How I Spent My Week...

Sorry for my absence, Shanti-Towners...last week I made an impromptu trip home to Seattle to see my loving family (with a bonus dinner out in Portland with the in-laws!).  Here is a picture of my dad's chickens to make up for it...

Yay, chickens!

Back next week with more yoga-goodness.  And hopefully a podcast!!

An Expanding Tree...

The mister and I had to take a last-minute trip on Sunday to his home-town in Oregon to attend the funeral of his paternal grandmother, who passed away last week.  She was 90 years old, of sound mind and, right up until the end...of sound body.   She was survived by 4 children, 10 grandchildren, countless great-grandchildren, and a multitude of others.

I, Shanti-towners, have not been to many funerals in my life.

In fact, if you don't count the memorials at my high-school gymnasium that were held for the one or two kids who died during the course of my time there--I haven't actually been to any.

I also (and I think this is partly why I've not been to many funerals) have a rather small family.  It's growing now, with the marriages and children of my brother and sister and myself (no children yet for me, don't get all excited), but when I was growing up, there weren't very many of us.

Paul's family, in comparison, is large and lovely and full of aunts and uncles and cousins and kids and grandparents--it was only his father's side gathered for the funeral, but the night before the service there must have been 30 of us all gathered together to eat and drink and prepare.  I felt, I have to say, like some buried childhood dream was coming true for me: to feel in some small way a part of this big--brood!  We had a whole room of the restaurant reserved just for us!  The other end of the table felt like it was a mile away, and all evening long people just kept...arriving.  During dinner, the kids of all the cousins (the great-grandkids) played trains and darted in-between the chairs of the adults.  At one point, one of the smaller girls sidled up to my chair and asked me, in her adorable squeaky voice, "are you my dad's sister?"

To which I had to reply, "no, sweetheart...I'm your dad's cousin's fiance."

Heh.

As for the adults, we ate steak and drank wine--cousins who hadn't seen each other in a while caught up, aunts and uncles congratulated Paul and I on our engagement, and everyone shared stories.  They shared stories of Paul's grandfather, who had died several years earlier and who was, without question, the head and center of that side of the family.  He was a baseball player and a salesman and a master storyteller himself, and though his passing had been difficult for all of them those four years ago, it seemed even more final now, with the passing of his wife.  They told stories of her, of how much more complicated their relationships were to her than to him, of how much less they felt they knew her, deeply, than him, but yet still how much they loved her.  They told stories of family holidays past, of the swimming pool at the grandparents house that all the grandkids were magnetized to during their teenage-hood, and they marveled at what it would mean now for all of them that these two--the hub of the family--were both departed.

And at first, I have to admit, as I listened to them all telling stories and reminiscing...I felt a little envious.  I want this, I thought.  I want the big family gatherings and the kids underfoot and the summertime boredom stories to share with the cousins.  I want to have so many people in my family that the little ones don't even know how everyone is related.  I want to sit around in the living room the day after someone important has been buried and reminisce about who wrecked the car when we were kids and who got blamed for wrecking said car.

But as the ceremonies progressed, as the meals and the funeral and the reception all came and went, I suddenly realized...wait a minute, I DO have this.  This family is now...my family.

(insert sound of rapturous choir singing here)

And as I thought more about it I realized, my god, not only is my small little family of origin beginning to grow and blossom, with nephews and step-siblings and step-nephews and nieces, but now, wonder of wonders, all of these people, this enviable large family--I'm now a part of it.  Our children, my and Paul's children, on both sides they will get this extravagance of relatives.  They will have this feeling of being rooted somewhere, of being known.  They will (unless all the other kids are grown up by then!) get to chase their cousins around the dinner table and gripe about grandma and grandpa in their later years..

And it seems fitting, as my wedding quickly approaches, to take a moment to acknowledge the size of this particular gift.  Just to get to marry Paul is enough of a boon to last me (my god, I still marvel at just THAT), but to also get to join my life in some way with this big brimming restaurant-room full of Willis'...it's a pretty sweet deal, folks.  

And I am so very, very grateful for it.

Things Which Pull at Other Things...

I have just returned from an extended family vacation, and while I felt focused and clear nearly the whole time I was away, I was woken this morning by a racing mind. Possibly due to the fact that I had a big meeting scheduled for this afternoon and have been ramping myself up for it all week. Possibly due to the book on Focus which I was devouring on the plane (devouring despite the warning from the small voice inside me that said perhaps reading a book which encourages me, the queen of to-do lists, to make a bunch more to-do lists might not be the best course of action) -- that could have been part of it.

The feeling was so distinct upon waking that I thought it must be due in part to some sort of dream from the night before, but the only thing I could remember dreaming about had something to do with leaping off a building into a mountain of books.

(Hmm...)

Anyhow, I spent much of the morning sort of ambling from one half-cocked task to the next before learning that my meeting scheduled for this afternoon is now postponed a week, and sinking into a brief "what now" paralysis.

That the meeting was about my actor life and that my feeling of distress all morning had been about the existence (or non-existence, depending on my mood) thereof, did not help my "focus" in the least. Alone in the apartment, the sun shining outside, utterly incapable of choosing from the myriad of things I "ought" to be doing in order to find the one perfect thing I "should" do, I wandered from computer to couch, the poster-child for unproductivity. The only thing I really wanted to do, faced with a free afternoon, was go to a yoga class, but folks, I can NOT go to a yoga class, because I, being the grand show-off-y too-proud-to-say-ouch girl that I am, I royally screwed up my rotater cuff over the weekend while dangling from a swing-set at an ocean-side resort.

"Now, Lia," you might be saying "that sounds pretty dramatic. Were you being held hostage by fisher-people when this happened?"

No. No, I was not being held hostage by fisher-people.

"Well, were you trying to rescue a small child who had become entangled in the swing-set and the only way you could rescue him or her was to swing like a monkey to his or her rescue?"

No. No, there was no child-rescuing.

"Then what on earth were you doing?"

So....now, don't laugh. My brother, martial-artist/personal-trainer/all around incredibly fit exercise guru that he is, was demonstrating this new device called the TRX Suspension Trainer, which is essentially composed of two hand/footholds, a caribiener, and some spandex-y straps. He swears by it, my brother, and I took one look at the thing and immediately began thinking of ways in which I might be able to go upside-down in it, so I was all for participating in said demonstration.

Small bit of history: my brother has been a martial artist since he was 9, and for that long and longer he has loved nothing more than to "try out" things on his little sister. I will leave out the story of him putting a paper bag over my head and punching me through it to see how close he could get to my nose without actually hitting me (he failed), but I will say that I should know better! My brother is like in 10,000,000 x better shape than I am and as much as I would like to be able to do everything that he can do...I. Can. Not.

Anyhoooo...he hooked the ole' TRX up to the swing sets outside the cabin where my family and I were staying for the weekend, strapped me into it, and began to show me all the different ways in which a body can be thoroughly stretched and strengthened on the system.

(Side Note: This thing ROCKS! It really is kind of mind-blowingly effective, you can feel it right away, and I really want to get one. As soon as I heal.)

So, I'm happily working my little patootie off...performing in front of the audience of my family, and even though I'm feeling fatigued, there is no way that I am going to give up before the end of the demo. That would just be too embarrassing. Not warmed up in the least? No problem! Feeling a little nervous about the small twinge that's been going on in my shoulder during yoga class the past couple weeks? Fuggidaboutit!

And forget about it I did, until, towards the end of the demo when I had moved on to the exercises where my feet were suspended in the straps and I was doing a combination of push-ups and crunches supported on my hands, when I landed a little weird on my right shoulder and felt a pretty excruciating pain which I knew (having experienced pain like it in the past) was my rotater-cuff.

"Well, gosh, what did everyone say when you stopped and told them you couldn't do anymore because you'd just hurt yourself?"

Um...

"You must have at least STOPPED, right, even if you didn't admit that you'd hurt yourself like a big show-off-y bonehead?"

Um...

!!!!!!

I mean seriously! You should just stop reading this blog right now, for good. You should honestly just be like, you know what, this girl sounds like sort of a bonehead and I think that maybe I should look for sources of yogic-ly-inspired insight elsewhere, seeing as how she has too much pride to even end a backyard demo of a piece of fitness equipment she's never tried before when there's no one around to be embarrassed in front of but her OWN FAMILY!

I won't hold it against you, I promise.

In my own defense, the excruciating part of the pain sort of stopped after a second and I even thought, oh...maybe I just sort of knocked something back into place. That's right. Not only did I not stop to make sure I didn't do any damage, I convinced myself that maybe I had done something GOOD for my shoulder and the pain was just some last vestige, some cork on my shoulder's full range of motion...like popping open a bottle of champagne.

Cut to hours later, after having completed the demo AND done some yoga AND swung around a 45 lb. kettle bell...and my shoulder is VERY very unhappy. It is making me wince with pain every time I move it in any kind of rotation and I am reduced to slathering myself with muscle cream and popping my brothers Arnica pills every few hours. Thank god he travels with all that stuff.

It's been several days now, and though my shoulder is definitely feeling better, it is not anywhere near ready for a yoga class...which extends my absence from classes to over a week...which makes me feel sort of cranky and deprived, and my larger self keeps annoyingly reminding me that THIS is why our injuries are our greatest teachers. It's not just because they teach us how to do things correctly in future, so as not to continue to injure ourselves, but, as is so often the case for me...they teach us how to slow down, how to be more honest about where we actually are, and to not try to do too much too fast.

I am trying to take that in this morning, as I race around making to-do lists, punctuated by bouts of staring out the window trying to lock in on that one thing that is finally going to help me break through some kind of stalemate. As if I can will the universe into providing me with the things that I want, if only I try hard enough. I am trying to remember what it felt like to wrench my shoulder all because I was moving too fast--the embarrassment of it, the price I am paying now--and that if I had only taken a moment to really ask myself what was right for me, I might have known to hold back, to take it easy, to go one step at a time. I can't help but think that the same thing happens in my own life when I am racing around, trying to get to the finish line or get it all accomplished right away--not only do I not get it all done, I can actually end up setting myself back while I recover from whatever injury I may have incurred. Physical or otherwise.

Please be ashamed of me, dear readers, for being a giant goober and hurting myself, and please, so you don't end up like me, take a minute, if you're feeling rushed...if you're feeling that someone out there needs you to prove that you're good enough...if you have left yourself in order to pursue some imaginary trophy out there in front of you...take a moment. Breathe. Ask yourself--is this a good idea? Am I ready for this? Do I NEED to do this right now? And if I rush right on ahead without taking the time to ask these questions, am I possibly going to end up having to bowl left-handed when I take my nephews to the arcade because my right shoulder feels like it's made of glass whenever I move my arm?

Save yourselves! Do it for me!

Yours in Recovery,
YogaLia