Bodies remember

Today I did my brutally boring -- I mean meditative! -- bent-arm strength workout. It's one I got from Toledo in 2011, which means that I know where I'd like to be with it. Very simple: do two chin-ups, then do two dips. That's one. Do as many as you can in 30 minutes. (Fine, fine, one more thing -- wait to stop shaking, then do some external rotator prehab just to balance out.)

Just two weeks and four of these workouts ago I felt like a rock and was doing around 15 sets before failing, never mind the 30 minute thing... but today my body remembered the deal. I zoned out and, though toward the end I was stopping for 30-second rests between sets in order to avoid muscle failure, put up 32 sets in 30 minutes. Respectable, even by my old standards! I hope this doesn't stiffen up my shoulders for handstands tomorrow, but even if it does, I'm happy. It's always wonderful when things come back, and stunning how quickly they do. Bodies remember things, including adaptations that took weeks and weeks to gain the first time around.

I'll find out tomorrow if mine remembers how to cartwheel into h2h with the Ant. Hope so.

One more book, this one on meditation

I don't meditate; that is, I don't do sitting meditation. But heisenbug does, and other friends do, and I like reading, so I did sit and read a book on the topic. Despite the terrible title of Real Happiness, it had some concepts that I really liked.

1) "Effort needn't be struggling or straining -- it can be relaxed perseverance." Well THERE'S a nice thought. Speaks for itself, doesn't it? A whole new style to aim for, in fact, and I love it and am thinking of it often.

2) The idea of being able to always calmly start again, presented as a life skill.

3) The idea of "add-on" thoughts, where we begin with one sensation or experience and make it ever so much worse by piling on our fears for the future, our (negative) impression of ourselves in light of the initial thing, and our projections of all that into forever. This one is a keeper, and has wormed itself into my head. If I'm worried about a work email and I start to go off into "this is always my problem, I'm never good at thinking big-picture, I'm actually not as expert as people think, and OH GOD, how am I ever going to keep being productive for another twenty terrifying years..." I'm a lot more likely now to say "add-on!" and think again about that one email. This is a good trick. "Add-on!" :-)

I am now expecting a flood of "you should meditate" comments. Here's the funny thing; when I read about the mind states of meditation I'm filled with constant "oh, I do that" recognition. I practice my focusing deliberately, I often move mindfully, I basically do the book's body-scan meditation while lying in bed, I am very often conscious of trying not to identify overmuch with thoughts or emotions (and being aware of them in the first place). I don't much like to hold physically still, this is true... I like to find mindfulness in motion, instead. Or in the world.

One day perhaps I'll become a practitioner of mysore yoga, and lose myself every day in a slow, memorized, solipsistic recreation of the Ashtanga primary series. That, I could imagine.