Today, I went to Doctor Yang’s second lecture, which I enjoyed as much as the first.  I started my day, though, with a simple breakfast of fruit and yogurt, and an hour and a quarter of yoga (with a spitfire packing session between the first twenty minutes and the last forty-five).  I said farewell to Dad under the heated lamps of the port-cochere of the hotel, and we drove off in our separate directions for our own homes.  And so ended four days in the Berkshires at a yoga/qi gong/nutrition retreat for the guys.

I’ve used the previous few days to talk about the daily insights of this trip, but if I had to categorize the big insights of the last few days, it comes down to a few commonsense and recognizable bits of lore.  I’ve talked about the diagram at left that I made quite a bit, but really it comes down to practicing balance, strength, endurance, and flexibility more or less constantly.

The second thing was about diet.  I am going to need to change my relationship with food, and I’ve begun to do that. I’m not going to say too much about this here, unless people express a whole lot of interest, but the essence of it is that I usually put too much food on my plate, and I’ve been a life-long member of the “clean-plate club.” The combination is … enlarging.  Let’s leave it at that, shall we?

The solution is awkward socially, but simply implemented — I need to leave food on my plate when I order too much, and I need to order less food generally in restaurants; and I need prepare less food when I’m eating at home; and I need to find myself a greater range of snacks for those long stretches between meals — so that I choose my snacks, and they’re not chosen for me by circumstance.  It’s going to be simple, but not necessarily easy.  I’ve made progress on this in the last few days.

I think this concludes the series for now, but I may have further thoughts tomorrow.

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