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Archive for Surprises!

Thanks for your memories

When I was in my early 40’s my older brother Bill came to visit me in Austin. We went to lunch with several of my women friends. Somehow over the course of the meal we got to talk about losing your virginity. It was a sweet memory for me, as I recalled a passionate escapade with my high school sweetheart. It was then much to my shock that Bill piped up that in fact he had been my first encounter when we were kids.

My immediate response was that he was full of shit. And then he relayed the story of luring me into a neighbor’s shed. A place we were forbidden to go. He went into a full accounting that ended with him throwing me out and slamming the shed door in my face. It was that one small detail about the door that sparked my memory and made me realize that in fact Bill was telling the truth.

You see, I do remember standing in front of that faded red door, feeling feelings I did not recognize. Often, I saw images of that door in my dreams. While I have no memory of what happened inside, I clearly remembered standing in front of that door with its red paint weathered and chipped. The hinges painted over with the same smear of red, rusted metal peeking through. It had happened to me. And since that was the only part I could remember I had to believe his story.

It seems for decades I had buried that part of me — buried that memory. Never told my mother or a teacher or a friend. Never told anyone I became involved with up to that point. I pushed it so deep inside I believed that it never happened. Even as a volunteer at the Austin Rape Crisis Center, I never thought of myself in terms of being a survivor. Yet there was this revelation in the middle of a Chinese restaurant with friends all around me — all of us shocked not only that it had happened, but at the casual, boastful way he told of my being raped.

Memories of events are hard to pin down. People often have different recollections of the same event. That doesn’t make one right and the other wrong. It can only be one’s own truth. This is why I’m so grateful to women who come forward with their truth, with their memories. I’m so sorry they had to go through these events, but am so grateful that they are able to put it into words and emotions — grateful that they have the courage to give voice to their memories of pain.

Food as a time machine

Posted by Abby Lentz 
· April 13, 2017 
· 1 Comment

This time of year I find that food turns into a time machine. As Easter quickly approaches I travel back to my childhood becoming 12 again.

Easter 1952 w/Nancy

Easter 1960 w/Nancy

A time when dying eggs was an all day project that lived on under your fingernails in crescent moons of red, blue and green. Clear waxed crayons would let you draw or write mystery messages that only appeared after dipping them into jars of warm dye.

Holidays were always my mother’s moments and no one did Easter as well as she did. Each kid had their part of the living or dining room where the Easter Bunny would hide the decorated eggs — the center prize being our very own basket.

A nest of shredded colored paper layered the woven bottom where jellybeans would jiggle down to be found just when you thought all had been eaten. A full array of yellow and pink Peeps, shoulder to shoulder with petite foil-wrapped chocolate marshmallow bunnies, surrounded a large hollow bunny stamped to look just like the rabbits on the pages of our fairy tales.

After all the eggs had been found, like clockwork, our Aunt Ethel’s package would appear. My Grandfather Briar’s sister was considered to be an “Old Maid” — never married, no children and not really liberated. Her father had left her inheritance in a trust fund that didn’t provide for her by the 1950s, which required her to work in her later years. Of course, as kids we thought that we were the luckiest ones around to have an aunt who worked at the candy counter in Wanamaker’s.

Aunt Ethel’s Easter eggs came carefully cushioned in layers of white tissue paper creased and folded smooth. To protect the script names, each egg was individually wrapped in clear cellophane gathered and twisted on top secured with a thin strand of real ribbon tied into a small bow. There would be no fighting about who got which egg since they were clearly marked as yours. Names in white surrounded by new growth green vines, each tipped with crafted candy flower buds in pastels of yellow, blue or pink. Inside the thick chocolate coat was a mystery flavor, hidden until mom would slice each egg carefully with a knife too sharp for a child to wield. Chocolate, vanilla crème, coconut, or sometimes even tiny chunks of candied fruit glued together with white sweetness, only to be revealed then.

Not a very good cook, my mother would excel at Easter. Canned ham was spiked with whole cloves to hold up golden rings of pineapple — always packed in syrup back then, never in juice. Each empty center ready to be filled with a maraschino cherry tacked in place with the point of a toothpick. canned hamIf you helped in the kitchen, chances were good that you would be rewarded with a taste of the coveted red cherry juice, sipped straight out of the jar. Baked sweet potatoes lost their tin-taste under a thick layer of gooey toasted marshmallows. Green beans would bathe in real butter, not oleo, for the holiday table. Of course no dessert was necessary. The Easter bunny’s bounty left plenty of sweets for us to eat all day and into the night. Once all the dishes were done we turned on the TV to watch the same show, all together, at the same time.

So, it’s no wonder that I love Easter time and all its many tastes. That the simple sight of grocery shelves loaded with sugar and chocolate transport me to a different time. A time when I was young and all was possible. When I could run like the wind and read without glasses. With my mother feeling accomplished, smiling and gay, and we were a family if only for that day.

Peeps Car

 

 

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Categories : Awareness, Featured, Off the Mat, Surprises!, Travel

Livestream now gives us a way to meet!

Abby Unplugged!

Live Stream Event

June 3 at 6p (Central)

After selling DVDs over the past decade I’ve only been able to meet a small number DVD_CategoryGraphicof you in person — but now with technology advancing in leaps and bounds Wednesday night I’ll be able to chat with you live!

I started sharing my work with Women’s Retreats in 2007 at what was then The Crossings outside Austin. Abby Unplugged became a tradition as my Women’s Retreats wrapped up on the last day.

Wanting to be sure no one left with an unanswered — or unasked question — I devote the final retreat segment to “Abby Unplugged.”

While my original thoughts were that this would be about yoga poses and philosophy, these unplugged sessions quickly became involved with questions about my personal self — advice on meditation and poses would often be followed by what sex is like at 67. How much I weigh became as important as how long have I been doing yoga (219 lbs / 43 years).

Yoga is so intrinsic to our lives it can touch on all that we do and everyone we meet. Not because we throw Sanskrit phrases around or drop into a headstand, but because yoga helps us to be present and be our best self even when situations are difficult.

Starting Wednesday June 3 at 6P (Central) time I’ll now be able to answer your questions even though we are not sharing the same space.

If you can’t be there live, but have questions you’d like to ask, email me at

abby@heavyweightyoga.com by Tuesday night. I’ll work to fit them into this event. No rules, no restrictions — I’ll be there on the mat to answer them all.

Hope you can join me as we get this opportunity to meet at last!

Abby Unplugged!

Live Stream Event

June 3 at 6p (Central)

http://livestream.com/heavyweightyoga

Expect the Unexpected

Posted by Abby Lentz 
· October 25, 2010 
· No Comments

Before we left Austin for our Second Honeymoon trip to California we made plans. Not only where we were staying, but also where we were eating.

  • Breakfast at MaMa’s — a café that was on everyone’s top 5 list.
  • Fancy dinner at the Grand View Hyatt — boasting to be the last sky-view restaurant in San Francisco.
  • The Sunday Grand Brunch at the Ahwahnee Hotel — our reservation timed to be at the cross over from breakfast to lunch so we could sample everything they had to offer.

So imagine our surprise after driving across Yosemite to Mono Lake to be treated to a 5-star meal at the Tioga Gas Mart. Fish tacos with fresh mango salsa and Buffalo meatloaf with seasoned steamed julienne vegetables all served on real plates with real silverware to be eaten outside on a weathered, well used picnic table. Gas pumps out front, the inside surrounded by refrigerator cases filled with the usual soft drinks and beer. The register decorated with last minute auto items hanging in their bubble packs. There was no hint of the delicious food we were about to savor.

In life there’s only so much we can plan. Out of that, there’s only so much that goes the way we hoped it would. After all Robert Burn’s poem written To a Mouse in 1785 is now a proverb:

The best laid schemes of mice and men / Go oft awry.

So it seems for generations we have been planning for things to not work out.  So what would happen if we also planned for the unexpected to be good? Things we don’t see coming that add to our day in a positive way.

The trick to this, I think, is letting those pleasant things be small. Receiving a smile from a stranger. Noticing how good our body feels after a little stretch. Hearing the birds in our front yard serenade us while sipping our morning coffee. Once expecting the best becomes a habit it’ll be easy to have little good things pool into a pond of joy you can soak in.

Be open to receive all that comes your way, let yourself exhale all that negative junk you might be carrying as you prepare for the worst to happen. Instead open yourself to receive the inhale breath and all the joy that it can bring.

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Categories : Awareness, Breath Work, Off the Mat, Surprises!, Travel
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