Training Day 7 of 71: Un-Aging

Today I did not not not feel like going running! The alarm went off at 6AM. I drank coffee sitting on my floral love seat, gazing out the window of my room into the dark barren parking lot beyond. One hour later dawn had dawned and I was downstairs in front of the TV watching a Tivo'd episode of What Not To Wear. It seemed really important. This 47 year old woman was dressing like a prepubescent child. I was really glad Stacey and Clinton helped her learn how to dress more maturely (but still retaining the color and spunk that reflected her youthful personality). So then 9AM rolls around and I decide the only possible way I can handle running my scheduled 3 miles is if I jog to my friend Clio's house (which is 1.5 miles away), take her 9:30 yoga class, and then run back home. So on go the sneakers.

Clio is an amazing blossoming yoga teacher. She's a fairly recent convert from a high-octane career in fashion and it always feels like you are at the best, most exclusive party when in her presence. So it makes sense that being in her yoga class would be even more fun - not only do you get to hang out with Clio, you also get to do yoga. (See Clio hanging with her Buddha above.) Four other ladies showed up and we all settled into Sukasana (a comfortable seated pose) on our mats. Then Clio said something really awesome.

She said how she is approaching a 'landmark birthday', and told us how this birthday is bringing up all the anxieties that come with aging - mainly that your life will one day end, and seems to be ending more rapidly as time goes on. As a child summer seemed endless, years moved so slowly, and now time flashes by in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon we'll all be dead. But she said that actually time DID move slower when we were younger. Because everything was new, we were constantly taking it all in, every detail. It was new information for our forming minds and therefore we were much more present with it. Now, as we continually live out the same cycles and habits, we move into autopilot. We don't need to learn from them, so we don't even necessarily notice what's happening around us. And so, yes, time flies by, because we aren't really fully experiencing our lives the way we did when we were young.

Oh sadness of sadness! To not experience one's life. To just let it pass without really noticing.

So Clio's antidote was to be more present. Experience each aspect of the yoga pose as if it were new. Live life with a child's eyes/ears/nose/touch. And I think that doing new things (for instance, running a marathon), recreates that freshness. It puts us back into the experience of learning and absorbing and really paying attention to what's happening around us. That way we don't die quite so fast.