Zen and the Art of Muscle Maturation

Sorry I’ve been out of touch the past few days—we had some friends in town this past weekend (super fun times!) & I’ve also been dealing with a renewal of the sinus/cold yuckiness (not so fun times).

Here are some things you missed:

1) I finished month one Spring Semester of GUU!  So far I am on track, only behind in 2 assignments (attending a ballet class and watching the first 3 episodes of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos).  Here are a few things coming up in February: 2 exams (Cooking with Daniel and Coupon Crazy Month, which I wrote a bit about last week), getting my cholesterol checked, trying to understand 401Ks, reading a book about body image, and reading/listening/watching things by Pema Chodron, Suze Orman, and Carl Sagan.

As with last month, I will be continuing to budget, exercise at least 180 minutes a week, keep a daily meditation/reflection habit, and limiting my eating out at restaurants to 3 times a week.

image via parhessiastes on Flickr

2) I attended my first meeting of the Pittsburgh Zen Sitting Group last Thursday night, feeling a little nervous beforehand because I didn’t know what to expect.  My hour and a half with the Pittsburgh group followed the same traditional Japanese Zen practices that I became familiar with during a weekend-long, silent meditation retreat I attended in college led a Japanese Zen master.  If I hadn’t gone to that retreat, I might have found the practices last week a bit odd or esoteric.  By “traditional,” I mean that the group leader was in black robes, and we meditated on the floor, sitting on cushions in some variant of the lotus position and holding our hands in a certain way.

Weirder by our Western standards was the walking meditation, lots of bowing, and some chanting of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism at the end.  The different portions of the evening were signaled by the ringing of a bell (since the whole thing is pretty much no talking), which is actually a cool-looking metal bowl known as the “singing bowl” that’s struck with a stick-looking-thingie to make a bell noise.  Not everyone knows about Zen Buddhism, so I’ll write another post about it sometime and further explain the basic principles, but here’s a link with some basic info for those who are curious.

Yep.  I felt a little silly and self-conscious during the chanting and bowing portions.  Fortunately, the group leader prefaced all of this with a very approachable description of what we’d be doing and why, and a short explanation of Buddhism and meditation.  Even though I knew a lot of this stuff from my studies during actual college, he was very down-to-earth and approachable.  Like what I’ve been doing at home, they use a basic breath counting technique during meditation, counting each in- or out-breath up to ten and then starting over either once you reach ten or anytime the mind wanders.  Although I was distracted a lot (of course), I managed to get through a 45-minute meditation without any difficulty—the time pretty much flew by. Overall, the people I met were nice and it is a good way to practice meditating, so I’m looking forward to going back soon.

3) I successfully completed a Weighty Month exam (eight weight lifting sessions in one month)!  How did my Exam Buddies fare?

Speaking of buddies, I found a workout buddy!  One of my friends who is also a member of my gym agreed to give the Rachel Cosgrove program a try, and I think she’s a convert.  We’ve worked out together a few times over the past couple weeks—finding a time we can both go to the gym has been the obvious challenge—but I really like having another person along.  Aside from it just being more fun, I’ve worked out much harder when she has been with me.  It’s not a conscious thing, but I suppose it’s easier to “space out” or cut corners when by oneself.

I’m still liking the Rachel Cosgrove program, and enjoying my recovery shakes and foam-rolling .  My weight hasn’t changed much this month, but I am definitely feeling stronger and I’m focusing on that right now.  The first “phase” of the Rachel Cosgrove program is the “easy” part (note: it’s not easy) in which you are mostly using your own body weight to gain strength, so sometime in the next month or so I’ll move on to the second phase which has much more intense workouts with the free weights.  Supposedly, that’s when the REAL butt-kicking begins.

4) I volunteered at the food co-op, fulfilling both my volunteering goal and earning me a 10% food discount for the next week.

Ethical dilemmas about my Coupon Crazy month exam are already coming up.  Case in point: I need to buy chicken.  Chicken isn’t really “in season” now as I’m coming to learn–local chicken farmers have a lot more for sale during the natural growing cycle of the chicken (in the spring), which means that they sell very little in the winter.  As a result, my co-op was all sold out of chicken.

I bought all the other ingredients for the recipes I was planning this week, so I’m backed into a corner and have to buy it.  The question is this: do I “cheat” and buy slightly more ethically farmed chicken at another store like Whole Foods, or do I follow the letter of the law on this exam and buy mass-produced chicken, for which I can probably find on sale or a even a coupon?  This exam is showing me that there is going to be an ongoing tension between saving money and buying high-quality food that is more in line with my principles.  As I’ve said before, I want to spend less this month without sacrificing the quality of my food, so I’m probably going to end up “cheating” and buying the chicken at full price at another health food store, and resolving to plan my meals better next week—probably using a meat other than chicken.

So those are my updates.

On a somewhat related note, did anyone else see the Vegan Experiment on Oprah yesterday?  For those that didn’t catch it, she and several hundred of her staff tried to eat vegan for a month.  They also showed footage from inside a slaughterhouse, one of the first times a company has agreed to let the media film.  I was excited to see Michael Pollan as one of her guests, since my readings last semester turned me into such a big fan.  I really liked the show’s take home message: our meat-dominant diets are unhealthy, and any small steps towards eating more vegetarian and vegan meals can be good for our health and for the environment.  That’s the reason I’ve been cooking so many vegetarian meals and I have so many linked on my side bar.

Yep.  I’m definitely buying the local chicken.

Speaking of food, it’s dinner time .  You all have a good Wednesday!