Get the Fork Out...


                                                                Of your mouth...

Now, c'mon, your dirty mind got the best of you, didn't it?

I have incorporated three strategies from the Strength for LIFE book by Shawn Phillips.  One was forced on me, the other is a personal challenge I have taken up and the last is a gift from a friend.

More on the friend later...

The first strategy is the stretching and yoga focus of a healthy and flexible body that can carry on for years.  I remember a doctor telling me several years ago the greatest predictor of longevity is how easily a person can clasp their hands behind their back, on from up, the other from down.  NOT just clasping hands behind you (ala the ralph mouth, fake hug, make out in the phone box trick - whoa, who knows what that is referring to?), heck, I can do that!

This is where you reach for the sky with one hand, and the floor with the other, then clasp hands.  One elbow points to the ceiling, the other the floor.  I just got a cramp typing that...

I hurt myself pretty badly about a month ago in the gym.  I've always had that cork-screw feeling since the car accident and, well, let's just say, I fully SCREWED myself this time.  The rehab has been stretching some very tight and short muscles.  It is coming along very well and I can tell that I will be stronger and better off for having addressed the flexibility problems sooner rather than later.

The second was a suggestion to slow down while eating, to raise awareness, his suggestion: Put the fork down in between bites.  Simple, honest, brilliant and the focus of my discipline/awareness training for the week.  This is all I want to accomplish this week, period.

Now I could have titled this blog "Stick the Fork In..." but then people would just think it was another blogger telling Hillary Clinton to get out of the race.

Oscar Wilde: The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork...

I can feel real change in my life nowadays.  There is a calm and faith that makes the waves my friends and allies and not the drowning destroyers of the past.  I don't have to run that hard or erratically to get where I want to go.  Maybe I'll end up in church afterall.

Yogi Berra: When you come to a FORK in the road, take it!