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February 26, 2008
When I Am Staring Into Space...
I am doing one of three things:
a) Counting calories. I keep a running total all day.
b) Counting yes and no votes on my current union campaign.
c) Composing Pilates routines to my favorite music. This evening, while walking in a driving rain to meet our new accountant for our tax appointment, I composed what I suspect is the first and only Pilates ab routine to Leonard Cohen's "Lover Lover Lover." It is a relentless, energetic ab routine. It has no rest at all during the entire song. It is supposed to put the participant into a kind of ab work trance, punctuated by occasional screams of pain. It's a good kind of pain, though, the "Pain is fear leaving the body" kind of pain. It won't hurt afterwards. I can do this routine and feel no soreness whatsoever the next day. When you're in the trance, in the headspace, in the zone, the very relentlessness, the lack of a release or a rest, is experienced as heightened pleasure. It's just like fasting, or like a forty-five minute build up to an orgasm... there's a whole other way of experiencing life that you can't get to until you've built up some strength, but trust me, it's worth it.
If anyone has ever taken a Pilates class with Leonard Cohen music, please let me know.
So I'm decorating my upstairs temple meditation space to double as a Pilates studio. My Pilates is a meditation, and I am thinking of designing a Pilates class for magicians. I'm getting carpets and candles and pillows and blankets. The blankets are just for decoration. I'm really excited about it.
Food is going well. Today my best friend brought in one of his homemade burritos, which I ate and counted as 600, but then later he and Susie wanted to go out to lunch and I went with them to be social but ate nothing. Amazing how easy it is to not eat when you're not hungry. Compulsion-ology. I've spent years studying the compulsion. To eat, to drink, to have sex, to fulfill all those biological urges that may or may not be convenient. I've found that exercising choice and control over when and how and with what or whom I satisfy them makes the eventual release, the inevitable moment when I eat my organic cottage cheese or make love to my blue eyed angel so much sweeter, so much more powerful than the experience of simply shoveling in whatever to satisfy the craving, as though the craving in itself were life and death. Deferred gratification is not death: it's an expression of confidence that you will eventually get all you need. The difference between us, human conscious CR practitioners, and the animals in the experiments, is that we know for sure we will feed ourselves, when we so choose. We can choose to wait because we're not afraid of starvation. We can eat less because we know that the famine our bodies have been programmed to survive just isn't going to happen. There is no famine, there is no reason to be afraid of starving to death. Satisfaction is always just around the corner, but the act of waiting, of moderating, or eating as little as possible has rewards far beyond just eating whatever, whenever.
Not to say that I do this all the time. Lately I've eaten too much, been out too much, exercised so much that my hungry muscles cry out for food and I ate a cup of my chick pea chili and a half cup of cottage cheese last night before bed. Perhaps I am working out too much. At the moment I need the clarity that I feel in my body, and it's worth a few extra calories. Once I'm done losing weight and calorie stable, I may cut back my exercise. At the moment I'm just reconnecting with my body and I need the Pilates binge... I love to sit in the V-sit pose and do scissor legs until I get bored. The end of my Leonard Cohen ab workout involves a version of the V-sit with scissor legs and it gets harder with every chord.
I've always had an addictive personality: can it be any surprise that I've gotten addicted to Pilates?
Now I'm going to hit the floor and work out to some Anjani and Leonard Cohen till bed time.
Y'all are welcome to come to my class!
Posted by april at February 26, 2008 6:47 PM
Comments
April,
I love this post. Its inspirational on so many levels. I love your explanation of choice, gratification, and compulsion. Your strength and dedication in all of your pursuits (whether or not you happen to be in a period of strict or ad lib CR) are uplifting. I am sorry you are ill and hope you are on the mend soon. Do you ever eat raw garlic when you are sick? I've cured many sickly little indy rock boys on the road with raw garlic, and then had to avoid them like the plague due to their odor.
Anyway, keep up the fight. I will to.
I have that addictive personality as well. I think as long as we avoid gambling and heroin we'll be okay.
love, Amanda from DC
Posted by: Amanda at March 1, 2008 4:19 PM