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I haven't written about this before, but let it be said that I've started yoga, and yoga is kicking my ass.
I never thought I'd be a yoga person, I always thought I'd do a bit of boxing, horseback riding, maybe a martial art, something fitting a small and very muscular, compact person as myself. Yoga always seemed to be for those asparagus girls, looking so serene and composed and bendy.
oh well. A friend asked me at the exact right moment, when I was so fed up with my body I was ready to break up with it...and then we went, I payed, and I HAD to go.
It was a beginners class, with a very good teacher from N.Y. with a good mix of hocus pocus body/philosophy/breathing - talk, and normal common sense.
Lemme tell you I was booored, and clumsy and ungraceful. I was staring daggers at those asparagus girls who did attend this two month long beginners class. But...everyone in the group was so nice, and one of the most gifted girls in the beginner group was a very fat, but really bendy teacher girl with a metabolism ailment. She was so great that I just shut the f**k up and payed attention.
So now I'm gonna take the followup class. I still think I'll never be really good at yoga, but I feel good after I have done it. Mentally I think I'll always be a little bored..but..it still gives me something that more fun sports haven't given me, it connects me to my own body and makes me pay attention to it.
I'm great at ignoring my body and its quirks, partially because I have a strong and rather healthy one, and I abuse that fact. I really do think my body will last forever and not fail me, and I need to snap out of that illusion.
The clearest indication of this mental blockage of mine is given to me when I work at the archives and need to pull out a heavy box to get to old records. I do it carelessly and fast, because I know I can handle the weight, my arms and shoulders are just that strong. So the results have been that I sometimes pull a muscle, and just work with the ache, ignoring it. A person with more respect for the weight of the box would instead use technique and angles and pull and lift slower and with more care. In work situations like these, it's no coincidence that men pull and sprain things more often than women, they simply get careless about their bodily strength.
Anywhoo...
America has been too good for me, or too bad, depending on how you'd interpret it. I've been stress munching, comfort munching and not exercising enough. The first year here, when I was still doing thesis work, internship et.al. I kept myself in shape nicely..but the job hunt and the contract working has not been beneficial to my eating/exercise routines.
I am a very small and muscular woman...compact is a good word. My calves are so muscular I'm ashamed of showing them off..and to be honest, when I've been in good shape, and dared to do so in a shortish skirt, men have approached me who frankly creeped me out. Would you want to date a guy with a calf-fetish? There is a certain type of fellow who gets off on very muscular calves in combination with a lean waistline...they are drawn to strong looking girls who don't look like regular athletes, but rather like little female barbarian warriors, or like...milkmaids I guess.
Sadly I am not attracted to such men. They can have sex with another pair of calves.
So I hide my calves and can't ever have smart loong leather boots. Ever.
But for walking, which is my favorite occupation, it's great.
I've taken up walking again in the midst of summer scorching, and it's going pretty well. I have several paths that I tracked out for myself a couple of years ago, when I was new to Colorado, and yesterday & today I walked the one that takes 1 hour. In a few weeks I might try the 1.5 hour one, and there's one that's closer to 2 hours. (back in Sweden I had a 3 hour one, but I'd still have to do some tracking to find a nice enough long route here)
I want to lose 20 lbs, but I also want to do some other, non weight related alternations to my relationship with my body in the future. I want to be able to eat a lot. I simply am not happy if I'm even half hungry. And I can eat a lot, as long as I have a certain form of balance and awareness. I don't want to be thin, I want to be chubbily in shape.
So, I'm thinking of starting a filter for this journal - a body/food filter where I feel I can safely put down my musings about body, image, food, how I view these things in myself and in other people around me. (I could for instance write much more about this amazing large girl at the yoga class, she's in such great shape alongside her large weight, and she's just a lovely person from the inside out.)
I want to write about these things without feeling like I bore people - sometimes it may just be about food and recipes, or bitching about stuff I don't like.
So I'd like people to speak up if you want to be on the filter or not, particularly if you don't want to be there.
I never thought I'd be a yoga person, I always thought I'd do a bit of boxing, horseback riding, maybe a martial art, something fitting a small and very muscular, compact person as myself. Yoga always seemed to be for those asparagus girls, looking so serene and composed and bendy.
oh well. A friend asked me at the exact right moment, when I was so fed up with my body I was ready to break up with it...and then we went, I payed, and I HAD to go.
It was a beginners class, with a very good teacher from N.Y. with a good mix of hocus pocus body/philosophy/breathing - talk, and normal common sense.
Lemme tell you I was booored, and clumsy and ungraceful. I was staring daggers at those asparagus girls who did attend this two month long beginners class. But...everyone in the group was so nice, and one of the most gifted girls in the beginner group was a very fat, but really bendy teacher girl with a metabolism ailment. She was so great that I just shut the f**k up and payed attention.
So now I'm gonna take the followup class. I still think I'll never be really good at yoga, but I feel good after I have done it. Mentally I think I'll always be a little bored..but..it still gives me something that more fun sports haven't given me, it connects me to my own body and makes me pay attention to it.
I'm great at ignoring my body and its quirks, partially because I have a strong and rather healthy one, and I abuse that fact. I really do think my body will last forever and not fail me, and I need to snap out of that illusion.
The clearest indication of this mental blockage of mine is given to me when I work at the archives and need to pull out a heavy box to get to old records. I do it carelessly and fast, because I know I can handle the weight, my arms and shoulders are just that strong. So the results have been that I sometimes pull a muscle, and just work with the ache, ignoring it. A person with more respect for the weight of the box would instead use technique and angles and pull and lift slower and with more care. In work situations like these, it's no coincidence that men pull and sprain things more often than women, they simply get careless about their bodily strength.
Anywhoo...
America has been too good for me, or too bad, depending on how you'd interpret it. I've been stress munching, comfort munching and not exercising enough. The first year here, when I was still doing thesis work, internship et.al. I kept myself in shape nicely..but the job hunt and the contract working has not been beneficial to my eating/exercise routines.
I am a very small and muscular woman...compact is a good word. My calves are so muscular I'm ashamed of showing them off..and to be honest, when I've been in good shape, and dared to do so in a shortish skirt, men have approached me who frankly creeped me out. Would you want to date a guy with a calf-fetish? There is a certain type of fellow who gets off on very muscular calves in combination with a lean waistline...they are drawn to strong looking girls who don't look like regular athletes, but rather like little female barbarian warriors, or like...milkmaids I guess.
Sadly I am not attracted to such men. They can have sex with another pair of calves.
So I hide my calves and can't ever have smart loong leather boots. Ever.
But for walking, which is my favorite occupation, it's great.
I've taken up walking again in the midst of summer scorching, and it's going pretty well. I have several paths that I tracked out for myself a couple of years ago, when I was new to Colorado, and yesterday & today I walked the one that takes 1 hour. In a few weeks I might try the 1.5 hour one, and there's one that's closer to 2 hours. (back in Sweden I had a 3 hour one, but I'd still have to do some tracking to find a nice enough long route here)
I want to lose 20 lbs, but I also want to do some other, non weight related alternations to my relationship with my body in the future. I want to be able to eat a lot. I simply am not happy if I'm even half hungry. And I can eat a lot, as long as I have a certain form of balance and awareness. I don't want to be thin, I want to be chubbily in shape.
So, I'm thinking of starting a filter for this journal - a body/food filter where I feel I can safely put down my musings about body, image, food, how I view these things in myself and in other people around me. (I could for instance write much more about this amazing large girl at the yoga class, she's in such great shape alongside her large weight, and she's just a lovely person from the inside out.)
I want to write about these things without feeling like I bore people - sometimes it may just be about food and recipes, or bitching about stuff I don't like.
So I'd like people to speak up if you want to be on the filter or not, particularly if you don't want to be there.
