Bucket List

Sep

24

Fast Forward

Bucket List / Learnings / Technology / Yoga / Yoga Therapy  Posted by / 0 comments

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post about my bucket list.  A few things may have been in the works at the time, but as of this past week I can happily say that I am actively working at two items on the list:

1. Take classes in web design, digital design, and photography

9. Become a yoga therapist

On Wednesday I started with three classes at Columbus State in digital graphic and web design!  I am feeling out the waters now, but if all goes well and I find myself enjoying the program I will plan to continue with classes beyond this quarter!

I  finalized plans to attend Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy, Level 1 in Vermont at the end of October.  This is the first step in training to work as a yoga therapist and I’m super excited both for what this will uncover as well as visiting Vermont.  The training is in Bristol, a town that is so small that it doesn’t have any hotels!  In a lovely and quaint way I will be staying with a couple who rents out a room in their house and walking to training each day.  The couple has also graciously offered to have me join them for a vegetarian meal one evening.  I love this idea of community!

As is so true in life things have been coming together as I have opened to the possibilities of letting go of that which isn’t authentic to me; untethering. In addition to the above developments I will also be starting a part-time job, hopefully next week with Communities in Schools, tutoring in Math and Language arts at Columbus City elementary school.  This opportunity literally fell in my lap when I met someone who works there at the Cincinnati Circus School.  Ironically through my physical process of untethering I found connection!  The universe works in beautiful ways when we listen.

I have also added a couple new classes to my teaching schedule at the new GoYoga studio in Powell. I will be teaching a flow class on Monday’s from 10-11:20 AM and a Prenatal class on Wednesday nights from 7-7:50 PM following my flow class at 6 PM.  Please spread the word and join me!

As you can see life has become quite busy for the girl who used to “go to work” and “workout.”  While living life to the fullest can be stressful and time consuming I gladly welcome it since what we have in life is time; both full of activity and life as well as the void of emptiness and stillness.

I welcome both.

In closing on this crisp, wet, and fall-like Friday I am positing a great journal prompt I got from Rosie Molinary’s site:

WHAT I AM IN THIS MOMENT:

[LOVING]: Warning: may be shocking- having a bit more curve to my body as of late.  This is what I love right now after all.  Now I just need to get rid of the clothing that encourages me not to love that part of me!

[NOTICING]: the anxiety that real life provokes

[APPRECIATING]: my best friend, Alexis, my mom and dad, as well as my lovely yoga kula who radiates unconditional love and promotes discovery and the challenge of change

[ANTICIPATING]: new experiences

[LOOKING]: for authenticity, both internal and external

[THINKING]: about my life choices

[ENJOYING]: the ability to feel again.  Almost off the Effexor!!!!!

[WISHING]: to spread joy and love

[WELCOMING]: the feeling of life

Sep

10

The Bucket List

Bucket List / Eating Disorder / Yoga / Yoga Therapy  Posted by / 0 comments

My post on Tuesday, “There’s Something Wrong with You,” wasn’t an intent to call out my peers who made fun of me at an early age.  While at some points in my life I did hold blame and anger I no longer hold any such feelings towards these people.  Do I remember who my harassers were?  Yes, but they were just children as well and I imagine that they also had painful experiences going on tin their lives.  Kids by nature are mean and hurtful as they practice what it really means to be in the world and have relationships with others, both positive and negative.  In fact by posting those pictures on my blog and subsequently on Facebook I’ve reconnected with quite a few people and I’m enjoying finding out where my former classmates are in their lives.  To me this reconnection is the true beauty of technology and one of its only saving graces.

Today children experience a totally new ball game as technology and the expectations of media have morphed teasing into more severe bullying and harassment.  While I only suffered at school, there no longer are safe zones for children as they are accessible at any time.  I imagine the effects of this on the new generations will be quite extreme.  Now if only we could get insurance companies to actually pay for psychotherapy instead of mind-numbing medications, perhaps some repercussions of this expanse of technology could be avoided.

As for the adults that have lashed out to me in the later years I am split in my ability to forgive.  Forgiveness is not a black and white process and while somedays I am more able to step into it, there are days where I still hold on to some lingering anger.  I don’t chastise myself for my inability to forgive. Inspite of talking ad nauseum about forgiveness and acceptance I am not always able to harness these for myself.  After all I am human too.  Instead I accept my anger, listen to it and move on; without judgement.  Running from our anger or shutting it out only makes it come back tenfold.  We can’t run forever.

Moving on.

Yesterday’s post on honesty was a sort of teaser about what is actually on my bucket list. Thus I present…

 

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The Bucket

This is not just any bucket. This is a plastic red bucket that was on sale at Target.  Perhaps you envision your bucket list inside a nice wooden bucket?  Not mine!  I like RED and I like my $2 bucket!  It even came with one of those awesome clearance stickers.  Plus this awesome bucket is super useful.  I use it to clean my floors and to drain my kitchen since when I inadvertently back it up twice a year.  Someday I will learn to not put egg shells and peels down the drain!

Onto the list, in no specific order, and some of this is currently in the works:

Hannah Siegle’s Bucket List

1. Take classes in web design, digital design, and photography

2. Open a yoga studio

3. Visit Indonesia and work with Orangutans

4. Visit Africa and work with Elephants

5. Trek the Inca Trail

6. Volunteer more with rescue dogs, perhaps becoming a foster

7. Grow a garden

8. Write a book-I have three ideas in the works!

9. Become a yoga therapist

10. Open a non-profit or branch of an already existing foundation to raise money for those who can’t afford eating disorder treatments

11. Learn paper cutting

12. Do a handstand in the middle of the room

13. Buy a house and paint my rooms in bright colors

14. Find someone to spend my life with

15. Have children

 

What is on your bucket list?



“

 

(Via .)

Sep

08

Honesty and my Bucket List

Bucket List / Yoga  Posted by / 0 comments

Honesty is something that is pretty hard to be, well, honest about, even to ourselves.  We lie day in and day out about our intentions, actions, wants, and needs without taking the time to slow down and have a good ol’ “get real” sessions with ourselves.

For me honesty is easily skipped over and to remain authentic I really have to stop and check-in frequently.  The things that help me most here?  My amazing therapist, blogging, and yoga.  I’m a big fan of “fake it til you make it” and yoga provides the grounds for this.  As I flow on the mat, read yoga texts, think about yoga, meditate (or consider meditating!) acceptance of where I am at this moment and the journey to my true self is really all pervasive.  I find even if I’m not practicing what I preach to my students regarding acceptance, eventually the rote practice of all this starts to get to me and I have but no choice to answer the call of this path.

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Yesterday I was going through my MASSIVE folder of medical EOB’s, bills, and lab reports.  Conclusion?  My health insurance company hates me and I have pretty much skipped around from one medical intervention to another over the years.  Gastrointestinal everything, low or high blood counts and a whole host of other issues that never showed up on paper or in any report. Lab tests only detect problems at something like 70% of the normal bottom of a range.  The bottom of a range?  That doesn’t even mean healthy!

In December of 2009 when I left my teaching job and entered treatment I made a commitment to blogging and to venture into a balanced life and to find what health really means.   I stayed on this path for a while but towards the beginnings of the Summer of 2010 I started to go astray.  Have I been open about this?  No.  Time to fess up.

Following treatment I had never really reached my goal weight, and while this is a somewhat external measure of health and not specific to my body I do know that I allowed and encouraged myself to remain at the edge of an unhealthy place for myself, continuing to be locked into some of an eating disordered mindset.  At the same time I know my body quite well and know that my eating practices don’t manifest easily in weight loss.  After so many years of abuse my body reacts quickly to holding onto food when my intake drops down and in fact manifest at times in weight gain as survival mechanisms kick in.

So for the past year have I been eating enough?

No.

Have I been doing too much working out?

Yes.

This has been the pattern of the past year.  Waxing and waning in severity, but still not the way I need to treat myself.

A year of falling an failing, but not necessarily negative. Yoga has taught me to fall and fail with grace.

The past year has seen more change in myself that the past 14 years combined.  I took some “wrong” turns, working in jobs that were a poor fit for my creative and independent mind, and engaging in some relationships, both male and female, that were more of a relationship with my eating disorder than with another human.

The realization of all this and the need to talk about it has been spurred on by the creation of my bucket list.  I’ve never had a bucket list before. It has been eons since I’e had any interests outside of working out and food and the why is something that has been on my mind.  This why has led me to the above realization that I was still operating in unhealthy ways over the past year and while my physical self wasn’t as seemingly challenged there was still a lot of unhealthy behavior going on that blocked any awareness of stepping into myself.  Stopping Crossfit spearheaded this change as well as falling into digestive problems again.

I want the space, physically and mentally to work on my bucket list, to create and allow the manifestation of all that has only lived in my head for so long.   I’m choosing to give myself that space, the space that was previously full of monotony.  I refuse to go another 14-years living in the haze of illness.

After all, my medical file is way too full.

Are you honest with yourself?  How do you remain accountable? Please share in the comments!!!

 

Photos: Heart:T. Newfield, “Songs of the Heart”