energy one and energy two

I've been thinking about energy today.

there's this kind of energy:

it is the end of the fourteenth week of power camp, and more than a few people in class have commented on their level of depletion. you can eat all the bananas and power bars you want: there still exists a point where you are just done. when you give and give and give, your body sometimes sends up a white flag, begging for respite.
and then there are times when you think you have nothing left, but you do. somehow, your body reaches deep within and finds something to spit out at the world.
this is the come and go energy that is fueled by nutrition, muscles, training, hydration, drive and determination, sleep, and respite. (yep, intervals, bananas and kale all fit nicely here.)

then there's this kind of energy:

it is the end of the fourteenth week of power camp, and many of us campers know a great deal about each other. we know who will be there consistently, and we know who goes running on wednesdays instead of coming to class. we know who the first few through the door will be each morning; we know who will arrive ten minutes into the warmup.
we get a sense of each other, we learn who we like to sit next to, who fits our own way of being.
our energy field, what I consider an almost palpable aura, is there with us no matter how many bananas or whole wheat bagels we've eaten, how many challenging classes we've been to in the past week, or how little sleep we've had. it's bigger than our daily fluctuations: it's who we are and how we present to the world. it tends to be fairly consistent within (and without) a person, though there are always highs and lows and subtle changes due to inner growth.
some energies I love to be around. they are peaceful and calm, positive and hopeful. which does not mean the owner of this energy can't be active and outgoing, dynamic, realistic, accessible. we can have traits that seem in conflict with our overall energy field.
some energy fields are intense, some are almost angry, some are so spiky and bright I can't get too close.

energy can be tweaked, both with glucose and with effort.
I know at times my energy field has been heavier and more solemn than usual, and I can feel that in my physical efforts. I may still be able to perform, but it has a bit of the feel of running through water. when my energy field is lighter and more love-filled, everything happens more easily, from spin class to making lunches for my kids to mowing the lawn.

this is my self-prescription: for energy one, more bananas, less chocolate cake, darn it all.
for energy type two, meditation, yoga, and more headstands. because there's nothing like spending some time viewing the world upside down to connect you more firmly with the joys and wonder of your own reality.
give it a try.

credit and a half

I am worthless in here today.
that's what I said to bob and andy in the weight room this morning at 6:35.
bob's response was,
if we compared your worthless and my worthless, I'm sure you'd come out ahead.
that made me feel better, to know that it wasn't just me.

I want to feel energetic and powerful and capable all of the time, and my reality is this: I don't.
and since I can only live inside my own head, and not those that belong to other people, I struggle when doing self assessments.
this is what I wonder: do other people in power camp climb on those bikes in the morning and think, oh God, another day of spinning my legs around and wishing it were over and feeling like I just can't keep going?
do other people in the weight room think to themselves, gosh, why is it that this doesn't seem to get any easier, and how do weights get heavier from one week to the next, and, gosh, why does everyone else make it look easy?

nick was in the weight room this morning, nick my swiss friend who in 2009 lost his wife of half a century or so and also broke his back in a water skiing accident.
prior to this morning, I last saw nick right before Christmas, when he was still having difficulty navigating stairs. he wasn't quite ready to return to working out at the JCC, and he didn't look as though he was quite ready to return fully and vibrantly to the community.
this morning he looked good.
this is what he had to say about it:
I see myself every day, and I can't see any change from day to day. but this week I'm better than I was three weeks ago, so something must be happening.

this is when faith keeps us going. a belief in something that isn't readily visible or measurable each day. a belief in the process, a belief that we are growing, changing, healing, progressing.

this is when I need to go do a headstand. because my headstands are markedly better than they were a year ago. they are not perfect. they are still slightly wobbly and I'm not yet ready to do one away from the wall. but the day will come when they will be even more stable than today's, and I will be able to do one in the middle of the room.

and perhaps the reason that I don't feel stronger and more capable in power camp is that I keep raising the bar. I take for granted the progress I've made and how very, very far I've come. it's no longer enough to survive the experience: I want to excel, to thrive, to conquer. so each day that I perform adequately I give myself credit for surviving, when in reality I should give myself credit and a half because I did it better than I allow myself to acknowledge. I am better than I was two weeks ago, a month ago.
I need to give myself a pat on the back for my iotas of forward movement, whether they appear to be measurable or not.
because they are there.
scooting along, moving me toward . . . the next best version of myself.

small gifts

this morning's class was one of those that belongs in the I Will Survive This But I Sure Don't Like It category.
there are many things in life that belong there, actually. in fact, here's a list I'll whip out without much contemplation at all:

visits to the dentist
waiting at the DMV
visits to the doctor
filling out forms for the government
drying and straightening my hair
visits to the woman who works with wax
refraining from eating cookies and cake

today, after our warm-up of 20 minutes at 100 rpms, our Work Effort was this:
15 minutes spinning at 110-115 rpms
15 minutes spinning at 115-120 rpms
5 minutes spinning at 120+ rpms

you might say, that doesn't sound so awful. and for some of you it may not be. you sprinters out there, and you who just spin fast anyway, well, bully for you. I am neither a sprinter nor a fast spinner. and I'm working very hard not to say I hate these workouts. I'm trying to have a better attitude, and to cull the word hate from my vocabulary.
because I don't like these workouts at all.
and part of that is due to my legs, who much prefer to push bigger gears at a slower pace, but the more significant portion of dislike comes from the nerves in my saddle area. to spin that fast I have to engage my core and dig down into the saddle, to prevent bouncing. pressing down into the saddle results in . . . you guessed it, pressure on some pretty sensitive areas.
enough.
I start these Work Efforts with supportive self-talk that says, you can back off anytime you need, susan, it's okay. and then when I'm 3 minutes in, realizing there are still 12 to go, with a harder segment coming up, I think I might take myself up on that offer. but 2 minutes later, a third of the segment is over, and I convince myself I can keep going.
at the beginning of the next segment I do the same thing: you can slow down anytime you need, susan, it's really okay. and I keep going.
but at the end of it all, I am so full of relief it's palpable. I'm sure everyone on the opposite side of the room can feel it.

I know this is making me a better cyclist. a Universal Truth is that when you are working on a skill of some kind, if you continue to work to improve the parts at which you are weakest, you will become better at that overall skill.
but the culmination of all my work and efforts over the past years have also helped me with something else, and I received some powerfully redeeming gratification this morning:
after all that ridiculously fast spinning, then a stint in the weight room, I headed to the yoga room with the mirrored walls and spread a mat on the floor. I put my forearms down in a vee, placed the crown of my head where my hands met, and gracefully---yes, gracefully---kicked my legs up and into a headstand pose.
I held the best handstand of my life today.
legs together, legs apart in a vee, then back together, barely ever needing the wall.
I was solid, steady, smooth, safe.
and this made up for every bit of that pain-in-the-butt, I Can Barely Tolerate This, can't-wait-until-it's-over, ridiculously fast spinning.
these little rewards are what keep us going, aren't they?

spring

happy spring! as it is visiting us with one of its many and varied manifestations . . .

today we have experienced so many different versions of "snow" that I've lost track. I have seen everything from powerfully heavy snowflakes as large as my thumb to light-as-air flakes that looked and acted like fireflies, spending more time and energy in a sideways motion than that in a downward trajectory.
I walked in the snow carrying an umbrella to keep from becoming drenched, and I walked without, bareheaded, letting the tiny and infrequent flakes flutter around me.
as I type, I am looking out my window, watching big, fat flakes float thickly downward in a constant pattern that, were the ground still frozen, would result in inches piling upon inches of prior flakes. however, the earthen temperature being what it is, the ground is fighting back, struggling to keep its claim of springtime, and the grass welcomes its little white coating while still poking its evergreen self skyward, above any kind of blanketing that might want to be happening.
and even as I type, the flakes have shifted once more, now a little more sparse, a little smaller in stature, a little less resolute.
yes, spring.
I feel something in the air.
something different, something hopeful, something that acknowledges life's blips and bumps, yet tells us to keep moving forward, to not get stuck behind what is really but a extra bit of asphalt clumped in a little ridge.

this morning I did my best headstand ever. it lasted so long and was so steady that I know, I know deep down inside, that I am making progress. today I still used the wall to steady myself when needed, but there will come a time when I don't need that security.
there will come a day when I will stand on my own little head, and know that I got there with a bit of direction and encouragement from miguel, but mostly by myself, through determination and practice and progress and commitment.

it's snowing today, and it's beautiful. it's the kind of snow that makes you want to stand out under a wide open sky, tilt your head up, close your eyes, and stick out your tongue to catch as many flakes as possible and count them as first they jar your tongue with cold, then quickly melt and tease your tongue with their moisture.

someday maybe I will go outside on a spring day like this, plant my head on the ground, pull up into my headstand, and then stick my tongue out and catch snowflakes on the bottom of my tongue, just to see if I can.