Making Memories

Making Memories

I worked through a pretty complex plan today and feel good about hitting the mark I had set for myself; despite the fact that I am trying to just go with the flow these days.

I did take a mid day break to “prove the point” to myself about my ease of being, so that Edy and I could walk to our neighborhood sushi place for lunch. Man, they do it right!!  It’s just like being back in Tokyo with specialty menu items and the freshest fish I’ve had for many years. The Unaju was exceptional today.  

Later, I saw a Facebook post from a buddy who is returning back to “reality” after weeks in Hawaii and that and lunch got me thinking about “experiences” and how we store them for recall in the future.

As you know, I take a lot of pictures and that is one way to store experiences. Others include food/meals, flora/fauna, music and other sensory repositories. One of the ones I’m just now remembering is the memories stored in muscles, because I am now using some that have been in their own form of storage for a very long time.  Yoga involves a lot of stretching and strength moves that address "every cell in your body” (Bikram quote) so, of course that brought me on to cellular memory (physical not the I-phone Type).

Over the past 5 weeks I’ve had a number of long lost memories surface about a variety of things. First were those brought on past injuries for obvious reasons. Second were those brought on by pleasure because they were so unexpected. An example of this is my ability to fully fill my lungs to what feels like the same capacity I did when I ran 9 miles a day and boxed in my 20’s. Ahhhhhhhhh, I did just now for the pure pleasure of it. Third are the memories that just come out of nowhere. For instance, the other day I was riding my bike on Route #3 and had a flashback to riding down US 41 in Florida when I was 14 years old – peddling my butt off to keep up with traffic and breathing into the flow. Was it muscles? Strobe of the spokes, my spinning legs and the burn in them or was it cellular?      

It’s been 25 years since I was in Japan yet, my Eel Bowl brought me right back to Minato Ku. I have not been to Hawaii for 6 months but my buddy’s post had me basking in the sunshine, smelling Kona coffee and feeling nothing but bliss.  Sensory memories are a trip.

So, I’ve been experimenting a bit on my wife with what I call the Eagle pose hug. I’m big into Eagles and Bigger into Hugs and learning the poses so I thought what better than combine them all into one? I combine all the moves (http://www.santosha.com/garuda.html ) into a relatively Python-esqe envelopment of my love, Edy. If I could levitate it would be even more effective.  The first time was a bit awkward but with each successive application the memories of that first time are felt in “every cell in my body” and I’m pretty certain are being stored for the future.  Try that with a I-phone.