Nicole Tsong - 24 ways to move more : monthly inspiration for health and movement

24
ways
to
move
more

24
ways
to
move
more

Monthly Inspiration for Health & Movement

NICOLE TSONG

Photography by ERIKA SCHULTZ

To the movers of the world

Copyright 2020 by Nicole Tsong

Photography by Erika Schultz

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by Skipstone, an imprint of Mountaineers Booksan independent, nonprofit publisher

Skipstone and its colophon are registered trademarks of The Mountaineers organization.

Printed in China

23 22 21 201 2 3 4 5

Copyeditor: Ali Shaw, Indigo: Editing, Design, and More

Design: Kate Basart/Union Pageworks

Cover photographs by Erika Schultz

All photographs by Erika Shultz except as follows: page 15 by Mountaineers Books; page 18 Blazej Lyjak/Deposit Photos; page 117 Michelangelo Oprandi/DepositPhotos; page 135 by Bill Thorness

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file for this title at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020004709.

Printed on FSC-certified materials

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-68051-274-8

ISBN (ebook): 978-1-68051-275-5

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I couldnt stop grinning, my hair plastered to my head. I was breathing hard, and I didnt care. I shrieked with laughter as friends bounced me off-balance on a giant blue-and-yellow inflatable tube. I jumped off a tall platform onto a huge inflated landing pad.

Splashing around in a lake on inflatable toys, watching my friend Kristen scream as she flew over the water on a rope swing, cooling off from the intense heat in Texas hill country, I had never felt so strong, so trusting of my body, so happy it could play so hard. Not my adult self, anyway.

I knew, technically, that my strength was above average. For the previous six years, my body had endured long yoga practices several times a week. My legs no longer shook in an extended warrior hold, and Id made progress on holding a handstand without a wall. For two years, I had taught the sweaty yoga I loved, encouraging my students in a high runners lunge or when they attempted a new arm balance. I took teacher trainings where practices sometimes lasted five hours, sweat dripping off my nose onto my mat in downward-facing dog.

Even so, I didnt feel like a real mover. Sure, I did yoga four days a week. I felt stronger on hikes than I ever had. But I didnt think of myself as a physical person, surely not an athlete.

But that day, playing at the lake, something inside me clicked. Moving my body in ways outside my norm didnt feel overwhelming or hard. I laughed when other people bounced me off-balance. I raced around like a kid, convinced I could do anything on the inflatable toys scattered across the lake. I was gleeful jumping into the water.

I felt exhilaratedwhile moving my body.

The experience etched itself into my memory. A couple of years passed before the notion that moving my body was an instant pathway to feeling happy and joyful cemented itselfwhen I knew in my bones that my body was not only strong and capable but also that moving it was an essential ingredient to feeling good on a daily basis.

Now, I center my life around this fact: moving my body makes me happy.

If you had told me at age 16, 25, or even 30 that I would love moving so much that it would be a mandatory part of daily life, that I would write a weekly fitness column for The Seattle Times for six years and then turn it into a book dedicated to getting you to bust a move on the dance floor or lace up a pair of roller skates, you may as well have told me I was going to be an A-list movie star.

But thats exactly what happened. The fitness part, not the movie star part.

A WOBBLY BEGINNING

Perhaps the memory of Dorothy Hamill and her 1976 Olympic gold medal lingered into the early 1980s, so it made sense to my mom that her two girls should learn to fly across the ice. Michelle Kwan was only a toddler then, years away from her Olympic medals. Credit to my mom for being at the forefront of the trend of Asian-American figure skaters.

At age five, the only reason I stepped out onto the slippery ice was to be like my older sister, Ingrid. I would do anything to keep up with her; I even pretended I wanted to ice skate. I didnt like falling on the hard ice, so I skated carefully, going slowly as I stepped one foot over the other doing crossovers in the little rink where I learned to skate forward and backward and to perfect T-stops.

A few years later, my radio alarm clock went off twice a week in the morning darkness, startling me out of sleep. I hit snooze until my mom opened my door and snapped, Nicole, you up? I rolled out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom, grumpy that I had to be up so early to practice.

I donned a teal-green zip-up jacket with matching short skirt, shiny tan tights, and scuffed white skates for private lessons with my coach, Yvonne. Yvonnes feathered, grayed-out blonde hair looked almost white. She was taller than me, though not by much, and wore a long blue coat with a fluffy white lining to keep herself warm on the ice. She had kind blue eyes and a maternal quality.

Figure skaters showed up early at the ice arenas parking circle, dropped off one by one, walking over a concrete bridge that crossed a tiny creek. When I opened the doors, the biting-cold smell of ice and dank carpet in the lobby hit my nose. I dropped my heavy duffel bag underneath the carpeted brown benches in the lobby and stuffed my toes into my tight boots, which hurt my feet every time I wore them. I carried clear nail polish in my ice skating bag in case I got a run in my tights.

Once on the ice, shivering, I skated in circles to warm up. Skating fast was the best part of practice. I felt free zooming around the ice. I didnt have to think; muscle memory took over. I went to the same patch of ice every time, spinning on one foot and learning to waltz jump, skating forward on one foot and landing backward on another. I watched older girls throw themselves into difficult double loops or lutzes, stumbling or falling out of the jump and trying again.

One day, when I was eight, I skated up to Yvonne at the hockey bench where we met for my private lessons. Yvonne looked over the top of her glasses, assessing me.