Author Archives: elizatwist

Pleasing Evergreens – An All Natural Craft Project

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It’s the time of year when I used to go totally wild with holiday decorations.  Sadly, my enthusiasm for such things has suffered a significant drop off, and right at the time when I’m supposed to be creating magical traditions for my boy.  Perhaps this post will light a spark…

I believe that it was last year when an idea finally struck me, and I think that it’s good enough to share in cyber space.  Here’s what happened.  I wanted to come up with a way to countdown the days till Santa visits our humble abode.  My husband has a really sweet set of miniature tree ornaments which are Taiwanese knock-offs of these ones.  Knowing that he would appreciate creating a new tradition with some cherished ornaments from his youth, I decided that we needed a tree to hang them on day by day.  Knowing further that my husband appreciates thriftiness, and that if there’s anything that I posses in surplus it’s craft supplies, I set about figuring out how to make a tree from in-home materials.  And I did.  Honestly, it’s still a little rough around the edges, but it works for now and I’ll spruce it up in years to come.

advent tree

In the meantime, I decided that if I could make a tree I could make a wreath.  I have a few wreath frames on hand from a wedding project that didn’t come to fruition and so I got busy.  I had stumbled upon a color combination with the wool roving at our local yarn shop that I wanted to see more of during the weeks leading up to Christmas.  So I made a bunch of balls and my wreath took shape.

wreath complete

Apart from being composed of things that I had on hand, I am especially fond of this technique for creating evergreen decorations because there is no plastic or other strange substance involved.  All natural craft materials are all better, if you ask me.  Both my tree and my wreath can use a bit of filling in, and I’ve still got plenty of yarn pieces left for that.  So much in fact that I’m thinking that a garland may be in my future.  For now though, it’s just a matter of pulling those ornaments out of the basement and hanging them up day by day.

Here are the step by step photos for making your own wooly evergreen.
If you are lucky enough to have some of these in home, they prove useful for all sorts of applications.  You’ll need some green yarn, scissors, and whatever form to which you plan to attach your yarn.

wreath 1:10

Wrapping your yarn around a few blocks and then removing the center two in order to make the cut is a speedy way to generate a large quantity of strings of a similar length.

wreath 2:10

 

wreath 3:10

wreath 4:10

wreath 5:10

Now it’s just a whole bunch of cow hitching until you have your desired fullness of foliage.

wreath 7:10

wreath 6:10

Here’s to a season of good cheer and merry making!

Rethinking Rejection

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I now have experienced what I could only have imagined up until now:  the heartbreak of watching my kid be rejected.  It’s happened a few times lately, where my very friendly and engaging little boy is overjoyed to see another kid that he knows.  For every ounce of eagerness and enthusiasm that he expresses, they demonstrate the opposite; and with an air of complete disinterest, leave him smiling and eventually crying.  This leaves me incredibly sad and somewhat angry.  But my boy recovers from such setbacks quickly and with a minimum of apparent suffering.

I’m realizing that my son is offering me an opportunity here.  Now is as good a time as any to rethink rejection.  So it would seem that it’s time for a new motto:  in the face of rejection, smile and move on.

Giving Thanks for Being a Parent

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I’m nearly two and a half years into being a mom.  But come to think of it, I count pregnancy, because that is when my mindset began to shift.  It’s been interesting for me to see how my thoughts about parenting in general have grown more open-ended since I’m now a parent myself.

Living with a very young person every hour of every day has taught me something about respect for others that I don’t believe I would have learned otherwise.  I have always intended to have respect for others.  But let’s be honest, it’s easy to create unrealistic expectations for people when we don’t know them too well and then be disappointed when they don’t live up to those expectations – and ultimately, that’s not very respectful.  Understanding that we each are indeed a complex combination of traits, preferences, and needs; has dramatically eased my invention of expectations with respect to other people.  I’m grateful for that.

When it comes to analyzing a relationship between two people, this need for respect is increased exponentially because now that I’m living it myself, I see how a relationship between a parent and child is a continuous and never-ending stream of moments of intimate interaction between two complicated people.  The complication factor is therefore huge.  To pick out one moment, or even a few, and arrive at some concrete conclusion about the people involved would be truly impossible.  So I don’t nearly as often as I used to and I anticipate eventually wiping that thought process off my slate completely.  I’m grateful for that too.

There are certainly aspects to the past three years that I wish had played out differently.  There is support that I would have loved to have had but did not and so I figured out my own way to create it for myself.  Honestly, those disappointments do sometimes weigh heavily on my mind when I permit.  But I’m quicker to recover from such lulls in mental vigilance, because I’ve got important work to do.  Motherhood has helped me to be more disciplined mentally.  I’m grateful for that.

Now that I’m parenting, and doing it my way.  I can see more clearly why certain things didn’t sit well with me – things from my own youth, things that I’ve witnessed.  Now I realize it’s simply a matter of preference in most cases.  I believe that this is a factor of spending more years as an adult, that we have the opportunity to see things from enough angles to really understand them.  I appreciate the insights that I have now that I’ve logged some years as a parent.  And I think that I’m building the maturity to form more respectful and compassionate conclusions.  I am so grateful for that opportunity.

Being a parent has taught me the necessity of caring for myself first.  When I have neglected myself, the results have been clear.  Aside from helping me within our little immediate family, this helps me in every other relationship that I have.  I’m more aware of where I end and others begin.  More often than not, it’s become obvious that the best I can offer is my compassionate presence.  Whether it’s somebody practicing Pilates, watching the wheels of a toy car with ear pressed to the floor, or picking out curtain rods, just bearing witness is enough (well okay, a bit of instruction with respect to concepts in the Pilates studio – but mostly I’m observing).  Anything more requires a crossing of a boundary which I simply cannot manage while staying true to myself.  If that’s not a gift of being a mom, I don’t know what is.  For me, it’s been a game-changer for which I’m grateful.

I realize that there is plenty of judgement-free interaction in this world, the sort that reflects people taking simple enjoyment in sharing company with others rather than constantly over-exercising their minds to create mini-theories about other people and their behavior.  But there is a lot of the latter and since empty barrels do indeed make a lot of noise, I’m inclined to comment on the topic.  And say that I’ve been relieved of a fair portion of my judging tendencies since becoming a parent.  For the relief that comes from setting down that heavy burden, I’m grateful.

Today I will revel in gratitude and open my heart to all the goodness that there is to receive.  I wish the same to you, dear reader.

Paula Scher Makes a Good Case for Being Serious

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A while back my husband mentioned a TED talk that he thought might capture my interest.  He was correct.  One of the many pearls of wisdom that reading Joseph Hubertus Pilates:  The Biography left me with was the description of the atmosphere of the Pilates’s studio.  It was apparently a serious place with a singular focus:  exercising the body.  I believe that it was Joe and Clara’s passionate enthusiasm for their work that created this environment of intense and singular focus.  As I was considering this idea, I thought about Jay Grimes’s stories of trembling his way out of a lesson with Joe and / or Clara, and of my similar experience in working with Romana.  While I believe that much of our common experience can be attributed to the people involved, my recent read has me thinking that the environment is due some credit as well.  And so it seems that I’ve stumbled upon yet another reason to hold my tongue in my Pilates studio:  we can each put our best effort toward creating an environment infused with focus and passion in which to practice Pilates by refraining from speaking anything but the most essential information pertaining to the work at hand.  I’m pretty sure that we’ll make some interesting discoveries in doing so.  And I admit that it will be a big challenge for me, a person blessed with the gift of the gab.

There are some other aspects of Scher’s talk that I think bear mentioning.  Starting with some thoughts on the joy of work for work’s sake.  Back in my twenties, I had a brief stint of sewing for money.  I quickly discovered that I would never be adequately compensated for my efforts.  Sewing for me is a pleasure and I must preserve that aspect of my hobby by keeping money out of the equation.  (Back then I managed this by naming a price and not worrying about how that related to how much time I spent on any given project.)  There is something to be said for engaging in a creative endeavor for the pure joy that the work brings us.  For those of us that do something creative for money, I believe that it is all the more important to have some other creative outlet for its own sake.

Lastly, rolling around in my head is the notion that consistently cultivating serious engagement is something of a fountain of youth.  There is a particular benefit to ignorance and I believe that Scher has done a fine job of identifying it.  With a practice such as Pilates that only deepens with time and therefore requires years of investment to experience all the potential returns, I believe that her insight bears frequent consideration.  I’ve noticed that with Pilates and with teaching Pilates, remaining curious leaves me open to new possibilities.  The more sure I am of what I know, the less likely I am to be curious.  And so it would seem that cultivating a lifelong sense of being a student is a good strategy for remaining serious in what I do.  The alternative, being all-knowing and having no sense of my own ignorance, is nearly impossible anyway.  So I’ve got that going for me.

Today I say thanks to Paula Scher for the reminder:  there’s a good case to be made for being serious.

Clearing

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Recently, I enjoyed something of a revelation within my body which relates in no small part to some other shafts of light that have been making way into my life these days.  I celebrate my joy and relief by sharing them here.

With my tailbone injury comes a fair amount of tension along my spine that radiates out to the rest of my body.  I keep that tension in check with the deliberate movements that make up my regular Pilates practice.  And I get support from various practitioners to slowly whittle away at the underlying tension patterns that have a hold on me.  It would seem that I’m making headway because recently I was able to feel something entirely new and gratifying.  In sitting and nursing, I often feel discomfort across my upper back.  I’ve known for years that this is indicative of my seated posture, I’ve even known how to change my posture.  But my body was under too much load to integrate the change.  In short, the pain remained no matter what adjustments I made.  (Movement has been the saving grace, I just keep moving and that has kept much of the pain at bay.)  But on this occasion, I was able to make the appropriate change, which is to sit upon my hips rather than slumping into them.  Instantly, my upper back pain disappeared!  This brought about a sense of relief that has been years in the making.

In a completely different area of my life, I’m enjoying a whole now sense of happiness and self-empowerment.  My son is nearly two and a half years old now and he’s entering a new phase of independent play.  One of the gals who has helped us with caring for him while I work, is leaving us because she found a full-time position that better suits her needs.  For a while I was struggling with how to re-organize our childcare arrangements and it finally dawned on me that it’s time for me to have less help and more time with my boy.  I can’t exactly describe the cascading benefits of this choice that I made other than to say that it was clearly the best scenario for both of us.  I partly attribute this to having passed through a rough place in my own personal healing process that becoming a mother initiated for me.  I share this because it is my belief that parenting presents us each with opportunities for healing old and long forgotten wounds.  The experience of tending to those wounds is not fun and not commonly embraced or even acknowledged in our collective conversations, which makes the challenge of it that much more than some of us would like to bear.   But coming through to the other side, has been such a clearing that it almost makes me eager for the next challenge that will inevitably come my way.

These two experiences put together bring to my mind another idea that’s been brewing since I put Rupam’s suggestion into practice.  If I think of my body as a vessel, then it makes the most sense to fill that vessel with love and light.  In doing so I expose the feelings and emotions that the dark thoughts in the recesses of my mind have embodied within my physical form.  The more that I fill my body with love, gratitude, forgiveness, and acknowledgement of that which hasn’t best served me, the more I clear out the dark places and complete myself.  In the physical sense I have noticed a spaciousness that comes with this clearing process.  That makes room for the constant expansion that drives so much of what I do.  I applied this idea to my Pilates practice one day when I was feeling particularly stiff and sluggish.  The result was immediate:  the entirety of my body opened and released.  I was longer, lighter, and more supple instantly.

We cannot always bypass the challenges that face us.  Often the only way is through.  And I’d argue that going through, rather than over or under, affords us the best opportunities for growth and empowerment.  In the face of adversity, we can honor ourselves.  We can focus on love and light.  We can give ourselves the best possible support for making the hard journey.  And we can assure ourselves, that we will eventually arrive at a clearing.

My thoughts upon reading “Joseph Hubertus Pilates: The Biography” by Javier Pérez Pont and Esperanza Aparicio-Romero

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I have gobbled up every word, even the ones that are arranged on the pages with a Spanish syntax, even the ones that I didn’t completely understand (I think because the translation didn’t account for idioms).

I enjoyed revelation after revelation thanks to the thorough work of the Spanish team that put this book together.  And I’m so heartened to know that this book marks only the beginning of another lengthy and equally thorough inquiry into the work of Joe Pilates.  I admire Javier and Esperanza for completing the tremendous task of discovering and sorting out the facts and myths that make up what we in present day can learn about Joe Pilates.  And I admire Javier for the inquiry into the method via the apparatus that he is now in the midst of.

The opportunity that they had to do this work is enviable, but the task of doing it surely involved countless hours of toil.  Anybody who loves Pilates owes them a debt of gratitude for taking on the enormity of the task, and completing it!  Which is to say that if you care about Pilates, read this book!  Think of it as the cost of a lesson – a very important, game changing lesson.

I appreciate the respect that they expressed for all people involved in the story of Joe Pilates’ life.  The book itself is at some points rather dry, although I daresay not for a Pilates enthusiast.  The authors chose to present the information directly, based on what they learned.  Which leaves each reader to fill in the elements of story.  While the story-lover in me loves a good yarn, I applaud their restraint.  Indeed, the whole of the life that the book chronicles is so much bigger than anyone could attempt to encapsulate in a series of stories, that it seems that the authors made the most respectful choice that they could have made at this stage in the inquiry.

I am grateful that there are others who are grappling with the question of how to keep the full method that Joe developed alive and thriving.  For me this is a daily challenge.  Honestly, I often feel that I’m engaged in an exercise of futility, but I realize that by simply setting my intention upon the goal of honoring Joe, I’m setting myself up for some measure of success.  And I have experienced an increasing clarity with the work that surely indicates some measure of progress.  All that creates a platform on which I am relieved to know that others are engaged with this challenge, and they are armed with much more information than I, as well as having each other.  When I am not bound by my duties of motherhood, I know that I have a place to go and learn that which interests me most about Pilates:  It will be a nice carrot to munch on someday.

This task of honoring the original work over 50 years after Joe left this material world, is no easy feat.  As the authors point out, we are working with incomplete information on the topic.  But with a fair amount of sleuthing and an intention of respect, I have faith that their efforts will yield good results and that we will all have access to a fuller picture of the Pilates Method than ever before.  This team of Pilates enthusiasts is well on their way to building a new course of study within the Pilates Method.

My introduction to Pilates came by way of people who were enthusiastic and knowledgeable, but not well versed in the original method.  The more I learned, the more I realized that the only way I’d feel that I knew Pilates was to learn from Romana.  Learning from Romana and many of the people who worked with her through the decades, was everything that I wanted it to be, and more.  Along the way, though, I realized that I could not stop there.  There is still more to the story.  More to uncover within the method.  And more to discover within myself.

Romana, among so many other things, kept Pilates alive.  The authors have shown us how this occurred.  In the initial decades after Joe’s death that meant doing the work of the method day in and day out.  But there was another, and perhaps greater, task that she took on which was the dissemination of the work.  In that process, choices had to be made.  She chose well and did an admirable job of doing what Joe could not manage to do in his lifetime.  Joe created and left us the work.  In a very real way, Romana kept it alive and gave us a blueprint for doing the same.  In doing that, she gave us a jumping board from which to delve deeper, to realize the fullness of the method and the richness that a complete and thorough study offers each and every student who accepts Pilates into his / her life.  (I know it sounds a little religious, what can I say?)

With this biography, this European team is building the foundation of that phase of redevelopment.  I guess I’ll have to move to Europe someday….

Auntie’s Chocolate Mint Squares

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chocolate mint squares

These are dangerously delicious.  Which is to say that they are not very nutritious and highly addictive.  For these reasons, I make them once a year to share.  When I met my husband, I stopped going home to Michigan for Christmas.  These mint squares are part of the traditions from my youth that I knew had to continue on with me as we built new traditions in California.  I got in touch with my great aunt who made them without fail every year, and I was in business.

First Layer
½ cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
1 cup flour
½ tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 ½ cups chocolate syrup

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Combine butter, sugar, and eggs with an electric mixer.  Mix in flour, salt, vanilla, and chocolate syrup until you have a silky batter.  Pour into an ungreased 9×13 glass pan.
Bake for 30 minutes.  Cool overnight.

Second Layer
½ cup butter, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
a dash of mint extract, to your taste.  (use either mint extract from the spices area of your market, or food grade peppermint essential oil)

Combine butter, powdered sugar and mint with mixer.  Spread over cooled cake.  Chill until firm.

Third Layer
6 oz semisweet chocolate chips
6 TBS butter

Melt chocolate chips and butter, stirring until silky and completely combined.  Pour over top.  Refrigerate to cool.

Once cooled and set, bring to room temperature.  Cut into 1 inch squares.  Dipping the knife periodically in clean water makes clean cuts (messy cuts mean nibbles for the person slicing though – your choice).  The squares freeze and thaw nicely, just wrap them really well.

Pilates is About….Strength

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If I haven’t already mentioned Romana’s simple and sophisticated definition of Pilates, then I should for posterity sake:  stretch, strength, and control.  In every exercise.  At least, that’s the gist of what I understood.  I think about that crystallized idea often as it’s a good measure of the work being done on my watch, and a good way to keep tabs on my understanding of the work.  (It’s very easy to veer off track with Pilates because our bodies encompass so much of what we experience from day to day).

I know that I already shared some thoughts on control a while back.  Today, I’ll share some on strength.  Here’s a story that I think goes a long way toward conveying what strength means in the world of Pilates.

When I was a Romana’s Pilates apprentice, along with working diligently on my Pilates workouts, I had decided that I wanted to be able to perform a pull up and a chin up.  Everyday when I worked out, I’d do a few of each at the end.  Months went by and I didn’t make a lick of progress.  (Yes, I realize that this proves that I am a slow learner.)  During one of my lessons with Sari at TPNY, I was working on the standing arm series and she was monitoring my low back.  Thanks to her wise and sensitive hand, it quickly became clear that with each movement I lost my connection to my center.  With her unwavering guidance I figured it out.  The proof of that being that upon returning to my daily pull up / chin up regimen, I could actually perform both.  It turns out that the strength had been there all along, but the coordination had not.

Sure Pilates builds strength, but always in a coordinated way.  Always with stretch, always under control.  This ends up building a very different sort of body than one that is focused purely on strength.  Strength alone doesn’t amount to much in terms of function.  On the other hand, consider a well coordinated body; that has a perfect balance of stretch and strength which is harnessed by mental control.  Now that’s what makes a powerhouse!

Dried Fruitcake: Delicious and Nutritious

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dried fruitcake

As promised…
A client brought this tasty loaf to me many winters ago.  I fell in love with it and asked for the recipe.  My husband and I love to slice it very thinly and toast it with butter.  It is mostly fruits and nuts, the minimal amount of batter just holds it all together.

1 cup dried dates, chopped (the oat coated date pieces are a dream after pitting and chopping your own a couple times)
2 cups apricots, chopped
1 cup raisins (golden if you like)
1 ½ cups whole blanched almonds
1 ½ cups walnut pieces
¾ cup sugar
¾ cup flour
½ tsp baking powder
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Mix the fruit and nuts.  Mix the flour, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and baking powder.  Combine everything.  Bake in a buttered loaf pan for 2 hours.  I check the loaf periodically to ensure that the top isn’t burning (I think that this depends on one’s oven because it wasn’t always a concern).  It can be covered with aluminum foil.  I have also taken to baking in cupcake tins since the baking time is shorter and the smaller cakes are easier to manage.  I’m afraid that I don’t have a baking time for the cupcake size.  I just check frequently.  It’s done when the cakes come out of the pan easily after a little coaxing with a spatula around the edges, the color is golden, and the consistency is firmly together.

Reclaiming the Youth that I Never Had With Pilates

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As I’ve mentioned many times here, I have been navigating injuries since I was a teenager.  My mother, in a misguided attempt to be helpful, would often say that I was too young to be in such pain.  Yet pain was a daily reality for me, for over a decade.  Even now, the majority of my days include some degree of physical discomfort, but nothing compared to what I experienced in my twenties.   Because of this, it has taken me many years to realize just how uncommon my experience of pain and discomfort was vis a vis my age.  I’m grateful to Pilates because as I continue to build my Pilates Body, I see the layers of pain dissolve and the body that I never had as a young person is revealed.

Many people bemoan the loss of youth with the aging process.  I can never relate to such lamentations because as I get older, I get better, not worse.  Yes, I have Pilates to thank for that in two parts.  Firstly because it helps me manage and diminish my pain.  And secondly because it gives me a format for continual improvement.  Pilates is at once corrective, restorative, and enhancing.

When I was an apprentice with Romana’s Pilates, I benefited from many conversations with Pamela Pardi.  She is one of my favorite teachers because she is so thoughtful.  Pam brought home the point that Pilates minimizes age.  It means so much to hear things in-person and in-context.  I’ve taken what she said on the topic to heart.  Because now I that I am officially aging, and I don’t have a picture-perfect-pain-free youth about which to reminisce, I have something of a double imperative to remain young by the standards of Joe Pilates:  “If your spine is inflexibly stiff at 30, you are old.  If it is completely flexible at 60, you are young.”

Since I’m reading the JHP biography right now, it bears mentioning that Joe himself enjoyed something of a renaissance in his life once he was firmly entrenched in adulthood because the “Golden Era” of Pilates was when he in his forties.  For many of us, this simple truth adds yet another layer of inspiration to the method that he developed.

Today for my small part, I’m grateful to enjoy the miracle of Pilates in my daily life and to be able to share its many wonders.  It is truly a gift that keeps on giving.