Yay for Yoga

Katy here.

Have I been doing the meditation every day like I'm supposed to, you ask? Well, sort of. I have been devoting 45 minutes a day to meditation, and I've been doing another ten minutes sometime during the day. But a lot of times the ten minutes is more successful than the 45 minutes. The 45-minute guided meditation you use for the first two weeks is a body scan meditation, and as I think I mentioned, it's been putting me to sleep. I have tried as many different times of day as I can, but no matter when I do it I'm out like a light. Sometimes, if I struggle, I can stay awake for about 35 or 40 minutes. A lot of times I'm out in maybe ten minutes.

This is the third week of the program, and we get to add yoga. And may I say, yay for yoga! It is actually really hard to fall asleep while doing yoga, so I don't feel like such a slacker. We alternate it with the body scan, so I'm really hoping that the awake-meditation of the yoga will rub off a little on the body scan, at least enough so I can become familiar with the last half of the body scan. But if not, at least I'll get some meditation that's not subliminal or sub/unconscious. I keep thinking of Chandler quitting smoking on "Friends."

I added a lot of different things to my life over the last two weeks (meditation, a slightly better diet, exercise, fish oil), and I have no way of knowing whether the meditation alone would have done this well for me, but I'm feeling much better. I sleep at night consistently, and I no longer worry all day about whether I'll get enough sleep. The long and nattering list of worries and doom-ridden prophesies that used to keep me awake hardly ever bother me, or if they do it's usually hard for them to gain any purchase before I fall asleep. I've had only one night where I couldn't sleep until about 3 a.m. because I was worried, which is a huge improvement after weeks and weeks of living like that. (I think worrying about not sleeping is my favorite.)

My worries are trying to find other times of day to pester me. Sometimes they are succeeding, mostly at work, because it's easy to feel out-of-control there, what with working for a pathologically dysfunctional company. (Two samples to back that comment up. One, we don't write requirements down, which means that it's a miracle if we get what we asked for, and an even greater miracle if we test for it. Two, if you are not in a room with someone they will pretend you don't exist--that's what, twenty or thirty years of stunning progress toward remote and virtual partnerships just blown off as if they don't exist. I think our corporate symbol should be the ostrich.)

Soon I'll be able to breeze along, not being bothered by uncooperative co-workers or bitchy kickboxing instructors. Have YOU been kicked out of a kickboxing class of being "just THAT uncoordinated"? I have. It makes me cranky and upset and gives me a very negative self-image. Fortunately it's nothing compared to the negative image I have of the bitchy kickboxing instructor, so at least I'm not the low worm on the totem pole.

Okay, maybe total serenity won't happen soon. Maybe I'll just settle for sporadic serenity.