Changes from the Inside Out

[written a couple of years back]

The thought I had whilst in Bikram yoga class yesterday was about changes.  External changes are relatively easy to come by - a new haircut or color, upgrading the clothes, lose a few pounds, change your diet.  But it is the internal changes which are harder to evoke.

 Bikram was instrumental in some difficult changes I made over the years.  It was Bikram yoga that  got me off the drinking track.  Being a functional alcoholic, I was drinking regularly everyday, at night, after work.  It was, for all intents and purposes, an addiction.  I started doing Bikram yoga in February of 2002, and ended up not having a drink for almost three months.  That's rather impressive for someone who had basically been drinking daily  for about ten years.  I loved Bikram classes so much it was easy to stop drinking, because Bikram class can truly suck if you've got residual alcohol in your system.  We won't get into the reasons why I got back off the wagon (something to do with old friends and a vacation in Florida).



Last year, March 10th to be exact, was another milestone for that was when I stopped drinking caffeine regularly.  That addiction stretches back to high school, watching my dad make a huge pot of coffee Saturday and Sunday morning, and I just had coffee all the time.  The stunt at Starbucks in college did not quite help matters either, for I learned more about the nuances of coffee, the impact of fine brewing and the variations of light, mild and dark roast among beans.  I learned the light but undeniable addiction of caffeine in my organic chem class in college, knowing that it takes only a cup to create the body's  addiction for the next 8-10 hours, after which one will experience tightness of the blood vessels and, thus, a headache, unless one consumes caffeine again.  In acupuncture school, we were taught that caffeine creates a steady drippy leakage of qi, and since proper respect and conservation of one's qi was the ultimate key in a long healthy life, caffeine addictions were bad.  Yet still I drank coffee daily.  For a wedding present we got a cool Cuisinart 10-cup coffee maker complete with its own grinder and thermos carafe, and I started making 10 cups of coffee at a time, and finishing most of it in a day.

But thanks to Bruce, a coworker at a Large Popular Health Food Store That Shall Remain Unnamed, who went on a fast detox and gave up sugar and caffeine (and looked a bit worse for the wear during its initial stages), I was inspired to say, "Sure, that sounds great, why not?" and gave up caffeine as well.  March 10, 2010.   Four days before my 38th birthday.  

Magically, it stuck. I've gone about 98% caffeine free, though don't ask how many cups of decaf coffee I down a day. Any slips are usually accidental, sometimes on purpose to get through an 8-hour shift when I was dead tired and cranky to boot.