Tag: truth

Five True Things… About Life??

barbell on the floor
Photo by Leon Ardho on Pexels.com

My previous post was about five true things that I have learned over the years about yoga. They were hard won epiphanies, you’ll have to trust me on that.

I have been reading a book by a fitness expert named Tom Venuto. Imagine my surprise to find this passage:

However, everyone can improve their fitness and physique above and beyond where it is today. Your goal should be to achieve your personal best while avoiding comparisons to others who have different genetics than you

— Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto, page 31

Imagine my surprise to see what amounts to two of the true things I know about yoga, back to back, applied to general fitness! Could all of them apply to general fitness? Let’s see….

  1. You can be more fit that you are today? Yes!
  2. The fitness activity you dislike most is probably the one you need to work on the most right now? Seems very likely!
  3. Admire but don’t compare yourselves to others? Absolutely!
  4. Fitness as a practice rather than a performance? For those of us who are not professional athletes, unquestionably.
  5. You have an intention when you do a fitness activity whether you call it that or not? I am willing to believe it. Maybe that’s why people who approach their workout with the attitude of “let’s get this over with” don’t get the same results as people who approach it as “I am doing this activity to meet that goal.”

I do not know if there are more truths out there for me to learn. Nor do I know if these five truths have application in the greater world. But I hope you can accept these truths as things you can learn from.

Five True Things About Yoga

This is my Yoga Buddy

Over the years that I’ve been practicing yoga, I have had the honor of learning five true things. The first three were slow to come, and the last two were learned in the last year.

  1. You can learn to do any pose better than you can right now. Always. Even something as simple as Tadasana.
  2. The pose you hate most is probably the pose you need most right now. This does not apply if the pose puts any strain whatsoever on the neck or actively causes pain, of course,
  3. It’s okay to admire and find beauty in someone else’s practice, but it’s never okay to compare yourself to them. They have their own practice, their own strengths and weaknesses, which are different from yours.
  4. It’s a practice, not a performance. You are — or should be — doing this for you and not for anybody else.
  5. Everyone sets an intention — what they want out of that day’s practice — whether they are aware of it or state it as an intention, or not! Sure you can say “I just want to stretch today.” Guess what? That’s an intention! “I’m not interested in any woo, I’m just here for the physical benefits.” Also an intention!

Someday maybe I will learn more true things. But for this moment, it is enough.

The funny thing is that I very recently learned something about these truths. I will share that in my next post.

Practice Makes Perfect

I have a degree in music. Many hours of my life have been spent practicing piano, voice, and flute. Many more hours of my life have been spent leading others in rehearsal. Moreover, I have spent yet more hours of my life practicing physical activities such as yoga, weightlifting, dance, and drama. I know a few things about effective practice and rehearsal.

My current occupation has skills that must be practiced as well. We even have scripts to read and use. Whenever someone has to explain something many times, a script naturally develops. If you check in on a math teacher’s classroom, you will find that she has her own way of explaining concepts, and that she does it almost exactly the same way every time. She may not know it, but she has developed a script. Even when she gets derailed by a question, she will give an answer and then return to the unwritten script. Some people think they are above the use of scripts: “it sounds stilted” or “that’s not me.”  Actors use scripts every day: they work to make them not sound stilted, and they are paid to be someone other than themselves.

Just like some movies are better than others, some scripts are better than others. The math teacher in room 101 may have better scripts than the teacher in room 102, and her students learn more as a result. Which would you rather use: an organic but untested script, or a carefully developed and tested script?

Realtors generally don’t like to use scripts, or at least ones they are aware are scripts. Real estate trainers, on the other hand, are big on the practice and use of scripts. Trainers insist — and rightly so — that these scripts are proven to work, and will practice they will sound natural. However, first you have to learn the script. This goes beyond knowing what the words are and what they mean. It must be internalized, so the next line is the most natural thing you could possibly say: yes, just like “who’s there” naturally follows “knock knock.”

Recently, a trainer advocated “internalizing” by reading the script as quickly as possible and/or in funny voices and accents. I could not disagree more with this approach. The natural tendency is to perform in the same manner that we practice. For example, I once had to break a performer of doing a funny walk between music stands. He’d always done it that way in the practice room, and now he was unconsciously doing it on stage!

Practice itself does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.

In closing: 500 new fairy tales; fact checking; the TSA is a security risk; national debt; an excuse to keep people in prison past their sentences; federal deficit; and Too Big To Fail.

It’s “Seriously??” Week!

I present 3 items that should make you say “Seriously??”

Reuters even adds “seriously” when they point out that Stephen Colbert is leading Jon Hunstman in South Carolina polls. They want to make sure you understand that Reuters is not prone to printing jokes.

The New York Times on the other hand, maybe. One of their editors actually wondered in print if readers wanted journalists to call people out on false statements. Seriously?? Well, normally one reads the news to find out what is happening, and that implies a certain level of truth. How silly of me to think that fact checking was part of the job. Makes me glad I don’t give the NYT a dime for their content. I also don’t read it.

And for our last brain-bender, someone wants Mitt Romney to release his tax returns and substantiate a claim he made in public that he created 100,000 jobs while working at Bain Capital. That’s reasonable enough, right? The weird part is that this demand did not come from the left or any Democrat, and these days I must say not even from one of the people running against him for the Republican nomination. Nope: this came from Sarah Palin. Seriously??

In Closing: yes; check your settings; it still stinks; and not-quite-immaculate conception.