I fell in love with indoor cycling five minutes into my first class in 1995. In the early days of Spinning I took two or three classes a week.  I loved the speed, the sweat, and the music.  Plus, it met my extrovert needs for camaraderie without worrying about a group crash  that sometimes occurs on the road.   My attendance is more sporadic these days, but I remain a big fan of this high intensity cardio workout.

My health club recently acquired new bikes which track RPMs (revolutions per minute), wattage, time, distance and calories burned.  I guess this is akin to the rollout of upgrades on the  iphone.  This is the “2.0” of indoor cycling.  They’ve taken it to the next level by adding computerized performance measures designed to make the classes more effective.  Plus, I’m sure it adds a selling feature for the club (“Only at Equinox…generation 2.0 of the latest in indoor cycling”), while also generating more profit for the manufacturer.  Everybody wins, right?

Do I sound skeptical? Indeed I am!

I took my first “monitored” class the other evening.  I did not like it! I found it distracting and disembodying.  I don’t want to know my power output (wattage). I just want to ride my bike, enjoy the power of my body, and sweat.

It used to be we’d monitor our intensity based on a simple 1-10 scale.  A flat road was somewhere from 3-5.  At 6 you began a slight incline.  At 8 and higher you rode a steep hill.  RPMs were guesstimates at best, but everyone seemed to get a good sweat going and enjoy the ride.  And, best of all, we felt better afterward!  There’s nothing like a good spin to release stress and re-boot my mood at the end of the day.

But now, you don’t even need to attach your head to your body to know how your ride is going. The monitor does it all for you.  Just follow the little numbers on the screen and you can be completely disengaged from how your body feels, what your legs are doing, or even if you’re still breathing.  Isn’t technology great!

The instructor did a fine job introducing the monitor, telling us where to look and what it meant.  But I didn’t want to use the “wattage” number to gauge my workout.  I spent the past twenty years learning to listen to my body.  Why would I give that precious commodity up for the supposed benefit afforded by technological advances in fitness?

The spinning bike was the only cardio device available at my club that didn’t have numbers monitoring my progress.  I liked that.  I paid for that.

Now the great numbers game has taken over the spinning experience as well.  What’s next?  A pedometer that will measure the number of calories burned while climbing trees, skipping stones across a river or building forts in the backyard?  Hey – great idea!  We can attach them to children and give them extra treats when they burn enough calories.  Now that’s a great way to motivate people to move isn’t it?

Do I sound cynical? Sorry.  I don’t want to be critical.  But we don’t need more devices to track progress, or programs to tell us how to move or what we should or shouldn’t eat.  What we need is to listen to the wisdom of our own bodies.

I am greatly concerned about the national health crisis–especially the startling rise in obesity among children. But if teaching people to track numbers—be it on exercise equipment or on nutritional labels—replaces teaching them to listen to their own bodies, we’re on a fast track to even poorer health and higher rates of obesity in the future.

I say throw out the monitors and teach people how to sense and track their own progress through body awareness. It is a natural “monitoring” device that can be accessed by people all over the world, anytime, anyplace. Best of all, it’s free!

But keep it quiet!  If the word gets out that people are practicing body awareness some smart Steve Jobs type will invent an upgrade and try to sell it to us.

My husband Dave cooked a scrumptious Asian themed Thanksgiving dinner.

I ate as mindfully as one can at a dinner table with seven other people.  I took small second portions of my two favorites dishes:  the red miso glazed carrots and sweet potato with five spice marshmallows.  At the end of the meal I felt satisfied and full, but not too full.

But I forgot to save room for dessert: his mom’s famous pear pie.

After the pie and coffee, I was too full.  My belly’s discomfort reminded me that eating too much is not a loving way to treat my body.  And, if I repeat this on a regular basis, my excellent fat cells will do a fabulous job collecting the unused energy and storing it as fat to get me through the next famine.  That’s what fat cells do!  And mine are well trained at their job.

Avoid Holiday Weight Gain with Mindful Eating

The best studies indicate that the average person gains one or two pounds during the holidays. One or two pounds doesn’t sound like a lot, but most people don’t ever lose that extra weight.  Researchers suggest that this accounts for the one to two pound per year midlife weight gain that is typical for all adults, even those without emotionally driven relationships with food.

Mindful eating is a proven way to prevent holiday weight gain.  Eat slowly and savor each bite.  It takes up to twenty minutes for your stomach to communicate “satisfied” to your mind.   And, if you’re like me, your mouth takes about two days, making it a very unreliable monitor of food intake!  Wait at least twenty minutes and then check in with your body before you go back for seconds.

It isn’t easy to stay attentive to your body when your mouth–and perhaps your heart—are craving just one more bacon wrapped scallop appetizer or a piece of pear pie!

But if you don’t stop and pay attention, you’re going to regret it sooner or later.  It may be an immediate sense of discomfort after sampling a bit too much of everything at a potluck.  Or it may be the slow, gradual weight gain that results from snacking on holiday cookies or sipping eggnog lattes.

Deprivation Driven Eating

Holiday overeating is driven by a deprivation mentality that tells us to try everything in sight because it’s only available once a year.  “Besides, it’s just one cookie.”

By the end of the month one cookie turns into dozens of cookies.  And mindless consumption of seasonal lattes end up doing far more good for the success of Starbuck’s marketing department than for either your bank account or your body.

Not that there’s anything wrong with eating a cookie or drinking a latte.  But, a few too many cookies or lattes over the next month, plus random snacking on goodies at work and holiday parties all add up to a lot of extra energy that your very wise and well trained fat cells will store as extra weight.

Did I hear someone say, “Famine please!

Saving Room for Savoring the Sweetness

Last night I saved room for a piece of leftover pear pie, but then choose not to have it.  My sensory pleasure seeking self listened to my body rather than my mouth.  My body definitely didn’t need any more calories.  I  chose the lasting pleasure of a satisfied but not strained digestive system rather than the immediate gratification of a piece of pie.

Saving room for dessert is a good principle for holiday eating and scheduling. It’s tempting to pack too much onto our calendars and end up missing the sweetness of the holy days of December.  A flurry of activity, engagement and consumption lulls us into a false sense of satisfaction that leaves little space for cultivating qualities of love, joy, peace, and compassion that are the essence of the holy days we celebrate this month.

The holy moments of life—where time stands still and we feel inexpressible gratitude, wonder, awe—cannot be programmed.  They are marked by a savoring of the sweetness of life that comes to us in both expected and unexpected encounters. Sometimes at planned events like weddings or holiday gatherings, but more often in the unscripted places of sunsets, bedrooms, and hospitals.  Intensity of emotional presence, coupled with a sense of being held by a power and love greater than ourselves, meets us in these moments.  When it passes we are left with a deeper sense of our own aliveness and our connection to others.

When my stomach is stuffed full from dinner or my calendar is packed with commitments, I don’t have room to savor the sweetness that may or may not be on the menu.  But, at least I won’t be too full to enjoy it if it is. And, rather than feeling uncomfortably full from too much living, I’ll be able to truly savor the sweetness of the season.

May we treat ourselves kindly this holiday season by mindfully eating and scheduling our lives so that there’s room to savor the sweets that may be on the menu!

Sometimes it’s good for your health to just stop and rest.  Our five and a-half year old Doberman Skye taught me this lesson yesterday.

She got up and ate breakfast as usual, but once she lay down for her morning siesta she refused to get up, even when coaxed with the offer of a treat.  Her hanging head, droopy eyes and low energy were uncharacteristic.  She also felt warm and a bit clammy.  Both my husband and I were concerned so I scheduled an appointment with the veterinarian.

Throughout the day her lethargy increased and she became more resistant to getting up from her bed.  When I lay next to her, gently petting and loving her, she just looked up with her sad eyes and then looked away.  Once up, she hesitated and went slowly but didn’t show signs of significant injury.

I had to drag her off the bed when it was time  for her appointment.  She hung her head and followed me outside but refused to climb into the car.  She got her front feet onto the floor behind the driver’s seat,  then stopped and looked at me.  I lifted her rear end and boosted her up onto the seat.  She pulled her front legs up on her own and collapsed in a heap tucking her nose and curling up—gazing at me with gloomy eyes.

The vet took her temperature, manually examined her belly, legs, mouth and other parts for problems.  “It’s a mystery.  We can run blood tests or x-ray her insides to make sure nothing’s wrong, but I’m not sure that’s necessary.  I’d wait and see how she is tomorrow.”

The rest of the day and evening she maintained her refusal to move for anything other than food, but her mood and energy brightened a bit.

This morning she’s back to her old frisky self — dancing around the kitchen in celebration of breakfast and tussling with our other dog Grace.

Skye was listening to her body yesterday.  She knew she needed to stop and she did.  One day of deep rest and she’s back to normal.

I tend to delay stopping as long as possible.  Like my group member Monica who tried to come back from a sprained ankle too quickly and ended up in recovery for over a year, I often refuse to stop moving even when my instinct tells me it’s in my own best interest.

We live in a world that highly values productivity, busyness and activity. The women I work with are often over-achievers.  They’ve succeeded by adapting to a culturally sanctioned too-busy lifestyle.  But at some point it’s stopped working for them.  Their health, relationships and sometimes even their work performance begin to suffer—usually in that order.

I teach them what I’m still learning myself.  And they teach me through their examples of both success and failure.  We’re learning together lessons that dogs and children know instinctively: stop and rest when you’re tired, ask for help when you need a boost, and dance when you’re happy!

May we all be more connected to our natural instincts to stop for rest, to ask for help, and to dance!

A Bad Knee?

One day in yoga class my teacher Mark asked, “Is that your bad knee?“   A knowledgeable and compassionate teacher, Mark knew about my injury and wisely asked before correcting my alignment.

I’m surprised by how often people refer to my injured knee as “bad.”  Why do we so quickly label body parts and symptoms as bad?  ”I’ve got a bad tooth…stomach…foot… a bad headache…cold…flu.”

“I don’t have a bad knee” I replied.

I knew that Mark was referring to my injury.  I could have just said “Yes” and let it be.

No Bad Body Parts

But everything in me said, “No.  My body is a good body.  Don’t call my body bad.” I felt like mother sticking up for her child.  “Don’t talk dirt about my knee.  You may be the teacher, but that doesn’t give you permission to talk bad about me!”

Mark corrected himself and said, “Okay.  I mean your challenged knee.”

I said it was and he said, “Okay, then I won’t tell you to straighten it.”

I drew my attention to my leg and mindfully worked the knee a bit straighter, sensing the muscles, ligaments and tendons move into a new position.  It felt good to gently push myself.

I am grateful for Mark’s combination of precision in alignment and gentle correction.  He did for me what I couldn’t do for myself.

Speak Up for Yourself

I am also grateful that I love myself enough to not let anyone speak ill of any part of me—including my knee!  Twenty years ago I might not have done that. While I would have challenged someone calling me a bad person, or speaking ill of my loved one, I might not have challenged that same assignment of meaning to my body.

I did for my knee what it couldn’t do for itself—challenge the negative language so commonly used when speaking about physical challenges and symptoms.

Most often it isn’t someone else we need to confront.   We’re our own worst critics when it comes to our bodies.  How often do you judge your body or assign negative labels to your body?

New Ways of Talking About Your Body

It’s difficult to change long-standing behaviors, but practice creates new patterns. The next time you catch yourself speaking badly about your body, see if you can find a kinder way to talk about your aches, pains and problems.  Descriptive language—“I have a sore tooth…a painful headache…an injured knee”—is a more accurate and loving way to talk about yourself.

Be a good mother to yourself–speak lovingly of your body and challenge yourself or anyone else who doesn’t.

I love teaching people yoga for the first time as that experience often determines whether they’ll come back again or not.  Like a first date, your first encounter with yoga  sets the stage for whether you’ll sign up  for a second round.

I had the privilege of introducing one of my colleagues to yoga last year.  Since then she’s hired a private yoga teacher who comes to her home twice a week for an hour of gentle yoga. Soon after beginning her new routine she reported:

“I’m just a beginner but I already feel more at peace about my body.”

I recently met  Joanne Spence – an amazing yoga teacher who developed a DVD for beginners: Absolute Beginner Yoga. It’s a great resource.  I’m recommending it to my yoga classes and my health coaching groups.

Joanne’s style is warm, friendly and accessible.  She’s the perfect DVD teacher for anyone who needs to have a positive first date with yoga.

Please check out her website and see for yourself!

http://www.absolutebeginneryoga.com/

And if you order the DVD, please let her know that I recommended her as I want her to know how much I appreciate her work.

I love to ride my bike.  I loved it as a kid, but then got “too cool” for it as a teenager and rode a moped instead.

In college my friend John, a competitive cyclist, convinced me to use part of a small inheritance to buy a road/racing bike.  He wanted company on his long training rides around Santa Barbara where we attended school.  Back on my bike after a ten year hiatus it was like I’d never been gone.  I loved it all over again.

Today (after fourteen weeks off my bike as I rehabbed my knee–my longest cycling hiatus in memory) I got back on my bike.   As we peddled up the South side of the Rose Bowl loop in Pasadena at a very slow ten miles per hour, my husband noted that this was fifty percent slower than we usually ride this route.  I told him that I didn’t care how fast or far we went, I was just happy to be back on my bike…although I didn’t say it that nicely!

After all my body and I have been through over the years, I am so blessed to be here:  alive (in my eighteenth year post breast cancer), strong (rode nine miles comfortably and without knee problems) and more content in my forty-eight year old body than I’ve been at any other time in my life.

I’ve been far more “fit” at other times in my life.  In fact, if I were to ride with John or his wife Susi (my best female cycling buddy over the years), they’d tell me in no uncertain terms that I’m in lousy cycling shape.  Heck, Susi said that the last time we rode together — and that was before my accident.

But true fitness is not measured by body statistics alone. As the stories of professional athletes’ struggles with addiction, violence and marital infidelity remind us, you can be in top physical shape and still be a psychological mess.

Or as my Aunt Margie recently taught me in the last days of her life, you can be living with cancer, preparing to die, yet more truly alive than much of the population. This is a photo of Margie taken at her “Honoring the Flow of Life Ceremony” held eight days before her death.  Over one hundred friends and family came together to celebrate her almost ninety years of remarkable life.  She is one of my sheroes!

My relationship with my body parallels the relationship I have with my life. In my less content years, I was too busy trying to control my body and achieve results to listen.  I was too busy trying to control my life and achieve results than to listen.  In those days fitness setbacks were a source of discouragement, frustration and anxiety.

But when I meet the physical changes and challenges of my embodied life with respect and a willingness to listen, every accident, illness, rosacea outbreak, new creek in my joints, mysterious symptom or discomfort becomes an opportunity to deepen my connection to my good body, to my self,  just as I am.

So, whether I ride my bike one hundred miles over steep hills and in unfriendly weather (as I did six years ago in the Solvang Century ride) or nine miles on the flats in perfect Southern California Memorial Day weather, I’m grateful to be alive, healthy, and growing through the changes and challenges each day offers.

A group of  perfectly imperfect women spent thirty-six hours together  in what one woman called “the Twilight Zone” – an altered state of community where instead of complaining about what’s wrong with us, we proclaimed the good news of God’s love and goodness that is deeper than our sin and brokenness.

With that starting point, we spent a remarkable weekend journeying through Edwina Gately’s Soul Sister’s version of the story of the woman caught in adultery.  The religious leaders wanted to stone her to death.  They were filled with accusation and judgment.

We each came with our own versions of being “accused” of not measuring up to someone’s standard for who we should be, how we should look, act, behave.

On Saturday morning we took our stories–the good and the bad–experiences of love, goodness and power,  of accusations we’d absorbed from others’ and of stones we’ve thrown at ourselves– and put them into a community painting.

We splattered, sponged and smeared paint across the canvas.  Some spoke, some cried, some yelled, some silent.

The final piece revealed power, love, pain, humiliation, anger, resentment, joy, beauty–all mingled together.  One artist’s bright blue splatter proclaiming her goodness holding a sister’’s red blotch of anger at years of addiction and abuse. The celebratory curvy purple feminine figure now the container for the pain felt by another for her own voluptuousness.

Our canvas revealed the reality of our lives: beauty amidst tears, light in darkness, creativity out of chaos.  We discovered that the fruit of God’s great love expressed in Jesus’ words to the woman–”neither do I condemn you”–comes to us in much the same way that Jesus was born–in the muck, stench and mire of the stable.

We are a community of women living with the perfectly imperfect parts of ourselves and each other as we abide in this great love of God revealed in Jesus.  His encounter with the woman caught in adultery became our story too.  We threw the stones thrown at us, the stones we throw at ourselves and each other, into the ocean on Saturday night.  And then went out for Gelato!

There’s more to the story.  You can read it at my retreat partner Kristin’s “post retreat thoughts” on her website, a beautiful mess. Kristin is a remarkable young woman with a passion to empower other women in authentic living and self-care.  Be sure to check out her many excellent suggestions for self-care and recovery from perfectionism while you are there.

Join us for our next retreat: The Soul & Sexuality: moving from shame to grace.  October 8-10, 2010 at Casa de Maria in Montecito.

(Photos by Megan Lundgren  and Kristin Ritzau)

Today I chose to listen to my body.  I canceled my appointments and entrusted my graduate psychology students to the guidance of my co-teachers.

If your reaction is “So what?” then you can be my teacher for this piece of the journey.  Somewhere in your life you learned to accept illness as an indicator that you need to stop activity, rest and recover.

I didn’t even begin to learn that lesson until my breast cancer diagnosis at age thirty.  It was a loud wake up call that sounded an alarm about the dangers of  my increasingly busy lifestyle.

Listen to Symptoms

After eighteen years of trail and error attempts to discern the difference between “stay at home” and “keep going” symptoms, I now understand that symptoms indicate an imbalance in my body’s self-regulating system.  My body wants to be well.  It cries out for help through symptoms.

Some symptoms–rosacea on my cheeks, constipation, tension in my neck–are quiet whimpers that don’t demand I stop.  But they do invite me to pay attention to what I’m eating and drinking, my sleep and exercise patterns, and a host of other basic physical needs.  Oftentimes a simple adjustment in one of these areas eliminates the problem.

The fatigue I felt two days ago, the sore throat and mild head and body aches that appeared the next morning, and the cough that showed up last night, are louder cries.   They tell me that stopping just might be a good idea.

Create a Health Supporting Lifestyle

I made a decision after my bout with breast cancer to make my health a priority.  I created a lifestyle that allows me to take time off when my body needs it and to allot a percentage of my income for products that support my body’s efforts to be well in spite of all the challenges I’m up against living in of one of the most populous cities in the world.

I’ve had seasons of both success and struggle with maintaining a health supporting lifestyle.  My inner compulsion to prove my self worth through productivity (how many people I help, how many presentations I give, how much money I make) coupled with external support for all the activity (happy clients and students, happy community groups, happy bank account) reinforce my often too busy lifestyle.

There’s Always A Reason Not To Stay Home

Reasons to not stay home when sick abound:

1. I can’t afford it.
2. I’m out of sick days.
3. I have a deadline to meet.
4. I’ll miss an important meeting.
5. They (fill in the blank) are counting on me.

The truth is–nobody is better off when you or I show up as expected but cough, sneeze and spread our germs around.  I don’t care if Dr. Oz or the Surgeon General supports the frequently touted line “I don’t think I’m contagious anymore”– it’s just not a loving way to show up in our lives.

That’s my take on staying home when I’m sick.  If you have something to say about that, I’d love to hear your take on it!

A ski accident on the slopes of Mammoth Mountain last weekend reminded me of two essential practices for good health:  respect my limitations and heed the wisdom of those who’ve gone before me.

At the top of a short mogul run there was a sign: Experts Only!   I am not an expert skier.  I can ski groomed advanced runs, but I’m not “advanced” on the moguls.  But my only alternatives were to attempt the run or  to take off my skis and hike back up the twenty feet I’d just skied down.

I didn’t honor my own limitations by checking in with my body or my history.  If I had, I would have heard: “Don’t do it.  You haven’t skied moguls at all this season.  Go back the way you came.”

And, I didn’t heed the wisdom of those who knew the hill and placed the warning sign there.

At the moment I felt strong and enthusiastic.  Even though I’d not skied moguls this season, I fantasized that my previous experience combined with  watching the techniques of the Olympic mogul’s athletes the night before would get me down the hill.   I also didn’t want to do the hard psychological work of admitting defeat and hiking back up the hill.

I neglected to pause long enough to fully assess the situation.  I went with my initial impulse, launched myself down the run, and almost immediately crashed.  And, because that wasn’t enough evidence to convince me of my limitations, I got up and tried again.

Not a good idea.

I crashed.  This time I felt a hot sensation in the outer back edge of of my right knee and significant strain.  I tumbled down the hill, my skis came off and I landed about ten feet from where I’d begun.

At that point, I decided to honor my obvious limitations.  I gathered up my skis and poles and slowly hiked off the mogul run, through a thirty foot wide expanse of thick ungroomed powder, and over to a groomed run I’d been skiing all morning.

I assessed my knee: no pain,  just mild discomfort.  I took a few minutes to bend it various ways and place weight on it.  It felt solid, so I decided to put on my skis and venture down the hill.

I skied a few more runs, but felt discomfort and mild pain from the weight of my boots and skis pulling on my knee while riding the chair lift.  I decided that I’d pushed my limits far enough and called it quits.

The knee swelled up and I’ve spent the past six days in recovery mode.  An MRI revealed significant internal damage to the soft tissue and bone bruising, but no structural damage.

The doctor said I’m a tough cookie and that I used up one of my nine lives.  He said that if it had been him, he’d have been carried down the hill in a stretcher.  He recommended physical therapy with a follow-up visit in six weeks.

Optimal enjoyment of skiing–and life–comes from paying attention to the instruction of others and to self-knowledge about my personal strengths, limitations and history.    Impulsive choices that don’t honor the wisdom of general experience  or personal awareness increase the risk of injury.

Similarly, optimal health comes from using the knowledge of doctors, nutritionists, physical therapists and others in alignment with self-awareness.  Whether it is on the ski slopes or in nutritional choices, personal responsibility for my health includes both.

Through reflecting on my accident with what the Irish Poet Jon O’ Donohue calls “gracious awareness”, I am finding the lessons to be learned.  It isn’t what I signed up for when I went to Mammoth.  But I’m grateful to be alive, walking, and still have a few of those nine lives left so I can get back on the slopes next year!

Loving yourself requires taking responsibility for your own needs with the same dedication you demonstrate in your responsibilities to others.

If you are like a lot of women, you may be giving too much of your good energy to others while neglecting yourself–especially your need for energizing food throughout the day.  Physical deprivation at the end of the day is a major contributor to nighttime binging and grazing.

You can reduce the likelihood of emotional eating in the afternoon and evening by eating more during the day.  And, if you’ve spent too many years not listening to the real needs of your body, you may need to eat more than you think to properly fuel your body during the day.  Instead of  eating “diet” portions during the day, experiment with eating more heartily during the day and see how that impacts your relationship with food at night.

Simple shifts to eliminate deprivation include:

Eat breakfast and lunch.
Eat more fruits and vegetables.
Eat energizing snacks.
Eat nutritious food when hungry.

Take loving action on your own behalf by saying “yes” to other basic needs too:

Forgive yourself when you fail.
Enjoy time with people you love.
Go to bed early enough to get a solid eight hours of sleep.

Loving yourself  isn’t complicated. You already know how to help others thrive—now it is your turn!  If you aren’t sound of body, mind and spirit, then nobody gets your best self.  And that is a huge loss for everyone!