Warrior Pose

The average age of the women in my yoga class at Wake Robin is, I'm guessing, somewhere in the eighties.  And because she announced it proudly as she introduced herself to me, I know that at least one of us is in her mid-nineties.

Although there are chairs spaced around the room for those who need them, the class is more demanding than I expected.  We begin with a couple of breaths in mountain pose, and dive right into forward bends, down-face dogs, warrior asanas, cobra, eagle, bridge, boat and, my nemesis, tree and dancer, the balance poses.

Fourteen years of yoga have taught me what Catholics call "custody of the eyes."  That means that I limit my vision roughly to the area of my mat, and with the exception of the standing poses I mostly practice with eyes closed, doing my best to focus on my breath, my inner sensations,  the state of my soul.  Still, I do get an occasional glimpse of what is going on around me.

And this is what I see.  I see arms that won't rise all the way up, legs that barely bend at the knee,  backs that won't arch, hands that cannot touch the floor.  Bending forward, touching my nose to my knee, I ask  wonder, "If I couldn't reach the floor with my hands, or flex my knees, would I even think of coming to yoga?"

But those arms are reaching as high as they can; those knees are striving to bend;  and with each forward bend, hands stretch closer to the floor. The instructor guides us into warrior one.  I raise my arms as high as I can, keeping them close to my ears, and pushing my shoulders down.  My eyelids flutter open and I see someone in front of me whose right arm won't go up at all, but whose left is raised defiantly towards the sky.

This, it dawns on me, is the real warrior pose, the pose of courage and strength, and what we aging yoginis practice on Friday mornings is the real yoga--no head stands, plows, peacocks or crows--just showing up and doing whatever each of us can reasonably do, accepting ourselves and the cards the universe has dealt us. 

By the way, of all the yoga classes I've been in--and they number well over a dozen--this one chants the most harmonious om's of all.

Walking

My friend John Harkey walks, bikes and practices sustainable living in Nashville, Tennessee.  I loved his essay on walking and thought you might enjoy it too.  You can read more of John's writing at
www.Harkeyresearch.blog.com 

Walking

In his essay of the same title Henry David Thoreau repeated the phrase wrongly ascribed to Horace Greeley: “go west young man, go west.”  Actually, Thoreau was talking about “walking” west, and for him the more precise direction was “southwest,” away from his village home (Concord), and away from the city (Boston), in the direction of the setting sun.  In his essay, he said he was going to make an “extreme” statement.  As he describes his walks, and the ambition of walking, the word “extreme” seems mild
.

For Thoreau a daily four-hour walk was the minimum duration, and more was preferred. His walking “ambition” was to leave civilization entirely, avoiding the well traveled path and claiming the uncharted wilderness to the south and west as his home. His “home” in the village was merely a starting place for his walking adventure, but his destination was the Pacific Ocean, or maybe the Rocky Mountains.
 

Unfortunately, or maybe to our good fortune, Thoreau never made it that far.  In fact, his pace wasn’t very rapid, and he was easily diverted. If you have ever been on a spring wildflower walk, you will know what happened.  Every step or two there is something new and unusual for a botanist/poet to look at, and if you are in a group, comment on.  Thoreau, like Christopher Robin, knew a lot about the 100-acre wood, but a 4-hour walk might take him one place in his imagination (say to some of the Greek Isles as he followed the meanderings of Odysseus), but while thinking about Odysseus he might be observing some ant platoons outside his door re-enacting their version of the Trojan war.

For me, a walk in the wilderness is a deep pleasure. But my wilderness walks are a part time occupation. I take those walks several times a year, but in my daily walks (and bike rides), I turn Thoreau’s treatise on its head, and turn towards the city, to meet friends, to purchase coffee, to shop for groceries, and to enjoy the pleasures of the urban experience, which are many.
 

Thoreau, of course, did too.  His sustenance was more from the village and the city than from the wilderness.  He thrived on the intellectual stimulation of Concord and the wider Boston community, and he enjoyed friendship. He wrote about the horrors of the village (“most men lead lives of quiet desperation”), but was really sustained by The Village.

For Thoreau, walking was an elite activity. While it involved only a modest investment of money (good shoes, sturdy clothing, and a hat), it required time.  In Thoreau’s day, the only people with “time” were the wealthy and the occasional bohemian poet.  The men (and women) of quiet desperation walked to work and to market, but otherwise were busy creating the economic engine that won the Civil War.

One of Thoreau’s more memorable trips was taken by train rather than on foot, from Boston down to New York, and there he met a promising new urban poet, Walt Whitman, who had just been “found” and promoted by Thoreau’s mentor, a Mr. Emerson.  Thoreau had just published his masterpiece, Walden, a year earlier (1854), and Whitman had just published his first edition of “Leaves of Grass.”

In contrast to Thoreau, Whitman looked toward the city and its thriving masses of people for inspiration rather than to the uncharted wilderness near Thoreau’s cabin. Whitman’s walk is also open ended —walking “the long brown road before me leading wherever I choose”—but is about those he meets rather than where he goes—“the felon, the diseased, the illiterate person” and “the escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple.” And, the objects of civilization: “planks and posts of wharves, rows of houses, porches” and then the ideas, the “philosophies” and the “music.”  Whitman’s walk was an exploration of culture—the city—rather than fields and forest, and he liked what he saw, as much as Thoreau liked wilderness. 
 

I like both walks. For my wilderness walks, though, I take part of the city with me, in the form of a friend or two. Climbing up a mountain along a shady path, we observe the beauty of a cascading stream while discussing whether charter schools really make a difference.

Walking is easy, requires no new expenditures, can be fit into a busy lifestyle, and helps you maintain health. It’s also fun, or can be. Twenty minutes a day (just over a mile) is helpful to health.  Forty minutes (2-3 miles) will help you maintain weight, and with healthier eating, possibly lose weight.  Either distance gives you time to think (alone) or banter (with friends), improving your mood and your friendships.

Thoreau set the bar too high, leaving his quietly desperate neighbors behind as he walked “away” from the Village. Today, in Nashville at least, the Village is the spark, encouraging its residents to leave the desperation (the TV, the computer, the couch, the bag of potato chips) behind, and take a walk (on the new greenway or sidewalk) “into” the Village.

For a description of one of the more interesting urban walks in America, try this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/nyregion/high-lines-best-kept-secret-its-a-fast-commute.html?hp

Research note on Walking for Health

Two researchers at University College of London conducted a meta-analysis of 18 observational studies (460,000 participants) on the health effects of walking published between 1970 and 2007. Their study was summarized in the August 2009 edition of the Harvard Health Letter.

• Walking reduced the risk of dying by 32% during the study period. The study period averaged 11.3 years for the studies reviewed. )  
• The risk of cardiovascular events was reduced by 31%.

• Benefits of walking were found for people walking as little as 5.5 miles a week at a pace of 2 miles per hour.  Greater protection was obtained by more miles and a more rapid pace

Here is a link to the Harvard Report

http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Mens_Health_Watch/2009/August/Walking-Your-steps-to-health

Every Step Counts

The pared-down new look of My Green Vermont comes from artist/graphic designer/herbalist/gardener/wise woman and friend, Dona Mara.  Check out her website:  http://www.artistseyestudio.com/donapage.html  When the makeover is complete and I have figured out the logistics, I will celebrate by giving away an original drawing for one of  the blog illustrations.  Stay tuned.

Now, for today's post:

I believe in the power of walking.  All I have to do is look at the women in my family, starting with my father's tiny mother who, dressed in black and in high heels, toddled all over the streets of Barcelona until she died in her nineties. Today my four aunts, now into their late 80s and 90s, are still striding down those same streets, on their daily rounds to the baker, the supermarket, and the concert hall.  My disabled 95-year-old mother, who nevertheless endures with perfect vitals, in her  mobile years clocked hundreds of miles inside her air-conditioned house in the sweltering American South.

Alas, where I live, the nearest market, cafe, bookstore and movie theater are all miles away.  It is theoretically possible for me to get along with no walking at all, so I have to make a point of integrating this most basic of human activities into my day.  

Ever since the Japanese propounded "ten thousand steps a day" as the key to immortality, I have loved pedometers.  Unfortunately, pedometers are designed to clip onto a belt, and right away if you are a woman there is a problem, because you don't always wear a belt. You can clip the pedometer to the waistband of your pants but, depending on the fit, it will count either too many or, more often, way too few steps.

When you wear a dress, you can clip the pedometer to a regular leather belt, worn under the dress and next to the skin, and grit your teeth at the discomfort.  Even worse, if you bend in certain ways the pedometer can slip off and fall to the floor, and never live to count another step.

Last week I decided to give my pedometer another chance.  But first I went online and bought a pedometer belt.  It is an elastic, adjustable belt with a flat snap buckle, and much more comfortable than the leather version.

Nevertheless, it is still accident-prone.  As I was sitting down to dinner at someone's house the other night the pedometer popped off the belt and landed on my lap.  There was nowhere to hide it, so I spread the napkin over my thighs, discreetly hiked up my tunic, and clipped it back on. I have since invented a simple thread loop which keeps the pedometer attached to the belt.

Now, I count every step.  I racked up 2,000 during a single phone conversation.  My yoga class, disappointingly, yielded only 100 steps--the pedometer was not impressed by all those down dogs and sleeping pigeons. I wear my pedometer every minute of the day, walking up and down as I brush my teeth before going to bed, when I check the count one last time.  In the morning, I snap the belt around my waist before even putting my feet on the floor.

It's been raining all day, and so far I'm just over 2,000 steps.  A picture flashes in my mind of monks reading their breviary while walking around the cloister.  I have a Trollope novel on my Kindle.  Maybe I can get used to reading it while walking around the house.