Yoga, Tai Chi and tryin to get up from the floor.....

One of the reasons that I wanted to live in an area like this is because i wanted to develop a healthier life style. I wanted to eat fresh fruits and vegetables. That was until I checked out the price of fresh fruit and vegetables.  Dear Lord! apples are a dollar each. Anyway, when you live on the side of a mountain, there are no taco bells around the corner. As a matter of fact, the only thing around is some critter trying to cross the road. By the way, you are in his neighborhood. There is no convenience stores or fast food up here. There is a little store up here about 5 miles from the house and you can get gas and beer, the necessities of life! 

Anyway, I harkened back to my youth when I was lithe and spry and under thirty. You cannot be lithe and spry if you are over thirty and you are lucky if you remember how to spell lithe and spry after 60 which I am. I was a yoga fanatic I would practice it daily for 2 hours and then came a career and marriage and kids and grad school and over 40 and by that time I was doing 15 minutes here and there (more there than here). By the time I had reached 50, I quit. 

The setting here is so peaceful with the sound of the creek being the loudest sound. Of course that is if you discount Riggins who is the loudest most persistant high barking Dalmatian on the planet. He loves it up here, he can stand outside and bark his fool head off for no reason at all. He kind of gets that from his mother Lotto who like to bark for no reason at all, but being old she forgets what she was barking at or that she was barking and she quits. Not so Riggies, barking is the passion of his life and he is really enjoying it. That actually was another reason to want to get back to solitude where my dogs could be the strange selves that they are.

Back to the peace and quiet. The house has both a deck and a screened front porch and beautiful wood floors. Now you know my history with yoga and for a short time after 50 I dabbled in Tai Chi. I took that up because 1st, you do the movements standing up, ergo no crawling around on the floor trying to get up. Second, The movements are done slowly and gracefully which is an added attraction if you are older and chubby. Yoga can require a mat or a wood floor is much better than carpet because you don't aquire "wood" burns if you do something wrong and fall over. Yoga is also the one form of excercise where the philosphy is never do something until it hurts. This is great advice for seniors and I've actually figured it out. Yeah, I've got a lot of free time. Anyway, you do the excercises until you "feel the burn" when you are younger because you recuperate a lot faster. After 60, if you "feel the burn", you've done something wrong and will be limping and griping and complaining for a week.

Before we go any further and I know you are waiting patiently for the yoga and tai chi story to begin, I feel I need to clarify a point. In any group you will have the over achievers and the underachievers and the rest. As a senior I am addressing most of us regular people. We've all seen the stories about the 70, 80 and 90 year olds who climb mountains, do triathalons and other marvelous feats. Well that's great, It provides hope for those of us who don't do that stuff and when we think about that we imagine what we could hurt or break. Then there are those of us who do absolutely nothing, weigh over 600 lbs and spend our day eating greasy food and ride around in a scooter, complaining that life isn't fair. Again, bless you, you make us feel good about ourselves and our limited athletic abilities. But, most of us fall in a wide range between those two. What scares the hell out of us is when we look in a mirror and see our parents or grandparents looking back at us. In our minds however we are still those 20 year olds. The other thing that concerns us is we are worried about breaking something. In my case I am consumed with the fear of breaking something. Mainly because I have broke things and found out that at  my age it takes a looong, looooooooooooong time to heal and it doesn't heal right. So if you fit into one of the two specialty classes, you may not see life as the rest of us seniors do and don't hate us because we're normal. Sit back, now about the peaceful setting, the experience with yoga and tai chi and don't forget about the greater joy life and laugh at it as we do.

Okay, we are finally getting to the topic of this post. I got out of bed (and that in itself is a fete) a few days ago and felt particularly motivated.  After getting all the Doos out and playing with them and then getting Riggins all set up for his daily barkfest. I decided to get ready by sitting on the floor and trying some meditation. This used to work at twenty but I didn't have six Dals who think the only reason you would be on the floor would be to play with them. Of course!! Picture this, me in a pair of sweats sitting on the floor, the cross legged thing is a thing of the past. My eyes are closed and I am focusing on the "third eye" which is that area between your two eyebrows. For those of you with a unibrow, don't let this stop you it is there. I haven't reached that state of concentration yet. It's only been about 2 seconds when I am mugged by 4 spotted creatures. One is licking my "third eye", one has decided to settle in my lap. One is sniffing the butt of the other one who is exploring my ear and sniffing in it. Of the other 2, one is barking (guess who?) and the last one has stolen all the rawhide chews from the other crates and is guarding them in their crate. Immediately, I knew that this wasn't going to work. I knew if I ever was going to meditate it would have to be sans dogs. Yeah right! If I put them in their crates they will bark loudly and in unison to be let out. If I put them outside, they will jump and bark loudly at the door to be let in. Riggins will joyfully join in because it involves BARKING. If I go out and leave them in, well you get the picture. So scratch the meditation and on to excercises. I decided to start with Tai Chi because I remember this one set of moves that is part of the "Sun salutation" and very flowing and nice. So after crawling to a vacant chair I got off the floor. I remember my grandma trying to get up off the floor and muttering "Oh God" in Italian of course. At the time I thought it was a little dramatic now I know what she meant. Sorry grandma! So now I am up and in position in bare feet on wood floors. Do you sense that something is going to go wrong here? I start the flowing move and am in to a third go 'round and one of the dogs got the idea that I was dancing and decided to join in. Now Siren is one heck of a dancer (for a refresher go to the 1st post) but when you are not expecting to be joined by an enthusiastic 40 lb dancing machine it comes as a real suprise. As I'm doing a kind of slide/turn and thinking about how cool this looks, Miss Toe-toes jumps up on me from the back. I think she had a conga line in mind. I lose my balance and had one of those moments when you think, "this is gonna hurt...." and down I go in the least cool manner I could. When I land on the floor I take inventory and find nothing broken, we already talked about this. Meanwhile Siren has decided, "okay we can dance on the floor". Now some of this is my fault (not the falling, the dancing). Siren and I have been known to cut loose in the privacy of the living room and dance, both standing up and on the floor. Hey, you dance too, I know it. Anyway, I decide that since I down there I might as well do some floor excercises. At that point I should have quit, but ohhhhhhh nooooo, never say never. So, I get back in that sitting position and here they come again, licking the third eye, butt sniffing (only this time it was mine) and ear sniffing. I really was proud of myself that I could continue with all that going on. I moved onto a routine which requires that you move your arms out from your side outward and then up.  Riggins has decided to stand there and is cheering me on (his version which is barking, but to a really catchy tempo). The rawhide bone thief was still guarding the stash but 2 others decided I had food in my hand and was tossing it for them and so they were running across my lap. If you have never experienced a dog running across you legs and launching itself off your lap, consider yourself lucky, it is quite painful to say the least. To top off the act of these two acrobats they were running around sniffing looking for the phantom goodie and when they didn't find it decided I was hiding it by sitting on it. At that point, they felt the need to start "digging" under me, both front and back. Oh yeah they were a team. At the point where I obtained a large bruise on the inner thigh from being clawed at. I gave up. Not peacefully of course. The surrender included a couple of choice words which I won't repeat. The dogs in question backed up and gave me that "jeez, what a grouch, you're no fun" look. Now that I had decided to give in, I realized that this was going to include raising myself off the floor. Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead was nothing compared to me trying to get up off the floor. Again, sorry grandma. I had dogs around me trying to do various things, none of which was helping. I tried kneeling and that didn't work then I was on one knee trying to use the other for leverage, that didn't work. I tried that on both sides, didn't work so I resorted to the ever faithful, crawling to a chair or other sturdy object and lifting my self that way. When I did get up, I plunked myself into the chair and all these spotted wonders came over and some even laid down. They let me know that they had forgiven me for spoiling their fun. So generous of them. After much consideration I have decided not to give up on excercise but to incorporate the Spots into them, maybe weightlifting?