Tag Archives: yoga

Slipping and sliding

My little black cloud has returned. The one my mother used to say followed me everywhere as a constant reminder of all the doom and gloom in the world. I felt it coming on as a bad fever dream over the past couple of weeks when I started eschewing morning yoga in favor of reading Google “Top News” headlines. Next came my compulsive news-watching — and now I’m in full-blown “chicken-little” mode what with four disabled nuclear reactors in Japan spewing radiation and reactors five and six on the way.

I guess it was the earthquake-tsunami combo that really put me over the edge and saw me blow-off a perfectly good weekend of work in favor of the intricacies of nuclear power plants. Did you know, for instance that after the diesel engines failed, the workers jerry-rigged fire hoses to pour water into the reactors?

Having been to Japan both as a traveler and for work, there has been an immediacy to the events that hit home — not to mention that I not only grew up in the era of “duck and cover,” but having had parents who were active in the Ban-the-Bomb pacifist movement of the late 50’s & 60’s knew rather more than I needed to know about nuclear bombs.

So meanwhile, I have work piling up for grad school, a body that is no longer a supple as a pretzel, and am struggling to find my way into the sunshine again when really — well, you get the point, I’m under my little black cloud!

Talk about a slip and slide.

Well, its time to take my own medicine and get out of my own way so to speak.

Yep. It’s first-you-cry, wash-my-face time. I could quote from Casablanca to myself … you know the one, “I’m not good at being noble, but it’s clear to me that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

And yeah, I’d be right. Part of the all the stuff that happens in “this crazy world” is our own obligation to make it a better place. So while I can’t do much to help in Japan other than sending on a few bucks, (nope, I didn’t major in nuclear engineering), what I can do is get out of my funk to live a better day and save the black cloud for where it belongs, in the sky to provide rain for all of those pretty May flowers.

So in the spirit of sunshine, born-again Pollyanna says, “have a great day!”

Tied up in knots…

Boxing connections

It’s raining dogs and cats

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It’s raining dogs and cats

Sometimes when you are working really hard at something, say writing a conference paper, training for your next fight or hitting your 47th non-stop morning at twisting your body in a pose, the goal still seems a million miles away from getting you anywhere. More to the point, and not exactly a marathoner’s wall, your world will feel upside down and a bit backwards, because no matter the effort that sense of achievement feels illusive.

I think of it having run into a friend at Gleason’s on Saturday who is in the midst of training for a fight. She looked strong, fit, and truly ready — and yet she also had that look that said, “wow, this is hard.” And is if her verbal constructions had hit into reverse, her far away gaze revealed the doubts that all of us feel when we are on the cusp of something. I’d have given her a hug if I could, but it wasn’t one of those moments. Rather what she needed was a pause to acknowledge her efforts and struggle; something akin to a moment of breath, where she could intake slowly allowing for the catch in the throat before forcing it all out to begin anew.

And that is how it is sometimes. We work with tremendous effort on our goals, but feel caught in a backwards swirl of mind movies that have us see our world upside down before we can shake the tree enough to right ourselves again.

Call it a raining dogs and cats moment and then move on — because when you are working that hard, you really, really know it, and should trust that you’re doing what you need to do to achieve your that goal.

Your moment, your time.

Sometimes you win …

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Sometimes you win …

Brooklyn Bridge at Night, 1948 Gelatin Silver, by Andreas Feininger

I managed to crawl out of bed at my usual ridiculous weekday hour in the morning today. My head is still spinning a bit from being tired and I’ve been fighting off waves of didn’t-get-enough-sleep headaches — not to complain, which I’m not, but to state that the inconveniences of those feelings are out-weighed by the suppleness my limbs feel after my third downward dog pose and all the other stretches these creaky bones held this morning.

While I may or may not get to four rounds of shadow boxing when I finish this piece, the hiss of the steam, wanderings of the kitty and the sounds of the house as it reverberates with the slow morning echoes from the street below gives me something else. A kind of serenity as I greet the day before the stresses and hustle and bustle of all the have-to’s begin to settle on it.

When one has a busy life with a tons of constituent parts that demand time, attention and thought, it’s so very nice to have the gift of a few minutes that aren’t in competition. Rather, they’re just for oneself. A little piece of the world one can own — if not quite the room Virginia Wolfe envisioned where one could state, “I am,” this place has more to do with a gift of quiet. And sure, predawn self-ministrations get “old” by Thursday morning when the accumulated hours of missed sleep are wearying, however, the idea of finding a part of the day for quiet doesn’t. I’ve been keeping to this schedule for six weeks now and have to say that occasional grumpiness aside these moments of quiet have truly given me something I didn’t expect: a place of peace that’s a little of my own.

The only thing you really have is your effort!

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The only thing you really have is your effort!

I wish that were original, but it’s not. My brother-in-law wrote it on his Facebook page last night. Given that he is a working musician, I give him his due as it is never easy.

Similar to professional musicians, professional athletes, talented amateurs and even the rest of us mere mortals on the ground — can usually only be sure of something based on the effort we’ve put in to achieve it. For this 50-something body that means I am truly *earning* the increasing tautness of my upper body from all those pre-dawn downward facing dog poses.

Yep, the effort does pay dividends — although I will admit to mornings where the seemingly endless long haul feels a bit discouraging.

And sometimes — the plateau is just that. The top of where you are going to go — say my ability to do a hand stand! To use the vernacular – that ain’t never gonna happen – but, it doesn’t mean I don’t stop the effort to get there.

Okay, I know I’m being Pollyanna-ish again, but this notion that what we have is our effort resonated with me. Perhaps it’s because when the effort is honest and truly your best the outcome is not the issue. In other words, it’s the doing that matters, and while it is great to have a goal — and in fact often the most motivating part of getting yourself to the piano, the potter’s wheel or the gym in the first place, after a while the goal tends to slip away in favor of the doing. We often find that the mere fact of following the path we’ve put in place whether its reps on a machine, rounds on the double-ended bag, or practicing the first four measures of a song for the 15th time, means finding the chance to discover beauty and serenity in that effort. Well, okay, the beauty part might seem a little bit funny in a funky boxing gym — but the point is to not forget the journey, ’cause it might just be what you are seeking to achieve in the first place.

My Boxing: Training on the go

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My Boxing: Training on the go

My Boxing Trainer - iPhone App

I admit to being somewhat of a Mac head … meaning that I am all Mac’d up with an iPad, iPhone, Mac Book, numerous iPods not to mention an iTouch. I’ve also come by all this Mac stuff somewhat honestly in that I also still have — and will occasionally use — my original Mac SE with all 4 MB of RAM! That old museum piece has a small black and white cathode ray tube for a screen (that’s a small TV!) and a sleek (for then) all in one body. We are talking 1986 when I first got mine — and what an amazing beauty this bad girl was for her time what with her 20 MB internal hard drive!

So fast forwarding to my 32 G iPad — I am truly in techie heaven what with the world literally at my fingertips as long as I can find 3G or internet, and if not, I can dig deep and find all of the stuff I’ve got loaded up including books, movies, and those blessed apps!

This week I’ve been discovering fitness apps — in my world that means I found a few and have been sticking to them. My two favorites are the My Boxing Trainer app (available as an iPhone app, but terrific on the iPad) and the Pocket Yoga app (available in iPad and iPhone versions).

The My Boxing Trainer app contains a terrific series of “how to” videos on such topics as boxing safety, hand wrapping and the boxer’s stance on through boxing tips for the ring including a video of Floyd Mayweather boxing “in the pocket.”

The other cool thing about this app is it contains a workout section that allows you to sequence your own training or follow a series of pre-defined training regimens. Once you select a sequence, the user clicks a timer button to set the number of rounds you want for each part of your training, as well as the the length of each round and rest period. The app also contains a straight boxing timer if you just want to use that. For the end of your workout there are some pretty nice boxing conditioning videos — everything from ab exercises to tips on stretching, using a medicine ball and keeping your shoulders in great shape. This app costs all of $1.99 and is highly recommended!

Pocket Yoga - iPad App

My other favorite app is Pocket Yoga. This app has three general areas: practice, poses and history. The practice portion has 30, 45 or 60 minute classes or two sun salutation sequences that allows the user to program the number of reps from 2 – 30. As a further refinement, each class and sun salutation sequence can be selected for a beginner, intermediate or expert level.

Once you choose a class type — the class or sequence you follow is animated with voice over narration. I followed the 30-minute beginner class this morning and had quite a workout. One other nice feature is the history tab. It will keep track of your yoga practice listing the date, sequence/class you used and the level of difficulty.

While this app doesn’t exactly replace a live-action class, it can work well in a hotel room, during a break at work — or even at the boxing gym if you want to follow-up your training with a little yoga. The app itself is $2.99 or $3.99 for the HD version and to my mind, well worth the cost.

The world keeps on spinning

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The world keeps on spinning

As pressed for time as my life is it’s nice to take some moments to do nothing but drift. By drift I do not necessarily mean gorking-out in front of the TV or getting memorized by online catalog sales. No, drift time are those moments when the imagination can soar — such as going for a walk where you let your “feet do the walking” instead of taking yourself on a straight line from A to B.

It’s those opportunities for shaking up your tree that lets you take-in things you might not ordinarily see. Say walking along and only observing the second floors of buildings. There are some wonderous things to see! Oddly carved gargoyles, balconies to no where, hand painted signs, and an assortment of drapes and window dressings that ranges from austere Modernism to Rococo to the merely ordinary.

So too with exercising. You can have solid morning calisthenics, classes you take, routes for your daily run, sacrosanct Yoga DVD’s, and for boxers the set-list of rounds for each type of boxing training plus the time you spend with your trainer. What’s nice is to spin yourself around by trying something a little bit different. This sort of drift time let’s your body find its way to where you want to be. That can mean an entirely new route for your run, yoga poses you never thought you could achieve, or in the boxing gym, a rhythm to your heavy bag or speed-bag work you didn’t know you had.

I guess the point is that we all need to step out of the ordinary so that we can find new ways of doing things. Whether its writing a story backwards, taking a stab at creating an oddly shaped pot on the potter’s wheel or spinning a globe with your kids and inventing stories about what life would be like if you all lived in those places. Believe me, nothing earth shattering will happen if you let things unfold without having structured it. What you might find is a feeling of relaxation and calm that otherwise alludes you as your go about your overly busy day — at least that’s what I’ve found when I remember to give myself the time.

Twenty six days and counting

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Twenty six days and counting

When one embarks on any sort of daily regimen of exercise, diet, writing or otherwise — or what I call the daily something, some days feel great and others are to put it charitably, “tougher” than others.

At best, one feels something a kin to a “glow” of self-satisfaction for having put in the work and effort while basking in what feels like tangible results. At worst, however, is that feeling of being in the mud having worked and worked without getting anywhere — and maybe even losing some ground.

Like any annoying Pollyanna, my response is to say focus on the bright-side, but when one has schlepped oneself day after day to some activity, or to the discipline of say, no chocolate except on Saturdays and the scale looks back with numbers on the wrong side of the goal, that is small solace.

To put it more plainly, when one is my age, a later rather than sooner 50-something, a scale that tips the wrong way feels like a miserable defeat! Inevitably (with a pardon to the youngsters out there) it becomes one of those “shut-up” moments when the whole hot flashing, weight fluctuating, mood altering, welcome to crone-hood stuff comes crashing down in a giant, “G-d damn-it” because in my world it means I can’t find my glasses again to even keep the awful number on the scale in focus.

That’s when my other, less grumpy, too cheerful for her own good self makes an appearance and screams out “suck-it up!”

Let’s face it, 26 days of a daily something is an amazing achievement — and what’s meaningful is the “and counting” part of it. So whether it’s shadow boxing before dawn, writing a poem a day or blogging about it, or any of the myriad of great things we all work hard to achieve, congratulations to you for even trying.

Waiting for morning to come

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Waiting for morning to come

I’ll admit it, Yoga at 5:15 AM this morning felt cold and lonely. Sure it was 9 degrees outside which had a lot to do with it, and yes, the cat had fun torturing my feet as I was in the downward facing dog position, but it was something else too. I felt the sense of being in the middle without seeing the shoreline on either side. Not exactly being adrift, but feeling dislocated.

A million odd years ago I took at windjammer type cruise in the Caribbean. The trip was on an old Maine Schooner (built in the early 1900’s), with about 30 passengers and crew. The attraction to the voyage was that the trip was an actual crossing: starting out in St. Martin’s making our way to such islands as St. Barts, St. Kitts and Saba Island towards the final destination of St. Thomas. At one point on the trip, we were a sea with no land in sight. I would cast my eyes about all 360 degrees and watch the shimmering waters as they met the horizon, catching the phenomenon of differing weather systems interacting: here a sudden squall, there beams of sunlight pushing their way insistently through the gaps in the clouds.

It put me in mind of the months and years that sailors would ply the waters of the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Indian oceans in search of whale or spices or for sheer exploration. Not that a vacation tour or a stint in the dark can in any way equate, but yet we do find ourselves in the momentary panic of being adrift when in fact is we are on course. It’s just that we can’t quite see it yet. Yes the light *will* eventually peak up and over the horizon this morning, as surely as the vessel I traveled on made its way forward till we saw land, still, I needed to feel reassured and finding it have gone on to embrace the day — whenever it wakes up enough to show itself.

Boxing day

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Boxing day

Now that I’ve gone to a once a week training schedule for boxing, I find myself getting really excited by the time Friday comes along. The daily fitness routine I’ve found that can work with my schedule these days is based around early morning yoga, but it’s the thought of boxing that gets me pumped up and ready to go.

My Saturday morning boxing routine begins with dropping my daughter off for her Aikido practice, after which I take a nice long walk over to Gleason’s Gym. By the time I get there I’ve logged 2-1/2 miles at a pretty fast pace so I am nice and loose. About a 1/2 mile out, I start pumping my arms a bit so that by the time I hit the gym I feel ready for one of my two favorites: three rounds on the double-ended bag or three rounds of shadow boxing using the slip-rope.

For those who don’t usually practice, the slip-rope is real old-school consisting of something as simple as a clothes line tied between two poles or across the ring around 15 feet apart at about chest height. The object is to move forwards and backwards along the line and “slip” under as practice for slipping a punch. The slip-rope is also great for practicing upper cuts under the line — or for simulating jabs to the body and jabs to the head. By around the third round, I feel loose enough to dance around the slip-rope going forwards, backwards, and circling. Having the rope at chest height not only helps to “remind” me to slip, but also gives me an approximation of where to place body versus head punches.

Alternatively, I’ll use the double-ended bag for warm-ups starting with a round of lefts and finishing the second two rounds with combinations and a lot of hooks or upper cuts off the jab.

If I can train with Lennox Blackmore, we’ll do three rounds of pad work — with an aim of getting to four rounds by the end of January, five rounds by the end of February and six rounds by the end of March! Once we’re done with the pads, it’s back to the double-ended bag for three rounds to work on punches and combinations that Lennox and I focused on during the training session on the pads. This helps to solidify moves, especially slipping punches to counter — a Lennox special. After that, it’s on to the speed bag for three rounds and then a whole lotta’ abs! I’ll add that if Len isn’t around, I might work-out for three rounds on the heavy bag in lieu of pad work, or add in an extra three on the double-ended bag.

By the end I’m exhausted, but happy — and ready for the quick walk back over to pick-up my daughter. I hope to keep this going for about three months so that by April I’ll be fit enough to get back into the ring for some light sparring. We’ll see!

Waking up is hard to do

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Waking up is hard to do

I have to admit, this morning was hard.

There was no way I wanted to get up out of bed — and when I finally managed it, the eyes that looked back at me from the bathroom mirror had bags, carry-ons and huge trunks. I truly didn’t know that eyes could look that puffy without having gone ten rounds.

Once I got to the living room to start morning yoga, it was all I could do to unroll the mat. I knew I needed something different or I’d fall right back to sleep so instead of following along with my usual yoga routine, Sara Ivanhoe’s Candlelight Yoga (available on Netflix), I went on Hulu and tried two of the Yoga Zone episodes, Gentle Yoga, Part 1 (if that’s gentle, oy…) and Strengthen and Tone, Part 1 (*lots* of leg stretches and downward facing dog poses).

Well, the fact that I’m writing means I survived, and I must say that doing the change-up really helped me to wake-up! It also reminds me that whether one is boxing or doing yoga, changing up the routine with other exercises not only gets the body going, but helps focus attention on muscles that may not get much of a work out otherwise.

(Note the full video is available on Hulu.)

Odds and ends about training

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Odd and ends about training

Belinda Laracuente

I trained at Gleason’s yesterday. Due to some time constraints I only had about an hour — but what an hour it was.

First off, thanks to my daily dose of Yoga, my stamina was light-years beyond the week before to the point where Lennox was asking what I’d put in my Wheaties. Not that I’d ever been one to proselytize (?!?) — but I’ve got to say that Yoga practice, even the Yoga 101 that I do really can make a difference in one’s stamina, core strength and flexibility.

Sonya Lamonakis

The second great thing about yesterday morning was watching the likes of pro-heavyweight fighter Sonya Lamonakis train. Sonya, ranked number three in her weight class sparred several hard rounds with Belinda Laracuente another sensational fighter who also works as a trainer at Gleason’s. As well, I caught sight of Alicia Ashley readying for her upcoming main event bout on January 13th at Brooklyn’s Masonic Hall.

The mention also goes out to all the women I trained with young and old, novice and pro who were working their butts off.

What a great day!

Get up offa’ that thing

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Get up offa’ that thing

James Brown!

Yep, it’s that kind of day. Getting up offa’ that thing!

As JB says: “Feel good? Feel good?”

Sometimes it’s the only answer! Enjoy!

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Girlboxing

The wit and wisdom of the ring.

Tag Archives: yoga

Slipping and sliding

Tied up in knots…

Boxing connections

It’s raining dogs and cats

Your moment, your time.

Sometimes you win …

The only thing you really have is your effort!

My Boxing: Training on the go

The world keeps on spinning

Twenty six days and counting

Waiting for morning to come

Boxing day

Waking up is hard to do

Odds and ends about training

Get up offa’ that thing

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