Cup Size, or don't get down in your cups....

Kasey Cox

I’ve signed up for the Yoga Challenge at Main Street Yoga this April, the purpose of which is to encourage people to increase the amount of their yoga practice, to see how many benefits this practice adds to your life. I signed up for Belly Dance classes, meeting Tuesday nights in Wellsboro. On facebook, I signed up for a “virtual rally” of sorts, sponsored by the American Heart Association: April 8th was to be “National Start Walking Day!” and I was to be in attendance, sneakers at the ready.

I’m 36 years old and I already have chronic neck and jaw pain that will probably only worsen with age. My doctor tells me that exercise will help increase my energy, improve the quality of my sleep, and help me with anxiety, depression, and irritability. I always feel great when I do yoga, or go for a long walk under a blue sky or in a warm wind.

Nevertheless, in spite of all these good intentions and wonderful reasons to get into a regular exercise routine, my participation can only be described as sporadic, at best.

With all the exercise opportunities out there, you’d think I’d be able to find one I can stick with on a regular basis. Sometimes, though, the sheer number of classes, and books, and experts, and equipment, and advice, and blabbety-blab-blah is what actually gets in my way (or so I’ll rationalize). In looking for something simple, portable, easy to learn, easy to do, easy to keep doing, I am pleased to report my discovery of the “Morning Cup” series. The encouraging subtitle on each book in this series begins with “one 15-minute routine for a lifetime of …” stuff I want, like “health & wellness” or “strength & stability”.

These little books feature writing with a friendly, casual tone that is nonetheless informative. They are beautifully-illustrated, hardcover for durability, with a spiral binding for ease of use (fold it over; lay it flat, while following the exercise or pictures). For the great price of $12.95, the reader gets a lovely book of 80 or so pages, and a CD to listen to as one becomes more familiar with the suggested routine. This “Morning Cup” series includes “A Morning Cup of Balance”, Stretching, Strengthening, Meditation, Massage, Yoga, Tai Chi, Qigong, and Pilates, as well as four different devotionals.

The “Morning Cup of Prayer” subseries has books focusing on specific groups, such as mothers or friends. I am already imagining not just the possibilities – as I do when I sign up for a class – but the wonderful probabilities of my spending 15 minutes each morning learning one of these routines for myself. Furthermore, I can’t wait to give some of these as gifts! (Sorry, Mom, I just ruined the surprise for Mother’s Day, unless you happen to miss my column this week!)

I decided to first investigate first “A Morning Cup of Yoga” by Jane Goad Trechsel, since I can’t seem to get myself organized enough to attend yoga class. Jane’s introduction is inspiring, since she reveals that, although a long-time practitioner of yoga, she did not begin training to become a yoga teacher until she was in her mid- to late-fifties – as she says, she was twice the age of most of the people enrolled in the teacher training class. This training, besides teaching her how to be a teacher, taught her how to be gentle with herself, especially in facing immense challenges.

I love her perspective: instead of telling herself that a task will be too difficult, she now asks herself, “what part of this can I do?” In asking this, she allows herself to remain open to experiences that may have once seemed impossible. So, with this introduction, I find myself more open to learning from this book, as from a friend, and that’s before I even get into the routine that Jane suggests establishing.

My experience so far with Jane Trechsel’s “One 15-Minute Routine” feels pleasant, simple, and manageable, mirroring the approach taken by Richard Hittleman’s classic book that introduced yoga to the masses in the 1970’s – “Richard Hittleman’s Yoga: the 28-Day Exercise Plan”. Teaching one pose a day, for 28 days straight gave people a firm foundation of exercises to use in beginning to construct a yoga practice. I think Treschel’s book takes this one step further with colorful pictures, the audio CD, and her personal testimony of how she didn’t change to do yoga, but how doing yoga changed her. I’m looking forward to testing out other titles in this series. Now, where did I put my tea kettle?

Cat-cow pose, or downward dog? Strengthen or stretch? Hobo’s favorite pose is re-pose; too bad there’s not “A Morning Cup of Sleep”. Maybe that will be Hobo’s next book, a self-help guide to getting good rest, since he’s an expert. Check out his advice in other areas in his archived past column, at his blog: frommyshelf.blogspot.com or write him with some of your own, at frommyshelf@epix.net