THANKFUL FRIDAY

Holding on

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I did some research and decided that I needed to change up my exercise routine. All that research kept pointing me to articles on ‘women of a particular age’ and strength training. So, instead of getting on a stationary bike and riding six miles on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’m attending a ‘strength and sweat’ class at the gym. I hate it, but I’m committed. The teacher, Colleen, makes it easier for me to be committed to attending the class. She sees me in the gym every day, doing my yoga practice and commented that she was in awe of that practice. When I walked in to her class that first Tuesday, Colleen exclaimed “You’re coming to my class?! Yay!” Later on she asked me why I was switching things up. We had a conversation about our age group and exercise and Colleen knew exactly what I was feeling. She knows I hate doing all of the things we do in her class and she sympathizes. She’s really good at encouraging without being overly cheerleader like and she’s always checking in with me (and pretty much everyone else in the class) to see how I’m doing or if I’m overdoing it.

This makes all the difference.

That doesn’t mean I like the class any better today than when I started last week. But having an instructor who gets you, makes it a whole lot easier to be there. The class has also been a bit of wake up call and quite humbling. We partnered up on Tuesday and while one of the duo performed a round of five pushups, ten sit-ups and twenty squats, the other person had to jump rope. I wasn’t good at jumping rope when I was in elementary school let alone at age forty three. I finally hit a good jumping rhythm without tripping up in the last minute of our ten minute routine. All this time, I thought I was in shape, but it turns out I was just a shape and that shape was not prepared for jumping around while punching ten pound dumbbells into the air. This realization was a bit humbling. At the end of week two, though, I have to say that I do feel better. On Thursday, I glanced over at my reflection in the floor to ceiling mirrors while we were doing squats and I did a double take. I was all “wha...is that my butt?!?” My butt looks less like the-party’s-over-deflated balloons and more like this-might-be-a-party balloons. My butt has a new shape!

Take a moment to have gratitude in yourself for your practice today

This is something I tell my students at the end of my classes. This is something I say to myself at the end of my own time on the mat. This is something I never say to myself off the mat. Today I am going to take a moment to have gratitude in myself for starting this new practice and for staying consistent with this new practice. I am going to take a moment to be grateful for this body’s ability to keep up even when things got difficult, even though I was often ungraceful and often outside of my comfort zone. I think maybe I need to be outside of my comfort zone some times.