Daily Habits...

are in fact a good thing. That's why I'm deciding to push myself into writing at least one thing every day. There was a post on one of the many blogs I read on a daily basis about a week ago that I can no longer find; maybe if I find it I'll post it. It spoke about giving yourself an interview, because sometimes the person you know the least is yourself. Well, I demonstrated this fact in two ways today.

The first was during yoga practice. Twice a week during my lunch break I go to a yoga class instead of my large lunch. It is a welcome interlude to the day and usually sets me on a good track to be more productive in the afternoons. Today our instructor taught us several mudras. A yoga mudra is a hand position that is used in breathing exercises or meditation. Let me first state that I am a practical yoga practicer, meaning that I don't believe in the spiritual side, but rather practice for the mental benefits of meditation and the physical benefits of the various positions. We were doing a meditation practice where several hand positions were held around the chest or waist, and by breathing one could feel the motion of the diaphragm. We entered one of the mudras where you make a double pointer shape with your hands (palms together, index and thumb extended, rest of fingers folded) and invert it, placing the thumbs at the bottom of the sternum and the index fingers against the bottom of the throat.

The moment I entered this position and started breathing, I started laughing. It was incredible, almost like a switch. I could hold the fingers half an inch away from the chest and be okay, but the moment I made contact with the chest I laughed. Honestly I was a little unnerved by it. Of course the yogi explained that it was possibly a freed energy center and that I was holding tension in that spot. Whatever. All I know is that my body has some funky wiring and when this mudra is performed I break out in laughter. I can still do it now.

The second thing I learned was while playing Big Brain Academy for the Wii. I rented the game through Gamefly to know if it was any good. It's interesting to say the least; the game has some rather challenging "brain puzzles" and although I doubt it's akin to an intelligence test, I can sense my brain straining (or at least flexing) when I play it. One of the puzzles is an art puzzle: there are two canvasses, one complete and one empty. The Wiimote pointer turns to a piece to be placed on the canvas to complete the picture. On the higher levels the picture flips. I am used to this: on a Playstation eye-toy game I once had, one of the games was to break small barriers in midair by coordinating your real-life movements with that on the screen, and every once in a while it'd flip the screen. Back to Big Brain, when you get to the highest level the canvas spins instead of flips. I can handle the flips just fine, but I can't get my head around the spins. I miss every one, almost like my mind has a mental block against solving it. Is it a form of dyslexia? I also had a similar problem with a counting puzzle where numbers rotated inside of balloons and I was confusing -68 as -89 and similar errors (which would be understandable if I hadn't missed it with the leading negative sign). The more I play that game the more I know my mental strengths and weaknesses. It's interesting to say the least.

Anywho, I'm out. Longer day tomorrow than today. But now that I'm dedicated to write about it, I'll start forming some new habits, and that's a good thing to shoot for.