#EveryDayinMay - O Selfie! My Selfie!

Oh, the selfie. Or should I say #selfie? Truly, the self portrait has been around for as long as art has existed, although The Public Domain Review says the first ever photographic selfie was taken by a rather dapper looking young man by the name of Robert Cornelius. It wasn't until social media exploded that what we know as today's selfie became popular.

I mean, let's face it -- it's a thing.

Even the Oxford Dictionary says so. And seriously, the beloved selfie even has its own song.

I've been thinking a lot about selfies lately, and what their prevalence means for society. When I read Becoming Odyssa by Jennifer Pharr Davis, she talked briefly about how after spending four months on the trail with nary a mirror in sight, her definition of herself changed. Beauty became less about her appearance and more about her strength.

I don't know about you, but that's the kind of beauty by which I want to define myself.

Earlier this week, musician (and Neil Gaiman's wife), Amanda Palmer posted a link on FaceBook that deepened my thoughts on how this selfie culture is changing the value we place on beauty. It seems some women are actually having their left hands re-beautified. I shared this little tidbit of pop culture with The Husband and he couldn't figure out why on earth anyone would have their left hand worked on. Then I held up my hand and waggled my ring finger in his face.

"Because," I said, "how can any proper lady possibly take engagement ring selfies if they've got mangled up fingers?"

He just shook his head.

And more and more, that's what I seem to be doing as well. There was also research conducted recently on the disease of the selfie. Thinking about young people falling into depression and becoming suicidal because of body image makes me ill. No one should ever have to feel that way. Granted, most people that fall victim to this degree of body dysmorphia are typically already suffering from other mental illnesses as well, but I don't think we need much more proof that narcissism is on the rise.

Top all of that off with the tragedy that happened earlier this week in California, when Elliot Rodger killed 6 people and then himself, decreeing in his manifesto that he was troubled (among other things) by his lack of success with women. Then add the fact that he was highly visible on social media with a large number of his own selfies.

If I hadn't already decided to go on a selfie-free, mirror-free challenge, all of these things combined would have sealed my thinking on it. I just have to wonder -- how differently might I view myself if I wasn't primping in front of a mirror each morning? If I didn't check my reflection in the window or take those selfies -- the ones I only seem to take when my hair and makeup is just right? So be on the lookout for some posts about how I will accomplish this vanity-banning challenge. Maybe you'll even want to join me!

I guess that's why I took my final selfie and posted it on Instagram the morning I left for my overnight backpacking trip. It was, I believe, the first picture I've ever posted of myself completely sans makeup. I could be wrong, but I can't think of another one. At the very least, it was the first intentional picture I've taken of myself not all glammed up. It felt like a turning point. I don't want to be defined by what I look like.

I want to be defined by who I am.

#EveryDayinMay - Poetry Friday

You can find more wondrous words over
at Crystal's blog today!

I'm sinking deep into the moment tonight. All this talk of hiking and hidden hot springs and finding adventure in my ordinary life brought me to the doorstep of the poet William Stafford. So many of his poems speak to me, fold themselves around me and say, "Stop. Listen. Rest a while," and I do, thankful for a place to lean my busy mind, if only for a moment.

***

Waking at 3 a.m.
by William Stafford

Even in the cave of the night when you
wake and are free and lonely,
neglected by others, discarded, loved only
by what doesn't matter--even in that
big room no one can see,
you push with your eyes till forever
comes in its twisted figure eight
and lies down in your head.

You think water in the river;
you think slower than the tide in
the grain of the wood; you become
a secret storehouse that saves the country,
so open and foolish and empty.

You look over all that the darkness
ripples across. More than has ever
been found comforts you. You open your
eyes in a vault that unlocks as fast
and as far as your thought can run.
A great snug wall goes around everything,
has always been there, will always
remain. It is a good world to be
lost in. It comforts you. It is
all right. And you sleep. 

***

I am happily lost in lines like "you think slower than the tide in / the grain of the wood;" and "It is a good world to be / lost in." I've always loved poetry, and am just a smidge reverent when I come across a poet like Stafford, whose words make me want to call him up and say, "Yes! This! Exactly!"

For more excellent poetry around the webosphere today, check out the link-up at Jama's Alphabet Soup.

#SOL14 - Mindset Reboot

I've been stuck in a circle of sorrow for the past couple months, choosing to have a pity party about my health issues  -- choosing self-defeat -- instead of focusing on the good things.

So my back hurts.
I can walk.
And my neck is chronically stiff and sore.
I can stretch.
I've gained weight by eating mindlessly.
I can focus on each moment and choose what makes me healthy.
I've slid back and am heavier and weaker than I was before.
I am completely capable of regaining the healthy body I want.
It's all up to me.

I turn 40 in September. I can choose to live mindlessly through each day and tumble toward that milestone without making any changes, or I can kick this bad attitude to the curb and start doing something about it. The time will pass either way. The real question is: so what am I going to do about it?

Since my doctors want me stretching daily but the physical therapy exercises are seriously boring me to tears, I decided to take up Pilates. I've done it before and loved it, and I know that when I love an activity I am much more likely to keep it up. I did my first round today, with Sass by my side. Since I want to workout from home, I decided to follow the beginner's workout calendar over at Blogilates. We laughed through most of it, even when she was rolling around on the floor yelling, "No more, no more - wow, this really hurts!"

Welcome to the burn, sister.

And since Grimm has come home, I need to work on leash training him. This is a great excuse to get out and start walking again. Eventually when my back and knees are stronger (and when he outgrows his puppyness), walking will become running. But I won't be able to run again unless I first walk.

Food is the easy part. By choosing to live in the moment and notice my choices, I tend to have great success in eating well. It all comes down to consistently making the smart decisions that will lead me to my end goal -- a long, healthy life.

Being active is the hard part, not because I don't want to do it, but simply because I ache everywhere and am sleepy all the time. Setting appointments for my daily walk and Pilates will be key to pushing through the first begrudging minutes. I know I always feel better about myself and am in a more positive mood with each workout I make it through.

I had hoped to do more of this during spring break, but the truth is I needed this week to just sit and think about what is truly important to me. I restarted my daily meditation practice and found myself falling easily back into that place where the past and future regrets and worries fall away. All that matters is today.

And I am very thankful for today.

I do my best to stay behind the camera these days. This was taken March 14, 2014 with Sass and Grimm!

The Problem

The problem with writing is this:
there are too many words, too many
ideas; popping up like springtime dandelions,
ripe to be carried away by the wind.

This was nudging itself around my head while I tried to sleep last night. It's still barely a seedling, but I'll play with it... if I don't lose it, or forget the words, or worse, accidentally delete it...

I've been thinking a lot about organization of writing and what to do with all the ideas, all the words, all the fragments that I've collected.

Do I start a new journal for every new story? I new file folder? Buy a hard drive just for my writing?

I need to do something. Right now I have journals, files, documents, napkins (seriously), you name it -- strewn through my life like a breadcrumb trail.

And honey, we're not gonna make it home on bread alone.

So I pose this question, friends: how do you organize your writing? I'm ready to learn.

A Mindful Hula Hoop

Last week I spent three days in San Francisco at the 31st Learning and the Brain Conference. I had the privilege of listening to powerful presentations from Dr. Dan Siegel, Susan Kaiser Greenland, and Michael Posner, among several other researchers and authors in the field of neuroscience and education . A common theme throughout the conference centered on attention, self control, and mindfulness. In fact, I had the good fortune to be there at the same time that Jon Kabat-Zinn was speaking at a benefit for Mindful Schools, and enjoyed an evening at Berkeley gleaning a stronger understanding of the need for mindfulness education in our schools.

Seventeen hours packed full of statistics, graphs, anecdotes, research, and practical application is a lot to try to synthesize back into one cohesive framework to take back to the classroom, so last night I was tossing and turning while visions of attentive, well-rounded children danced in my head. I came up with a couple ideas on how to use simple methods to begin teaching my class the benefit of executive function and mindfulness.

First, a quick definition: executive function sounds super fancy, but it is really a simple concept -- think about a game of Simon Says. When playing Simon Says, a child must suppress the urge to perform the action they hear when the speaker leaves out the trigger words "Simon says..." Executive function is all about impulse control, attentiveness, and self-regulation. Mindfulness in a school setting is used to help students learn to focus attention and concentration, build their social-emotional skills, and reduce stress.

My class this year has struggled with self-control, social cues, and boundaries. I wanted desperately to find a way to use all these new tools to help my kiddos learn to bring some balance to their life.

And suddenly, it came to me.

Hula Hoops.

This morning I gave each student in my class a hula hoop. We held our hoops around our bodies and I instructed each of them to drop their hoops. I asked them if they had enough space to sit, stand, hop, do jumping jacks, and numerous other stunts. Laughing, they all agreed they had plenty of room to do just about everything they needed to do, and could still talk to each other without difficulty.

We held our hoops again and held them up above our heads. I told them to look up through the hoop at the sky and imagine that the space around their hoop extended all the way up to the clouds and beyond. This was their space. This was the area that they could control. I asked them if it was possible for them to control anyone else's hoops while they were focused on holding up their own. They decided quickly that they could only focus on their hoop. I demonstrated walking around them without touching their hoops, without overlapping or bumping into anyone and asked if they thought it would be easy or difficult. Naturally, they all replied that it would be easy. So I gave them a few minutes to jump, run, skip, and hop around each other -- but the one rule was that their hoop needed to touch only their hands and not run into anyone else's space. Afterward, we regrouped and they reported back it was as simple as they thought it would be.

Next, I asked them to form a big circle around me with their hoops. Immediately they began telling each other what to do. A loud chorus of, "Hey, you need to move! No, go there!" and many other comments were exchanged. A completely ill-formed shape spread out around me, resembling something more akin to the blob than a circle. I reminded them that they had all agreed earlier that they could only control their own hoops, so to form the circle they needed to focus on just their hoop and let everyone else do the same. Very quickly an almost perfect circle had surrounded me.

"Wow!" I practically shouted, "That was fast! Why do you think it worked so well?"

Everyone was bubbling with answers about how much easier it was to work together when they focused on what they needed to do, rather than telling other people how to do the job. 

So of course, I walked around the circle and removed every other hoop. I asked each hoopless child to step into a hoop with another person. I asked them to do everything they had done before -- still not touching the person next to them. They tried to sit, stand, hop, and even do jumping jacks. They were not happy. I asked them to pick up their shared hoop and walk, run, skip, and hop around the playground. This resulted in at least one group tumbling to the ground and a few arguments. I asked them to come back to make a new, smaller circle. This almost never happened.

I asked what happened. Why did they seem to have so many problems this time?

Unanimously they decided it was much easier to take care of their own needs when they were in complete control of their own space.

We put the hula hoops away, went back to class and talked for a few minutes about what we noticed, and then I asked them to write without stopping for ten minutes about their experience with the hoops, what they thought it meant about self-control, and how they could keep the hula hoop image in their mind to help them think about coming back to their own space and making thoughtful choices.

I was amazed at their insight, the lessons they learned that I hadn't even anticipated, and the way it changed their mindset for the rest of the day.

This is just the first step, the introduction, the tiniest spark to get them rolling in a direction that I hope will serve to set them on a course of mindful awareness that will last their lifetime.

And all it took was a hula hoop.

Not bad for a Monday.