Finding/Keeping Centered

This morning my thoughts came back to a frequent topic for me, which is finding and trying to keep a feeling of being centered. It's frequent for me for a number of reasons, mostly because I often feel out of balance in some aspect of life and needing to make corrections.

This morning I went to my third spin class of the week already. In a normal week I do three classes including a Saturday morning, but I threw in a bonus class yesterday and I'm feeling the change. I'm exhausted, but not only from the physical effort. I'll get back to that.

Spinning is one place that I'm constantly reminded of the importance of good form giving better results and feeling better through the effort. Heidi and Susan constantly remind us to sit correctly, work on our foot position and engage every leg muscle for maximum efficiency. It makes such a huge difference you'd think we'd remember to do it all the time. But we don't. I sure don't. When I start to tire or after a hard effort I find myself bobbing side to side or up and down, unconsciously trying to compensate for tired muscles with those motions. My breathing is labored and my heart rate spikes up.

The crazy thing is, it doesn't help. While I might engage other less efficient muscles, the bike computer easily tells me I'm producing worse results and feeling worse doing it. When I correct myself back to good form and engage the right muscles my numbers all go up and my labored breathing goes down. Taking some deep calming breaths and calming my mind back to a focused state brings everything back to center.

I found this also to be true in yoga, and a principle they remind continually about being present in your practice. Not only does your mind find peace, but your body and all it's functions calm and come back to a place of better feelings of control. This definitely can be applied to life as well.

It's easy to feel off center and out of control even to the point of heightened anxiety or even a sense of panic. In the last few weeks I haven't had a day without pain. The new chemo I'm on called Sutent has been triggering a wide array of sharp side effects that have thrown me out of balance and made getting through some days pretty tough. From terrible sleep and fatigue induced exhaustion to sharp pain in my stomach, neck, back and even my jaw. My blood pressure has risen about 15-20 points on both systolic and diastolic pushing me into hypertensive ranges and leading to headaches and blurred vision. Other symptoms we just don't need to discuss. And all this we know is possible based on the disclosures, and we still don't know if it's worth it until we do a new scan to see if it's working.

So yeah, that makes each day a little tough to feel calm, centered and without anxiety. And yet, that's exactly what I need to do. So that's why I hit the fitness. Increased blood flow, endorphins and raising my heart rate all give me huge immediate benefits. I can succeed at something in the midst of so much I can't control. My mind can churn through those feelings of anxiety and problems I really can't solve while the body is engaged in other efforts. I can stretch my body in physical ways providing some distractions to other aspects of while I put them aside for an hour or two. This is why I call it my therapy.

But even when I don't have the opportunity to do something fitness related, or when the symptoms simply don't allow me to like part of last week when I was crushed with strong back and neck pain, I still try to find ways to come back to center. Taking a few minutes to simply sit in quiet and think. Taking deep calming breaths, slowly releasing those worries with each breath out. Sounds silly perhaps, but it works. While you may not be able to completely dispel worries, you can temporarily put them in a box to set aside and just be still.

Or here's an idea...take some time to write. All these can help, at least they do for me.

That's it for today. I'm trying to keep to my commitment for shorter and more frequent installations. So while this is not "short" it's definitely shorter. Thanks for all your comments, and part of my commitment is to try and reply to most of you back. These connections matter!

Based on yesterday's initial response it appears that posting directly to Facebook versus the Notes format is better. While I like the notes for the ability to intersperse photos in my longer form writing, I'd much rather see better engagement with others when I share my meandering thoughts. I appreciate the insights from others on the topics and the support I feel from those listening. Thank you!