Tag: streak

Lying to Myself About Meditation
habits · meditation · mindfulness · WOTY

Lying to Myself About Meditation

MinaLeave a comment

Monday morning. May 8th 2023. I wake up after an unusually restful night of sleep. I know I got up to the bathroom once. Other than that, I have no recollection of sleepless restlessness, which is not the norm for me these last many months. The first thing I notice is the fading rose of the light on the buildings out my window, soft and clear. I am surprised the day is here. I check my iPad for the time. It’s on the bedside table. Reading a novel (on the kindle app on my iPad) in bed as I fall asleep is one of my life’s pleasures.

And, in that moment, reaching for the time, I realize this: I did not meditate yesterday. Horror! How could I have forgotten?

I comb back through the day. It was not my typical Sunday. To start with, I didn’t get into bed until 4:00 am. I was taking part in a big group photo shoot organized by some friends, which didn’t start until past midnight. That same morning, I stayed longer in bed than usual … waiting until the moment before I needed to leave for my 5 Rhythms group at noon. I left my iPad out in a particular location to remind myself to meditate when I got back. But not with a note, as I often do, if I don’t meditate first thing in the morning.

That was May 7th. My cousin’s birthday. He was born 4 days before me. It would have been 1617 days of meditation in a row. 617 days since the last day of the first in-person visit with my mother after pandemic.

My streak!!?? I couldn’t lose my meditation streak, too! Enough with the loss already (I won’t get into the details—I’ve written about them the last couple of months.)

I recalled that while I was lying in bed Sunday morning, I had thought to myself, maybe 5 Rhythms will be my meditation today. After all, Gabrielle Roth, who developed the technique, called it a moving mediation. Still, if I’m honest, I wasn’t thinking about that anymore when I got to the studio. I was just inside my body, inside the dance. So, did it count if I hadn’t thought to myself, in the moment, this is my meditation?

I’ve been meditating daily for more than 4 years now, and I have adjusted my expectations and the form my meditation can take several times. For example, when I started, I required of myself a minimum of 20 minutes. After a month, I relaxed into any amount of time counting, so long as I sat down intentionally. My meditations now are most commonly 10 minutes long. Another requirement was that I be seated—a cushion or a chair (airplane seats count) or a patch of grass. Just seated, you get the picture. Then, about six months ago, when life got especially challenging, I began to relax the seated requirement and relaxed into lying down meditation. Sometimes (often on days when I’ve woken up super early or am having trouble motivating myself to get out of bed), I start my day with a meditation in bed. 

So, I am not averse to adjusting my meditation habits over time. And, I’ve never made the adjustment unconsciously. And, I’ve never included a moving meditation in my streak, at least not before May 7th. And, I do think it’s appropriate to count 5 Rhythms as a meditation, though I’d probably feel differently if it was the only form of daily meditation I practiced every day, which is how I feel about lying down meditation, too. Yes, at times the system of rules and regulations and definitions of what counts and what doesn’t inside my head verge on the Kafkaesque. For example, I don’t count riding around town on a bike as my workout, but I’ve also realized that it is a factor that needs to inform the workout I choose to do on a day when I’ll be riding around town a lot.

Which brings me back to my immediate problem on May 8th—what should I do about the meditation streak?

First, I decided to meditate, with the intention to notice what was coming up around the issue. Then, I thought, why bother? You’re just fooling yourself. You’re back to zero. You won’t get back into the 1600s on a new streak until you’re into your sixties. Suck it up. I sat down to meditate anyway. I considered whether there was a freedom in not being on the streak anymore. I’ve got a number of new, unasked for and unwanted, freedoms in my life. I don’t want more of these types of freedoms.

These thoughts crowded my mind: I have deep expertise in the field of being hard on myself, maybe this was not the moment? But if I follow that logic, was I at risk of being too gentle? What long time discipline would I cheat on next? If I decided to count 5 Rhythms, was I lying to myself? What would I lie to myself about next? A rabbit hole of dire possibilities yawned open.

Then, as if switch flipped, my mind quieted and I heard, count it. Add the session into your log. The streak motivates you If after a few days, you feel like a lying, cheating fraud, you can always take it out.

Well, it’s been more than a week now. When I look at my streak count, which is, as I type this (on Friday May 19, is 1628, I feel no remorse. I’ve come clean here about my streak. That’s enough. No public hanging required. I will continue on with my streak.

That last sentence was supposed to be the end of this post. My intention was to let the writing sit over the weekend and come back to polish the next week.

…

Except.

…

Saturday morning. May 20th 2023. I finish my run and decide to meditate outdoors. It’s only then that I realize, holy fucking shit, I did not meditate on Friday. The very day I was writing my first draft of this post, I forgot to meditate. Again. And this time, there was no 5 Rhythms waiting in the wings to save me. I was stunned. Was this the universe punishing me because I was lying to myself about my meditation streak with my 5 Rhythms fiddle? I sat down to meditate on my new streak-less reality. As I listened to the wind in the trees and breathed the breeze, waves of grief, followed by waves of jubilation rocked through my body. Each wave swelling into the space of the receding wave, as grief rolled into jubilation rolled into grief. For everything that’s been happening. When I finished my meditation, I was shaken. And I accepted. No, more than that, I welcomed what was. That was my word of the year, here was a reminder of the practice. I was not being punished or tested or whatever. I was living and doing the best I can. Later that day I bought a bottle of champagne to share with the friends I was having dinner with. To celebrate the ongoing deconstruction of my life.

This was the quote on my Insight Timer app on the day I realized that I’d forgotten to meditate. It felt like a message addressed to me rather directly. And the other image is my welcome to what now is.

I’m on day 4 of my new streak today. Or so Insight Timer tells me. And I don’t intend to streak for the time being. I will take the days as they come. 

fitness · Guest Post · holiday fitness · running

60 Days of Streaking (Guest Post)

Sam B2 Comments

By Stephanie Keating

60 days ago, I wanted to shake up my relationship with running, which had fallen into a bit of a rut.

I used to run a great deal, but after my second ultramarathon (which took place in May 2018), I struggled with setting new goals. This was problematic, because I’m highly goal motivated. I didn’t feel I could make improvements on my pace, and wasn’t ready or willing to commit to running distances longer than 50 km. Over the past couple of years, my running went from consistent training for some race or another to doing a lacklustre 5 km a week or so.

To change things up, I decided on something very simple: a run streak of at least one mile (1.6 kilometres) per day for at least 30 days.



I put the idea to some friends, several of whom joined in, either to do the minimum mile or mixing in other sports with the goal of consistent daily commitment and progress. After the first 30 days, I felt like I was getting a lot out of the process, so I decided to continue.

Streaking took a lot of thinking out of the equation for me. I always knew that I would run; the only questions I had to answer were when and how far. A mile does not seem like much on any given day – it’s roughly 10 minutes of activity, which always made that goal feel achievable.

This was particularly important on days when I otherwise would not have run at all due to other life circumstances, and when I found myself in some physically challenging situations. For example, I had a tooth extracted during the 60 day streak. I made sure to run before the extraction, and was pleased to find out I could handle a mile the day after it as well.

I also injured my back over the course of the 60 day streak while doing another activity that I enjoy a great deal: weight lifting. I pulled something while trying to improve my barbell squat, and had a brief worry that my streaking would be cut short as a result. But because I had set a goal, I figured I owed it to myself to try to achieve it. I made sure to slow things right now, and even while injured I managed to get in my mile per day.

Because a mile does not seem like very far, it also would not ever have really felt worth doing on its own on any given day, without the mental commitment. Why bother heading out the door for such a short distance? But getting out the door is exactly what I needed to do on many days. On many occasions, my mile morphed into two, three, or more.

Overall, I would call the experiment a resounding success. I rediscovered the joy I used to feel in running, the catharsis, and the physical benefits. And I got to share the joy in watching my friends meet — and in many cases exceed! — their goals as well.

January 1 was day 60. I did 10 km, which is the farthest I’ve gone in one run throughout the streaking process. Across all 60 days, I covered a total of 179 km, which works out to 3 km a day. And now I feel ready to do more again.

As I figure out what my next goals are, I think I will continue the streak. Depending on what I decide to do next, it may make sense to commit to including full rest days into the mix. But for now, I’ll continue to enjoy the benefits of consistent, incremental progress.

A sweaty treadmill selfie early in the run streak.
Some pretty scenery found on one of the outdoor trail runs during the streak.



Bio: Stephanie Keating is a science writer at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. She lives in Kitchener, Ontario, with her partner, Kevin, and their two cats. She has dabbled in many athletic pursuits, but her favourites remain running, weight lifting, hiking, and cycling.

Stephanie on January 1, after 60 days of run streaking.
cycling · fitness · Zwift

Tempted by distance challenges and the #Festive500

Sam B1 Comment

Oh, distance goals. In 2015 I rode 3675 kms on my bike and blogged about it here. I set out to ride 5000 km in 2016 . I don’t think I made it quite to 5k km but I think I came close.

This year I will for sure. All that Zwifting! I’m at nearly 5000 km and averaging 150 km a week. There’s 5 weeks left and so, barring injury or trainer issues, I’ll make it to 5000 km by 2021.

Distance4,509.5 km

All of that is just to say that the usual, for me, distance goal of 5000 km, is no longer a goal. It just happened.

Likewise, I’ve whooshed past the 220 workouts in 2020. (Want to join us next year? Find out how to here.) I’m currently at 364, thinking I might make it to 400. The pandemic has been horrible in so many ways but for me exercising lots is helping me cope.

All of that said, I miss Holiday Challenges. In past years I’ve done a holiday bike streak. Before, when I could run, I would do an annual Thanksgiving to Christmas running streak.

I’m also on record of supporting the idea that December can be the new January. When I wrote about that back in November 2016, I said, “I like the idea of hitting the holiday season with my fitness habits in place. It’s not about weight or dieting. It’s partly the stress of all the social stuff. I like my time at the gym. It’s also about aging. When I was younger I could take longer breaks. Now I notice fitness drops off quickly. So yes, while I don’t generally make New Year’s resolutions, I do think about getting fit for next year’s cycling season. And for me this year, December 1st will be the new January 1st.”

Now there are no parties this year to distract me but I still like the idea of taking on a special holiday fitness thing.

So I can keep on doing what I’m doing and make it to 5000 km, or…..

Or what?

Well, my Zwift Bike Club, Team TFC, has a monthly mileage challenge. I could try to win that for December. But that’s too ambitious. There are people riding more than 700 km a week in that group.

And then there’s the Festive 500. “500 kilometres. Eight days. Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve. Restrictions come and go but some things never change. Rapha’s annual festive riding challenge is back, with an all-new capsule collection and more ways than ever to go the distance.” I’m tempted! For the first time this year the Festive 500 allows zwift kms to count. (It’s a UK based challenge.)

Festive dancing penguins

En route to the Festive 500, I could knock off some Zwift badges, like the one for 25 laps of the Volcano. That’s also a Century and another badge. Zwift Insider says, “There’s also a “100 Clicks” badge awarded the first time you ride 100 km in one activity. If you complete 25 Volcano Circuit laps you will hit 100 km, unlocking this badge and 500XP bonus if you haven’t done so already.”

I’m still mulling it over. The issue is I think if we’ve got nice weather and snow I’d rather be outside.

(There are also less challenging annual challenges out there. If 5000 km isn’t your thing, you can start smaller.

There’s a group aiming to ride 2021 kilometers in 2021.)

Festive!

How about you? Do you love holiday challenges or hate them? Love them generally but declining this year because pandemic? Are you taking on a fitness challenge this holiday season?

Nine Nifty Things I Noticed in 150 Straight Days (and counting!) of Meditation
Fear · habits · meditation · mindfulness

Nine Nifty Things I Noticed in 150 Straight Days (and counting!) of Meditation

Mina1 Comment

As I write this, I just hit 150 days of meditation in a row. That is a big accomplishment for me. My longest meditation streak ever. 

The day I started this streak, I participated in a meditation workshop and the teacher suggested that all we needed to do was noticeduring our sits, be mindful of our noticings. So that’s what I’m doing. 

The biggest thing I’m noticing is that I’m in a constant state of re-learning what I already knew, but somehow forgot or thought I had changed. Or I’m discovering that circumstances have changed and what I learned no longer applies. Or I am the circumstance that’s changed and therefore needs to learn anew.  I don’t got this, but I am getting it. Very few changes stick forever, no matter what, no backsliding. Good to know, so we don’t judge ourselves as falling short! This whole streak has been about impermanence and the wow-reallys?of staying curious. 

Small brass yogi sculpture in cross-legged seated position, reading a book, wearing a red string scarf (made of a string I was gifted by a fellow attendee at my first silent meditation retreat)

Here are 9 more noticingsthat jazz my curiosity and keep me coming back for more: 

  1. Practicing daily makes it easier to drop into a meditation. Every day is different, but most days there’s a moment (often in the last moments of the sit) when I feel like my mind drops away and my body simultaneously gains 100 pounds and sinks into the earth and slips the bonds of gravity. I find that this moment may happen right away now. Not that it lasts the whole meditation, but the opening fidgets hardly have time to squirm before I’m noticing my mind and body in that more concerted meditation-y way.
  2. A short meditation is better than no meditation.When I started this streak, I sat for 10 minutes a day. I knew that if I demanded more from myself that I would fail. Why set myself up for failure in advance? There have been days when I’ve only managed 8 minutes of riding on the personal rollercoaster of my mind. Great. I accomplished what I set out to do. Often, I am more open to a longer meditation when I’ve given myself the grace of a short one the day before. 
  3. Noticing feeds itself, so I notice more details when I’m not meditating. Over the last months, I’ve become more aware of the complexities and hidden corners of how I am in the world. What feels most sharpened is my sense of responsibility for who and how I am. I notice that blame is futile. Better to open my heart, to consider how I might change the circumstance, even if that’s just changing my own attitude. Pissed off by someone else’s thoughtlessness, how can I be more thoughtful somewhere else? Noticing slows the world down enough to create a pause for reflection.    
  4. There’s a lot of dogma around meditation, which we should not be dogmatic about. A lot of people prepared to say that there’s one right way to meditate and at the end of their suggested path lies … fill in the blank—peace, bliss, no pain, wealth, happiness, fulfillment, career success, spectacular sex, love, the source of infinite wisdom and so on. The dogmas conflict, no surprise. We have to self-test and find the combination that works for each of us. To do that requires tuning into where our mind and body is at, making an honest assessment of our condition and situation and choosing for ourselves what feels right, which, by the way, may change. I’ve been self-testing a lot of different modes on my meditation app (Insight Timer)—various guided, recorded music or chanting, timer with background of rolling OM chants; plus some other guided meditations I’ve downloaded, and meditating on specific subjects or objects (my spirit guides, space-time, elevated emotions like joy and gratitude, or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, fear). 
  5. Meditating on fear is squirrely and uncomfortable. I recently read Kristen Ulmer’s book, The Art of Fear. These past days, I’ve tried on a bit of her dogma, meditating on fear. The idea is that getting intimate with my fear will transform the feeling into a healthy catalyst, instead of a dreaded obstacle. My list of fears stretches the length of the alphabet and more, ranging from losing my ability to move easily, to not connecting with people, to my washing machine going on the fritz and flooding the downstairs neighbour’s apartment. Plus, the existential, running subtext fear that my life doesn’t have meaning. Simply allowing fear the space to express itself, instead of telling myself to get over it, is new. I feel a small catalytic effect. As in: okay you’re scared, that’s okay, let it be, and hey, maybe you can still do the scary thing.
  6. Owning my woo-woo is scary. Meditating on, for example, one’s spirit guides feels out there. I fear that I’ll lose credibility (whatever that means) if I admit to any kind of woo-woo experiences or encounters. I am allowing myself to be more woo-woo curious and owning up to it (like in this piece about a puppy in India, that I wrote around day 100). 
  7. Sneezing during meditation is like an orgasm. As a kid, I read Where Did I Come From?, which compares an orgasm to a sneeze. Over the years I wondered if I have orgasms wrong, because they never felt like sneezing. Then I sneezed while I was meditating the other day. Because I was alone in my office and in the midst of a meditation and quite sure I wasn’t about to sneeze out great gobs, I just let myself sneeze without holding my arm in front of my face or ducking my head or any of all the twisting we do to be polite and not sneeze on others. Holy crap. That sneeze went right through me like a wave of sparkles over my nerve endings. Our well-justified, necessary public fears around sneezing mask the thrill of the simple sneeze.  Like orgasms, something to look forward to in private.
  8. I think a lot of non-contemplative thoughts when I’m meditating. In addition to thinking about sex when I’m meditating, back on day 45, I narrated a succession of interior design thoughts I had while meditating. I still have such thoughts. Everyone does, even monks on high mountains. Oh, and I did get the new duvet from Boll and Branch I was thinking about, which makes bedtime even more delicious. (I’m with Tracy, who writes often about the radical pleasures of sleep.)  
  9. Meditating regularly enables me to be kinder with myself. Noticing generates the gentle pause, in which we see our suffering from the outside and thus cultivate compassion. A truism worth repeating—if we are more compassionate toward ourselves, we will be so with others.

All of these noticings are small. Yet abundant enough to keep me going on my streak. Have you noticed anything in your meditation? Or in another streak you’re having? 

cycling · fitness · winter

Streak interrupted but still going strong

Sam B3 Comments

My bike streak was interrupted this weekend when travel to London to see a concert and help my daughter move made cycling impossible but I’m back at it. Yesterday was warm, grey and snowy and today was bright and cold. Both have their charms but after the greyest November on record  I’ll take the cold and the sun.

I am not the sort of person who thinks after breaking my streak “that’s it, it’s over.” I’m more a “back at it” kind of person. I wasn’t not going to go see Mallory’s Christmas concert. And I’ve got a bunch of streak days ahead. I’ve got spinning classes on campus, my bike on a trainer in my home office, and my bike commute. 

I love riding at this time of year. It feels so good to be moving outside. I used to love winter running for the same reason.

How’s your running/cycling/whatever streak going? Let me know in the comments!

running

Sam ran every day for a week and guess how she feels?

Sam B2 Comments

Answer: Great!

It’s Day 8 of my holiday running streak. And I’m just back from my morning run, all sweaty and smiley.

Freezing drizzle, yes, but offset by the sounds of happy children playing in the schoolyard across the street and guilty pleasure pop music on my iPod.
image

Today was the usual route in my neighbourhood. The upside of that is that I know exactly where a mile begins and ends. And Strava helpfully tells me if I’m faster or slower than last time.  I’ve also taken my running with me when I’m away and I’ve done one of the daily runs in Toronto and another on campus to and from the gym to lift weights, adding on a bit to make the mile.

I’ve got a friend on Facebook who is celebrating 365 days of running, on average just over 11 km a day.

Me, I’m just doing 1 mile a day for the holidays, American thanksgiving through the New Year.

Two thoughts so far, one week in. First, a mile isn’t a short as I thought and yet it barely seems worth getting running gear on. Second, and this is the best news, so far nothing hurts.

Also,  bonus, I no longer deliberate if I should run today or maybe run tomorrow when the weather is better. I’ve been writing and running everyday. It’s a good way to deal with the changes in schedules that come with the holidays and the very busy end of the university term. Faced with a grading, and behind with a bunch of my own writing deadlines, it can be easy to miss out on exercise. But a mile? Anyone can do that, I think.

My friends and my cycling coach aren’t convinced. I’ve promised Coach Chris that if my knee or shins (previously injured bits) hurt even a little bit, I’ll quit. As you know, if you’re a long term blog reader, if running and I had a Facebook relationship status, it would “it’s complicated.”

A running friend commented on Facebook about my streak, ” This is wonderful but please watch out too. A few years ago there was a city-wide “run 30 min for 30 days” that started in Jan. No days off, and you could only make up a session if you left 2 hours in between the make up run and the day’s run. A google spreadsheet was being circulated; not only did it get competitive but among my fit friends (sample of 6 I know I know) we all started feeling things in places we didn’t normally feel sore or hurt as regular runners (eg regular: knee; everyday plan: hips). Re-read this post on that day life gets busy and you can’t make your run smile.”

So far, no pain.

But it doesn’t take my 30 minutes to run a mile. I’m slow but not that slow.

And if anything hurts, I’ll walk instead. After all, Cheddar, needs his exercise too.