Rise Up and Shine Again

The recent and rather abrupt change in the weather from mild warmth to a somewhat more bitter chill made me start to think of the way in which we draw with in during the winter months. The earth settles down from the height of summers warmth and draws in to rest and renew during the fall and winter. Some people draw in during this time of year and use up there reserves of energy re-emerging somewhat dull and listless. Others draw in using the time to revitalize themselves, filling up with new energy and renewed creative spirit. 
As the chill in the air begins to get more pronounced allow the breath to become full and free, warming you from the inside out. Take some time each day to do something for yourself,  if it is sitting quietly with a cup of tea or talking a walk in your neighborhood. You will feel more revitalized.

Soup

I love soup, I would eat it everyday, at every meal if it was available. The rich variety of soup is limited only by your imagination. Of course the classics are always appropriate French Onion, Minestrone, Leek and Potato, Five Bean, Vegetable, Chowders of all variety, Tomato Basil, the list goes on and on. Why should we shun soup to the cold winter months or times of illness? Soup can be created out of almost any ingredients that you have on hand and with a little creative paring take classics and update them to your special tastes. 


As I become more sensitive to foods and how they affect my body and my mood I have been playing with ingredients to see what harmonizes with me and what does not. One thing I have noticed is that I seem to have an almost unquenchable thirst. There are days when no amount of fluid will keep that dry mouth feeling at bay. This is more pronounced the more dry foods I eat (breads, crackers those sorts of things) but a bowl of soup will help to add water to the desert. 

Soups also lend a sense of home to most meals. The warmth from the bowl, the  complex aroma can trigger a feeling of warmth and togetherness. Take a moment before you have your next bowl of soup to appreciate the simplicity of the meal. There is no reason that the most expensive and extravagantly prepared foods must be your favorite things, try to slow down and let simple be the guide for the day.

Lift Me Up

As I reached the end of a long day of teaching students began to trickle in for my last class of the day. The first student to arrive was a stout woman named Omaria with a lot of fire in her eyes and a little life experience in her pocket. She rolls out her mat front and center in the room and proceeds to go about her pre-class stretching and settling. We begin a casual conversation where she revels that she was going to go walking but decided to come to another yoga class instead that day. She then begins to tell me that she has been working on Crow pose and that it has been eluding her and she is at the point of frustration and about ready to give up. She then begins to rattle off a list of poses that she can do, ones that she has been working on and has succeeded with. She then shows me her crow attempt. Her form was nice she seemed balanced (if for only a few seconds). My suggestion was for her to bring her feet together and squeeze them together, hugging into the mid-line. So she immediately jumps back into it and eureka! Balance and confidence!
As other students began to trickle in and take there places in the room there was a mellowness to the class that fit perfectly with the lazy Sunday afternoon. As I normally do I ask if there are any requests for the class and as was expected Crow was requested. There were some murmurers from other students about that being a challenging pose that was scary at times thinking that face-plant-asana was very likely. So we worked hugging the mid-line and trying to get the shoulders firmly on the back to support the lift safely. Then before they knew it we were at Bakasana. Not one person backed down from the challenge, most were able to balance and fly for more than just a few seconds! It was lovely to suddenly be in a room full of birds flying so gracefully.
At the end of class as we are gathering up our stuff to leave and the remaining students are chatting about there experience in class, Omaria revels that she will be 63 in September. I hope to have her zest for life and fire to learn at that age. For Omaria I say thank you for your gift of determination, perseverance and sharing your enthusiasm for life!

Falling in Love with Fall

I love fall! Who doesn't really? The landscape changes color, the air gets crisp, and you are almost willed to be outside to soak up the last bits of summer. When the sun begins to set around 6 pm I am usually astounded to find myself still awake since the rest of the natural world has gone to bed. This year I have noticed the shift to fall was a bit more dramatic than I remember it being in the past. It almost seamed like I went to bed one night during the summer and the next morning it was fall. There the thought also occurs to me that we seem to be working in opposition with nature since we create our "busiest" season just as nature is telling us to take a break and relax a bit.Since we are a over connected, ultra caffeinated society we must keep up the busy pace that we set for ourselves during the summer right threw to January. 
I am of course not immune to the hectic scheduling of the holidays but this year has been one of hectic scheduling. I almost don't know what to do with myself if I'm not bouncing from one thing to another at this point so I am looking forward to trying to slow down and maybe take some time for myself. I have a feeling that my practice will grow in leaps and bounds threw this fall and winter. One of the side effects of being inside so much more is that I am one of those people that "needs something to do". I often find myself jumping up and wondering around the house usually aimlessly. If I have something to do that can calm that inner restlessness then perhaps I won't find myself wondering aimlessly.

strong and able

Ever have one of those moments where you feel really accomplished and you want to run down the streets and shout to everyone about it? I am increasingly having those moments more and more lately. I think that I am just now realizing what I have accomplished. I just recently started talking about my weight loss almost because I was ashamed of it. Who wants to be thought of as the fat girl that lost weight. For that matter who wants to be thought of as the fat girl. When I first lost the weight I felt like I had come to the other side of a tunnel but I didn't really realize I was in it. It was a couple of years later that I found some pics of myself at probably my heaviest. They were really scary. I couldn't believe that was me, I didn't feel that big at the time.

I used to be the person that wanted to hide behind everything and not be noticed. I was also somewhat hard on myself. Another of my recent realizations is that I have accomplished A LOT. Many of these realizations come to me during my practice. When I was 17 and took my first yoga class I could do all sorts of crazy things, back bends so deep that it's surprising the human form can bend to that degree. I couldn't do Bakasana (crow), my wrists would wither under my body weight and I would tumble forward and land unceremoniously on my face. After some practice I have been able do this pose. It's not all ways pretty and both feet don't always come off the ground but I can do it.

The irony of this current revelation is that I recently went to hear Jillian Michaels speak. Almost immediately she chastised someone for negative self talk. While I don't generally talk about any one part of my body with disdain I do have some likes and dislikes. Realistically, who doesn't? I have learned to look past these idiosyncrasy and I have learned to love who I have become. I am aware that I carry 40 extra pounds. I also happen to be one of those lucky people that carries weight around the middle of my body. Many people would be very uncomfortable about this and yes for a time I was. Over time I have learned to accept that this is just my body and with some encouragement it will change and I will get to my goal weight. Negative talk will not take you very far and the pity party usually has a guest list of one because no one wants to hear you complain.

flowing water

I love the rain. The calming sound of rain hitting the roof. The sound of water flowing in a little stream down the driveway. The smell of a spring rain when everything seams so alive and fresh.

I recently realized that with the exception of one place I have always lived somewhere near a major river. The exception was Lubbock, TX, which is practically in the desert (which might be one reason why I didn't like living there). This is relevant because I am an Aquarius, the water bearer. (Aquarius is actually an air sign.) Water's ability to flow around or over or even under any obstacle is something that I am trying to achieve. How many times have I been in class and the teacher says "the next pose is (fill in the blank). My first thought might be "Oh I hate this pose" or "This pose never works out well for me" or "Not again!" Of course I wold never reveal this during class or probably even after for that matter, but wouldn't it be nice to just say "OK, lets take things as they come and learn from it." This has been my approach lately and it's worked out fairly well, I think.

The ability to go with the flow and not put up damns or have to build a bridge to go over the flow of life is what yoga tries to teach us. When I really became interested in yoga I would read about "taking yoga off the mat". I had some trouble figuring out what that meant, recently I have been able to take the lessons "go with the flow" off my mat. One other kernel of insight that I have been able to use to my advantage is that the pain and extreme effort is only temporary but to realize your true potential you will need to go threw the uncomfortable to get to the bliss. Knowing that things that seam bad are going to improve and that you might come to the other side of the pain with a new understanding and appreciation for your new strength and ability may make the lessons learned more worth while.

Food, Food, Food

Ok, I admit it I think about food a lot. Probably more than someone who isn't a professional chef should. How much food? What kind of food? Where did this food come from? How was it cooked? How did it get from farm to me? All good questions and all ones that people have been raising lately with increasing rapidity. The fact that we need someone to point out that you should buy your food from a local farmer and learn what is available and when it is actually in season seams utterly ridiculous but that is the effect of a global food system. Because we have this bounty, this unending supply of food there should be no global hunger but there is. There should be on malnutrition but there is. As Americans we should be able to feed our children nutritious foods but what we have is a warped food universe. Just the other day a friend of mine asked "Do you like that or do you force yourself to eat it?" She asked this as I bit into a fresh peach. "What do you mean?" This was the only reply that I could come up with. "Eating that peach that way, like it just came out of the ground?" was her response. After I stopped choking on peach juice I told her that peaches grow on trees. Turns out that the only way she eats fruit, or veggies for that matter, is from a can. Personally I stopped buying canned fruits and veggies a few years ago. I don't like the way they taste. The veggies have no flavor and are mushy and the fruit tastes like syrup.

As anyone who has lost a lot of weight will tell you to keep the weight off you have to moderate your food, or diet. Diet is not one of the four letter words that should be associated with abstinence. Diet really means the nourishment that you intake. Moderation is the key to so many things, food included. The conversation with my friend show how people have become so unaware of what food really is and where it comes from. Food does not come in a styrofoam container and defiantly does not come from a drive threw. Just after I lost the majority of my weight I was presented with out of town guests, my in-laws (who I love by the way). After the initial shock of seeing the new trimmed down me then the questions of eating and "will you be able to eat anything here?" comes up. Since I'm not one of those pre-packaged weight loss plan kind of girls food choices have always been open to me. The key was to choose foods that were healthy, and yes lower in fat, and lower in calories . What most people think is fat is the enemy when it comes to loosing weight. This is not entirely true. Balance is the key. After a while my tastes began to change I prefer lower fat items. I crave fresh fruits and veggies. Almost 100% of the time when asked what do you want to eat my answer will be veggies.

I have been thinking about reducing the amount of meat further in my diet not because meat contains a lot of saturated fat and cholesterol, which it does, but because I want to know that what I eat comes from a clean processing plant and isn't going to make me sick. I believe that animals can be treated well, given an environment to live in that is humane and killed in a humane manner. Commercial meat processors need to be reminded that they are the guardians of living, thinking creatures and should be treated accordingly. After reading books like In Defense of Food and Fast Food Nation I think vegetarianism is not 100% about health. Sure there are huge health benefits from a vegetarian diet many of which are the added fiber and micro and macro nutrients but there are advantages to eating animals and animal products as well. Meat doesn't have to be the meal, vegetables are not just there to dress the plate up. Exposure as a child can make all the difference as an adult to the food choices you make. There should be no forcing a single solitary pea down a child's throat on Thanksgiving while that child screams that they hate peas and have never had them before in their lives and will not start today. While you know this is not true because you had the same fight with the same child last Thanksgiving, it does show that variety is the spice of life. Eating fresh foods and preparing them from their whole state is the best way to introduce children to foods. By enlisting children to help in the kitchen, you will create adults that are comfortable cooking and eating food.

Breath

Breath connects us all. Everyone of us, humans and animals are connected, these connections run deep. The very core of our being is life. Everything around us is alive with breath. Trees, plants, oceans, animals, birds, turtles, all alive all breathing beings.

Yogi's talk about moving the breath, using the breath to expand and soften. Buddhists use the breath as a point of focus. In my personal practice, breath has become more of a focus. I find that in different poses or situations I use it differently. In long holds trying to slow down the breath can take some of the focus away from the physical body. In slow release poses, especially hip openers, breath becomes about releasing and relaxing, being able to identify gripping and holding and let it go.

In daily life breath comes to the front of my mind as well. Heavy sighs or shallow breaths are what I notice more. Just being aware of the breath in my body is an amazing accomplishment. So many people take their body for granted, completely unaware that their body is so much smarter than their minds. Breath being one of the first indications of a situation. Taking just a few moments to notice your breath in every situation. By watching it and knowing how it flows in all situations will allow your breath to even out as well as your emotions .