Miniature Tomatoes and Moving my Body

Fresh picked miniature tomatoes, hot from the sun and full of flavor

I am sitting at my desk eating a lunch of delicious raw vegetables and hummus (the miniature tomatoes from my garden taste like they came from Eden) and catching up on some internet browsing.

The recent internet browsings that resonate the most with me today:

• About building a new relationship with your body and with time  http://www.jenlee.net/home/a-week-of-good-things.html 
• This poem..oh my goldeness.... http://emmatree.blogspot.com/2011/06/evening-morning-stillness-flight.html
• This is fun.... http://oneword.com/
• Below average.... http://sivers.org/below-average

 This week I am continuing the 30 Days of Something and find I am pushing myself a little more.  I am still trying to make up my mind about how I feel about this pushing though.  At the beginning of the month I was walking outdoors/indoors, practicing yoga or some type of intentional body movement for at least 20 minutes.  Since last week, I am working out for 10 minutes doing various upper body, lower body, core body, yoga moves or weight lifting and then walking and running 30 minutes. 

I am new to running and really to exercise in general.  I ran all over as a child as well as roamed the neighborhood on my bicycle, but my teenage years were tumultuous to say the least and also the time I started smoking.  I did not play sports in high school and am not generally competitive in that nature so even if circumstances were different I don't know that I would have gotten into sports at the time.  I can be competitive against myself, but it is just not something that generally feels good to me when others are involved.  Flash forward to my freshman year in college when a bunch of the girls on my hall talked me into signing up for intramural soccer.  The first person that I knocked down (by accident) caused me to completely stop and I gasped and helped her up as I apologized over and over again.

In college I also worked out quite a bit at the Nautilus (a local gym) for one year as we were able to sign up for a gym membership and use that as our PE credit.  I enjoyed that because I did compete against myself and it was also the strongest I have been, muscle wise. I took up yoga in my late twenties and followed that for almost 2 years but then got distracted planning a wedding and then my yoga teacher closed his practice and followed his dream on moving to Colorado.

I would like to think I will become stronger now then I have ever been, even stronger than my 20 something self and since starting the 30 Days of Something  I have noticed a few shifts:

• I no longer want music or television or any sound on around me.  Previously I turned on music videos or watched the ticker at the bottom of the screen on CNN and got caught up with the news.  I used all of this activity so I would not become bored.  Now I just feel my body and listen to my breath.  
• I am understanding more about pace.  Monday I felt like I should change my pattern from 30 minutes of walking/running to seeing how long I could sustain the running and asking myself what is hurting first, my legs or my lungs/heart.  
• Now that I don't smoke I find that I can excercise longer and can actual build the intensity.
• Distance is beginning to trump time.  Tuesday I decided to stop measuring the time I was walking/running and to start seeing how far I could walk/run.  I did just over 2 miles in 35 minutes yesterday and today which doesn't seem like much if you are a runner, but for me I see it as an accomplishment.
• Today as I was running I found myself counting to twelve over and over and over again.  It was my way to push through on the run, a form of distractionto help go just a few seconds more before I had to reduce the intensity and return to walking. 

Overall I have a great sense of well being since beginning this challenge and think it must be all those happy endorphins that are being released.  Yeah to happy endorphins I say!!

So on the one hand I have a better sense of well being and know that I am gaining strength (my ultimate goal) and on the other hand I wonder if all of this is just mindless and wasteful.  I am literally running in a loop (on the treadmill) and counting to myself for 30+ minutes.  I guess eating is a different form of running in a loop as well though...you have to keep doing it over and over again to live, and breathing is the same, and really all of life we are running in some kind of "loop".  Maybe what is different is acknowledging it, seeing this pattern for what it is and realizing that even if I was outdoors hiking, if I did that everyday it too would become a loop.  Hmmm.... 

I really do love this 30 days of something challenge as I have now started working out everyday and I know it is possible to make it happen.  There are some other things I really want to make happen as well and the Universe has sent me so many prompts today to begin...to put one foot in front of the other and see where it takes me....to give answer to the questions that are holding me back in other areas of my life. 

Begin is such a green word for me.  I visualize it as a delicate shoot pushing through the earth...a vine reaching for the light... new life pulsating in rhythm to the sun.  I think I will begin by organizing my room and making way for new creations.

What are beginning this week?