I’ve been re-reading Kara Leah Grant’s ‘40 Days of Yoga’ . I bought and read it last year, and while it was thought provoking and very interesting it wasn’t the right time for me to put it into practice.*

Last week, I started re-reading it. It’s really profound while being profoundly simple. I’m not even finished reading and I decided that it was time to take action. Time to start my regular home practice.**

The thing that tipped the balance for me, timing-wise, was when she said that a time period of 40 days has a spiritual element to it, as well as being a length of time you can wrap your mind around. I can easily wrap my mind around 40 days AND Lent – that infamous 40 day event- starts today.

Religion is no longer a part of my life, but some of the cultural aspects remain in my consciousness. Doing something different, making a sacrifice or taking up a new practice during Lent is one of them. I don’t DO it every year, but I think about it every year and if a meaningful idea arises, I follow through.

A home yoga practice feels particularly meaningful for me this year, so I started today.

I usually like to follow a yoga video or sequence designed by someone else*** but in her book, Ms. Grant explains how to put parameters on your practice so you can kind of go with what your body needs. I would normally be very nervous about that whole idea – How do I know what I’ll need? How will I be sure I do the ‘right’ thing? – but this time the appeal of the parameter idea won out over my nervousness (And her writing about yoga is so friendly that it helped create a space for me to be a bit experimental).

So, at 11:20, I lit a candle and then got on my mat for 20mins. I knew that I would start with an intention, do some child’s pose and cat/cow to ease into the practice, and that I would end with some Savasana/meditation. I didn’t know the middle. This is huge for me, to not know the middle and to start anyway.

It was the most enjoyable yoga I have ever done. I was focused and tuned in. My body told me where it wanted to go next and I moved it that way. It felt fantastic. I was expecting some mental pushback about whether the poses were ‘effective’ or not and whether I was doing them in the ‘right’ order but I got none of that. I just got directions about where to go next until suddenly I had no more directions and I realized it must be time for Savasana.

It was weird and it was marvellous, and I kind of wanted to start another session right away.

I have a good feeling about this practice.

*2013 was much more of a think year than a do year for me.

**I do yoga in bits and pieces all the time, but this is a focused, purposeful practice intended to put you in touch with your deeper self.

***Taking yoga teacher training so I can design my own is part of my long term plan

Sometimes I freak myself out with my writing.

I don’t mean that I am so good that I can hardly believe it. I think I am a pretty decent writer, and it comes fairly easily to me – at least the early stages do – but I know I have lots of room to improve and I know that an editor will make me vastly better.

What I mean is that sometimes I come up with an idea or a character that totally unnerves me. And sometimes they resonate so hard that I wonder if I should consider bringing them up with a psychologist.

Today was one of those days. I was just doing a writing exercise* and suddenly my character was talking about the difficulty of dealing with the past – how you can’t engage with it, you just have to bury it, but sometimes it won’t stay buried.

The image I chose was fairly ridiculous – a pool noodle, and the way you can’t keep one under water. Yet, somehow the image became more and more ominous as I wrote. My character went on to try and metaphorically bury the memory in the dirt and suddenly this pool noodle, in my mental image, was that black-green mold colour. Sitting on top of the ground, slimy and cold, as the character frantically scraped at the dirt to create a hole big enough to put it in. She feels like her efforts are in vain though, because there is going to be a way for that slimy memory to surface again.

Putting myself in the character’s shoes gave me chills. It felt horrible to think of trying to escape that memory and that’s the point where my empathy for my character creeps me out.

Why can I conjure up that feeling? What do I know about trying to suppress a horrible memory?

My imagination just goes wild. Do I know how to suppress a memory? Have I done it already and now I am going to conjure it up by writing about this character’s desperation?

Obviously, that’s foolishness, but my body doesn’t know that. My body travels more slowly than my brain does, and when my body feels the dread and anxiety of the character – even when my brain knows better – it’s damn hard to shake. I have to consciously stop and move around, and sometimes literally shake it off.

I can’t decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. But it’s definitely a thing.

* I know some people don’t like writing exercises, they consider them a waste of time, but I like them as warm-ups and to me they feel the same as when I practice my patterns for Taekwon-do – it’s a time to work out some kinks, to get my muscles ready for the task ahead and to really understand the process I am trying to use for the bigger work. Writing muscles are different than physical muscles, obviously, but the comparison works for me. The more writing exercises I do, the more easily other writing comes to me.

My 100 days plan suffered from inadequate planning.

 

This is the new plan.

 

I have about a month* until my black belt test.

 

I am taking a course in getting my mind around time (calling it time management doesn’t begin to cover how comprehensive this course is.)

 

I have a new exercise plan with a lot more cardio.

 

AND, most importantly, I have finally wrapped my mind around how to write more.

 

I have always had this disconnect with my writing. I can write thousands of words a day under pressure. When I have an idea or a plan I can go mad with the typing and what comes out is not awful (at least most of the time). But then I will have these long periods of time where writing just doesn’t seem to fit. I don’t feel like I have much to say, it seems like a waste when there are other concrete things to do.

 

When I teach writing classes I remind people that all writing is useful and it’s like practicing lay-ups in basketball, each practice session brings you closer to where you want to be, and it’s not wasted. I understood that intellectually and believe it fully, but I hadn’t really seen how to bring it into my daily practice.

 

Now I have. I am going to methodically work my way through my writing advice books and do the exercises (at least the ones that seem ‘right’ to me), and consider them the same way I consider practicing my patterns in taekwondo – steps towards my eventual goal. And the thing is, like with exercise or practice (activity generates more activity), the more I write, the more things I think of to write about. So, any writing practice that I do will automatically help me get my writing work done because I will already be in the writing mindset. It’s win win.

 

So, here I am, with a plan for my writing, a plan for my exercising, a plan to prepare for my black belt, and a plan to get the biggest challenge area of my house done. This is the part in the movie where the heroine (that’s me!) starts working bit by bit and makes her way to where she wants to be. It would be boring to watch, of course, so the director puts in a montage – a collection of scenes (with music) that show her changing rapidly, her pages and muscles piling up, her house getting sorted. In real life, you don’t get to speed through that part, so here I am creating my montage, piece by piece. When I look back, it will seem pretty damn fast.

The key though? I actually enjoy the process of exercising, and the practice of writing – I hate THINKING about writing or exercising, but when I can actually sink in and just do it? It feels good.

 

The other thing I am currently working on is being better at just showing up, and being there imperfectly. So while, like the montage, this blog will get better as I go, some of the entries are going to be a bit meh in the meantime. These things happen. 🙂

 

*I’m really good at doing things for just a month, so this should work just fine.

Feminism is not over, our work is not done.

The fact that people still wince when Feminism comes up means there is still a lot of work to do. People wince because some parts of the media, of the ‘old boys’ club have convinced them that Feminists are mean, scary, unshaven bitches. People wince because one (or 4) Feminists they met were harsh and horrible.

I understand how that experience would shape your perception, but here’s the thing:

Some Feminists may be mean, scary, unshaven bitches, they might be harsh and horrible, but that’s not because they were Feminists, that’s because they are mean, scary, harsh, horrible people, the Feminist part is a coincidence. They don’t know how to make their points any other way.

I had some rotten teachers when I was in school, that didn’t make me decide all teachers were rotten. I’ve been served by some pretty lousy customer service people, that didn’t make me decide all customer service people were lousy. And I’ve met some socialists who wanted to destroy everyone in their path who disagreed with them, and others who just wanted change to happen, and they were willing to keep pushing until it did. That didn’t make me think all socialist were nutjobs.

I’m a Feminist (obviously), please do me the courtesy of judging me for who I am, not because you once met someone who used the same label and made it a bad thing.

AND consider, perhaps, that maybe that harsh (or not so harsh) person put you on the defensive. Humans seem to lean toward binaries, so to like one thing means to dislike another, so if you hear Feminist, maybe you automatically jump to the idea that Feminists are anti-masculine.  Let go of that for a second and consider what else that could mean – you don’t have to let me convince you, just consider the possibility that you don’t have the whole picture. You can also do a quick read of this great Tomato Nation post to see what Feminism is really about.

I confess, I used to be put off by Feminism. When I was a teenager I believed I was equal to the guys but I was afraid of the backlash from calling myself a Feminist so I would use that stupid line ‘I’m not a Feminist but I believe in equal rights.’ That was me claiming my space while hiding from a label that might cause me hassle. Sometime in my 20s, I stopped hiding and just claimed Feminism.

Feminism is about equal rights for women. AND equal rights for men. It’s about breaking down this gender bullshit that we pretend is natural, and deciding for ourselves how we want to contruct and conduct ourselves. It’s not about putting men down, and it’s not about exalting women. It’s about seeing how our current social structure is failing us all.

It’s about fixing a society that dismisses women, it’s about getting rid of the lousy idea that women are men’s property – to be used, abused and tossed aside. No not EVERY man thinks that, of course not, it’s very few, but until we have a better structure for dealing with the ones that do, we need Feminists calling attention to the system that supports that attitude. And our system does. Big time. I know you, as a reasonable person, don’t, but the system was designed when women were considered property and we haven’t rooted out and eliminated all the parts that still function that way.

Feminists see all this change as needing to start with fixing women’s current status, that’s why we use the word FEMinism. We need to bring women up to the position of men, and then when everyone is at the same table, on the same level playing field, we can make even more change.

The thing is though, bringing women to the table, onto the field, that will help free men too.  We’re not looking to downgrade the masculine, we’re looking to get riddy of the shitty parts of both masculinity and femininity – the parts that say that men aren’t capable of behaving themselves, the parts that say that women can expect to live off men, that kind of thing.

I’m a Feminist for me, for my Sisters, for my Mother, for my Mother-in-Law, and for my female friends. I’m a Feminist for my husband, my sons, my Dad, my Father-in-law, my Brothers-in-law and my male friends. I’m a Feminist for you.

I want change in our world. I want everyone to be able to live the lives they choose unconstrained by outdated notions of masculinity and femininity. Yeah, I know that’s a big wish, but if we don’t keep trying it will never happen.