Month: September 2020

fitness

Planning for a fit-distanced winter

fieldpoppy8 Comments

Susan and I were at her cottage on the weekend, and Saturday and Sunday were those perfect last-of-summer days: breakfast on the deck, dog walks in the forest, a beautiful crisp rolly bike ride. (BTW, all those hills on my tiny bike on Salt Spring? Built me some muscles all right).

But then Monday morning, Labour Day? September 7? It was still dark when we woke up, and it was dreary and rainy. We did Alex’ virtual superhero workout (I used a log as a kettlebell for single leg deadlifts and as a thing to hop over), and then went for a soaking wet, chilly dog walk in the now-muddy woods.

When I got back to the cottage, I hit PURCHASE on something I’ve been hemming and hawing over for months: a bowflex spin bike.

Tuesday evening, when my outdoor spinning class was moved inside because of rain, and my yoga in the park was canceled, I knew I’d made the right choice.

Throughout the summer, I’ve been loving outdoor spinning, and I just discovered the wonky brilliance of yoga in the park with my favourite studio, Chi Junky. (Go buy a fun mask, a tshirt or some of their virtual classes — they are awesome and they are really struggling to stay afloat). I’m running, and riding my bike, and just being happy to be outside moving around.

But. Winter is Coming. And I feel like we are all holding our collective breath about what is going to be okay about gathering inside, where, and in what communities. I won’t rehash all of those conversations here — all I know is that I have too many vulnerable people in my life for it to be a responsible choice to go breathe heavily in an enclosed space right now. So I’m outside, or in my house. And outside is rapidly becoming Not So Appealing.

Last spring, I was okay with my basic at home set up — a few random weights, a skipping rope, Alex and YWA on the zoom, a selection of yoga and workout mats. Over time, I’ve added to my stash, and last week, I finally cleared out the antique trunk I use as a coffee table to put some of the gear out of view. (The story of clearing out that trunk could be a book — it was stuffed with letters and other paper from the 80s and 90s, from a time when the highly verbal people in my world sent handwritten letters in the mail constantly. So much overwritten romantic devotion and division, friendship, working out of what it means to be an adult. A program from the 1991 Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, a 1994 price list for Wild Women Expeditions. Some truly puzzling letters of the “who the hell is Cheryl?” variety. A few treasures, like letters from my dead grandparents and father. Stats and medals from my long-dead marathon career. Most of it now trashed or recycled, a tiny few things tucked away).

Now I have a basket of weights (two heavier kettlebells on order), and a good set up for strength and stretching and agility. But the shorter light and long workdays mean any fast, hard movement will be in the dark chill. And I’m… not good with that. I have this thing that when it’s dark, I want to corkscrew myself into a tiny home-hugging ball, audio books and jigsaws. (Remember April, all that homecooking and puzzle doing?)

So I’ve been thinking about getting some kind of spinning bike for months. Sam is an aficionado of using her real bike on a trainer, and we all know she’s a Zwift devotee. But I’m cautious about that. To start with, I’m not a racer — I love spinning, but competing with other people leaves me cold. And while many people feel perfectly fine about sticking their bikes on a trainer, it makes me feel anxious. My road bike is 13 years old, and I love it more than any other non-living being I’ve ever had a relationship with. Specialized — its maker — is wishy washy on whether trainers are a good idea. It fits me perfectly and is, as one mechanic once marveled, “in that sweet spot of early carbon frames with super simple mechanisms.” I like it that way, and I don’t want to do anything that might disrupt its perfection.

So once I ruled out the trainer, I was left with a decision about spinning type bikes. I missed the chance to buy one relatively cheaply when my studio sold off a bunch from a second location, but their bikes — while robust and wonderful — have a pretty big footprint anyway. And I don’t have a lot of space. But as I said to someone else, I have even less space for a mental health collapse — if we are going to have another mostly distanced winter, I need to sweat. Or I can’t balance everything else in my life.

I briefly paused on the idea of a Peloton, but quickly wafted past it. Just before the lockdown, I stayed in a random hotel for a political leadership convention that happened to have a peloton bike. I tried it, and it left me a little cold — the classes were … okay, but I found the bike a bit flimsy, and had a really hard time getting it the video working with my headphones. It was fussy and annoying, and certainly didn’t make me want to start worshipping at the church of Peloton.

But I did like the footprint. So I did some research, and asked some people some questions, and had this Bowflex C6 in my cart for nearly a week. Until I woke up on a dreary, rainy, chilly Labour Day Monday and thought, s**t just got real. I need this.

So I ordered it. It connects to my ipad or phone, and I can do zwift, virtual classes from my studio, peloton classes if I give into that or just plain ride. It was half the price of a peloton, and a nice person will come and assemble it for me for an extra fee. I’m supposed to get it in early October.

I’m hoping I will find myself wondering: “why the heck did I buy this thing?! I keep tripping on it as I run out the door to the gym or to spinning class!”

But just in case I don’t, it will be taking up space in my office, ready for me to hop on. How are you hedging your bets for winter fitness?

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede, who is looking out the window in Toronto and sighing.

Woman sitting on a beach blanket at the beach, meditating. Finding a sitting posture during meditation: an experimental process
fitness · meditation

Finding a sitting posture during meditation: an experimental process

catherine w3 Comments

I’ve been doing daily meditation since July 13. It’s something I’m really happy about– I get to experience a lot of different emotions and sensations, and also a make some space to abide with them, as it were.

Below the neck, there are also issues to deal with in meditation, namely, how to sit. The aim isn’t maximum comfort, but rather stability, alertness and sustainability. To meditate, you need to be able to sit quietly, in a still way, for anywhere from 1 minute to an hour or more at a time.

These days my sitting periods are 10–20 minutes. That’s long enough for my knee to start aching, my foot to fall asleep, or my hands to want to change position. There’s no rule that says you can’t move during meditation (well, some meditation practices do have those rules and for reasons, but that’s not what I’m talking about here). In fact, one of my meditation teachers told us during an all-day workshop that if a foot or leg starts to fall asleep, feel free to adjust subtly. Good.

But, the question remains: how should one sit for optimal meditation performance?

Woman in a full lotus pose, legs crossed and sitting on opposite thighs. Totally not required.

The image above is one of the ways to sit in meditation, but there are lots of others. I’ve tried all of them, and make use of them depending on how I’m feeling, where I am, what time of day it is, and what else I’ve done that day. Below are some positions to check out.

In a chair. Sometimes this feels better than sitting on the floor, and works when floor space is limited (or there are dogs/cats about!)
  • Against a wall. Sitting crossed legged with back support.
    Against a wall. Sitting crossed legged with back support.
  • Against a wall. Sitting with legs outstretched, maybe on a blanket, with back support.
    Against a wall. Sitting with legs outstretched, maybe on a blanket, with back support.
Kneeling (hero pose, which I totally can't do), with support between knees (I still can't do it, but others like it).
Kneeling (hero pose, which I totally can’t do), with support between knees (which I still can’t do, but others like it).

The next two poses are pretty standard seated poses, both of which I like:

  • Easy pose-- seated crossed-legged, often on a cushion or pillow.
    Easy pose– seated crossed-legged, often on a cushion or pillow.
  • Burmese position (new term for me)-- seated with knees bent, feet crossed. I like this seated on a bolster.
    Burmese position (new term for me)– seated with knees bent, feet crossed. I like this seated on a bolster.

And then there’s the lotus family. Not comfortable for me, but they are for many others.

  • Quarter lotus-- seated, legs crossed with one foot on calf.
    Quarter lotus– seated, legs crossed with one foot on calf.
  • Half lotus-- seated, legs crossed and one foot on thigh.
    Half lotus– seated, legs crossed and one foot on thigh.
  • Full lotus– seated, legs crossed, both feet on opposite thighs.

Thanks to this website for all the nice pictures of meditation postures.

You can also lie down for meditation. I don’t do this often, mainly because I have trouble focusing (read I get too sleepy) lying down. But YMMV, and again, experimenting is good.

Lying down meditation. I use a blanket or pillow under my knees; some use a blanket under the head.

If you’re still here and reading, you may be thinking, okay. But Catherine, which pose really is the best one for meditation?

The answer is: whatever pose helps you to sit long enough to meditate: in a house; with a mouse; in a box, with a fox! Whatever works for you is the right one.

  • Mouse in a house.
    Mouse in a house.
  • Fox in a box.

Readers who meditate or have tried meditation: what positions work for you? Which ones definitely don’t work for you? Have you meditated with a mouse or fox? We’d love to hear from you.

The cover of the book Real Happiness, by Sharon Saltzberg. FIFI Book Club: Real Happiness by Sharon Salzberg, week two–Mindfulness and the Body
Book Club · fitness

FIFI Book Club: Real Happiness by Sharon Salzberg, week two–Mindfulness and the Body

catherine w3 Comments

Hi readers, and welcome to the fourth installment of FIFI book club’s reading of Sharon Salzberg’s book Real Happiness: a 28-Day Program to Realize the Power of Meditation. Each week we’ll offer some reflections as we move through the chapters, and maybe do some of the exercises, too. You are invited to join us, and we’d love to read and respond to any comments you’d like to share.

Last week we blogged here about week one, Concentration. We blogged about Chapter 2: Why Meditate, here. You can read about the intro and chapter 1 here.

This week is week two of meditation practice techniques and exercises, called Mindfulness and the Body. Here are our reflections.

I’ll start today (Catherine).

This chapter is my absolute favorite, even among other meditation books I’ve read. Why? Because it evokes all kinds of sense memories I have: very painful ones (my appendix ruptured when I was 30; that’s a 9.8 on the 10-point pain scale for sure), and also ordinary ones (I noticed this week that I rush like mad through teeth-brushing, so slowed down to see what it was like; answer: more interesting).

Saltzberg is in effect giving us permission to focus on what our bodies feel like when we’re going through our day. And how do they feel? Different from moment to moment. And what does this mean? Nothing much; it’s how bodies work. But, that feels like an enormous relief to me. Experiencing and witnessing non-earthshaking change for 15–20 minutes is having the effect of opening up something, a set of possibilities I’m too timid to identify or hope for. Is the world/my world really less fragile, less endangered, less burdened that I usually (these days) think it is? Dunno. For now, I’ll just continue to sit and walk and breathe and attend to those sensations.

Here’s Mina:

Week Two of this book’s program is about mindfulness and the body. In keeping with the theme, I’ve been listening daily to one of my favourite 20-minute body scan meditations. Yes, I “should” be listening to Sharon Salzberg’s meditations, but I no longer have any way of listening to CD’s and I want what I want, my fave.

Early in the chapter, Salzberg talks about the difference between our direct experience and the add-ons we impose, which cause further suffering; what other Buddhist teachers call the second arrow. Applying that line of thinking to myself—my direct experience is that I’m not following the book’s specific meditations, but I’m avoiding the temptation to add-on, by criticizing myself for my lack of followership, or criticizing myself for not being a compliant book club member.

One of the reasons I’m drawn to my fave is that at the end the meditation teacher asks a series of questions that always intrigue and provoke me in different ways. If I am not this body, who am I? If I am not my emotions, who am I? If I am not my thoughts, who am I? She repeats the questions three times. The fact that she repeats the questions three times is something that took me a long time to realize. My mind would either have drifted before the questions started or it would begin wrestling with the questions and miss their repetition. Over time I’ve gotten more comfortable letting the questions be and noticing what bodily sensations, emotions and thoughts pass across the horizon in response. Some days I feel peaceful and loose. Other days I feel anxious and want to hang on tighter to my body, emotions and thoughts.

Then, after I’d written that paragraph above, I got a real test of the direct experience vs. add-ons. I sprained my right ankle on a run. Badly enough that I am wearing one of those big clunky surgical boots and will not be running (or doing yoga, or my skipping workout, or, or, or) anytime soon. The direct experience is a loss of mobility and freedom. The add-ons I’m struggling with are the enormous frustration of not being able to move how I like in my body and not being able to get my heart rate up in the great outdoors.

My mind’s first impulse is to catastrophize—I’ll never be fit again. I’ll dissolve into a muscle-less worm. Never mind other add-on self-talk in the category of blaming and criticizing myself for the accident.So, my practice at the end of this second week about body and mindfulness, is to notice my instinct to add-on, to be gentle with my body, so it can heal (because I know it will, despite my fears) and to be kinder to myself, because why suffer more than I need to?

Here’s Martha:

This was a curious chapter for me. I spent a fair bit of time in my 30s letting go of negative self talk so as another FIFI book blogger noted, it doesn’t always resonate when Salzberg uses those examples. I am intrigued by mindfulness as a practice as I have several friends and colleagues who use it for self-care. I did like the variety of options to approach mindfulness as the body scan is a common one (I often fall asleep before I get past my neck so I use it to fall asleep sometimes if I’m distracted).

I was challenged to think about the differences between concentration and mindfulness, and I concluded at the end of the chapter the difference is about the level of deliberation. Salzberg describes it quite well in the walking meditation. I’ll probably have to think about these two a lot more in the future as it’s still a little fuzzy for me.

Eighty pages into a 200-page book, and I have come to realize that there are things I do that could qualify as a meditation, but I don’t put myself in that space often enough to see it as a practice. Salzberg notes this in the section on every day activities as meditation, but I can’t see myself using teeth brushing as mindfulness exercise. This chapter more than anything has reminded me how little time I spend being still as I have a need to be always doing. So even though I may find binding a quilt a very mindful exercise, I’m not necessarily sitting with my thoughts in any focused way.

Here’s Tracy:

Week Two, “mindfulness and the body,” took me back to when I did the “Mindfulness Meditation for Stress Relief” course. The main thing we did in that course, for the entire 8 weeks, was a daily body scan. I didn’t see the point but I did it anyway. Now I think the body scan is a great way to learn how to pay attention.

I know I said at the beginning that I would go into the Real Happiness course with “beginner’s mind.” But I confess that I spent the whole week doing the body scan. I skipped the walking meditation (nothing against walking meditations, but I didn’t feel like it). Once I did a guided version (narrated by someone who isn’t Sharon Salzberg) that I found on the Insight Timer app (best app on my phone). The rest of the time I did my usual Vipassana meditation, which is a head to feet and feet to head body scan, paying attention to sensation.

I have wandered away from the daily Vipassana practice, so it felt good to reconnect with it even if for 20 minutes and not the recommended one hour, twice a day. I have nothing much to report about that besides the grounding feeling of doing it daily. Routine, for me, provides a foundation for my life that I definitely feel is missing when I let the structure of routine slide.

The one thing I haven’t done but that I plan still to do is Salzberg’s “everyday activity meditations.” This is where you take something you do all the time and on auto-pilot, and do it mindfully – slowly and with awareness of each part of the movement. It could be brushing your teeth, making your coffee, slicing a tomato, folding your laundry. She suggests a drinking tea meditation, in which “we try to be more fully present with every component of a single activity – drinking a cup of tea.”

I will report back on this next week, but I will admit now that my busy mind is already saying, “when am I going to fit a mindful cup of tea into my day?” I also plan to do Week Two’s “try this: do a task in slo-mo.”Overall, I’m in touch with my body and didn’t find the mindfulness of the body theme to be a bit challenge. I expect that week three, Mindfulness and Emotions, will be a different thing. I am less in tune at times with my emotions and I have lots of feelings these days.

Here’s Christine:

I haven’t meditated in a week.

Last week started off weird with a night of virtually no sleep and I didn’t sleep well for several nights after that. My fledgling self-care plan (journaling, meditation, reading, etc.) fell away bit by bit until, by the end of the week, I found myself using coping strategies (more reactive than proactive) rather than the proactive methods I had been using in the two weeks previous.

It’s not that I didn’t have pockets of time for meditation, it was that I kept thinking I would do it at a ‘better’ time, later. I felt that I had so little attention to give that once I was focused on the work I needed to do, I should keep going for as long as I could in hopes of accomplishing anything at all. (I am not stating this very well, this is not about me needing to feel ‘productive’ per se, it’s about me needing to have some tangible evidence of where my day went. It’s hard to explain.

But even though I didn’t choose meditation, I did choose the kind of self-kindness she advocates throughout everything I have read so far. I didn’t delve into any sort of unpleasant inner monologue, and I reminded myself that I had reasons for feeling so off. I wasn’t hard on myself at all about it.

I did notice, however, that it took a bit of extra effort to avoid what I call ambient anxiety (the sort that kind of floats over you without any immediately discernible origin.) Until that started floating around last week, I hadn’t realized that I had had a bit of a break from it. And, as it occurred, I kept thinking ‘meditation was keeping this away last week’ – I don’t know if that thought is true but it feels that way. It didn’t actually help me move from not meditating to meditating but it gave me some space for reflection.

I’m going to observe and see if this week’s meditation keeps that ambient anxiety at bay. Since I don’t live in a lab and I can’t control most of the factors, my observations won’t be scientific but they will be useful to me.

So, now that I have ‘confessed’ to not meditating, I will also confess to not having read this section about mindfulness until this morning so my thoughts on it will be (fairly) brief.

{By the way, I am so tired of the word mindfulness. I cringe every time I hear or see it because it has been so overused by the type of wellness gurus who thrive on encouraging people to blame themselves when the guru’s advice doesn’t work…”Well, my darling, if you had been truly mindful…” }

I am really intrigued, once again, by her discussions of attention in this section and, shockingly, I have some thoughts:

Previous to reading her discussions about the difference between feeling something in your body and getting caught up in thoughts about that sensation, I think that I believed that getting caught up in the thoughts was part of paying attention to the sensation. This wasn’t a conscious choice, it was kind of automatic – not unlike the thoughts themselves. This is odd because I regularly coach people to step away from that kind of thinking when they are writing, and I make that choice when I am writing or drawing. I’m curious about why I apparently don’t consistently apply it to physical sensations.

Her suggestions about having more meditative moments during the day sound kind of painful for me. Not physically painful, but mentally painful. I have to invest a lot of energy in keeping my attention on my work or on the tasks I have chosen for the day. So, it feels really risky to plan to sink into small tasks like making tea. I feel like I could get very off track very quickly. I’m curious about this, too. Would learning to invest more focus in those moments actually give my brain a break? Or would they lead to me wandering off track for a while after my tea is made?

Given my aversion to the word ‘mindfulness,’ I really enjoyed finding out that you can also refer to it as ‘wise attention.’ I LOVE that idea. Her discussion of how the m-word, or wise attention, helps us to separate our experiences from the thoughts we add to those experiences was really helpful for me.

I guess I am going to be a week ‘behind’ in the meditation practices since I really want to give the ones from this week a try but I won’t be hard on myself about it. I can’t change how last week went and since the overall purpose here is to develop a practice, learning to work around side quests like last week will be useful overall.I will, however, be sure to read Week Three a bit earlier than next Tuesday morning, though.

camping · covid19 · cycling · fitness · snow · winter

Is this the year to try snow biking?

Sam B3 Comments
Sam riding her fat bike on a trail on a sunny winter day

I saw a tweet the other day that made me smile.

https://twitter.com/jennwicks/status/1302382653228879873?s=19

I loved all the snow and the sun and the smiling faces.

We’re going into this winter knowing it’s going to be hard. And I find regular falls challenging. See here and here and here. Oh, and here! It’s a bit of a theme on the blog and in my life. Lol

The reporting about winter in the time of COVID-19 is gloomy and hard to read.

See A Canadian coronavirus winter is looming — and it could ‘amplify loneliness’: “But winter is coming and, according to experts, so too is the accompanying seasonal woes. And this time, it will be “amplified” by the confines of the coronavirus, according to Roger McIntyre, a psychiatrist and professor at the University of Toronto. An epidemic of loneliness long preceded this pandemic. And just by the nature of winter, people are less likely to come in contact with others. It’s a realistic concern.”

Since March, Canadians have been told to stay apart to stop the spread of the virus. The ability to be outdoors has provided safer alternatives to exercise, recreation, commuting and dining, among other things. In the winter, those options will dwindle. Experts have warned the risk of transmission also increases indoors.”

So what’s my plan? Because it’s clear that I am going to need a plan. I’m trying to remind myself of all the things I like about winter. I’m fending off anticipatory sadness with thoughts of snow biking and winter camping.

So far my plan has four parts but the fourth is still a bit sketchy and needs the details filling in. There’s time.

First, more time outside, including winter riding.

Second, I’m bringing home my SAD lamp from my university office and I’m going to use it in my home office.

Third, I’m following Catherine’s advice and getting a small warming fireplace for my deck so I can visit with friends outside even during Canadian winter.

Fourth, I used to joke about Canadians who went south in the winter. The truth is though between riding in Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina for the past number of years (I’m not even going to check to see how many!) I’ve become one of those people. It’s only ever been for a week at a time but this year that won’t happen at all. I’ve already booked some time in a yurt for winter outdoor sports. And I’m still scheming about what else I might do.

Suggestions welcome!

How about you? Are you in a northern climate heading into what looks like a long, lonely winter? How do you plan to keep body and spirit moving?

More of Sam fat biking
cycling · fitness

If only real world cycling had a fence….

Sam B4 Comments

The images above are of a virtual group ride in Zwift. It’s the Sunday afternoon TFC team social ride where we are divided into two groups by pace.

That’s similar to cycling in the real world where clubs often have an A group and B group. My old club in London, Ontario even had a C group. There’s an advertised pace for these groups and since C starts last it’s the no-drop ride. We often picked up people dropped by the faster groups.

In Zwift it’s done by watts per kilo. Here I’m riding with the sub 2.5 watts per kilo group. My ego feels the need to tell you that I can ride with the faster group and have done so in the past but it doesn’t feel like a social, recovery ride. I’m kind of working hard at the back of the pack. Often real world cycling groups specify an average pace. In Guelph Speed River Cycling describes their rides as “leisurely,” “moderate,” and “advanced” where advanced is averaging 29-31 km/hr and leisurely is 25-27 km/hr and moderate is in the middle.

So that’s the way things are supposed to work. But we all know that sometimes, in the cycling world, the advertised pace isn’t the actual pace. You show up for a group ride where you know you can keep up with pace they say they’ll ride but instead they are all speedy and zoomy and you’re either being left behind or exhausted struggling to keep up. Ugh. Often, though not always, this behavior is gendered. It’s not a race, guys.

There’s a fix for this problem in Zwift and it’s called The Fence.

The Fence sits out in front–see above–like a sheer, red band. Go faster than the group leader and eventually you’ll run into the fence.

There’s also the stern warning, “Return to group!”

I got close to it in this ride so I could share some pictures of it with you.

Here’s a video about how it works.

The etiquette of the group rides is that you don’t speed off the front and make others chase you. Inevitably it splits up the group as some struggle to keep up while others pursue the faster riders. In the real world there’s yelling, “ease up” for example.

In Zwift there’s the fence. I’m a fan

fitness · holidays · rest

Labour Day: Celebrating What We Gain From Working Together and Prioritizing Rest

Kim Solga2 Comments

Happy Labour Day! If you’re reading this morning from Canada or the US, you know exactly what today marks: the unofficial end of summer and the start of the “new” year (for all students, parents, teachers, and anyone like me who worships autumn).

You might not know, though, that Labour Day has been an official holiday since 1892 in the US, and 1894 in Canada, and that it traces its roots to 1872 Toronto, where a mass printer’s strike achieved legal protections for unions and marked a huge step toward entrenching labour rights for working class citizens.

(This image shows a brown forearm and fist clutching a brown wrench; the text reads Happy Labour Day 2020. “Labour Day” is 1 May; it’s also 7 September. Huh!)

Labour Day, in other words, is a day of rest that celebrates the recognition that rest is essential for the human body – so that it can be more productive, so that it can be healthier, so that it can be happier, and also so that the humans connected to it can be healthy and happy too.

Lines of music showing the note and rest notations for whole, half, and quarter notes. Musicians know exactly what rest looks like!!

I was thinking about all of this yesterday, when I decided to pass up the chance to go on a solo bike ride under near-perfect weather conditions in order to play tennis with my partner D instead. He adores tennis (and is really good at it – I am not) but doesn’t yet do long-distance cycling, so a solo ride would have taken me away from him for a good three hours on a rare Sunday together. Moreover, D doesn’t get a lot of chances to play tennis with a partner (however unskilled). I knew it meant a lot to him to play on this glorious day, and I wanted to share that with him. I also wondered if perhaps NOT riding would do my body some good; a change, when it comes to fitness, can be as good as a rest, after all, since different muscles get stretched and worked and your body and brain can enjoy learning something new.

Tennis is the kind of sport that, however intensely competitive players may be, really requires working together. If you offer up a bad serve, the rally won’t ever get going; if you don’t think about landing the ball somewhere that your partner can play it, ditto. For me, right now as I learn, a lot of tennis is about just figuring out how to return the ball, period; that means that D also has to be supportive and kind in his returns, hitting me balls I can play rather than the fast, hard balls he would send the way of a more skilled and agile player.

Serena Williams, in black, in full flight. The media loves to give Serena grief about not being a “team player”, but that’s mostly racist, misogynist BS. To be a competitive athlete at the highest levels means working with your partner even while you play hard against them.

Here, too, my tennis adventure connects with a core principle we celebrate on Labour Day: the power of collective action. Anyone who plays team sports knows how essential it is to play with and for one’s mates, as opposed to for one’s own gain; the latter might win some games but it will never win the long haul. In any sport that includes others, however – racket sports; group cycling; canoe adventuring; even marathons or triathlons – it’s equally important to be aware of and attentive to the needs of those around us, because our achievements are measured in the small ways we help each other to excel, to be our best selves on the court or on the road or in the pool.

Taking care of one another’s needs, knowing that we might need the same courtesy at any moment, is fundamental to the ethos of all sport, and this ethos is one of the reasons sport is such an immense character-building opportunity for people young and old.

The same is true of life out in the regular world, though. Working together, for one another, knowing that we all benefit that way, makes all our lives better. Together we have the power to stand up to injustice, to stand up for fairness, and to raise our voices together in order to ask for the concessions we need in order to live our best lives. This is why socialized medical care is a massive success around the world, and why nations like New Zealand, with a strong commitment to equity and fairness, have weathered the pandemic incredibly well. It is also one of the reasons that protest movements – like the kind we have seen these past few months in support of Black Lives Matter, in the wake of the deaths of ordinary human beings like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor – quickly gather speed and catch our attention. Humans thrive by working together for common causes, and despite our differences. Differences are as natural as shared human need; we benefit from recognizing the former even as we join forces to meet the latter, every single time.

White and black and brown hands, seen from above, joined together in a circle. Working together means recognizing and acknowledging the importance of differences even while we share common goals.

We talk a lot on the blog about the importance of resting our bodies to build and consolidate strength; we also talk a lot (and feel strongly!) about what it means to be in this together, a team working toward our feminist fitness goals, even when those goals are individual ones. Resting, and celebrating our community, is a big part of our blog ethos; it’s also a Labour Day ethos.

This autumn marks a choice point for the nation that brought us Labour Day under President Grover Cleveland in 1892. It’s worth reflecting on this Labour Day 2020 about what it will take in the years ahead to return America to a place where shared human needs are addressed by shared (not divisive) social vision, where rest is valued by and for all – not just for the richest and most powerful among us.

Readers, how are you spending your Labour Day? Let us know.

Keep calm. There's an app for that. Meditation apps: a non-systematic survey
mindfulness · technology

Meditation apps: a non-systematic survey

catherine w5 Comments

Our lives would be very different if we didn’t have smartphones apps to occupy our time and attention. They help keep us on track with schedules of waking, working, taking breaks, moving, eating, playing games, shopping, and all the other things that comprise our daily routines.

A world inside a phone: the app.

But what about when we want to be still, stopping all those activities or distractions? Worry not, there’s an app for that, too.

Some of the many apps for meditation out there in phone-land.

I’ve added and deleted loads of meditation or chill-out/relaxation apps over the past years. Once the novelty wore off, I would move on to something else, or more likely just revert to my default non-mindfulness routine.

In July, when I restarted a daily meditation practice, I found myself looking for guidance and accountability to help me make sitting a habit. Apps can be great for this– they track your sessions over time and the time you spend each session. They also tend to offer a variety of guided meditations of different lengths and for different times of day and different purposes. Apps are nothing if not extensive in their offerings. Here are some I’ve tried and what I think about them.

  1. For many years, I’ve used old-fashioned recordings of guided meditations by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction programs. I just discovered: there’s an app for that! The series is available on Google Play for $10 each–look up JKZ series 1, 2, and 3. I use series 1 often, but the others provide that variation I was talking about.
I still own the 4-CD set of these meditations by Jon Kabat-Zinn. They’re the Chanel suit of guided meditations.

2. Meditation Oasis is one of the OGs of the meditation app world. It started as a podcast and expanded to apps, each focusing on a specific purpose of meditation, like sleep or stress/anxiety reduction. One crucial feature of any meditation app is the voice, and I happen to like Mary Maddux– she is calm but also sounds like a real person. You can add in sounds or music to the background, which I’ve enjoyed from time to time. There are individual apps or bundles that range in price from $3 to $12.

A bundle of apps from Meditation Oasis. Not fancy illustrations or features, but very solid content.

3. The newest app that I’ve added to my meditation routine is 10 Percent Happier, which is a book and a podcast and a blog and an app. Dan Harris is the author of the book (which I haven’t read, but hear good things about). He has brought together a group of some of the best English-language meditation teachers and created a one-stop shopping mall of secular meditations for many aspects of modern life. There’s a coronavirus section, a section for busy parents, and other areas that we care and worry about. I use this app every day– mostly before bed (I do a different meditation in the morning). However, it’s expensive– $100 for a year’s subscription. Yeah. That’s a lot. For me, it’s worth it. There are courses, lectures, and a lot of top-quality content. Can you get great content without paying $100? Oh yes, for sure. But this is an excellent resource if you don’t mind the price.

I like the simplicity of this icon. And it looks like it’s smirking.

4. On the advice of a friend who loves it, I tried Calm, which bills itself as the #1 app for meditation and sleep. Like 10 percent happier, it is very professionally done and has loads of content from a lot of meditation teachers and writers. One thing Calm has that the other apps I’ve tried don’t have is a large selection of bedtime stories. These “sleep stories” are “soothing tales that mix music, sound fx and incredible voice talent to help you drift into dreamland” says Calm. It also has meditations, body scans, video of calm nature scenes with sound, classes, and (as they say) much, much more.

So (as they say), how much would you pay for this? The regular price is $70 a year, but when I clicked on the links, it offered me $42– such a deal!

I did a 7-day free trial (10 percent happier offers a free trial, too), but ended up not buying it. The sleep stories were nice, but I found myself too interested in them to fall asleep. I was really more interested in a meditation-focused app, not a sleep or stress reduction app. But YMMV– a lot of people love Calm. And it’s certainly got all the bells and whistles you would want.

Simple icon, complex world of Calm inside.

5. Finally, there’s one of my favorite stand-by meditation apps: Buddhify. First of all, the name is awesome. Second, it’s cheap– $4.99 for the phone or tablet app. Third, it’s so pretty:

Just looking at this color wheel, opening like a fan, makes me happy.
Just looking at this color wheel, opening like a fan in the app, makes me happy.

Buddhify has the usual varied content, with different voices leading you through a guided meditation. Their approach seems very personable to me; the recordings are part meditation guidance and part therapeutic/friendly reassurance. This is my go-to app when I’m really having trouble sleeping, as I find those voices and words soothing in addition to grounding.

I just saw that Buddhify has an expanded version for $30/year. Here’s one of the features:

Karaoke and meditation together in one app? Done!
Karaoke and meditation together in one app? Done!

Wow. I never thought I’d see the words “karaoke” and “meditation” together in one sentence. But I’m liking it. Maybe not enough to buy the membership, but it’s undeniably cool.

My very unsystematic review has barely scratched the surface of meditation apps. But I hope it offers you some information if you’re looking to get started.

Dear readers: have you used any of these apps? What did you think? Do you have other recommendations? I’d love to hear about them.

dogs · Sat with Nat · walking

Nat on outsourcing motivation

natalieh (she/her)

Recommended Soundtrack: I wanna be your dog by The Stooges

I’m not great on making a training plan and sticking with it. When it comes to activity I’m more a go-along with whatever folks are up for. Yoga? Sure! Cycling? Yup! Walk? Uh-huh!

So when my beloved decided he wanted to up our step count when walking our dog, Lucy, I agreed. I offered that we could add 1 block to all our walks, short coffee break and our typical 30 minute morning, lunch & evening walks.

It totally worked. In August my average step count jumped from under 7,200 to 11,500. Partly this is because as Lucy gets older she can go on longer walks. The other part is my beloved’s joy in counting and metrics. He really loves hitting goals.

One night, after dinner and a glass of wine, he asked if we could go for another walk. He hadn’t hit 10,000 steps. I pointed out that 10,000 was an arbitrary goal. He laughed and shouted “Join me in meetng this arbitrary goal! Achievement is as meaningless as the goal BUT IT IS ALL WE HAVE!”

Of course he was being overly dramatic. Many times our common goals are based on best guesses and gut feels. I’m not much for tracking metrics or goals so I’ve happily handed over all of that to my partner. He’s a greyhound who needs a rabbit to chase.

The other being I’ve outsourced my motivation to is our resident gremlin, Lucy. She, like Gollum, both loves and hates our walks. She needs the movement but would rather do high intensity frisbee intervals than walk. But she’d rather walk than lay about.

Lucy, the wonder dog, sits attentively watching the photographer who may gift her with walksies or treats.

I find I don’t have the cognitive or emotional depth for self discipline but I can say “yes” to the asks for walks. Like the dog, I’m just along for the ride these days and I am 100% ok with surrendering to the process.

What do you do to stay motivated to keep moving?

fitness

Fall fitness goals

marthafitat551 Comment

Fall is my favourite time of year. There’s often no humidity to deal with. The temperature is pleasant and the wind is manageable. I like to walk in the fall — it gives me a chance to see the changing landscape and to think about what my plans are for the year ahead. (The calendar may say January is the start of the new year, but in my head and heart, the new year always begins now.)

I usually like to walk with purpose — let’s go from Point A to Point B and collect the mail, or get some milk, or feed the ducks. This past summer, quite a number of my friends started virtual challenges: crossing the province, walking the Camino in Spain, traversing South America.

It’s similar to Fitbit’s equating various steps achieved to having walked all of London’s tube network, or crossed the Sahara desert. Unlike Fitbit, the virtual challenges are set before you start out, instead of being award after the fact.

Given that travel is still a no go option for me, I have thought about choosing one of these challenges as a way to travel virtually with minimal risk and (hopefully) maximum benefit (yay!).

I’ve discovered over the past few years of consistently training that I like things explained or set up visually. I can remember exercises or movements if I associate them with a creature or a place.

Consequently, I can act like a sphinx, a pelican, or a tree one day and the next I’m waving my arms like Spiderman throwing webs all over the place or I am carrying all the groceries in one go for my farmer’s walk. When it comes to deadlifting, I have balanced seals, mountain lions and a few deer for excitement.

The appeal of a virtual walking challenge is that I have a goal (beyond getting the mail or milk). So I’m checking out a few apps, many of which can be synced to my Fitbit. I can be on my own or I can join a team. There are lots of options — do I want to walk the Ring of Kerry, hike along Hadrian’s Wall, or follow in the steps of ancestors along the Camino?

I’ll let you know next month. Have any of you tried these challenges? let us know in the comments.

MarthaFitat55 lives and walks in St. John’s .

cycling · Guest Post · running · swimming · triathalon

Why Will Writing Make You a Better Triathlete? Or Ten Maxims of Writing for My Students (Guest post)

Sam B3 Comments

by Şerife Tekin

I turned 40 last Friday. To celebrate my efforts to become a triathlete in my late 30s I went to the beautiful Canyon Lake with a super-triathlete friend. With no actual race or scheduled event in sight due to pandemic, we executed our very own choose-your-own-adventure triathlon. We swam for 40 minutes, rode our bikes on high hills for 40 minutes and ran for 40 minutes. I would have never considered waking up at 4am and pushing hard nonstop for two hours a kind of celebration but, hey, maybe that was what 40s were for. I suffered with so much joy. It was the fittest I’ve ever felt; I could have probably gone for another round of 40+40+40 (after having snacks!)

How come it felt easy and fun even though triathlons are still so new for me? Two reasons: First, the foundational triathlon training program prepared by my awesome coach and my ability to stick with it thanks to pandemic’s side effect of no travelling. Since March, all my work-related trips (averaging 2 per month) were cancelled and I stayed put with a solid uninterrupted time to dedicate to my research, writing, and training. The second reason was me discovering that triathlon training and writing have so much in common. Since March, I have also been thinking about the graduate course I was going to be teaching this Fall, on Philosophical Research and Writing. As I contemplated on my own research and writing process to find the best way to pitch the course to my students, I realized how much in common (academic) writing and triathlon training have. I started transferring my attitude to writing to my training. Triathlon training, just like writing, I realized, involves a lot of suffering and joy. Here are the ten maxims that have been working for me; perhaps they will work for you too!

1. Do a bit everyday

Noone ever wakes up one day to find themselves transformed into a strong athlete or a prolific writer. It takes a lot of consistency. Develop a routine and do a little bit of writing/training each day.

My habit of writing by using the Pomodoro Technique – in 25-minute chunks – served me well in my tri-athletic endeavors. Even when I don’t feel like writing (I almost never do!) I convince myself to do it just for 25 minutes. Most of the time that one 25-minute chunk turns into 4 or 5 because I eventually start enjoying it. Similarly, I started taking a look at the training I have for the day and dividing it into 25-minute chunks. It helped me overcome the mental obstacle of say, having to run 70 minutes in the summer heat of Texas: It was only two chunks of 25 minutes with a 10 minute warm up and 10 minute cool down.

2. Track your progress

Tracking your progress enables you to celebrate small victories or think about what you can do to improve. In other words, don’t wait to finish the project you are working on to celebrate – your dissertation is not going to be done in four Pomodoro sessions. Instead, give credit to how much time and work you’ve already put into it. As a bit of a productivity technology junkie, I use an app called “forest” to track my writing time; after each 25 minutes the app plants a tree. It is so fun to see a forest emerge out of nothingness. Similarly, it is motivating and sobering to see how many hours per week I spent running, biking, and swimming on my smart watch and Strava.

3. Don’t worry about perfection; allow yourself be awful.

Accept that every day is going to be different. Sometimes you spend eight Pomodoro sessions just writing random sentences with no sense, logical coherence, or whatsoever; sometimes you pump out a well-argued paper in just four. Similarly, sometimes (often!) running sucks all the life out of me; everything hurts, I am short of breath even after 10 minutes. I learned to accept the pain and carry on. As my coach always says, it will always hurt, regardless of how fast you can go; even the elite athletes suffer. Just plow forward. You need to be really bad at it before you can be good at it. If you need more inspiration listen to Ira Glass on storytelling.

4. Read or foam-roll if you feel stuck.

Sometimes, you just can’t write, you are stuck. After hiding under your blanket with your eyes tightly closed having a panic attack (this is a very typical process for me when I start a new project), get up, wash your face and read. Just relaxing into reading will help get back to writing. I think the reading-equivalent of triathlon training is foam-rolling; when everything hurts and I “can’t even…” anymore I get on the foam roll, it relaxes my muscles as they get stronger.

5. Rest. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.

Take at least one day off per week. Get enough sleep. Take naps. Eat. These all fuel your writing and training. Always keep snacks around.

6. Balance between sprint and endurance workouts.

Sometimes work on multiple projects simultaneously in one day: 25 minutes for that article revision, 25 minutes for that conference abstract, etc. Make sure to also work on a single project for a long time in a given day, such as your dissertation or book. Endurance writing is necessary for big projects. Similarly, do multiple sports in one day (combining cycling and swimming in a day is always a good idea; or a bike-run brick) while training but make sure to do one long session per week on one of the three sports.

7. Enjoy solitude

Get comfortable being alone, in your head, for hours at a time, both for writing and triathlon training. Yes, you need to spend time, writing, by yourself. That is the only way you improve. Similarly, you need to run, ride, swim, by yourself, for hours at a time, to make progress. It will get uncomfortable at times, be ok with it.

8. Find your peeps

Yes, you need peeps. You need them to feel inspired and motivated but you also need them for the honest and sometimes brutal feedback they will give you. Get comfortable with sharing your work with your peers, supervisors, or anonymous referees and receiving feedback. You might hate it at first but taking the feedback seriously will make you a better writer. I love receiving feedback; someone took the time to challenge you, that’s just so precious! Similarly, get comfortable training with other people and getting feedback on how you are doing. You might be the slowest in the group (I often am!), or you might have no idea about the technicalities they are talking about, but listen, learn, enjoy. Try to incorporate their recommendations into your training.

9. Listen to yourself but not too much.

Listening to yourself is a double edge sword: acknowledging how you are stuck in your writing or you really don’t have time because you have to fulfill x,y,z, responsibilities are important; you can work on addressing these so that you can dedicate time to writing. But don’t always believe yourself– these thoughts might be your mind making up excuses to avoid the discomfort of writing. When you feel this way, go back to advice number 1, do it for 25 minutes. Similarly, while training, listen to yourself: if your knee is stabbing in pain, be sure to skip the run that day, but maybe try to drag yourself out of bed and go for your run-meet even when you really feel like sleeping in.

10. Showcase your progress

Whether submitting a conference paper or sending articles to journals for publication, get out there and see how you do. You will learn a lot and make solid progress. Similarly, do races or group events once in a while to see how much you’ve improved and what else you can do to push your limits.

Şerife Tekin is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Medical Humanities at UTSA. When she is not moving around she can be found petting her kitty cat Cortez. Her website is www.serifetekin.com,