Tapas

In Sanskrit, the language of yoga, tapas means a fiery discipline.  When I hear this term, though, all I can think of is happy hour with lovely little plates of delicious food.  And that right there may be why my yoga teacher trainer didn't seem to like me much.

In spite of my natural inclinations running to drinking, napping and consuming copious calories, I've been trying to the instill a little more tapas into my life.  I've completed two weeks of 5k training and I am feeling great about it!  I am doing a couch to 5k program.  The gradual buildups of distance and speed have kept me motivated and feeling positive.  At least three times per week I have been hitting the pavement.  Today I wasn't feeling great due to too little sleep, but I still loaded the kids into the car and took the chance of a dropping them off at the gym daycare.  This is hit or miss, but today it was totally a hit.  They had fun playing and I got my run in.  Win win.

I'm not only working hard to cultivate this tapas spirit for me, but for my kiddos too.  When Milo sees me heading out the door to "practice for my race" as he calls my workouts, he is learning that everything we want to be good at takes practice.  Accomplishments don't come easily.  To achieve a goal we need to have a fiery discipline to take us across the finish line.  Only then can we enjoy happy hour.

On Walks

Although I promised myself that Milo and I would continue our daily walks until the sidewalks became impassable with snow and ice, this first real cold snap of the winter has the stroller gathering some dust. Walks have been a great help to me, in a number of ways. Of course there is the exercise aspect. I credit walking with losing that first round of pregnancy weight back in the spring. Walks around our neighborhood, to the grocery store, or for coffee have kept me moving and pushing around 20 pounds of baby up the slight hills of Clintonville have kept those calories burning.

Part of the reason we really like this neighborhood is because it is walkable. The sidewalks actually lead to useful places such as Kroger and Starbucks. It's also fun to just walk up and down the different streets, seeing how the houses are decorated for the holidays or who is renovating. When all else fails, we count cats on our walks.

A quick jaunt around the neighborhood gets us out of the house and the change of scenery is always helpful. I had come to think of our afternoon walks as a reboot for our day. Baby is cranky and won't nap, Mom is losing patience and would like some quiet time? Out with the stroller where we had just enough distance from one another to peacefully make it through the rest of the day. The fresh air lends some perspective I think.

I miss our walks and I am hoping that either the weather warms up or I get brave enough to get out there and walk anyway. Mittens, coats and blankets are made for a purpose, right?

Baby Weight

With Milo turning seven weeks old today(!), I have to face the fact that no more of this baby weight is just going to melt off as it did in the early days. I arrived home from the hospital about 20 pounds lighter than I arrived there, which I found to be amazing and wonderful. In the next couple of weeks, I lost another 10 or so pounds. Since then I've been in the same place with about 12 pounds to lose to get back to where I was when I got pregnant (yes, I gained 40+ pounds during the pregnancy). Then there are also the 10 extra pounds I was holding on to as that point, but for now we are focusing on the 12 pounds of baby weight.

I'm cleared for exercise and the weather is warming up, so until I head back to work next month, Milo and I can be found wandering the streets of Clintonville on long walks. I also can't wait to get back to the mat and start practicing asana again, oh how I've missed the physical yoga practice these past weeks.

Body Issues

I have friends who worry out loud about the changes pregnancy will have on their bodies. Before getting pregnant this just wasn't a worry to me. I've never been small and have always had curves, so I didn't think adding on a few pounds would mess with my head too much. After all, the weight gain and the physical changes are for the purpose of nurturing a new life and if pregnancy teaches you anything, it teaches you not to be selfish.

So it's been surprising to me these last few months, to find that gaining 20 pounds in 6 months really has messed with my head. Having the full baby belly is very cool and life-affirming, but having the full baby thighs, butt and arms is a little less miraculous. I really didn't think I would react this way to the weight gain, but it's been challenging to stop 15 years of worrying about the number on the scale.

As always, my old friend yoga really helps me get through the days I just feel huge. Breathing, looking inward and focusing on what my can do is a reminder that it's about more than physical and superficial changes to the body. And if I get too wrapped up in my head, a gentle kick has the power to remind me that the weight gain just doesn't matter.

Kitty Craig

Since I'm just a few cats short of crazy cat-lady territory, I am sharing Prada's latest issue. Chris decided last year the cat should go on a diet. She weighs about 15 pounds and evidently cats aren't supposed to weigh this much. In her defense, she's also a big cat. Tall, if you will, or long as the case may be. Anyway, we did start rationing her food a little more and using a measure cup to make sure we were consistent with amounts. She was fine with that for several months, but lately she seems to be hungry all the time. We switched to feeding her twice a day, once in the morning and once when we get home from work. We're still feeding her the same amount, just splitting it up to more often. This works fine on the weekdays because she spends the day sleeping while we are gone, but on the weekends when we're home she doesn't nap as much and has taken to sitting by her bowl all day. That's fine, but she'll plaintively meow whenever one of us looks at her. She's also arranged herself in such manner as if to say "how could you not give food to cutest kitty in the world," but even worse she just stares at us. See for yourself:

Opening the Heart

Because Valentine’s Day fell on my regular yoga class, I promised the group an evening of heart opening poses. One woman thought I meant open heart surgery, so I had to change the terminology to widening through the chest. Maybe because of this lingo challenge, I only had four people show up. However, we had a great time. We worked a lot on cobra, tried our best at half moon modified to against the wall and then on our knees and half of the class tried camel.

The physical asana was interesting and felt great, but the really intriguing part was the conversation after the class. When you open the heart in many yoga poses, you are also opening the throat and communication center. I wasn't totally surprised to hear then the things that were shared with me after the class.

They told me about their struggles with weight loss (one woman had had gastric bypass surgery and the other had recently lost 50 pounds) and how these last few months of yoga had given them confidence. Since I could relate, we had a long talk about the weight issues and how yoga can help. It did my heart good to know I have made a small impact on their journey.