James' last day 7/17/04

It is hard to find a good yoga teacher. James is a rare one that I stuck with and today was his last class. I brought a copy of A Teacher's Gift by Thomas Kinkade. A lady brought flowers and herbs from her garden. Another lady brought a card. Since this is the only Level II yoga class, I started to realize that most of who come to class are regulars. You can almost figure out who came for the first time.

Before the class, James told us a little bit about his life story. He started yoga when he was 16. With his knee injury (which he mentioned often), he went along with his father to try out yoga. Then he got into massage therapy thinking he can't commit himself to the long process of becoming a medical doctor. He was offered to teach a yoga class after practicing for two years or so and after several teacher training. He said when he wanted a job for massage therapist, they had an opening for yoga teacher. When he wanted a job for yoga teacher, they had one for massage therapist. He said follow your heart, then mind. I got thinking people sometimes say things happen for a reason. The reason I started yoga wasn't exactly healthy, but maybe this was meant to be.

I am going to greatly miss James' class. But he deserves this big step. And people will benefit from his knowledge and teaching! Best of luck to you, James!!!

No rest today, OK? ^_^;; 7/16/04

I looked at the log yesterday and realized that I haven't rested from weight training over a week. Because I teach a morning class today, I thought I would just give it a rest today. I woke up and I feel like exercising already. Today is a Back and Triceps day with smallest amount of exercise repertoire. When I go to Japan next month for a week, I probably don't get to have access to a gym, at least daily, so I will make that a nice rest. So I go ahead and exercise, today, OK? (Ah, I was going to bring yoga and Tai-Chi DVD's, but that doesn't count, does it? Oh, I was also going to bring exercise tubes, but that doesn't count as effective weight training, right?)

When to eat, what to eat 7/15/04

Of course, part of this fitness game is diet. Teaching evening classes, especially two, doesn't let you relax throughout the day, but also makes things difficult to plan out when to eat. I used to just wake up and go to the gym, come home and have a good-size breakfast. Rice, eggs, sausages, spinach, miso soup even 納豆. This is because I get very hungry after the exercise. If it gets too late in the morning, I think my blood sugar level goes down too much. In April, when I went to Health Fair, I was supposed to fast because I wanted them to draw blood. I didn't go early enough, so I ended up waiting a bit. I had them check my blood sugar, maybe around 10am and it was something like 60. That is good because it tells me I don't have diabetes, but it is a little too low. I notice when this happens, my mood is affected and my energy level gets quite low.

After reading that morning exercisers should eat something light, like a fruit, before going to workout, I started to eat a bowl of cereal, generic brand of Cherrio (because it is cheap and has least sugar) with slices of banana. Or a Gala apple. Then after I come back, I eat something light again. This gets me going until early afternoon, when I eat my main meal. In class, I have candies for students and I munch on some mints, too. Bad, I know. Then when I come home, I have a bowl of non-fat plain yogurt with a teaspoon sugar and mix that in with various nuts. I heard nuts are good for minerals and yogurt is good for calcium, which is what I need to save my bones.

I am starting to taste sweetness of fruits more these days. I am hooked on peaches, cherries and grapes. In fact, I am munching on grapes as I write this...

Bad manners 7/14/04

I try not to write about others, but today there were a couple of people who bugged me enough to write an entry.

There is this lady who places her towel, water and a lipstick(!) by and on a flat bench and disappears. She walks around the gym talking to people and gets on machines. Occasionally she comes back to Free Weight area and pick up a dumbbell and does Dumbbell Triceps Extension standing by the bench, which doesn't require a bench at all. Then she manages to leave that dumbbell on the bench and goes on making rounds. She comes back and picks up a dumbbell and does approximate 6 reps of Dumbbell Kickback on one arm and moves on again. She even gets on a incline bench (how can she claim that she needs an incline and a flat bench at the same time?) and takes time to spray and cleans it. In fact, she had to stop somebody from using the incline bench because somebody started to use it. Of course, she has nothing to put beside the incline bench!

Exercising on walkway in front of dumbbell rack is bad enough, but today there was this guy who had dumbbells in his hands swinging right and left widely. I had to keep myself in distance and wait for him to finish his set to reach the dumbbells that I needed. I thought we needed to be careful not to harm ourselves and others while using free weights. Where is a guarantee that this guy's hand decided to give up and the dumbbell flies through the gym!

Decisions, decisions, decisions 7/13/04

I was going to register Debbie's Flexibility training class for fall this morning. When I went to the classroom, there was this little flyer telling that there are two Yoga classes that are not in the catalog. Intro to Yoga classes are offered Tuesday and Thursday mornings! You already know that I like to work out in the morning and how much I like yoga. I didn't go register, but decided to wait.

Believe it or not, both Debbie's class and Yoga class are free. I just have to pay registration ($30!) and I will be in. I could register them both and drop when I decide. However because the room is small, they only take up to 12 students. I feel bad if I don't follow through the registration commitment if I really don't attend.

Debbie's class is MWF 8:00-8:50. Yoga is TR 7:00-8:15. A few factors come in... I love yoga, but I am really picky on teachers. I really like Debbie's class partly because it has ab exercises. I don't do ab enough if I am not doing in class. I do have to miss some Friday classes, but Debbie said it was OK. My scheduled classes so far are TR evenings only. I don't think I will teach Fridays and usually Friday is a big exercise day for me. Debbie's class is not a regular stretching class, so it is a little tricky to schedule weight training depending on what we do in class. Even if replacement of James is a bad one, so far I can go to Will's yoga MW nights. But what if I end up teaching MW nights?

URGH. Decisions, decisions, decisions

Hooked on Tai-Chi! 7/12/04

In Tom's class today, we learned some self-defense movements. Tom has said and demonstrated Tai-Chi is a form of self-defense briefly the other day. All the movements we do in class, including portions of long form that we are learning, have meaning to it and often apply for real situations. Now I realize why they have two-people in pictures in some Tai-Chi book. I a took self-defense in May and bought a book, but you have to practice until it comes naturally. So I really appreciated today's lesson!

I mentioned that I am going through
The Complete Idiot's Guide(R) to T'ai Chi. It is an easy-to-read book with lots of substantial information in it. I am more getting into Tai-Chi! Growing up in Japanese culture, I didn't realize until now, how much of Chinese culture is part of me without me knowing. I like what the book says so much, I ordered the DVD's the author made! I am looking forward to receiving them. I also found there is such a thing as Qi Journal. Nice thing I found about this site is that they have a small dictionary that can convert romanized version of Chinese pronunciation to the actual character, single character at a time. I played with it and figured QiGong must be what I know as 気功. My grandmother, when she was still alive, and my mother often go to their hair dresser to get this treatment.

I constantly notice that after I come back from Tom's class, I walk as if I were lighter, kind of like feather. I am looking forward to reading more about it and Tom's classes!

Fitness "program" (and teaching) 7/11/04

When I needed a physician clearance to get the second free personal training session at my gym, I went to the doctor that I thought I had insurance from soon-to-be ex (that will be another blog!), he suggested Body for Life: 12 Weeks to Mental and Physical Strength. I had seen the book in Borders (that will be another entry), but never took it seriously. The part I liked least was that they had before and after pictures with oil on them to show off their (newly earned?) muscles and its requirement to take this particular supplement. Now I like this idea even less because fitness "program" that has particular time frame and tells you EXACTLY what to do on each day doesn't sound good. Why? Because it WILL come to an end. And if you follow a prescribed schedule like that for prescribed amount of time, even if you want to keep going, you are left with, "Now what do I do?"

(This is the teaching part...) Exercise, at least for me, is not a temporary hobby, but a life-time commitment for well-being. If you want to teach anything to a beginner, one of the teacher's goals should be for the student to become independent to keep learning without you. I know, it sounds contradictory because if you are extremely successful at this, you will lose your customers and your job. I truly believe that giving the tools, motivation, skills to continue studying independently is more important than trying to transfer knowledge.

I feel a little authoritative today because a lady came up to me today and said she saw me when I was having a session with Mary-Beth in April. She spotted me recently and she had to tell her husband how different I looked. Mary-Beth also stopped me the other day and asked how I was doing. She was rather impressed when I said I was following her suggestion to change the routines. Well, exercising is pretty much all I am doing this summer. So I guess this kind of comment HAS to come. But again, my weight has never changed since November last year! At this point, I want to say, if I want to reduce the number that I see on my scale, probably the easiest thing is to stop weight training and lose muscles. And I don't want to do that... Or I should just say, I am just a person who gains weight so easily and losing is almost impossible. Again the point of today is that this is a life-time commitment and I should focus on keeping it going without hopes for quick results. (Profound, huh?)