Trikes for Grownups!

Are you looking for something interesting to put on your holiday gift list? Adult tricycles are becoming more popular for the boomer generation.

Unlike the trikes we rode when we were toddlers, adult trikes have three wheels that are all the same size. Most adult trikes have a sizable basket in the back. That’s my favorite part. I use that basket for laundry, tarot cards, musical instruments, and anything else you can imagine.

I first noticed adult trikes when we moved to Florida. Immediately I knew I wanted one. As I did some research, I learned that the adult tricycle is not a new phenomenon. In fact, I spent $5 at a yard sale to buy the carcass of a “Western Flyer” from the 1950s.

After much consideration, I decided it would be easier to get a brand new trike than to try to rehabilitate the antique Western Flyer.

There are a surprising number of adult trikes from which to choose, and seemingly more on the market every day. You can get a three-speed, a six-speed or a fixie. You can get wheel sizes from 20 inches to 26 inches. You can even get a canopy to shade you from the fierce Florida sun as you pedal to your water aerobics class.

The trike I chose for my first trike (yes, there will be others) is a Schwinn Meridian in Wild Cherry Red. I understand these are very popular in third-world countries for basic transportation to work. We could learn a lot from third world ingenuity.

We ordered the trike online, so it needed assemby. In the picture, you can see my dear husband added some bows and balloons to his stellar assembly job. The trike was waiting to great me when I arrived home from my trip to Connecticut.

It is also possible to purchase high-end trikes from bike shops. The top of the line is the Miami Sun, but there is a wide range of other options, too.

Adult trikes are perfect for those who need to carry more than a two-wheeler will allow. They are also great for folks whose sense of balance isn’t quite what it used to be.

For fun, transportation and exercise, the adult trike makes a lot of sense!

My First Bikram Yoga Experience

I took my first Bikram Yoga class during my Northeastern Tour this summer.

I have always been aware of the benefits of yoga. My grandmother did yoga back in the 1970s. Until recently, my personal yoga experiences were limited to a few private classes with a good friend, and some free classes in church basements and community centers.

I have been to many yoga studios to teach tarot, meditation and other complementary modalities, but, until a few weeks ago, I had never taken a class in a real studio.

True Bikram Yoga in New Haven and Madison, Connecticut, is about as real as it gets.

I attended a Saturday morning class in the New Haven studio. I also visited the Madison studio.  The New Haven studio is downtown, in the basement of a grand old office building near New Haven Green. The Madison studio is a brand-new facility on a second floor with huge windows.

There are many yoga studios that offer a “hot yoga” class, or a class based on the Bikram series of twenty-six postures and two breathing exercises. Robin Brace, the owner of True Bikram Yoga, closely adheres to the teachings of Bikram Choudhury.

Robin explained to me some of the differences between Bikram and other forms of yoga.

Bikram Yoga is practiced in a hot room, specifically 105 degrees with 40 per cent humidity. There are a list of benefits of the heat posted on a bulletin board in the New Haven studio. I kept that list firmly in mind as I suffered through the ninety-minute class. I found it oddly comforting to learn that Bikram developed the hot room to mimic the environment of Calcutta, where he first learned yoga.

A Bikram hot room floor is carpeted. This keeps people from slipping on pools of sweat. The carpets at True Bikram Yoga are frequently cleaned. However, if your idea of a yoga class involves the sweet scent of exotic incense wafting on a gentle breeze, your senses will be shocked. A Bikram studio smells like a gym.

Bikram Yoga doesn’t focus on the search for enlightenment. They don’t say “Namaste” to begin and end the class. But don’t for a minute think that the Bikram Yoga experience isn’t spiritual. Bikram Yoga is difficult and uncomfortable. Enlightenment comes simply from the process of getting through it.

Bikram Yoga is practiced in front of a mirror. “Eyes on you!” The teacher commands throughout the class. Looking at myself in skimpy yoga clothes, covered in sweat, trying to gracefully balance on one leg, I appreciated the lesson of self-acceptance.

A Bikram class is 90 minutes. There are no short classes, or beginner classes. Beginning students practice alongside experts. For me, this thought was immediately intimidating. I imagined my overweight, middle-aged self sandwiched between young, lithe, slender beauties turning themselves into pretzels without breaking a sweat. The reality was much different than that.

While each of us did the same postures, we were each individually challenged to do our own personal best. For me, staying in the hot room for ninety minutes, breathing through my nose and actually getting my forehead to touch my left knee were my challenges and achievements.

Robin Brace, the owner, taught the class I attended. While Bikram Yoga teachers are trained to use a specific dialogue to guide students in and out of postures, Robin seemed to know how to help each person with their specific challenges.

After the class, we had fresh juice and slices of cold grapefruit. The other students were warm (no pun intended) and congratulatory. “How did you like it?” “Are you coming back tomorrow?” “You made it through your first class! Way to go!”

I was shocked. Didn’t they see me fall out of Standing Bow posture in a rather dramatic way? Didn’t they notice me lying on my mat, panting, while they were bending themselves into Camel and Rabbit postures?

Suddenly I had a clear flash of yoga-induced enlightenment. I have avoided yoga studios of all types for most of my life. Somehow, I thought a yoga class would be a lot like middle school physical education class, where I could never make the basket, or hit the softball. I have been avoiding the benefits of yoga, and exercise in general, because of how much gym sucked in seventh grade.

Robin gave me a button that said “I survived my first Bikram Yoga class.”

Bikram Choudhury, the founder of Bikram Yoga, is controversial for a number of reasons. Some people in the yoga community express concerns about the man, and the practice. I’ve yet to hear a Bikram student say anything negative about any other style of yoga. The closest was a fellow student, after class, who told me this.
“I’ve studied many other yoga styles. Bikram is my favorite.”

I remembered her in class. She struggled with a few postures, and had to leave her mat to get tissues from the back of the room. She seemed to be suffering as much as I was.

So often we seek to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Sometimes there is pleasure that comes from doing the hard thing, rather than avoiding it.

I like a gentle, relaxing yoga class, too. Now that I’ve survived my first Bikram class, I’ll feel comfortable visiting different studios and learning different yoga styles. But, like my friend in class, Bikram may become my favorite.

Rolling the Panda

I may have become guilty of passive cultural appropriation.  Or I am learning an ancient Chinese exercise form. Or maybe both, I’m not quite sure.

Here, at my community, there is a “Chinese Wand” class twice a week. Our class leader is an incredibly fit octogenarian.  Like all group leaders in our community, she is a volunteer.

We gather in the still morning at the lake’s sandy beach and engage in a series of seventeen exercises.

The scene is idyllic. Sometimes I feel like I’m in a movie. The breeze rustles in the Florida bamboo as juvenile cranes practice flying at the water’s edge. Turtles bob up and down in the water, occasionally snapping at jumping fish.

From a boom box comes a meditative Asian flute.

A bamboo stick (the wand) is the centerpiece of sixteen of the seventeen exercises. The exercises have exotic names such as “the Twisting of the Snake,” “Peeling the Octopus” and “Rolling the Panda.” I am proud to report that, at present, I am the only person in the class who can actually get the panda to roll.

We count our repetitions with the Chinese elements, raising the chi life force with our breath.

The exercises are just the right amount of challenging. If my instructor is any measure, the exercises are quite effective. Supposedly the precise order and motion of the seventeen exercises work all the organs and muscles.

I am so enamored of this exercise form that I did some research on it.  Chinese Wand was brought to America by Minnesotan Bruce L. Johnson, who claimed to have been taught the ancient form in Shanghai during his time in the Navy.

The only information about Chinese Wand comes from Bruce L. Johnson himself. The limited information about the form is explained by a tradition of secrecy. According to Johnson, Chinese Wand was just for the use of the ancient Chinese rulers and their families.

Johnson himself has a remarkable history of fitness, health and healing.  He also has an interesting personal story. He was at one time a psychic mystic. His ultimate conversion to Born-Again Christianity caused him to renounce both mysticism and the practice of Chinese Wand.

There are many who continue to promote and practice Chinese Wand, also known as Jiangan.

It is very possible that Bruce L. Johnson is the Chinese Wand equivalent of Wiccan Raymond Buckland; simply a person chosen to bring a new spiritual practice to the United States.

It is probably more possible that Johnson himself invented the form, and gave it a romantic and ethnically-appropriated origin story.

Regardless, the practice feels good. Many good practices come of ignoble beginnings.

Tarot started as a simple game.

Most of what we believe to be our history was made up to gain sponsorship for exploration.

I do have a nagging question, though.

I don’t have a problem with people making stuff up – everything was made up by someone. But now I wonder how many origin stories that we hold as sacred trusted history are as likely untrue as this one?