Left, right, right

I was at the rock climbing gym one Sunday afternoon and none of my friends were available to belay me, so I bouldered (which is climbing without a harness and rope but only to a certain height). Some rock climbers prefer bouldering. Others use it to train endurance by doing horizontal circuits around the gym. Still others boulder to work out certain "problems" which are series of moves determined by the placement of particular feet and hand holds.

I bouldered a circuit for a while but I could only endure so much for so long and I turned to the problems. The ones at the gym where I climb are graded in increasing difficulty from 1-24. Usually I can complete problems 1-8 without much difficulty and I have never completed a problem higher than 12. This is still true. That Sunday, I completed 1-8 with no problem. I started 9 but it is in the cave with the moves set from the side to the ceiling. I get stuck on a ceiling move. Whether I lack the core strength or technique or willingness to commit, I don't know, but I get stuck at the same place every time. I was able to complete problems 10-11 with coaching from others and I am now working on 12. I can do each individual move but cannot string them together to flow from start to finish. I would like to break past this level of climbing and progress, so I decided to specifically work on moves that I find either mentally or physically challenging.

One of the moves that I find difficult is to be in a position with my feet high on the wall, knees fully bent and hands on a single hold, somewhat like a backstroke swimmer at the start of a race, and then dynamically reach up high with one hand to the next hold. It's like being in a squat and reaching up to a basketball hoop. I decided to practice this un-coiling and catching the hold until I had done it ten times in a row.

First try - I positioned my hands on the start hold, brought my right foot up and then my left foot and reached with my right hand. Miss. Second try, I did the same thing and succeeded in catching the hold. My brain and body had used the information from the first try to gauge how much unfurling was required. Third try, I did it again. My neurological circuits were firing and the move was transitioning into body memory.

I decided to experiment and make a subtle change in the movement. Experiment - I positioned my hands on the start hold, brought my left foot up and then my right foot and reached with my right hand. Miss. Second try in the experiment, I did the same thing and missed. Third try, I missed again. Fourth try, I missed again. Clearly, something was amiss.

The pattern of movement - left, right, right - is not the pattern I am accustomed to in ordinary life. I walk, left, right, left right. I swim, feet kicking left, right, left right and my arms arc left, right, left right. To move two limbs on one side of my body in succession feels wrong. This is why it is good for me. I am breaking through old patterns and creating new neurological pathways. Not only will this help me climb better but research shows this learning will help me as I age. Learning dance moves or yoga poses, I encounter the same thing. New ways of moving create new ways of being.

And so, if you notice yourself moving in the same pattern, time and time again, alter the pattern slightly and notice what happens next. You may feel a frisson of fear as you do something new, but it's all part of the fun.

Seeing things

I was walking my dog this afternoon and, about twenty minutes into the walk, I noticed my thoughts. I was thinking about skiing. Now, as much as I like to think about skiing, thinking about it in July in the northern hemisphere is clearly an example of not being in the present moment.

So, I shifted from visualizing future enjoyment into the "now". Immediately I began to see things differently. I was walking past a grove of birch trees. I looked at a tree and noticed the subtle gradations of pale gray and green bark . Ants were channeling up and down the trunk. The next tree was also a birch but I was struck by its stark white and black. Two trees of the same species next to one another, much the same when viewed quickly, but with dramatic contrast when viewed with intent.

The life lessons are apparent and almost cliched. Be in the present moment. Pay attention to each individual. Do these things and life will reveal itself differently.

Namaste,
Ginny

Plus ca change

I've been going to yoga a lot lately, and I feel changes happening in my body. The progress I began to feel last year in loosening my tight hamstrings continues. My hips continue to open, and my lower back feels more aligned. I attribute the changes not just to the physical exercise but to how I am feeling emotionally. I am letting go, and so my body follows (or perhaps, it's the other way round, my body is letting go and I am following).

My left leg in particular is loosening and tightening at the same time. For the first time in many of the poses, I am holding it locked and strong. It is a new feeling. These changes are not dramatic and they are not driven by external circumstances. I am not injured. I have not gained or lost weight. I am simply doing yoga, and by doing yoga I am changing.

I am finding that my ego is challenged by some of these changes. The shift from slightly bent knee to straight knee, from hip and quadricep almost parallel to the floor to parallel is having consequences on my ability to hold triangle pose. This has been a favorite pose, similar to warrior pose, and one that I have moved into easily since beginning yoga. Now, I am falling out of it, unable to stay balanced. Sometimes, my feet start to slip and I wonder if I have the inner thigh strength and the inner mental strength to keep holding the pose. Sometimes, I hold the pose. More often than I would like to admit, I put my hands down on the ground for respite. It is humbling to no longer be able to stay in a pose for the full sixty seconds. I imagine that the instructors think that I am wussing out for, in the past, I have always been able to hold the pose.

I realized that I was competent in the pose previously. Now I am on my way to a new strength and flexibility. To achieve this, I will fall out of poses. I will find new edges and limits. Internally generated change, simply to grow, seems difficult. I am asking myself to be resilient, to be comfortable with discomfort, to create new neurological pathways.

Many of my big life changes have had an external stimulus such as change of job or change in marital status. I am realizing that to make a big life change or to simply become unstuck requires a different strength when the motivation is internal. The change is incremental and almost unobservable until the accumulation results in a action that others perceive as change. Change is constant. Change is real. Plus ca change, plus ca change.

Trust

I started rock climbing because I wanted to trust people more. As a neophyte, I believed that the relationship between climber and belayer had to be one of trust. It is. What I have learned about trust from rock climbing , though, is more fundamental. You have to trust in yourself before you can trust in others.

Without trust in yourself, there is no trust. Without trust in yourself, you have abdicated responsibility. This is especially true in rock climbing. The climber does rely on the belayer to catch falls and identify risks but the first onus is on the climber for the climber's safety. Trusting oneself is more difficult than it sounds. Self-trust relates to confidence and body-mind awareness. Trust is being in the moment, listening to the stillness, and acting accordingly. Because most of us go in and out of the moment, most of us go in and out of trusting ourselves.

And if we can't trust ourselves, every moment of every day, how can we trust others? Especially, when trust is one of the foundation building blocks of any meaningful relationship? The answer that I am pursuing is to act as if trust is present. Assume trust.

Trust will not be there every moment in my relationships with my family and my friends but if I act as if it is, it will be more and more often. This is true in the big important things in life, and it is true in the small things. I continue to explore my ability to trust myself on a daily basis, as I rock climb, as I navigate a hilly curve on my mountain bike, as I lift my heel in toe-stand in yoga, as I am open and honest with friends, as I communicate with family. Trust grows.

Fairy Tales

As I child, I read and I read and I read. Interestingly, I don't remember learning to read though I do recall the laminated paper tools we used for phonetics. I also recall that in grade one, we were divided into two groups and I turned whenever the other group read Jimmy's name out loud. (Jimmy being the main boy character in our primer, and sounding a lot like Ginny when pronounced by a six year old). I do know that I read all the books in the children’s section of our town library by the time I was 12. I spent so much time with books that I could identify the publisher by the smell of the ink and texture of the paper.

In grades six and seven, I became engrossed in Andrew Lang's coloured Fairy Books. There are twelve books in the collection, published between 1889 and 1910. The Blue Fairy Book was the first and then the Red. The most widely known fairy tales were selected in the early books with lesser known stories in the later ones. I read them all - Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, Pink, Gray, Violet, Crimson, Brown, Orange, Olive, and Lilac. Last night I read an essay by Barbara Sjoholm about "The Snow Queen" included in the Pink Fairy Book. Serendipitously, today I found my forty-year old, yellowed copy of the Blue Fairy Book.

As I grew older, I continued to read fairy tales and myth. I thought the value was in escapism not education. I began to realize the powerful influence that fairy tales have had on my values and decisions when I first read Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Estes is a Jungian psychologist who re-tells familiar tales and stories from around the world and then illustrates their import on the female psyche. I read her description of Hans Christian Anderson's "Red Shoes" and thought of Princess Diana. Brittney Spears also wears red shoes which dance out of control. "The Snow Queen", which is not included in Women Who Run with Wolves reflects the shattered shards of adolescence and dysfunctional families.

Classic fairy tales are no longer being read by children. Classic fairy tales are no longer being read to children by adults. Our society is lacking as a result. The tales are rooted in our history and provide universal lessons of risk, caution, and caring. Do cartoons, anamie, Air Guitar and Wii provide the same richness, just in a new cultural context? Maybe so, but certainly, the adult re-reading of old favorites is lost and symbols of the past, like the Little Match Girl and Red Shoes, are fading away. Adults need doses of fairy tales even more than children. Our prescription seems to be cardboard reality television and box office movies. Stories and magic in music, even the most popular, linger on and give me hope. Keep re-telling the old stories.

Blind spots

Lately, I have been very conscious of my blind spot when I am driving my car. I make an effort to shoulder check and look at the small but very dangerous spot when the car close on the right is not visible. Too often, I see a car when I did not sense one.

Lately, I have been wondering why certain people get to me, triggering thoughts or behaviour that do not reflect the me that I want to be. Yesterday in yoga class one of those people practiced next to me. I heard a noisy thunk as she hurled her mat onto the floor. I looked up to see who it was. I saw her and felt dismay. I resolved to focus on my practice, to get into the poses, hold them and move on. As I did so, I realized that what triggers me about her isn't so much her drama but her frustration with not getting the poses right or perfect. It seemed as if she wanted someone to notice her and compliment her - good work, good effort, good girl. I know that feeling and gradually over time the need for external recognition is diminishing in me. It's still there, though, and pops up when I least expect it.

Recognizing my blind spot in yoga class spawned other ah-ha's. There was a woman who spoke to me in the climbing gym about watching her climber while she belayed him on lead that triggered anger in me. I held back my snarky retort but it troubled me so much that I moved to a different part of the gym but did not enjoy the rest of my session. I realized that it was because she saw me as a middle-aged beginner climber, not an experienced intermediate.

With that realization came others... the guy who told me that some of my short radius turns were good; others not so. I became VERY passive aggressive (knowing short radius turns are an area of improvement for me), and challenged him to tell me specifically which ones were good and which ones weren't and what I did differently on each. It was a trigger-fest on skis. His lack of self confidence (which I would have seen were it not one of my blind spots) triggered my lack of confidence. I fired back. He volleyed in return. Good thing we weren't in cars, but at least in cars, we know to check our blind spots.

This is the lesson that I am taking away - check my blind spots. When I feel unease, I become less present and worry that I am not good enough. Instead, I need to open myself to the situation and ask myself what it is going on. The irony is that by worrying about not being good enough, that's what happens. Maybe I can tape a note on my nose that sticks up in front of my eyes. Check your blind spots! No - that would make me blind to other things...the answer is (with apologies to the Grateful Dead) to "keep on truckin".

Over and over

One of the colloquial, somewhat humorous, definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I disagree. It is almost impossible to do the same thing over and over again in exactly the same way. The key is "exactly the same way". Last night I was at the rock climbing gym and was stuck getting past an overhang. I was on top rope so I could attempt the challenge in several different ways. On my first try, I positioned my feet, one under the overhang, the other around the corner and reached up with my left hand to a higher hold. I successfully grabbed the hold. Now I needed to get my right hand higher and then pull my body weight upwards, past the precipice.

I moved my right foot to a hold about three inches higher, closer in to the wall, beneath the overhang. My chest and hips were parallel to the overhang and, relying on core strength, I reached up and over on to the higher right hand hold. I grasped it but then my hold slipped and I swung left in the air over the corner.

I repositioned myself and attempted the same move the same way. I didn't even come close to reaching the hold. A different outcome doing something the "same way". My friend who was belaying me, suggested moving into a backstep which meant bringing both my feet onto the corner wall, pulling my right side in, and then reaching up with my right hand. I tried and felt unbalanced. A "new way" and the same outcome: I wasn't yet past the overhang.

I reverted back to my original position which was comfortable and reached up for a fourth time. My hand did not reach the hold and again I swung in the air on top rope. I recall saying to myself "you can't quit, you can do this" and I reached up with my right hand in the same way as I had in my first, second, and fourth attempts. This time my hand gripped the hold and I pulled myself up and over, wondering why it had taken me so many attempts when the successful reach was so easy.

The difference between the successful reach and the unsuccessful reach? To people watching, there was no difference. A snapshot would have shown me in the same starting position time and time again. But, the snapshot would have been misleading. There were several differences. At the outset, I was not certain of my technique and not certain that I would pull myself up. A bit of experimentation convinced me that my technique and skill would allow me to pull up. The experimentation also gave me insight into the millimeters of difference in where I positioned my hands on the holds, and in the milliseconds of timing in reaching, pulling and moving my hands and feet up. So, millimeters and milliseconds made a difference. The most important factor, though, was my intent. There was no doubt in my mind when I made the final pull-up. I was going to do it that time. My intention was clear and my body and mind worked together to make it happen.

So, is it insane to do the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome? No. This is how athletes train. They do the same thing over and over, making minor adjustments (and sometimes major changes), until the movements are patterned and reliable. Still, almost every 500 meter run, every triple Axel, every ball pitched, and basket sunk has some minor variation.
The "insanity" is to think that it is possible to do the same thing the same way over and over. The truism isn't true . That said, I do agree that there are times when small change is not enough to produce different outcomes and when boldness is required, but that is fodder for a different day and a different climb.

Namaste