Fitness?

I tried to do a 30 Day Yoga Challenge.  I failed, completely and utterly about a week into it  Not because I hate yoga or because it's not for me, but because I keep making excuses.  I keep thinking, "Oh, I can do it later," or "Oh look, eight seasons of Bones on Netflix!  Let's power watch as many episodes as humanly possible!"

My boyfriend once told me, "Everyone wants to have lost weight, no one wants to lose weight."  At this point though, I'm not terribly concerned with weight.  Weight is only relationship of my body to this gravitational source.  I don't weigh myself regularly, especially because my weight can fluctuate as much as 10 pounds every day, depending on what I eat and how much water I drink.

Right now, I am more concerned with becoming strong.  If only I was perfect at yoga and it wasn't so damn hard to Chatarunga (literally cannot bear that much weight on my arms, so I tend to not-so-gracefully flop to the floor like a dolphin hopping onto the landing pad at Sea World).

Yep.  That's familiar. (Link is to picture source)

I am more concerned with surviving an eventual zombie apocalypse than whether I ever weigh 175 pounds (add about 20 pounds to that and that's where my average is).  And even that concern is outweighed by the great Void which is the Internet.  Hmm, Facebook?  Netflix?  Pinterest?  This is not healthy, I know.  I have tried to limit my TV intake, but horrid habits are hell to break.

What about doing yoga or exercises while the TV is on?  I was doing all right with that when I was marathoning Scrubs for the third time, but if there is a show or movie I haven't seen before, I tend to pay more attention to it than I do to my workouts.  So I end up lying on the floor and watching TV.  Bust.

This wouldn't be so bad, but I have translated this into my writing as well.  I am finding more and more alternatives to writing my own novels, poetry, blog posts, you name it.  I long for the last days of my undergraduate degree when I didn't have Netflix or even cable, just the same old, tired shows and movies that I had watched more than a few times.  I was writing like crazy, due to 16 credit hours of English classes, and all I can remember is the fun that I was having.  Sure, I hated Shelley (I mean hated everything by him except "Ozymandias"), and I really didn't do much for my American Lit survey.  But when I think about that point in my life, I realize that I was pretty well balanced.

A friend of mine introduced me to the idea of the medicine wheel, and this is something that I have been thinking about more and more lately.  There are four quadrants, and each represents a part of existence.  North is mental, East is spiritual, South is emotional, West is physical.

Note how the cardinal directions complement each other.  South is ruled by emotions and is balanced by the North, the practical and mental.  Your physical being balances your spiritual being.  Spirit and emotion cannot exist without balance from physical and mental aspects as well.

No wonder I was so balanced that last quarter of college.  I was mentally engaged in reading poems, writing papers and relearning French.  I was physically active by riding my bike at least three miles (round trip) to class, and I even worked out on occasion at home (because it was easy).  I was emotionally stable because I had friends to rely on (although here, I remember I was chasing after a guy I had no business to even be interested in, but I'm pretty sure that was just me working out my emotional baggage).  And I was spiritually active because of said friend who introduced me to this concept.  I had everything working for me, no side really outweighed each other.  Sure, I was stressed from taking 20 credit hours and working 20 hours at a fast food job, had little to no money, and didn't always eat the best food, but I felt incredibly accomplished when that quarter was over.  I had done it, I had kicked butt at it.  I'd even achieved all A's and B's in all my classes (despite a couple questionably long absences from a few of them).

I have to think of some way to hold myself accountable; I don't want to get up super early in the morning to go and work out.  I want to be able to ride my bike and not worry that crazy Columbus drivers will try to run me off the road (there I go, making excuses again).  I need to get off my butt and get into a Sun Salutation. (There I go using the words "want" and "need" again.  Didn't I write a blog post on how you shouldn't do that?  Oh yeah, I did.)

This is my current conundrum (poetry book title, aaah, I should so use that!).  Despite my positive headspace, I am not really in a positive action space yet.  I really do deserve to be there.  Perhaps that should be my affirmation for the next few weeks; "I deserve it."  I wonder how that statement will draw the determined lady out of this unbalanced dolphin?