How about morning and night?

8Dec10, 8:15pm: Power Yoga with Michael Lau

I almost cancelled but who knows what next week will bring regarding fitness and yoga, and I missed a couple days last week, so why not?

It was good. I fell out of one posture but my Parivrtta Trikonasana was pretty solid again and felt good. I did notice however, that I was a bit light-headed a few times while looking up.... will keep that in mind.

Cinderella

8Dec10, 7am: Hot Yoga with Cinderella Yau

It was a good class, and I got in that really good sweat that really fuels me in the morning. A few things came up that I'll write about when I have more time, but in the meanwhile I was intrigued by my teacher, and so I'll jot down a few things to ponder...

She was the tiniest thing, very flexible, strong, but not super young. I'd say she was late 30s, maybe 40 at the most, but I find that Asians always look young until one day when they are, perhaps 87, they wake up and are a cute, old Asian man or woman. Up until that day, they look super young. Anyway, she had what appeared to be burn scars all over her upper back, shoulder, and upper chest... maybe more, but she was wearing clothing, and so I couldn't completely discern. She spoke mostly in Cantonese, but with a few words in English, appropriately placed throughout the practice. She started the practice with 3 OMs... which were not pleasant OMs when the rest of the class joined in, as they sometimes are. I prefer one OM, and often I find myself annoyed with the OM process. That's another story, though. She also made really helpful adjustments to me, and I felt good throughout the practice. Finally, her name was Cinderella... no joke.

I realize that almost everyone I meet here has a Chinese name and an English name. There is always a blank for both on all of the paperwork I've ever had to fill out over the past couple months. I've thought about putting something down for my Chinese name... what would it be? Because I know 3 words in Mandarin and 4 words/phrases in Cantonese, I don't know if that would be a good idea for me quite yet. Plus, the Chinese name is in character form (all the more reason to have an alphabetic name, especially for government forms and such), and I only know 6 characters... one, two, three, chicken, duck, and conference room. Although, I do know "thank-you" in both languages, just not the character form, neither traditional or simplified... but maybe "thank you" would be a good name for me. It got me thinking, though. When do Chinese (Asian?) people get their English names? My mentor here told me that sometimes they get to choose as adults as soon as it is necessary, which is why he knows a guy named Angel. Did Cinderella get to choose her name? If so, what drove her choice? Was this recently, or was she a young child mesmerized by the Cinderella story and content living in fantasyland as many children are? When did she get those burn marks, before or after she was called Cinderella? What's the story here?

What would I really choose if I could pick any name for myself?

Over-caffeinated

It is possible.

Even drinking only one, albeit large, Americano a day lately... I think I may have put myself over the edge and am officially over-caffeinated. I've been enjoying tea in the evenings, especially green tea, as I've found Qi Organic Fairtrade Authentic China Green Tea that tastes amazingly and fits with my values. Having a warm drink ritual can be solved this way, no problem. My issue, I think, is that I have this residual fear of not having enough caffeine in my body. Could that be it? What can I do, try to ween myself off of coffee derived caffeine? Nevermind, I know I can do that, but what is it in my head that makes me afraid of not having caffeine?

A thought I'll ponder...

Early morning vs. late nights

I've flip-flopped for a few days, I think. Several nights of staying up late and sleeping in last weekend, and now I'm still in that mode for my week... that's ok, though. I also know my body is tired, or at least it was this morning when I tried to get up, well stay up, so that I could hit the gym for a 7am work-out. I got up around 5:35am, ate breakfast and realized I was a bit ahead of schedule, and so I made the fatal mistake of lying down for a few minutes...

I woke up at 7:15am, having missed the start of my work-out, decided to go back to sleep until almost 9am, which is really sleeping in for me. I'm sort of all over the place right now anyway, Sunday night was very emotional for me, saying goodbye to Kim again, the second time in 37 days. Monday, as I mentioned, I got in a killer work-out at 7am. Then the rest of my day was stellar, especially research-wise! I am doing microscopic surgical procedures on transparent fish so that I can image their circulatory system in real-time as well as image each molecule of oxygen released from the hemoglobin protein that carries it through the blood to the working muscles that need it. I've always had it in my mind that I would like to be an excellent micro-surgeon, so to speak. I've heard a mentor of mine refer to another colleague as that, and I remember thinking that I could be that too. I've been told my sutures are better than those of medical doctors (yikes!), but that makes me very proud. Furthermore, I know that I have a precise hand and keen eyes for tiny detail. For my current research, I was having trouble with this one particular surgery for a couple weeks. I just wasn't consistent and found myself very apprehensive, often asking my colleague to take a turn just because I didn't want to mess up. Yesterday, I made up my mind that I was excellent at surgical procedures, just as I had always imagined, and that did it... I totally changed my mind-set and it really worked for me. It was a very successful, but also very long day.

Although I was absolutely beat by the time I got home Monday night, I still found myself getting a second wind, and so I did end up staying up late again. So, it really comes to no surprise that I was tired this morning (Tuesday), and I gave that to myself. I had a pretty productive day today but ended up getting in my fitness at night instead of morning...

7Dec10, 9:30pm: Hot Yoga with Michael Lau

...and now I'm wired and it's 1:30am!

My parivrtta trikonasana, or twisted triangle, this evening was my best ever, I think. Note, the photo on the right is not me, but this is how I felt! Everything else was good, but this particular asana really stood out to me, as it's a tough one, not only from the twisting perspective, as the name implies, but also from a balance perspective, and for once I feel like I really got into this posture.

I think that if I'm going to do a yoga class at night, then I need to make it a relaxing one, like Yoga Therapy or perhaps a meditation class so I can actually come straight home and veg-out before falling asleep. After hot yoga, I must take a shower, as I'm drenched... absolutely drenched. Although, that is one aspect I really, really love about hot yoga. I feel amazing after a really good sweat, but only if that was my initial intention. I don't like the nervous sweat, like when I'm about to defend my thesis or get married... I'm hoping to stave off that response next week in HOT Australia during my job interviews. But anyway, back to the scheduling... I find that if I get in an intense work-out in the morning, I'm set with tons of energy all morning and can get so much done. However, if I have to anticipate it all day, and maybe even cut my evening short to head off to the gym, I'm not as content. Although getting up from a glorious sleep is never easy, I do find that I am happy to do it for a great work-out or yoga class, as I know I will be on a roll to a productive and energetic day!

Sure, just about everything in life is fluid, schedules are fluid, preferences are fluid, but for now, in this environment, with this body and this schedule, in this city, at the risk of sounding cliche, I think I can say that I'd rather be a "morning person." Cliche aside, that reminds me of how so much of the deep thoughts that I long to elaborate upon touch on impermanence, one of the three tenets of existence in Buddhist beliefs. I am reminded of this by a discussion with a friend today, as she is thinking a lot about this particular one of impermanence, or अनिच्चा anicca. I too need to remember this, as the things that are going on for me right now for which I am not happy are, indeed, temporary and my body's way of finding a new set-point to waver around to maintain homeostasis. I will find a new balance with everything... I already am finding balance on some levels... but on other levels, I still feel like everything is very much out of balance... hang in there, self.. you can do this!

Proximal recapitulation

6Dec10, 7am: personal training with Wallace...

whoa... I got my ass kicked and handed back to me... 3x6 abs circuit with cardio in between, 3x6 arms/shoulders circuit with cardio in between, then 16 min. on treadmill doing sprints... no wonder I'm dead! It was good though... other than the morning breath of my trainer... found a way to ignore it and get a killer work-out... back to good old proximity... a topic I began discussing in a previous post and will no doubt come back to often!

I mentioned the guy sitting next to me on my flight from HKG to TPE … how our discussion was amazing, but the entire time, his face was about 100mm from me... no joke... and he had just eaten his in-flight lunch of Chinese noodles... I left it somewhat hanging because I wanted to devote some time to thinking about it... I’ll continue now…

After this experience on the plane and then lately seeing ancient Chinese artifacts and learning more and more about the history of this part of Asia, I’m reminded abouthow old this part of the world is… not just historically speaking… but spiritually, culturally… it’s something that North Americans don’t readily wrap their head around as both Canada and the U.S. are so young incomparison. I think I’m at least more familiar with European history, which makes sense, given my heritage

and ancestry. Asian history, however… a whole different cup of tea! Yesterday I saw some art from the Tang Dynasty… that’s from the 7^th century! Not only artistic masterpieces and architecture, but there is also so much history in the types of government and ruling styles, some of which we still see today, in some form or another.

Speaking of which, the guy sitting next to me on the plane enlightened me a bit. He was telling me how he was Taiwanese but that his parents were originally from mainland China but were both dead now. During the Chinese civil war, his father was a part of the KMT (Kuomintang, anti-communist army). According to Wiki, “the KMT was founded by Song Jiaoren and Sun Yat-sen shortly after the Xinhai Revolution. Later led by Chiang Kai-shek, it ruled much of China from 1928 until its retreat to Taiwan in 1949 after being defeated by the Communist Party of China (CPC) during the Chinese Civil War. There, the KMT controlled the government under a single party state until reforms in the late 1970s through the 1990s loosened its grip on power.” In the late 40s and early 50s, things were really bad with the Soviet, Korean, and Chinese (communist, cold war) involvement combined… the Korean war… and many mainland Chinese people were fleeing, either to Taiwan or Hong Kong.

This guy told me that his parents got an opportunity to get on a midnight boat to Taiwan one night about 60 years ago. I guess the father was afraid for his life, and they wanted out from communist rule. They hadn’t given birth to him yet, but they already had two daughters, one that was very young… an infant probably less than 1 year and the other was 5 years old. The catch was they couldn’t take children for fear of being discovered late in the night if a baby cried. So they planned to leave alone, this guy tells me. He remembers his father telling him stories about what it was like… his mom pacing and his eldest sister suspecting something was wrong because her mother was dressed differently that day and acting nervous. The eldest daughter was apparently very clingy and into the night she was pried out of her mother’s arms and into the arms of her auntie, never to see her mother again. The parents left their two daughters in the care of the sister… never to be seen again. In fact, this guy said that his mother literally worried herself to death over the following year. The father and this guy weren’t allowed to contact mainland to look for them until 40 years later! Still in mainland China, I’m told that neither sister is well off at all. Both were haunted by the specific event that separated them from their family but then forever because of their father’s affiliation with the KMT. Neither could marry anyone but only the lowest class Chinese citizens, which were opera singers and taxi drivers. They were shunned throughout the majority of their life for their familial association, which for one of them only lasted a mere year!

All this time, I’m getting a rich history lesson about Taiwan and how it became a haven for the Chinese and the reasons why, but this older gentleman was also pouring his heart out via his life story, most of which I will never even fathom in my entire lifetime.

I’ve been thinking about this for a few days now, almost a week, as I flew to Taiwan last Tuesday. The first thoughts that I had that afternoon were regarding proximity. For me, this was – I’m sure – one of many turning points for me in learning about myself and the fluid concepts of proximity as well as space and time. With regard to proximity, I found myself asking myself to please take in this moment, get beyond the smell of Chinese noodles, the intermittent belching, and the misty spray of someone talking very closely, the seeming “invasion of personal space”… and really listen to this man, listen with compassion… imagine how he must feel… imagine how his mother and sisters and father must have felt.

Proximity is a tough one... it makes people uncomfortable. It's not necessarily painful or harming or even inconvenient... it just touches on the idea of personal space that some of us have gotten used to having a lot of!!!! I have been in this place of uncomfortable… about so many things and for so long… Personal space is HUGE for me, and like I mentioned in my the first blog about this plane ride, is “the apex of the triangle in my opinion, and the last, hardest concept for me to understand...” I’m uncomfortable in my own skin most of the time, which has limited me endlessly. I don’t feel good being in such close proximity to a stranger (and sometimes even people I know well), which I’m sure has caused me to miss out on a lot in life, as it would have in this case. I’m not saying that by letting others be in close proximity to me, from now on, will allow me to have a richer life. What I’m thinking is that in this particular case, I acknowledged the barriers that usually prevent me from this kind of encounter and chose to put them aside. I don’t believe this always to be the solution, as I think we have barriers and warning signs that we definitely need to heed as protection. Always building walls and setting up barriers, however, is not likely the key to an enriched, loving, and fulfilling life.

Proximity… hmm...

What a weekend...

I've got so much to write about, but now is not the time, as I'm absolutely, positively exhausted and have a personal training session with Wallace at 7am Mon. morning. Meanwhile, my topics list is as follows:

1Dec10: no yoga or fitness and TONS of walking

2Dec10: no yoga or fitness

3Dec10, 6:30pm: Power Yoga with Jasmine (Kim joined me)

4Dec10, 12noon: Hot Yoga with Michael Lau (Kim joined me)

5Dec10: no yoga or fitness but TONS of walking

- holding on to pain, if we hold on to it, e.g. after a particularly tough yoga posture or weight-lifting sequence, our body remembers and won't try again...

- practicing no harm, meaning even no harm to ourselves...

- more on time... especially with a loved one

I shall return when I have some sleep!

Thoughts on proximity...

30Nov10, 7am: Bodypump class at PURE with Kelvin... great work-out, especially my anterior deltoids... yowww-zaaaa! Had also planned for an evening yoga class in Taipei, but the others were too tired... may have to do a day of lots of walking on Wed. to get in my fitness for the day. Time to explore Taipei then!!!

But before that...

Interestingly, I'm finding myself taking on space, time, and now proximity... the apex of the triangle in my opinion, and the last, hardest concept for me to understand... not that I've got it down, but I'm working on it.

I find myself asking these questions, albeit silently in my head, to various strangers I encounter...

"Do you realize how close you are to me?"

"Do you realize that there are 500 people behind you trying to get by, and you're blocking the aisle because you are meandering side to side at a snail's pace?"

Ok, that second one was a bit more descriptive of my every day experiences; whereas the first was rather general and could be applied to just about any encounter in Asia, I'm finding.

When you live in such close proximity to people by no choice of your own, your definition of proximity gets smaller and smaller, I'm certain. Coming from the land of wide open spaces... Canada, even more so than the U.S., we do not understand that and our definition of proximity incorporates a much larger radius. In N. America, we can... most often... choose to live in a big city and be close to other people, or we can choose to live in more rural communities where our neighbours are sometimes 8km from us.

8km! That's 8,000m... or 800,000cm or 8,000,000mm!!! REALLY?

I've become at peace with time and space, but proximity is still weighing on me. At the gym Monday night, I was taking a new class, the BodyCombat class I mentioned in my last post. Wanting to get as much from the instructor as possible, I tend to pick a spot very close to the middle and front of the room. I arrived early to do so, and what happens, another woman comes and stands, literally, 60cm directly in front of me... not staggered at all, DIRECTLY in front of me, as if I were not even there! So my blood starts to simmer a bit and thoughts begin developing regarding the concept of proximity. I let it go for the time being and get in the best possible work-out I could, saving the ponderings for later.

On my flight from HKG to TPE, the guy sitting next to me was quite nice and struck up a conversation. I'm not sure what got the conversation going because while we were waiting on the tarmac, for what seemed like an hour, to take off, I dozed multiple times. So, I'm sure I wasn't the ideal-looking candidate for an in-depth, in-flight discussion. Anyway, as it happened, our discussion was amazing, but the entire time, his face was about 100mm from me... no joke... and he had just eaten his in-flight lunch of Chinese noodles... I'll stop there...

Proximity...

As I mentioned, we had a phenomenal conversation, which I'll talk about in my next post more in-depth, as it provoked a lot in me. The conversation was so worthwhile, I found myself asking myself to please forget about how close this guy's face is to me and take in the discussion... it was hard, but I did it, and it was worth it. For now, I think I'm coming to terms with a new acceptable definition of proximity, one that is realistic for me in Asia... it may not be 100% Asian-certified ;-) but it's good for the "Asian Jodie" for now.

Time is ticking and I have Taipei to see... jo sahn and joy geen for now!