Reading Now: My Stroke of Insight

I just finished reading an amazing book recommended to me by my yoga teacher, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. Dr. Taylor is a neuroanatomist who suffered a massive AVM stroke in her late thirties, and this book records her detailed memories of her actual stroke experience, as well as the significant changes in perception that occurred as a result of the stroke.

Because of the stroke, much of Dr. Taylor's left brain was damaged which caused her to rely on her right brain much more heavily. The book discusses the divergent ways in which the right and left hemispheres of the brain allow us to perceive the world, and the different functions that are managed by each side.

Dr. Taylor's mind opened her up to a whole new way of looking at the world. Here were some of the interesting points that stood out to me from her experience:

• "Most important, I had to be willing to try. The try is everything. The try is me saying to my brain, hey, I value this connection and I want it to happen. I may have to try, try and try again with no results for a thousand times before I get even an inkling of a result, but if I don't try, it may never happen." (italics in original, p 94) "For a successful recovery, it was important that we focus on my ability, not my disability." (p. 118) Dr. Taylor found that reaching for small goals and celebrating small achievements and living in the present moment ultimately allowed her to accomplish more difficult tasks and allowed her to see the enormity of her progress, made in tiny increments, over time.

• " ... the experience of Nirvana exists in the consciousness of our right hemisphere, and that at any moment, we can choose to hook into that part of our brain. ... peace is only a thought away, and all we have to do to access it is silence the voice of our dominating left mind." (italics in original, p 111) "To experience peace does not mean that your life is always blissful. It means that you are capable of tapping into a blissful state of mind admidst the normal chaos of a hectic life." (p 159) We can all achieve peace of mind.
  

• We can decide the person who we want to be. We don't have to be angry or irritated or short-tempered or mean. We can release judgment and competition and criticism. We can open ourselves to our more intuitive, expressive, and accepting right mind and embrace compassion instead of negativity. In reconstructing her self and re-learning who she was, Dr. Taylor decided to forgo the competitive side to her personality in favor of a more open demeanor.

• We are constantly making choices about how to respond in any given situation. If a certain episode triggers a knee-jerk response, our system has 90 seconds to let that emotion wash over us. After 90 seconds, we have the ability to release that initial reaction and engage in a more open, empathetic approach. We can learn to observe our body's triggers, responses, emotions and thoughts and choose the way that we want to express ourselves.
  

• When we act positively, we send out positive energy which then attracts positive energy to us. In this way, we can help shape our own world to be more pleasant.

Taylor's book is truly a "yogic" way of looking at life - through her experience, she found herself literally feeling one with the world around her. Viewing her life through her right brain helped her to see everything in a completely new way, and realize that we all have access to seeing the world through those eyes, if we just - in her words - "step to the right".

Inspiring Reads

I read a couple of really inspiring running books this winter break. The first was Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner by Dean Karnazes. Dean is an uber-athlete who tackles the toughest physical challenges. He is well-known in the running world for his prolific success at long-distance races (50 miles or more).

In this book, he talks about what led him to start running, and he details his experiences in some of his first ultramarathons. His story about his first Western States 100 race is incredible - it is an unbelievable testament to what the human body can endure.

Despite his phenomenal success and athletic prowess, Dean ultimately credits sheer perseverance and hard work for his performance, rather than any innate traits. Basically, he is just telling his reader to get out there and run and you never know what your body can do. While he can sometimes come across as a little pompous, his book definitely motivated me to add more mileage to my weekly totals.

Another running book that I dove into this winter break was Strides: Running Through History with an Unlikely Athlete by Benjamin Cheever. Unlike Karnazes, Cheever is more of a casual runner, though "casual" is a relative term as he has run numerous marathons.

In this book, he explores his passion for running by delving into his own experiences as well as chronicling some of the history of marathoning. The accounts I found particularly engaging were his tales of running the Medoc marathon in France where the runners stopped every few miles to indulge themselves in a glass of wine, and his stories about running a race in Baghdad and discussing the culture of running in the military.

Both of these books express the unique joy and feeling of freedom that running inspires. Each author makes me feel, even though I have only been running for a few months, that the sky is the limit and that I can accomplish anything. Since reading these books, I have been contemplating training for a longer race ... something that I didn't envision myself until further in the future. We'll see about that. In the meantime, check these books out for an entertaining and inspiring read!

Today's workout:
35 min. run (4.12 mi)
30 min. resistance training
75 min. primary series yoga

Running Secrets

From this amazing book that I am reading right now, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Super Athletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall:

"That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they'd never forgotten what it felt like t love running. they remembered that running was mankind's first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain. ...You had to love running, or you wouldn't live to love anything else. And like everything else we love - everything we sentimentally call our 'passions' and 'desires' - it's really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run."

Find the joy, find the passion! I love it! Check this book out - it is UNBELIEVABLE!

Today's workout:
30 min run (3.95 mi)
20 min. resistance training
55 min. ballet body class
60 min. yoga

Living Yoga

Today I received one of my birthday presents: a copy of A Year of Living Your Yoga: Daily Practices to Shape Your Life by Judith Hanson Lasater. I am very excited about this book - it contains daily inspirational thoughts and questions to direct your practice and lead you into living yogic principles. Today's entry really hit home, since it dealt with some of the very issues brought up in Stephen Cope's book that I've also been reading, particularly with accessing "the real".

Lasater's September 25th thought reads:

Give up your attachment to the way you think things are, so you can experience things as they actually are. Living Your Yoga: Our beliefs create a screen between what is and how we want things to be. Yoga is a practice to help us let go of that screen and live authentically. What belief can you let go of today?

The "belief" that I am working on letting go of is something that I just becoming aware of --- my attachment to things. I have become increasingly aware that I enjoy shopping and acquiring new things, whether I need them or not - particularly clothes. Even though I have a full closet, I for some reason feel an urge to get something new. It is as if I am defined by what I wear, what I have.

In Donna Farhi's book Yoga Mind, Spirit and Body, she writes,

"The practice of aparigraha also requires tht we look at the way we use things to reinforce our sense of identity. The executive ego loves to believe in its own power but unfortunately requires a retinue of foot soldiers in the way of external objects such as the right clothes, car, house, job or image to maintain this illusion. Because this executive ego is but an illusion created by our sense of separateness, it requires ever greater and more elaborate strategies to keep it clothed. Although the practice of not grasping may first begin as consciously withdrawing our hand from reaching for external things, eventually the need to reach outward at all diminishes until there is a recognition that that which is essential to us is already at hand."

In my yoga practice and life, I am working on adopting the quality of aparigraha (not grasping), of letting go of my attachment to objects and work on developing my own identity, separate from the things around me.

Today's workout:
50 min. run w/ hill sprints (5.38 mi)
25 min. resistance training
60 min. yoga

He Said It Better ....

from Stephen Cope's Yoga and the Quest for the True Self (one of my current reads):

"Yogic teaching says that we have to learn gradually to tolerate sensation and feelings to the physical body, and thoughts in the mind, without reacting to them by either holding or pushing away. Craving and aversion ... roil the body-mind and create a kind of white noise in the system that obscures seeing clearly. For this reason, the development of a compassionate, grounded, centered, continuous and abiding sense of self is at the core of yogic practice."

If not today, tomorrow.

Today's workout:
40 min. progression run (4.34 mi)
30 min. resistance training
10 min. elliptical (1.51 mi)
80 min. primary series yoga

If you can't have a coach, be a coach!

So says Brad Hudson, former competitive runner and now coach to the athletic elite, in his book Run Faster: From the 5K to the Marathon. His book arrived today from Amazon and I seriously cannot put it down!

He explains his approach to training clearly and outlines the rules and principles behind his method. His theories make a lot of sense and are completely based on the individual needs and abilities of each runner. He has dubbed his style of training "adaptive running" because each runner needs to develop the flexibility to adapt their training regimen to their unique situation.

Hudson builds on his vast knowledge of a training techniques from coaches around the world and uses his own experience, including his own mistakes, to help improve the speed and performance of his athletes. His workouts strive to improve three aspects: aerobic capacity, neuromuscular strength and specific race endurance. I really love that he is telling us to listen to our bodies and modify as needed. He points out that if we are constantly pushing ourselves beyond our limits, then we will become injured or over-fatigued and ultimately sabotage ourselves. Instead, if we modify as necessary and challenge ourselves at appropriate levels, then we can maximize our performance.

I haven't finished the book yet, but I can't wait to get into the "meatier" chapters and apply his principles to my own workouts!

Today's workout:
15 min. stretch
45 min. tempo run (4.29 miles)
25 min. strength training
60 min. yoga

Just Finished Reading

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

You may be familiar with Lahiri from her novel, The Namesake, which was made into a movie with the title starring Kal Penn (Kumar from the Harold & Kumar movies).  

This book is a collection of short stories, all featuring Bengali characters.  Each story centers around the idea of fitting in to an "unaccustomed" land.  It tells the story of assimilation, the the inability to assimilate, with characters of varying ages, and the different coping mechanisms members of the same family use.

Although I normally prefer novels to stories, I enjoyed these as each story felt like a novella.  Even in a few pages, you feel invested in the characters and their feelings.  You don't have to be an immigrant or the child of an immigrant to understand being an outsider, of straddling two worlds.  However, her stories definitely provide insight into the American-Bengali world.  In addition, she deals with issues we all may face: aging parents, alcoholism, falling in love, accepting a new step-parent, infidelity, dissonance between generations.

The first section is a series of individual vignettes, while the second section contains three stories interwoven with each other.  

I found this a quick, interesting read and would recommend it to others!