Distance: 14 blocks, take yoga class, acupuncture session, chiropractic
I believe this is day 362 of my one year commitment to post something to CIWT every day. What to do at the end of the year is on my mind a lot.
Definitely write, continue. I will do that no matter what. And I believe I'll make a hard copy off the internet of CIWT, Year One.
The questions surround 1. writing a one year summary essay; 2. whether to make another commitment to a daily post: 3. what my numbering system will be. (ie, Day 366, 367 or Day 2-1, 2-2...).
The essay seems a daunting undertaking, but the one year has been very meaningful and maybe I owe it to CIWT to acknowledge the changes it has brought. And, as for #2, I feel daily posts contribute to the strength of the project and keep me more focused. So I have a feeling I will do #'s 1 and 2, but the answer to #3, the numbering, is more elusive.
What I may not get around to including in the possible one year essay is how remarkable it feels to take seriously, actually express/reveal the things that really do occupy me. There have been elections, shootings, destructive storms - a whole year of 'news.' And certainly I'm pulled around about these things, have curiosities, thoughts, opinions, emotions about them. But a 'true' part of me is usually addressing the types of things that show up in CIWT. And so one Huge gift of CIWT has been 'owning' 'me.' Even as I might wish I had some more Fabulous thing on my mind and actually in print, even as I am judgmental about my 'shallowness, whatever,' I can look at that, acknowledge it and then go ahead and make the entry anyway.
This is big. And doing it for almost a year is cumulatively Huge in its self-revelatory power and personal acceptance and growth. Much of the journey, the growth/acceptance/awareness, is identical to yoga. Let's take Triangle Pose (technically, Extended Triangle Pose or Utthita Trikonasana). Maybe in the last 40+ years of having yoga in my life and certainly the last 10 years of teaching, I have done at least 5,000 Trikonasanas.
For those of you who don't do yoga, what yogis do in triangle is spread their legs at least a leg length apart, open their arms shoulder height, hinge forward at the hip, bring the top arm to the sky and the bottom arm down, maybe twist from about the waist and maybe turn the neck and look up at the top hand. That's it. Remarkably trivial - on top of which there is really no reason/goal aside from consciously doing the pose. Just consistently showing up and staying present to yourself as your whole self as much as possible merges with the pose, that's all you do. Some days the pose looks, feels good - other days not at all. It is all the same - you are just observing, attending to and owning whatever shows up.
And over time your being/something in you changes - of its own accord. You can't make anything come of Triangle. You can't make it change you or know if it will. All you can do is show up and address the shape of triangle by staying present and breathing into whatever your being makes of the pose in this practice.
And my CIWT has been like this. I sit down, I write, that's the commitment. The more artifice I consider, the more it feels wrong, not like CIWT. When I have something to say, I say it plain. When I have 'nothing' to say, like Seinfeld, I've learned to say 'nothing.' Somehow all this in and of itself has been releasing toward me, toward myself.
And, however numbered, I can't imagine harnessing or stopping this opening energy.
And here's one of my main mentor/teachers, Jason Crandell, doing Utthita Trikonasana with a block.
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