. Anyone want to travel 786 miles with Aragorn from Isengard to Dunharrow through the Paths of the Dead to Minas Tirith? (Of course he and the companions were riding for some of that. . .

There are all kinds of reasons why this is a wonderful challenge for me. First, I often listen to the Lord of the Rings soundtracks when I walk and sometimes imagine myself with the Fellowship. Second, one of my goals is to get outside more often, and while there are no rules about being outside to do the challenge I can imagine it will be more emotionally satisfying to be out in the woods or along a beach when communing with the Fellowship. Third, one of the challenges I have in "going for a walk" is that I hate walking with no specific destination/purpose -- and I imagine that being able to imagine walking to the next Fellowship milestone may help offset that.

I've also joined the "Island County" SparkGroup, which is for residents of the San Juans, including Whidbey. I'm hoping to get some ideas about island walking adventures and events, since I want to spend more time there.


And yes, I'm losing weight. . . down 7 pounds so far, and only one drive-through meal the entire time.


The original Eowyn's Challenge group is not affiliated with SparkPeople. You can find more info here: http://home.insightbb.com/~eowynchallenge/index.html

There's a woman I've met through work, an account manager for a new vendor, who I've connected with in a more than work-only perspective. We just had a valuable business conversation that ended with a more personal exchange.

I shared with her about Nia, and among the things she said to me about her own journey was this:

What new thing can I create with my body during this time?

She is training for a triathlon, and preparing for foot surgery next year, and is thinking about different ways to train and relate to her body during that recovery time. She's in a very different place than I am. But the idea of "creating something" with her body, in loving collaboration, struck me as being a powerful concept for me right now.


And speaking of Nia: I got back to class for the first time in a couple of weeks last night, and I felt it. My endurance was down and my lower back protested at a couple of points. But I also achived a personal milestone that reflects other movement and openings in my life: when we came to the point that we relax our knees, drop a few inches and swing our hips freely, I was actually able to swing my hips freely, rather than just move them side to side in a stiff and inhibited manner.


Sometime in the next few days I really need to write a major post about some major shifts in my life.

I won't be able to do it tonight, however. Tonight I'm taking Wolfling to Wednesday night salsa, even though it's a school night. ;-)