Dawn

September 9, 2017

When I wake up in the morning, I’m not fat.

I don’t mean that elven plastic surgeons come in the night to carve away all the adipose tissue like a cherished Beverly Hills fairy tale. I mean that for a few blissful, warm, horizontal, totally relaxed moments, I have achieved the fully “neutral” status that Barbara at Body Dynamics has been trying so hard to help me achieve in more vertical and conscious postures.

I can’t feel the drag of my butt. I am aware of the line of my hip bones, sleek and slinky. My shoulders are relaxed and down; even Chad the stretch class teacher would nod with approval.

All the muscles are lying the way they’re supposed to, relaxed and ready as if Gwynn had just untangled me like a knot of knitting yarn.

Warmth and energy radiates down my spine along neural pathways Grace is working to open wider.

And then I stretch. The delicious contraction starts at my shoulders, with my arms going up and out. I’m breaking up the night’s fuzz between my muscles and it feels good. It has ALWAYS felt good, that first morning stretch…

…but now, thanks to the hard work I’ve done and the wise guidance of Barbara and then Gwynn and then Grace and then Chad, I can feel muscles rippling down my core from shoulders to pelvis to butt to legs to toes… and it feels like power.

It’s a REALLY nice way to wake up.

(Of course, that’s only if I’ve been able to wake up in my own time; if it’s an alarm that jars me from my slumbers, then all bets are off and the day begins with me cursing a blue streak.)

When I get up, I’m fat again… but there’s muscle now below the blub. There’s strength in my walk. The morning stiffness a 57-year-old fat lady earns simply through being alive so long – that stiffness works itself out within two or three steps.

And I go downstairs to eat the pumpkin-seed-laced breakfast that Chip recommends. (And water – water, water, water! I’m thirsty as I write!)

I tried for 56 years to do it alone – to recapture that sense of well-being and balance that shines for a few elusive moments every morning. Now I have a whole team helping me. And at last I’m getting closer!

Thomas Cole’s “River of Life” – this painting is dawn. It’s an awesome, overt, slap-in-your-face-with-a-fish allegory; the real thing is in the Smithsonian. You should check it out; it’s four huge paintings representing the stages of life. A hoot requiring absolutely no subtlety or advanced thought. (Hey! No subtlety or advanced thought?? An allegory for MY life!)