Excessive Moderation

Meet the queen of "excessive moderation."  This is not a new term for me nor a new idea; I've done it for years and most generally paid for it with my health as in this last two weeks.  I thought it best to define my term and then my mind wondered as I jumped from definition to thesaurus to new word then back again. Somewhere there's bound to be a little humor in this story.

Excessive is defined as an amount by which one quality exceeds another, when my eyes and hand wrote down "quality" instead of quantity I knew the joke was still on me or Freud.  Now moderation is a word and act I really respect and would like to model more in my life.  In essence it means to lessen the intensity or to avoid extremes.  It is so much easier to define the words than to live them. 

Chicken soup for the soul.

So here I sit coughing, sniffling, and hobbled with a foot issue called "plantar fasciitis" all because of "excessive moderation."  It began when I was a child, but then so did all of my good and bad habits.  On January 1st  this year I decided that my body now needed yoga to help me relax and stretch this foot.  I began with "hot yoga" for 90 minutes at Genesis and loved it.  The next day I went to another yoga class, then next day two yoga classes and my body was happy, albeit slightly sore.  Then I went to my favorite workout--Pilates, at Core Connections.  Thursday was warm and sunny in the heart of Kansas so I took the dog for a walk.  However, I walked too far south (it may have been a yearning for a warmer climate) and had to turn around and walk back the distance home.  That's when the hobble began.  My body began to break down and argue with me all of the way home, how dare it do that when I was so enjoying the weather.  Three days later I had read another book, sat with ice on my foot, soaked it in Epsom salts, caught this passing cold,  and let my aching body heal.  Hump!  Excessive moderation won.

This time I may have been humbled or hobbled enough to teach my excessive spirit that moderation is the key.  We'll see.