Spring is back: The weather is moving
slowly from chilly to mild, the blossoms on the wisteria are draped in white
profusion and the air is intoxicating, with lilies of the valley and lilacs
perfuming our passage. The bicycle
shops and cafes are busy, the streets are alive with untanned legs in shorts and sandals, new
sunglasses, cotton dresses, and altogether there's the feeling that people are shedding
the layers of winter and emerging, slightly fragile, pale, and fresh, into the
warming sunshine.
And I too seem to once again be in spring
mode. It feels great,
Perhaps it’s just that I am getting into
some renewing activities. The Burma book is finally about to head to the
printer: the photos have all been picked, the edits are done, with as many
typos found as we could find (a few always manage to escape notice, no matter
how many pairs of eyes check for them), and hurrah! the cover seems to have
found its way at last (so the cover now up on Amazon is NOT what we’ll have:
the fish will be safely tucked inside the book, a great shot but not for a
cover, and replaced by fresh free loveliness - you’ll see).
Thrilling to have the book this far along.
With work less demanding the first renewal
is that at last the spring house-cleaning thing is happening. It’s not
exciting, more a (rather predictable) getting caught-up feeling. At last! is the theme here, which it
seems to me is the true essence of spring-cleaning.
The other renewal this week is about new
horizons, not the food history course I’m about to start teaching this week (I
am really looking forward to it, after hours of prep) but something entirely
different. I mentioned last year that ligaments in my left foot had weakened
and that I was not going to be able to go for my extremely pleasurable runs any
more. That remains true,
alas. I’ve replaced the runs with
brisk walks, not quite the same, but way less potentially damaging for the foot
and other body parts too.
I was talking about the sad fact of no
longer running with a woman who came to immersethrough in Chiang Mai this last
winter (and was in great shape). She told me I’d love doing weights, that it
gave her great endorphin hits. As
an endorphin/adrenalin etc junkie (in a mild kind of way), I was intrigued. It’s taken me several months to figure
out how to start. But now thanks
to a friend I have met a personal trainer named Rafi, and had a first session
with him.
Our phone call was funny: Rafi “what
weights or equipment do you have?” me: “none” Rafi: “not even a ball?” me:
“nothing at all, but there’s lots of room…”
I had no idea what to expect when he came
by yesterday. My mother was a
physio, and I’ve always been interested in how things work, body dynamics, for
example why one person walks this way and another walks completely
differently. As Rafi had me lift,
push against resistance etc, in various positions, he was checking out where I
had muscle weakness or imbalance, in other words, where I needed work the
most. I learned a lot: glutes need
work, abs too, and lats, and some other transverse muscle in my back. hmm
And then he started getting me to do
deceptively simple things: lie on my back with bent knees, breathe into my
belly, tighten my abdomen and pelvic floor, then on the exhale lift one leg
slowly toward my chest and then back down to the floor, keeping the abdomen etc
tightened. Relax, then repeat with the other leg. It’s not so difficult to understand, but to do it while
keeping the hipbones level, the pelvis level, takes concentration I found.
And so it was with all the other things he
had me do.
I made notes at the end of our session and
now I have “homework”: I’m to do the full lot of exercises (a specific number
of reps for each) every other day, just once for the first week, then twice in
the second week, and so on. And
there are a few great stretches too, subtle and effective. When I get comfortable, maybe in three
or four weeks, he’ll come by again and add other exercises.
The day off is to let everything
recover. Logically, having done
work yesterday I should have skipped today. But I wanted to get started, and also to repeat everything
right away to get my body-memory more established.
And how was it? It was engaging and energising, a challenge that took
concentration, way more than I would have imagined. Somehow this combination of concentration and effort (side
plank held for a minute for example, and knee bends with a stick held
straight-armed over my head, to keep me in alignment) was exhilarating, got the
old endorphins going, transported me, even though I wasn’t running happily down
the street but instead working on the floor.
This is not a fascinating post, sorry, but
I wanted to write about this new invigorating era in my first flush of
enthusiasm and discovery. It’s
such a pleasure to embark on a new challenge and feel that I am going to get
stronger day by day, through my own efforts. We can’t ask for much more than that in life, can we?
…well, apart from the pleasures of
friendship… This evening I’m
headed to eat and drink and play with friends. I'll make a leek soup I think; we'll grill meat and vegetables; asparagus is finally here and fabulous (we had our first huge meal of it last night); and there's been talk of making a baker's cake (using a yeasted dough to make a sweet treat). Yum. The excuse is Mothers’ Day, but really it’s all about the
joys of extended family, celebrating the juiciness of life at every time of
year.
