The Local Yogini

A space of my own

2012-01-08T11:33:00.000-08:00

Since moving to Portland, OR my main practice space has been my livingroom. It is less than ideal with carpet, curious dog, and sometimes present boyfriend. Too many distractions presented themselves, which then turned into excuses. I would plan to practice, then Dan would come home early, so then I wouldn't. Mayson would keep crawling on my mat preventing vinyasa progression, so I would do a twist and savasana so he could safely snuggle against me. I finally realized that two years of distraction, diversion, and excuses was making me into someone who only occasionally will practiced instead of the girl who would trek to the studio or practice in my petless, single-girl livingroom six or seven times a week.

I was left but no choice but to clear out the piles of laundry, tuck away Dan's various outdoor equipment, and eliminate piles of crap from the office. After all of this, I now have a luxurious space on the office floor, and a closing door for practice. No more excuses of dogs and boyfriends. Now I just have to shut the door and switch my focus to practice.

It is by far the best thing I have done for practice purposes in a long time. Now in an hour and a half I can chant, practice, and read a sutra or two. On days that I genuinely don't have time, I can cut everything and sit for 10 minutes of meditation. That is a real motivator to make practice time in itself, because quite frankly meditation is frustrating and hard. I'd much rather find an hour for asana than have 10 minutes of meditation.

How clean is your window?

2011-12-04T19:57:00.001-08:00

A yoga sutra study group started up tonight at Near East Yoga, the focus tonight was the vrittis. I would like to share a drop of wisdom that I learned. Vrittis can be useful if you stay mindful of their purpose. Asana, pranyama, all of this is a type of vritti. These particular vrittis (and others) can be used as a window cleaner to scrub your window clean, clear the seer's vision of reality. However, if you get addicted to the window cleaner and stop seeing it as a tool, your window just gets foggy with spray. You might as well be spraying dirt on the window. Maybe this is the purpose of breaks in practice, such as moon days off. After polishing the window for two weeks, you can sit back and look through with clarity at what is real.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-26T18:17:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It is such a pure holiday, despite the attempted corruption by an ever-earlier Black Friday. I spent it with Dan, Matt, and the three dogs. We had a very delicious, local meal that stuffed us all. I hope that everyone else out there enjoyed their thanksgivings as well. I give thanks for the abundance of delicious food and drink found locally here. I also give thanks for the Portland yoga community that I sometimes have the rare treat of indulging in when school eases up a bit.

Don't count on many posts until the new year here. As a busy chiropractic student, things are heating up. The biggest test of the program is approaching in January, and as such, things are very intense until it wraps up. After that, many more practices with Near East Yoga, kirtans at the BhaktiShop, and perhaps even some fun at the Yoga Space too. More local food too.

One promised post...a reflection on an observation of a great yoga as therapy doctor.

Yogi Wrists

2011-10-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

Nothing in the nine years I've been practicing yoga has been as hard on my practice as chiropractic school. Seventh quarter was especially was hard on me, and hard on my practice. At the end of the quarter I went several weeks without so much as a surya namaskara. Now I'm trying to get back to practice. Besides the tigher hips and hamstrings, and maybe a slightly less tolerance for 10 surya namasakara that crept up while I was being lazy, the thing that prevents me from my pre-break practice habits is the wrists. It's not a pain that lasts after savasana, or even really a pain at all. But rather an ache that develops in my wrist a few asana into the primary series. When I experience this, I simply go on to finishing. In fact, instead of doing a proper bridge or upward-facing bow I will simply place a block under my pelvis and breathe for 25 breaths instead to avoid weight bearing on my wrists. What is going on?

Of all the things that yogis and non-yogis ask me about yoga, the wrists are number one on that list. Questions like: what do you do to ease the pressure on your wrists, my wrists are too bad to practice yoga, and do your wrists get messed up from yoga. All of these things and more come up. I even get questions about people wanting to do push-ups and think that the yogis have the answers.

The thing that many people don't think about is that your bones are living things. And as living things they change in response to stimuli. How often in your everyday life are you weight bearing on your wrists/hands...as much as your body weight? Not so much. In many yogasana you are supporting half to all of your weight with your arms. That's a lot for them. Bone remodels according to the stress it regularly experiences. This is why astronauts will come back to earth after living without gravity and have bone loss. It's why your bones are not perfect lines and cylinders, the muscles create stresses on the bones at different points when you're growing and the bone grows to accommodate that. This is also why weight-bearing exercise is recommended for those with, and at risk for osteoporosis, it can give the bones strength where it's needed.

Your body can change a lot in a few weeks. It takes 120 days for cortical bone to fully remodel against a new stress and about a year for the medulary bone to accomodate that same stress. A study monitoring bone strength in patients on bed-rest found that their skeleton changed it's strong parts from places like the heel to the new weight bearing places like the back of the head in a course of 17 weeks. All of this makes me think that it is likely that my body started to change during that break in my practice schedule. During that period of practically no weight bearing on my arms, I likely lost some of the strength there. I can no longer tolerate nearly 50 vinyasas in a practice. The way to get back that strength. Practice. Repeat. The science says at least 3 times a week will do you.

As a yoga teacher I think this is a valuable lesson learned. There is a reason to focus on the standing and seated asana with beginners and especially so with elderly students new to yoga. Let their bones get stronger. Encourage regular practice, at least 3x a week. Build them up from just one or two vinyasas and one short inversion. Take the pressure off the arms and let them grow gradually. Let these students know that if it hurts in their wrists, it's okay to ease up. Teach the very valuable half-sun salute as an alternative in beginners classes. Let them insert this variation as needed. Gradually increase the amount of weight bearing in the arms. In time, a hand stand and vinyasas will be much more tolerable.

Canning Wrap-up

2011-10-09T20:42:00.000-07:00

This weekend I really devoted myself to wrapping up the year's canning. I canned plum jam and pickles of all types. Below are the grand totals for canning season 2011:

12 pints clam chowder base
6 1/2 half pints strawberry rhubarb jam
1 gallon frozen strawberries
2+ gallons of frozen cherries
10 1/2 half pints blue-raz jam
3 gallons frozen blueberries
21 1/2 half-pints blackberry jam
12 quarts peaches
2 gallons frozen peaches
1 1/2 gallons frozen blackberries
47 quarts tomatoes
12 half pints plum jam
10 quarts pickled beets
18 quarts dill pickles
3 pints refrigerator breat & butter pickles

Many thanks to my sources of fruit and veggies for canning: ABC seafood, New Seasons Market, Sauvie Island Farms, Pat & Marina, ODFW and USF&W for providing the space for blackberries to grow free, Josey Farms, Karam Farm, Giusto Farms, and Growers' Outlet.

Nuts will be ready for sale at Josey Farms this November, they have hazelnuts and walnuts in big sacks. They're the best nuts I've ever tasted. They come pre-cracked, but you need to separate shell from nut, but it's rainy and cold out anyway so it gives you something to do. The shells make excellent fire fuel if you have a fireplace or woodstove. We don't but we do give them to a friend who says they burn super warm!

Summers Off?

2011-08-21T17:47:00.000-07:00

Most kids in America get the summer off from school. A lot of us see summer as a time to kick back, go on vacation. Summers off is actually a relic from times where nearly everyone had a family farm. Summer is such a busy time of harvest and food preservation that families couldn't afford to have their kids at school. They needed all hands on deck at this time of year.

This summer I've been going to school, manning my little dirt spot of a garden, visiting the local u-picks, and preserving food for the winter. This leads to a lot of late nights and stuffed weekends. It should all pay off in the end though.

So far this year I have stored up:

* 12 pints of clam chowder base (add the dairy when you eat it)
* 6 half-pints Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam
* 1 gallon frozen strawberries
* 2 1/4 gallons frozen cherries
* 10 1/2 half-pints blueberry-raspberry jam
* 3 gallons frozen blueberries
* 21 1/2 half-pints Blackberry jam
* Several baggies of dried herbs
* A basket of garlic
* 12 quarts canned peaches
* 2 gallons frozen peaches

My freezer is now packed to it's limits. No more freezing this year. A deep freeze is my dream for when I move into a house.

I still hope to can a bunch of tomatoes, some pickles, some beets, and try my hand at some plum jam.

The last chore of the harvest will be to get the walnuts and hazelnuts from Josey Farms. They come pre-cracked, but you need to separate the nuts from the shells. The nuts are ready in late october/early november.

With all of this I don't have a lot of free time during the summer, but I'm fitting in a few roadtrips anyway! We're off to the Redwoods during my 'fall break' from school.

Wake-up Call

2011-07-20T18:43:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been reading Awake At Work by Michael Carroll. The short chapters are thought provoking and take a couple days or weeks to sink in and take hold. It is so appropriate that I should read chapter 14 'Be kind to yourself'. "We want to be seen as competent and capable--and then we have to live up to our own aspirations. Tight timetables, complex challenges, risky decisions, and much more can keep us going at a pace that is just asking too much." It really brought to light something that Kathy Cooper had said to me when she was here in the spring, to be kind to yourself and not confuse willpower as prioritizing practice; realize that you need your sleep.

Seventh quarter in chiropractic school is very demanding. I think the whole point of this quarter is to see how many balls you can juggle at once without collapsing. I asked my boyfriend how I could practice daily, fufill the demands at school, eat, and sleep. He replied that he didn't know, that I'm pretty much maxxed out. I shouldn't be so hard on myself.

After just about 3 weeks of this schedule I came home today and collapsed on the couch without taking my dog out to pee...for two hours. Talk about crashing. I have been barely practicing at all, getting very little sleep, and beating myself up for not practicing 6 days a week like I did in Philly and not sleeping enough. This is not productive. It leaves me too drained to even practice on the weekend, when I actually could enjoy yoga, sans timer, pehaps even make it to the studio!

Clearly this is not the way. The first limb of yoga is the yamas, the first of which is ahimsa. I have not been kind to myself. I DO need to get through these 10 weeks, successfully. I will do what I can to make that happen. But perhaps I should stop beating myself up about literally making the choice to sleep. Cut the "mandatory" practice to the weekends/holidays. At the end of these ten weeks, I can go back to a daily practice over vacation.

Yoga has many parts, not just asana. I think my weekday practices will change to something new for now. I am contemplating meditation on a daily basis. Perhaps after the dog's after-school stroll.

Has anyone else ever felt like this? What did you do to get through it?

When God Says Wait

2011-07-04T17:08:00.000-07:00

When I was in Sunday school as a kid my teacher one day told us that God always answers your prayers. God always says yes, no, or wait. Well, for the people of Portland praying for strawberries in May, God said wait. At last, the strawberry crop is ripe for the picking. Talk about independence from a "fruitless" existence! The apples from the CSA stopped pouring in weeks ago.

All the waiting has basically turned the U-Picks on Sauvie Island into a bit of a scene. Today I saw too many people in very nice outfits showing up with five gallon buckets. Sundresses and pretty white capris abounded. I sat there in my clothes that are meant for getting dirty...literally sitting in the dirt for three and a half hours. Picking the juicy bundles of early summer sunshine for a total of 7 1/2 pounds. The pretty clothes people walked about bending every so often to pluck a berry, commenting on how low the bushes were. They left with maybe a quart in their buckets. Strawberry picking is dirty work, as well as the rest of farming. Come prepared and reap the rewards!

I picked Hood Strawberries. A local favorite. These berries remind me of the field of wild strawberries across from my parents' house. Delicious and tiny. The only difference is they are bigger, but not by much. They are much smaller than the average berry you find in other varieties.

Seven and a half pounds of strawberries will keep me busy after my shower. Tonight I will make strawberry-rhubarb jam. I will tart freezing berries...hoping for a gallon to make treats throughout the year. The rest will be for us to eat in their most simple form throughout the week.

At the farm they mentioned blueberries and raspberries will be ready next week. This summer is moving right along. It looks like another batch of jam will be cranked out within a week or two!

Spring Salads

2011-06-30T12:53:00.000-07:00

The best sign that spring is in is the way my refrigerator screams SALAD when I open it. It may be officially summer, but here, the spring crops are still in season. Strawberrries are just now ripe for the picking and the first cherries came in today's CSA box.

My favorite spring salad?

Saute chopped garlic scapes, asparagus, and chives in butter. Hardboil an egg. Chop radishes and a small amount of cheese to add to whatever greens you have on hand. Combine the whole thing and dress simply with a bit of red wine vinegar, olive oil, and a dash of salt and pepper.

Sometimes I'll make some croutons by drizzling some baguette pieces with olive oil and toasting them in the toaster oven. You can also rub them with a split chunk of garlic scape or add salt if you like.

Dessert can be a piece of chocolate or strawberries/cherries when they become available.

At least another two weeks of salads at my place.

Strawberries are popping and jam making is in order now. Some other spring preserving I do is to freeze a gallon each of cherries and strawberries. This gives me something to make smoothies out of throughout the year. Another smoothie prep I'm adding this year is to juice a watermellon and freeze it into cubes.

drishti and inversions

2011-06-06T20:10:00.000-07:00

I am afraid of the eyedoctor; I haven't seen one for at least a decade, maybe longer. I've been practicing yoga for 9 years. This could be a problem. Here is why I'm vowing to make an appointment soon.

Glaucoma affects 15% of people in their 60s and up. This disease creates irreversible vision damage due to increased interocular pressure pressing on the II cranial nerve which supplies your retina. Inversions, all of them, including downward facing dog and child's pose, can increase interocular pressure and aggrevate glaucoma. You would think that the solution is just to not practice asanas with your head lower than your heart if you have glaucoma, and you're right. Except, many people that have glaucoma don't know it until big damage has been done. The disease starts by gradually eliminating your peripheral vision, you really don't see it coming. The only way to find out is to have an eye exam by a professional.

Who is at risk?
*Caucasians 50+
*African Americans 35+
*People with a family history of glaucoma
*People with cardiovascular disease
*Near-sighted people
*People with hypertension
*Those that experience vasospasms

*Likely at risk people: migrane sufferers, the obese, smokers, heavy alcohol users, those with anxiety or high stress levels

I would like to hypothesize that regular yogasana practice including inversions would help your body to learn to control and tolerate increased interocular pressure. However, I could find no research to support that hypothesis. On the bright side, there is also no evidence that yogis have a higher glaucoma rate.

The Mayo Clinic lists weight & blood pressure control and excerise as good prevention, all of which yoga practice provides.

They also recommend eye exams every 3-5 years, every year if you're over 60. I'm clearly due. The good news is the reason I dislike eye exams is the air-puff glaucoma exam. Apparently, this went out of style years ago and now a more accurate, non-air-puff test is used. Nothing should hold me back now.

What do I recommend for the inversion-loving yogi?
1. Get regular eye check-ups.
2. If you have glaucoma, follow doctors orders and practice ahimsa by modifying your asana practice appropriately.
3. If you are a yoga teacher, teach inversions with great reverence and perhaps encourage your students to love their drishti with a eye check-up.

A side note: Corticosteroids, especially those in eye drop form can increase interocular pressure. The effect can last a few weeks to months after you are off the drug. If you are on these drugs for any reason, it may be wise to modify your practice until this time period passes.

Appropriate asana practice modifications would be to keep your head above your heart as much as possible and definitely no shoulder, head, or hand-stands. Perhaps prop your head on a folded towel for legs up the wall instead. Make your backward bends all ones that start from the belly down position. Spend little if any time in standing forward folds and downward facing dog; instead practice your forward folds seated. Get creative and protect your drishti!

Kathy Cooper 2011

2011-05-21T11:07:00.000-07:00

Kathy Cooper once again blessed our Portland Mysore community with her presence this May. I was lucky enough to have a clear enough schedule to join for a lecture, a women's forum, and one class. Kathy Cooper is definitely the softer side of Ashtanga yoga. I can definitely relate with this as I feel this practice is more gentle due to the ability to set your own tempo and meet yourself on the mat in a more individual way. She talked about Guruji and the much smaller Ashtanga scene in the 70's when she started practicing. The beauty of the practice for her is about the efficiency of it. You can get to your mat, move your energy around, and take that into the rest of your day.
My favorite quote from the lecture was that "Ashtanga yoga has a reputation of being serious and severe, but it's not that at all; rather it is very sincere."
Here are some other gems I took away from the experience:
*A main key to this practice is moola bhanda, by engaging it you can contain all the energy that you gather in with practice instead of it all draining out of you.
*Morning practice has the effect of connecting you to the world around you.
*Personalizing your practice is the best thing you can do to strengthen it.
*Marichiasana is about sending the energy up the shushumna nadi, you need to sit up to make that happen.
*Prasarita is about opening your back body, breathe into your kidneys.
*Sometimes the only thing holding you back is fear. This is where a teacher comes in handy. They can give you a safety net that can allow you to realize what is true.
*Lighten up. Do what you can, and come back to your practice tomorrow. This is a practice that can last a lifetime.
*Pranayama is essential past 60. Be strong enough for it.

Great mid-week practices continue

2011-04-20T07:44:00.001-07:00

Today's practice was good. A full practice sans egg timer is so luxurious. I really put my all into it. You know that is true when your last downward facing dog ends up collapsing into a puddle-like balasana. Finishing started out with a supported bridge so I could recuperate for inversions. Juicy savasana, complete with a pup snuggled up to my side. It really is too bad that now I must go to school...

Wonderful Wednesdays

2011-04-12T18:59:00.000-07:00

This quarter I have long days...7:30-5:30 most days. To fit in practice I have started rising at 4 AM. It has required coffee and an earlier bedtime, but is well worth it. Two days and I feel more at peace and more like myself. I hope to continue! Wednesday I have a 9:30 start and the boyfriend and dog don't make their way out of bed until 6:30 most days. This all adds up to an extra hour of sleep tomorrow!!! I'm hoping to adjust to earlier days soon, perhaps a few more weeks?

Polishing off the rust

2011-04-08T18:10:00.000-07:00

The past month has been very trying on my practice. Finals, boards, exhaustion. Now I have recovered from that. Something Manorama said stuck hard: You can't willpower your way through yoga, just hold steady with a formal practice that fits. I have one that fits, but not always. I just can't say I'm going back to a full on 6 day practice that I did before Portland. It's too much, too soon and I'll burn out and not practice at all. My new idea is to polish off this rusty practice in a more natural way for myself. Everyday I will set the intention to practice. If my intended morning practice doesn't happen because I hit snooze for too long I won't be upset because my body needed sleep. Instead I will do at least one sun salute in my pajamas before getting ready. It takes no time and will keep a steady habit of morning practice. Hopefully the small regular effort will be able to grow into a steady habit of real morning practices. "Do SOMETHING every day." -Manorama

An Evening with Manorma, Reflections on the point of yoga

2011-04-02T20:49:00.000-07:00

Last night I was blessed in many ways to spend time with Manorma, an amazing teacher, at the BhaktiShop. Blessed in one way because yogis trust one another. My wallet was stolen on Thursday. I had to cancel all my cards and thus, have no access to my money until the bank sends me a new ATM card. The very sweet BhaktiShop received and e-mail from me explaining the situation and immediately extended the offer to pay them when I could. I don't practice here and don't know these people, but yogis CAN trust one another because yogis are bound by ahimsa, satya, and asteya to not harm each other, not lie, and not steal; we can trust each other. I will send them the money AND a thank you card when I can.
On the greater level, I am blessed that Manorma (which translates as charming to the heart, delight to the mind), comes to Portland from New York at all. Here is some of what I took away from just two hours. I highly recommend that you go see Ma even if you have little interest in Sanskrit at all. Her spiritual knowledge is the best. Check out sankritstudies.org.
Manorma talked about the point of yoga: Yogas citta vrtti nirodhah. (Sutra 1.2) Stop fueling the spinning of the mind. Without giving it energy it can't keep turning. Asana, chanting, meditation pranayama-these are all tools we are given to achieve this task. Eventually you will drop all tools. The mind and the body are also tools. We should use them to play, but remember that they too are merely tools for this lifetime. DON'T do anything that doesn't come naturally-the point is not to be crazy. The point of yoga is to come closer to answering the question "who am I?", not loose yourself. How to do this? Have some formal practice using the tool(s) of your choice-go all the way with that particular tool. Manorma highly recommends meditation. I really should do more of that. No one likes meditation, especially me! This is because it is the height of intimacy and you might get TMI from yourself. The point of meditation is to cultivate witness consciousness. this witness helps you function in the world without becoming controlled by your mind and body, but rather control them. The best way to answer the question "Who am I?" and stop the spinning of the mind is two-fold:

1. Have a formal practice of some kind. Do this every day. Why? YOU are different every day. If this is true, then you need to expose every piece of yourself to the practice to learn more about YOU.

2. Be conscious in your life. Notice what your mind does in every waking moment and don't let it carry you, you carry it in its like/don't like duality. Use it as the tool that it is. Meditation helps with this.

Always keep your rhythm. It will hold you steady. The rhythm is breath, mantra, heartbeat.

Perfect Spring Lunch

2011-03-29T12:09:00.001-07:00

People have different signs for spring: daffodils, robins, spring peepers... Mine is the fact that I have the ingredients for a spring-like lunch. Today's lunch was just that. Microgreen salad with vinegrette, pickled beets, hummus, and a home-baked walnut bread. Many of the ingredients are from stored foods like the beets, chickpeas, and beets...but the microgreens make the whole thing fresh and bright. Here's to the beginning of salad season!!!

Practice and Unattachment

2011-03-24T13:53:00.000-07:00

The two keys to yoga are practice and unattachment. I learned this lesson well in the past few months. I finally found a way to make a daily practice a priority. My early morning practices were happening pretty regularly. It was worth the early wake up.

Then I injured my ankle and had to give up practice for a while. I felt like crap, sickly due to lack of practice after being quite regular with it. But what could I do when even walking was painful? I was forced to be unattached to a regular practice schedule.

Returning to practice was hard, I couldn't get back to the solid practice schedule when the ankle healed. It was too close to finals and board exams. I wish that picking practice up was easier.

I promised myself to indulge in studio practices all break for a bit of a tune-up complete with a teacher and breath of others...but the bank account is completely exhausted of funds until the next student loan check. Board tests are expensive.

So here I sit in my half cleaned house nearing the halfway point of break. No practice, unless you count the immense tapas I have had to perform the past few days of cleaning my house. Most people associate spring cleaning with saucha...but for me it is a tapas. I really am not so much a cleaner. I have been cleaning for the health and happiness of my dog and my boyfriend. Personally, I would rather look the other way at the filth. After today's dusting and vacuuming practice on my carpeted floors will be much more hospitable.

Practice will resume officially next week if not before. I have set up a new practice schedule for myself for next quarter. Ten weeks of wake-ups at 4 and 5 before school. Next week will be a trial period, that will allow naps.

Unattachment to my inability to practice with others on hardwood with a teacher is a much harder tapas than even scrubbing rugs. Love and admiration to all of you that swim in that pond often.

Chronic Users

2011-01-30T18:30:00.001-08:00

Some fun facts about chronic usage from nutrition class: Chronic consumers of potato chips (160 g/day) significantly increase their chance of atherosclerosis when all other factors are accounted for. Chronic bean consumption (20 g/day, at least 4x a week) with all other factors accounted for reduce their mortality rates by 7-8% from all causes. Further, for each 20 grams of daily bean intake, you can decrease your mortality by an additional 7-8%. So, ditch your processed, likely un-local chips and embrace your local bean farmer. I heart beans!

Local Carbs

2011-01-30T17:15:00.000-08:00

The great thing about local carbs is that they are getting easier to come by. You can buy Stone Buhr white flour and trace it to the farm which usually comes from Eastern Oregon/Washington area. Not the most local, but close. The Grain and Bean project (see the blog from A2R farms) is promoting food-based seed crops to old grass seed farms. Two perhaps 'unhealthy' carbs are a regular part of my local diet. Honey and potatoes. I know what you're thinking, you should just use sweet potatoes. And I ate a lot of sweets and yams back in Philly to be sure. But they just have too long of a growing season here. I did buy some from California to satisfy a big craving, but I didn't feel good about it. Potatoes can be redeemed by the way you cook them. The worst forms of potatoes are the heavily processed ones like chips, fries, hashbrowns. The best thing about a local diet? Processed foods are easily eliminated. If you want to make your own french fries or hashbrowns it's labor intensive, so you just usually don't do it. Honey is a special thing. I gift from bees that pollinate most of our other food. It is tasty and delicious. The best thing about local honey is this: it can reduce your susceptibility to seasonal allergies. You get a small dose of that pollen regularly, so the sudden blast in the spring isn't such a shock to your system. You can usually find some local honey by a roadside sign just outside your town in a slightly rural area. It will likely be on the honor system, ditto for local eggs. We went and picked up a 1 gallon container for $40 just yesterday. There are a wealth of other reasons to get local honey that include your health, the environment, and human welfare. If you are interested in learning more about honey, bees, and the pollination machine I highly recommend the book Fruitless Fall by R. Jacobsen. BTW-we got our honey from Wessels Family Honey in Forest Grove, OR. We made the trip doubly good by visiting a great biodynamic winery in the area too.

Egg-timer Yoga

2011-01-30T12:16:00.000-08:00

I have been struggling with holding a strong practice schedule since I started chiropractic school. At first I got done at 4:30, which afforded me the time to take the bus to the Mysore studio for a slightly late 5:30 practice time; this in turn put me to a 8:00 getting home time. Then we got a puppy that needed walking and my days grew to a more regular 7:30 AM-5:30 PM schedule at school. Thus, my travels to the studio have fizzled. I can still make it on days off and plan to really reinvigorate my practice during my two-week breaks at the studio. Despite my best efforts to keep a good home practice, I have failed to practice more than 3 times a week for a long time. I miss my Philly life with Wake-Up Yoga a quick walk from my apartment and a flexible work schedule that allowed me to practice 6 times a week most weeks; many of those at the studio.

I believe I have found a way to get a more solid practice schedule going now; however non-ideal it is.

On Mondays and Tuesdays I am blessed with an 8:30 start and a boyfriend willing to drive me to school on his way to work. This used to mean sleeping in. But this week (and hopefully many more to come) it meant waking up at 5. Lots of inspiration including Corina's mass e-mail about tapas and Jill's facebook post about waking at 3:15 AM in Mysore lead me to the conclusion that I must get up and face my mat.

When the alarm goes off I brush my teeth, wash my face, and put on the yoga clothes. The dog doesn't even want to get up yet, so I have the downstairs to myself. I light some candles and roll out my mat and set the timer. I know that if I get up at 5 I have an hour and a half to practice, if I hit snooze, I have to cut that many minutes from the timer I set. I set it for 1 hour 20 minutes if I get up on time. I start my practice. When I glance at the timer and see 10 minutes left, that means time to start the finishing poses, where ever I might be. (Usually this happens as soon as I find myself seated in Dandasana because I hit snooze too much.) When the timer sounds I must stop and put in the toast and turn on the tea kettle. Then I take Savasana until he toast dings and the kettle sings. Usually my boyfriend wakes up when I'm in shoulderstand and sleepily will call out, 'Sweetie, are you practicing?'. The floor is carpeted. This is not a complete practice. I'm lucky to get any of the primary series in at all.

On 7:30 mornings, this is not happening; I catch a 6:30 bus. Those nights I will practice some yin yoga with my dog snuggling up to me and Dan watching TV. Friday afternoons I get home around 1:30 and hope to start practice, but this week I was too tired. Maybe next week will be more successful.

This is not ideal, and it's no Philly practice schedule, but at least it IS a regular practice.

Local Fat

2011-01-22T10:51:00.000-08:00

This quarter I am taking the first of a series of nutrition classes. I've been finding myself evaluating the health benefits, and limitations, of a local diet.

When it comes to fats and a local diet, it is super easy to avoid the worst fat-trans fat. It's just unnatural. It usually comes pre-packaged, and I don't mean the cardboard box my csa delivers in. The key beyond trans-avoidance is to limit your saturated intake and balance your omega 3s and 6s one to one. The average American diet has the 6s way out of control. A long chain omega-3 supplement (food or pill) is recommended.

My diet does not look like this ideal. My cooking fats (the local ones) are not oils, they are butter and leftover fats from meat. (When I do eat meat, I use the whole meat. It's out of reverence for the animal. Eat bacon, save the grease. Make a roast, skim the fat; ditto for gravy and broths. I save the fats and use them to saute.) Animal fat is saturated any way you spin it. Adding full-fat cream to coffee, scones, and pies is another way I'm just rampantly consuming these 'bad' fats.

Local sources of healthy fats in the diet are here: walnuts, hazelnuts, salmon, tuna, and oysters. But I don't like to consume the precious fish in the sea daily, even weekly. It is too much, more than my allotment in my opinion. Some would recommend a fish oil supplement, but then, that's coming from fish...you might as well just eat the fish whole instead.

I do use oils when cooking if I'm out of left-over fats. I always have some canola oil around. A note about that though, we are switching to organic only canola. Small farmers are being penalized by big gmo companies because the 'roundup-ready' gene is infiltrating their rapeseed crops. The big company just samples a small-timer's field and can prove that they 'stole' the gene. A lot of little farms get shut down or at least have to pay a settlement to the big guys this way. Organic farmers have a leg to stand on because they don't benefit from a 'round-up ready' rapeseed gene. I encourage you to support the organic canola industry as well.

Another fat that gets a lot of use around my house is olive oil; mostly just used for dressing salads. We buy it in bulk and keep a small bottle in the cupboard that is continuously refilled from the giant tin. Buying giant tins of olive oil is better than buying individual glass bottles because at least you are downsizing on the amount of packaging that is used and shipped. I also try to buy a California olive oil instead of one from Europe. It's the more local choice overall; but southern Cali isn't exactly local.

While I do get some omega-3s from the walnuts in my homemade granola, I could stand to add some more. We canned a whole tuna this summer and we consume those jars periodically. In addition, Dan caught two steel head trout, one or two fillets remain in the freezer. I do think that we could stand to have some more of these polyunsaturated fats in our diet though. Perhaps adding some flax seeds in our granola could be local?

After some Internet searching I found a local farm, A2R in Corvalis, that is going organic with flax seeds, oats, and wheat. Unfortunately I just missed their recent 'stock your pantry' sale. I am penciling it in for next year. A good thing I learned from this research is that Nature Bake has just come out with a bread with a lot of this farm's products called Oregon Grains Bread. I'll be sure to check it out!

Eating locally might not be the best answer for your body's health, but for your overall health as a human it can be the right choice for you. I will continue to eat local fats, despite the high amount of saturated fats that I'm consuming. Using some organic canola oil and California olive oil as supplements to my fat intake seem to be reasonable, as well as supplementing some flax seeds into my morning granola.

Locavore Lament

2011-01-09T20:45:00.000-08:00

It has occured to me on many occasions that it has been ages since I've had a sweet potato. Since I was living in Philly to be precise. Today I inquired about this at the farmers market. I appears that the growing conditions in Oregon don't last quite long enough for this plant. You need at least a 100 days for one variety...much more for most others. Perhaps someone in the valley has figured this out somehow. If you know a farmer in the PDX area growing sweet potatoes, let me know.

New Year, New You

2010-12-20T09:41:00.000-08:00

The benefit of having a late December birthday is that I embark on a new calendar year and a new age around the same time. This really encourages me to reflect on the past year and set my New Year's resolutions. I always make four of them and put them on my iGoogle homepage so I see them on a regular basis. Here is what I'm focusing on for year 30, 2011: 1. Stick to my budget, don't outgrow my student aid check. 2. Schedule a friend date once a month. 3. Get enough sleep, prioritize practice. 4. Explore my fields of interest in preparation for when I'm a practicing chiropractor...i.e., yoga therapy. It's not in the curriculum after all. I hope you set some great intentions for your upcoming year, whether you do it on your birthday or when you get a new calendar.

Local, Sustainable, AMAZING Wine

2010-12-11T18:07:00.000-08:00

When I first moved here I was all about the local wines...hey, I'm in the Willamette Valley after all. However, recently I made the move to boxed wines for the shear sustainability and affordability of them. When those two worlds came together for me, of course I scooped up a box. Badger Mountain Pure Red is amazing. At first sip I was floored. This is quite possibly the best wine I have ever tasted...for the average price of $20 a box (that's $5 a bottle for you bottle drinkers). The sustainability does not stop with the box. Badger Mountain is a local-ish wine for me; 200 miles away in the Columbia River Valley (same watershed). They are an organic winery (Washington's first) who adds no sulfates to their wines. The box liner is BPA-free too! This wine is a winner, local or not, so check it out! What could be better than your pocketbook and the environment than this...if you're not willing to not buy wine that is. And if white wine is more your thing, don't worry, Pure Red has a sister...Pure White.

"The best homework anyone will ever give you"

2010-11-02T18:00:00.001-07:00

My teacher training teacher, Corina Benner often would tell us this. We were assigned to practice 4 times a week. At the time, I did not find it easy and it was sometimes a struggle to fit in those practices 4x a week for 9 months. Boy was she right though. I only could dream of such homework now. Before I moved out of Philly to attend Chiropractic School I had a solid practice schedule. Most weeks I would be practicing 5-6 times a week. It was incredible; and I certainly did take it for granted. It was just simply the way things were. I made sacrifices and showed up to practice regularly. Fast forward to now. I wake up at 5:00 AM, rush around to get out the door and bike to my 7:30 class. School ends at 4:30 or 5:30 and then I'm biking home. Two days a week (on those 4:30 days) I head to the studio, unless my dog gets sick, which happened today, or some other obstacle pops up. Home practice is becoming more and more the norm, but it is not nearly as infused with juice and devotion because there is always a dog on the mat, or some other distraction...and more often than not I am easily pushing the practice back until it's just too late because there is always dishes or clothes to wash and of course, studying to do! The reality is that at best, my 5-6 practices a week has now slumped to 2-3 practices a week. I find myself making the same excuses that I used to hear from yogis all around me: I'm too busy, I'm too tired, there's just no time today. And I just hear Jill saying her simple answer to all of this, "Practice first." Perhaps that really is the key, but how? Sometimes the sutra-like answer needs some experimentation and explanation. I don't think I can embrace a 4:00 AM practice, but perhaps practicing first thing after getting home is something more manageable...well after the dog is walked of course. Studio days will continue to be Tuesdays and Wednesdays plus the occasional Saturday morning; but other days practice comes first at HOME. Saturdays and Sundays are going to be no exception and a practice will happen before breakfast. This lofty goal of mine does have some cushions...yin yoga is to be practiced 3 days and moon days are days off. I will be experimenting in the assigned time slot for the rest of this week. And officially kicking off on Saturday morning when I expect I'll be full of juice after Friday evening's Jayashree workshop! Please leave your pointers and advice for this lazy yogini and her lofty goals to get back to her beloved Philadelphia practice schedule. And if you see Corina, thank her for the best homework anyone ever gave me!

Kitchen Counter Local

2010-10-31T16:10:00.001-07:00

When people talk local foods they have many definitions: 250 miles, 100 miles, metro and surrounding countryside, maybe even their own garden. But what about in your own kitchen. What possibly could be there for you to harvest and eat? YEAST! Yes, that critical ingredient for bread and beer can be found in the air everywhere, including your own house. You too can grow your own with very minimal effort. Here is the basic gist.

Make a yeast food mixture of half whole wheat and half regular flour.
Take a medium bowl (large cereal bowl should do it) and add about a half-cup or so of your blend to the bowl. Add some tepid water to make a loose dough.
Cover the bowl with a thin kitchen towel or some cheese cloth and let it sit for 3 days.
Remove the towel and remove half. Feed your yeast another 1/2 cup of 'food', and water to make the same consistency. Cover, wait 2 days.
Continue to remove half and feed and water daily. The yeast will grow and shrink predictably at some point. This is good behavior. If you forget to feed your 'yeast pet', it will forgive you if you get back into good habits again.

To use your yeast you can follow the recipe below to make some of the most delicious, complex, and filling breads I've ever eaten. A little dense, but wonderful. The recipe makes three small loaves, so I froze the other two. Bread making takes about a day, but it only requires that you be around for that day to monitor the situation periodically. Yeast pets and their breads are not nearly as demanding as dogs. Feed and water your yeast pet the night before bread day. 5 1/2 cups whole wheat flour 2 3/4 cups regular flour 3 cups + 1 T warm water 2 T + 1 t salt 2 T yeast

Add the water to a big mixing bowl.
Add in yeast and stir to dissolve. Floating yeast is good behavior, but it will work if it doesn't float.
Add in the flours. Mix with hands until there is no dry flour, this is messy business.
Let the dough rest for 20-40 minutes.
Add in the salt and incorporate by dipping hands in water and folding the dough on top of itself until the salt dissolves into the dough.
Let the dough rise 3-4 hours in a warm place, turning the dough over onto itself 12 times every half-hour.
After this rising period portion the dough into 3 pieces and shape it into fat, round discs. Allow them to rise for 3-4 hours.
Preheat the oven and a round casserole dish with lid to 500 degrees.
Carefully flip a loaf into the preheated casserole dish, lid it, put it into oven.
Turn oven down to 470 degrees and bake for 20 minutes.
Remove the lid and bake for 20-25 minutes until deep golden brown.
Remove bread to a towel to cool.
Wipe out the casserole dish and repeat the baking for the other loaves...including preheating the oven and dish/lid to 500 degrees.

Enjoy your new 'yeast pet' and the lovely gifts it gives you!

Can Do!

2010-10-31T15:38:00.000-07:00

If you are going to eat local...eventually you will want tomatoes in the winter, something sweet for your toast, and more. Luckily, you can find good quality canned and frozen foods that are local in Portland, just go to New Seasons Market or somewhere like it. However, that stuff is a little too expensive for my tiny budget. So what to do? Can it yourself. This year I have canned a lot of foods for the year ahead: 19 quarts of tomatoes, 8 quarts of beets, ~30 1/2 pints of jam of various flavors (mostly blackberry that I can pick just about anywhere in this city for free), and ~10 1/2 pints of of tuna. Maybe next year I'll add some dill pickles to my list. Canning is serious business, and if you are thinking about it I recommend you get the 'bible' of canning and follow it's instructions and recipes (for canning practically anything)...the Ball Blue book, which can be purchased on their website for just $6. You certainly don't want to poison yourself or your loved ones by improper technique. Upfront costs of canning are sort of high. You're buying a lot of produce, e.g. my two boxes of tomatoes cost around $50. You need at least two big pots, I prefer to use my pressure cooker for the jar processing, I can use it as a water bath canner as well as a pressure canner. Low acid foods and meats must be pressure canned. And you need jars and some spare lids. The good news is jars and the canner/pots will be re-used again and again so those are one-time expenses...unless you increase production next year and get more jars; you will need to get new lids next year. A jar lifter and little lid magnet stick are also great helps. When I was just doing jam I used tongs and a big pot and it worked just fine...but it was sort of dangerous. The good news is once your operation is set up, your ready to go every year. The food costs are high, but much lower than what you'd pay for the same thing in the store. I see quality local jams at farm stands for $8 a pop...and I'm spending $25 on some strawberries to make 8-10 of the same, so the savings add up to around $30-40 over the year...depending on how much you spent on the sugar and pectin. And then there's the 'love' component. I mean, there is nothing as good as raiding your own reserves, or you gram's or mom's. The love is there, and you can't eat that from any store local or otherwise. The final drawback of canning is the reason this post is a bit less optimistic than most...the time component. Being a chiropractic student not only is my financial budget tight, but so is the time availability. Every canning experience this year, besides the jam, has cut into precious weekend time. I always underestimate when to start and ultimately decide that after a luxuriously lazy morning would be best. This results in very late nights in my kitchen. Not one of my summer/fall projects did I start before noon, and not one of those nights did I get to bed before 1:30 AM. The reality is that I only got to bed then last night because my boyfriend took pity on me and helped out at the end, most nights were until 3:00AM. I'm exhausted! I know this will all pay off in the end though. It already is. I have used the tuna, the tomatoes, the jam all before now; the beets will be pickled and ready for consumption on Christmas Day. The canner is being cleaned and put away in the closet and so are the beets this Halloween. No effort is ever wasted. Here's hoping that my efforts will inspire your own, and this year will be tastier and lighter on my checking account!

Adapting to a new environment

2010-09-26T08:51:00.000-07:00

For the majority of my life I lived in Pennsylvania. I knew what was in season, and that included deer, trout, and sunfish as wild game. You could always find some venison in my freezer and I most certainly had some fish every summer. Now I live in Oregon and while some things are similar, but there are some new meats in my life. Oregon has a lot of fish. Salmon and Steelhead trout swim in our rivers here, and Dan went out for Steelhead, so we have some tasty fillets in our freezer. The fishing industry is huge in Oregon. The thing to do here in the Pacific Northwest is to can your own fish. My friend from Alaska canned 20 pounds of Coho Salmon from the Columbia River just on the border of our city last year in one weekend, and that included a fishing trip. After hearing about that feat, I decided it was time to start canning fish. I started this year with the most common, and cheapest, fish-tuna. This was truly an adventure. It started with a road trip to Astoria, OR around 100 miles from Portland. We went to a small fish shop and purchased a 18 pound tuna, already 'loined out'. The price was $2.09/lb. and the charge a $7 fee for the butchering job, which is just fine by me. Since we were there we fit in a hike along the coast at the most northern point in Oregon followed up with a dinner of fish 'n' chips at a brewpub. The canning was relatively straight-forward thanks to the Blue Book (an essential for any canner), the processing was long...1 hour and 40 minutes, plus cooling. Pressure canning is cool because when the jars come out they boil for a long time, and it's kind of fun to watch. Why eat local tuna instead of just a can of chicken-of-the-sea? Because it's better for you and the environment. Many grocery-store tuna cans can't compare to this, in fact we once purchased a local tuna can of 6 oz. for $8 (it was amazing). The cheap tuna is typically imported from south-east Asia, questionably harvested, full of mercury, and over-processed. My tuna came off the fishing boat and went right up to the fish shop I bought it at the night before. The fishermen use the fish waste from butchering as bait that they collect from the shop later. Not much shipping or waste there, besides our car, to do a hike/adventure that we would have done anyway. Fish off the coast of Oregon are caught using hook-and-line methods which is much more sustainable, and since the water temperature is perfect for pretty much only tuna, there are few other fish 'accidentally' caught. The fisheries are abundant and sustainably harvested. Health-wise, Oregon tuna are amazing. They have very low mercury levels, since the fish are on-average younger and have had fewer years of biomagnification. (Then again, we wouldn't have to worry about mercury levels of fish at all if the world could just stop burning fossil fuels, but that's a whole other post.) A huge benefit of Oregon tuna is their Omega-3 levels. They have much higher levels of this essential fatty acid than imported (leaner) tuna. Canning methods count too. Most cans of tuna you find in the grocery store are cooked before being processed. The cooking process makes them loose some of their oils and also their flavor. At the recommendation of the Oregon Albacore Commission I used the raw pack method. This method involved cutting up the tuna into jar-sized pieces, packing them into jars, adding a half-tsp. of salt, filling the extra space with boiling water, and then processing. This retains the natural fish oils and flavors. I hope this post encourages you to adapt to whatever environment you find yourself in, and preserving some local abundance in season just may come into play for you too.

Fall Eqinox Pizza

2010-09-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about eating local is that you never really get tired of eating anything because you have it only for a short while. Just when I'm starting to get slightly weary of salads-and I still really had my fill-fall rolls in. It's cooler out now and I am looking for something a little more substantial. Last night I made some delicious pizza, which might be the best thing I ever put in my mouth. I added some sausage to please my meat-loving boy, but not too much and you can certainly cut it out without cutting out any of the deliciousness. Start by making your pizza dough, whichever recipe you love most. While it's rising make the topping. In a skillet start by sauteing one onion (cut into strips) in a bit of oil. Once this gets a nice brown color add in two links of sausage, one hot, one sweet, both local and sustainable pork, sliced into bite-size chunks. Chop mushrooms, I used cantrells and portabellos that the CSA delivered (first of the season!) and add them to the skillet along with a couple cloves of garlic, chopped. De-stem a bunch of chard, chop the stems and add them as well. Once the food cooks enough to be tender add the chard leaves (chopped) to the mix, lid it, and let the leaves steam. After a few minutes the chard will wilt down enough to be stirred in. After combining everything add a small pat of butter and stir until melted. Remove from heat. Once your crust has risen, make it into a pizza-shape, oil the crust and salt and pepper it. Arrange the topping. Shave a nice layer of Parmesan cheese all over the top (optional). Bake for about 10 minutes at 425. Obviously temperatures and times will be determined by your particular crust. Enjoy this. It's definitely worth all the love and labor.

Back to Basics-Ahimsa

2010-09-21T17:17:00.000-07:00

Recently I suffered a pretty serious rib injury and my practice went on a hiatus. Further, it was the end of the school term here at Western States Chiropractic College resulting in increasing stress and decreasing sleep. Now I have a two week break from school and have healed enough to practice asana again. Over this break I'm getting back to the basics, the yamas and niyamas, one each weekday and practicing every day. Yesterday was my ahimsa day. I pulled out my philosophy workbook from teacher training to see how I felt about this yama when I focused on it for an entire week. We were asked to define ahimsa for ourselves, my entry read: I think that ahimsa should start with how you treat yourself. This means proper rest, nourishment, and stimulation. Secondly it applies to how you relate to the world: not being wasteful, making conscious choices about your day-to-day activities. Thirdly it is how you treat others, namely your actions, words, and lastly your thoughts about others. You should strive to be kind. Two actions that popped out at me from my week of reflection were these: proper nourishment, and find ways to reduce your workload so you can focus on the more important things. Non-violence toward myself has certainly been lacking lately with the end-of-term stress by staying up late, getting up early, and eating food that's not the best for me. My nourishment needed work. I set out to remedy the situation. For lunch I made a salad with beautiful summer squash, lettuce, spinach, zucchini, tomato, beets, and a hard-boiled egg...all lovingly delivered in the CSA box, besides the beets that my mom canned for me before the move to Oregon. For dinner I cooked chickpeas, black beans, and red beans (with the help of my new favorite pressure cooker, I highly recommend them) and made a chili with fresh green peppers and jalapenos and a can of tomatoes. Since this was a giant pot of chili...it will last Dan and myself through the week and I can focus on other important things. I love big pots of soup! Yesterday's practice consisted of tentative trials of a few asana here and there. Today I had my first real practice in weeks. I could hear Jill's mantra in my mind the whole time, "Practice in a way that you can still practice tomorrow." This is certainly ahimsa. So, instead of pushing my tight hips and newly healed chest, I modified. Instead of 10 surya namaskaras, there were 5 without one jump-back. I practiced the entire standing series, but only a few asana in the primary series. I listened to what my body was saying and just ended the practice right there with a nice long twist and savasana. Because apparently, there are only so many chatturangas this costosternal joint was willing to stand for today.

Shout out: Anna

2010-06-11T23:22:00.001-07:00

My old friend Anna in San Francisco finally got her act together and joined a CSA. Check out her blog post about her first delivery ever. Where ever you are google CSA and your town, you might be pleasantly surprised by how convenient and wonderful fresh local produce can be.

10 Things...take 3

2010-06-11T22:38:00.001-07:00

As I have been inspired by both Jill and Amanda, here are the 10 things that are really making my day as of late:

Finished with classes for the quarter, finals week will land me 1/6 of the way to becoming a Doctor of Chiropractic.
A perfectly placed moon day the weekend before finals.
Dan and I are adding to our 'family'...we're getting a puppy this weekend.
My parents will be visiting for a few days over break; I haven't seen them since Thanksgiving.
The kind people that surround and inspire me...including my professors and classmates.
Using this upcoming break (2 weeks long) to really dive in head-first into practice with no other obligations (besides #4, a three day break). I want to establish a stronger practice habit (6 days a week) so I'm more prone to practice at home when I need to this upcoming quarter.
Resolving my issue with killing slugs in my garden. I struggled with this as they weren't doing anything but eating...until it killed a pea plant. As the Gita teaches us, sometimes action needs to be taken. However, if I find a banana slug I won't harm it; I'll just move it into my neighbors yard full of weeds. It's a native after all, and doesn't actually eat living plants!
Summer is forcasted to finally begin tomorrow. And we deserve it with all the rain and cold.
Pulling out the summer clothes and packing up the winter ones.
Looking forward so much to the first signs of Oregon strawberries...and the few plants in my small garden putting out fruit. I can't wait to harvest food other than herbs that I grew myself.

Kathy Cooper, Practice 4...staying open while getting stronger

2010-05-26T19:29:00.001-07:00

Kathy has been really focusing her adjustments with me on opening my shoulders. This has been demonstrated in bound poses, downward dog, and parasarita padotanasana C particularly. At the same time I'm striving to strengthen my shoulders and upper arms with bakasana and reforming my bad alignment issues in up/down dog and chaturanga...not to mention working on those adjustive skills at chiropractic school. All of this focus on strengthening and opening really plays the opposites. The dance around the point, isn't that yoga...the balance between shiva and shakti? At any rate, this continues to help open up the tension at the root of my neck and help those muscles finally let go after months of being in spasm. As I approach my last Kathy Cooper practice on Friday evening I am realizing that this month has done much to intensify my practice. My practices are sweatier, more energetic, and much, much more focused whether this teacher is there or not. Even though I haven't added any new postures, my understanding and curiosity has grown for each in my practice. I find that my practice times are expanding to longer sessions. A point about this practice of Ashtanga yoga and how it has changed me since I picked it up in January. At my first day Casey mentioned that this practice teaches you to align yourself with the natural cycles in the world around you. He mentioned that this isn't something you force yourself into, it just happens and asked me to just observe if that was true for me. It's becoming very true from the simple waking with the sun and getting sleepy as it sets to noticing diet and balance changes with the moon cycle. Who knew?

Kathy Cooper Practice 3: Standing on my own two feet

2010-05-18T19:54:00.000-07:00

Today I realized that I don't use my feet as much as I should. My arches are constantly collapsing all over the place and my balance on my feet is terrible! Today's practice was about standing firmly on my feet. Kathy seemed able to align my body in such a way in many of the standing poses that I had to firmly plant my feet in order to hold myself up. I am reminded of the fact that Jill would always point out that the bhandas are energetic directions, not a particular muscular contraction. I was certainly engaging uddiana bhanda and even moola bhanda in my standing series. This paid off in the standing balances...however, by that point I had been SO active in my feet that from ankles to foot to root of the toes, they were getting quite tired. In an unrelated point, I'm healing myself through yoga. My elbows have become a pain in my neck, quite literally. I have developed extreme tension in my levator scapulae and posterior scalenes. No amount of chiropractic manipulation or soft tissue work seems to have worked for months. But guess what, it was pointed out to me recently that my elbows hyper-extend consistently through my practice. Down and up dogs are big culprits here. I'm not using my musculature to hold myself up here, instead I rely on the bony supports and/or my ligaments. Clearly, without correction, this could become a problem in the elbow joint. However, it also puts me in a position where my shoulders close in on the front side of my body. Sitting all day in lecture does nothing but enforce this...so now my natural posture is with my shoulders in front of my body with my palms facing back. Since I started consciously putting a slight bend in my elbows during practice I've noticed and ability to pull the shoulders back during lecture. This new way of practice is strengthening muscles that I couldn't ever figure out before. My utkatasana has improved because I can really access the neccessary inward-spiraling of the arms as I'm developing the strength/flexiblity to move that way. And today I realized that when I continue the slight bend in the elbow theme while in bridge, it opens up all the tight spots in my neck. Bridge is so powerfully important at this point in my life, that I'm temporarily dropping ALL practice of upward-facing bow. I just don't get the same, very necessary, benefit from that. This experience is just sitting here to reinforce that what we might view as the 'easy version' is really something all it's own...so never let go of those 'simple' asanas; they are more powerful than you might first realize.

Kathy Cooper Experience, Practice 2: finding the space in asana

2010-05-12T17:58:00.000-07:00

My second Kathy Cooper practice this month was Monday evening. The bus was right on schedule that day and I for once arrived on time! On days I'm lucky like that I get to enjoy the chant. She slowed it down a bit, which I liked a lot. This was a good practice for me. My mind was calm and focused for the majority of the practice despite the full room or the plant that I encountered with my fingertips. I continue to be impressed with the information that Kathy can convey verbally and physically. She can find space in not only the 'complex' asanas, but for some reason, she found a ton of space in my triangle that I didn't know I had access too. Mostly what I learned this practice is how to rest within each asana. I used to say quite often in my classes that the point of asana practice is to see if you can breathe complete, smooth breaths in each asana. However, after this practice I would add to that: can you find ease and expansion in each asana too.

Kathy Cooper: Practice 1; OR Yoga-the good, the bad, and the 'it doesn't resonate'

2010-05-04T20:35:00.000-07:00

This month at my yoga studio, Kathy Cooper is teaching. I plan to blog about the five classes I'm signed up for with her throughout the 'Kathy Cooper Experience'. Tuesdays I practice twice, once at our school's yoga club (new teacher every week) and again at the studio. Yoga club is a unique yoga experience, as we have a smattering of teachers picked and handed down quarter to quarter. This week we had what I must say was flat-out BAD yoga. How do you know bad yoga? When the teacher unrolls their mat and forgets to teach to the students completely. This 'teacher' proceeded to 'teach' a (potentially harmful in my opinion) series of asana that she did not describe 'what part goes where', give them the correct names, and barely gave breath cues. The worst part perhaps was when from revolved extended side angle we were instructed to 'now exhale and fall into my favorite pose and try not to pull your hamstrings'. That was the only instruction...and the pose after I turned to look at her was Hanumanasana completely folded forward! This was bad yoga, in my opinion. After class, she was proud to announce that she had no teacher training...and it showed. Yoga club does offered a varied experience, but not all of it is bad yoga. For example, one teacher came, who clearly understood the point, but was very nontraditional, mixing many calisthenics with asana, but matched it all with breath and was able to teach a lot of philosophy. I like my yoga with a heavy dose of tradition, so he didn't resonate...but he had some good yoga going. GOOD YOGA happened much later in the day at the sweet Mysore studio. This was my first practice with Kathy Cooper. As soon as I entered the studio it was heavy with breath. There was no need for the heater tonight because the place was warm with prana flowing everywhere. A great way to start practice is to arrive to a packed energetic studio. I received two adjustments from Kathy that were super informative. Like Jill Manning, she knows each asana like it were her dearest, oldest friend. Both adjustments came with pointers and small movement that opened up things in a big way. The first in downward dog amped up the energy, the second in Marichyasana C gave me so much more room for breath. As I was preparing to leave she came over to say good-bye and there was something so Manorma-like about the way she interacts with you...and if you know Manorma, maybe you know that feeling that I can't describe in any other way. Good yoga, that resonates with you leaves you feeling light and springy...and makes the world a more beautiful place. I hope that motivates everyone to find the good yoga that works for them no matter what it is and run with it.

2010-04-23T17:12:00.000-07:00

If I haven't said it before, I love my CSA, Hood River Organics. The more I talk about local foods, I realized just how many people still don't know the joys of a CSA. My boyfriend and I signed up for a half-share of the family omnivore box. This means that every other week we receive a box filled with various local, organic goodies. Check out this week's box above!

This time we got: Portabella and cremini mushrooms (we almost always get these), Fuji apples, microgreens, two bunches of kale raab, baby white turnips, yukon gold potatoes, baby spinach, red and purple radishes, two bunches of bok choy, two loaves of bread, a dozen eggs, and a half pound chunk of colby cheese.

Since we only subscribe to a half share we try and eat the most perishable items, like the microgreens in the first week and save the more hearty things for the second. Eating from a CSA box has the great benefit of forcing you to try new things...and getting a plethora of different foods into your diet, which is so important in life in order to get all of those valuable phytochemicals.

Because each delivery is different, and you don't know what to expect until the food shows up on your doorstep, it keeps your diet flexible and your cooking very 'in the present'. Yoga is everywhere!

Savasana, शवासन

2010-04-13T18:19:00.000-07:00

I have a shirt that reads 'I'm just here for savasana'...and I always mean it. The first day of teacher training I'll never forget that this was the 'favorite asana' choice for both Patrick and myself. I am of the opinion that this is the most important asana for many, many reasons. For me it is the point of asana practice, the silence of the practice's OM cycle. This is where everything comes together. I once had a teacher describe asana practice in the following manner, and it has stuck with me through the years: The first part of practice is to tire the body, the second to tire the mind, and all of this work leads to savasana-a time to rest the body and mind and connect with the universal. Savasana to me is important for all 5 of our koshas: annamayakosha needs rest to recuperate after physical stresses. As a chiropractic student, I can fully appreciate that the intervertebral discs loose fluid into the vertebral bodies as we go through our day as they are subjected to stresses; asana practice results in even more stresses and therefore, lying on the floor allows the spine to return to 'neutral'. The pranamayakosha takes rest in allowing the body to return to natural rhythms with no stresses or control, you drop the ujayii breath and your heart rate can slow to a resting state. Manomayakosha can drop everything, unlike in meditation there is no need to call it back from wandering as long as you don't force it to stick to a point. The mind can drift freely here and rest in the present. Vijnanamayakosha is also given the opportunity to take rest. In savasana the Anandamayakosha is leading the way. You feel limitless and content! Of course, as a rule I always practice a decent savasana at the end of asana practice. But it is easy to let all of this 'theory' be forgotten and/or unappreciated with regular practice. Today I did NOT get a chance to practice savasana after yoga club practice because I had to skip out of class early in order to get our lovely teachers paychecks approved. My thinking was that I would be able to slip in a savasana after the meeting, however it ran later than expected and I had to run to class for three more hours! Not practicing savasana after practice left me in a terrible state! I felt as if I hadn't slept in days and had been guzzling coffee like mad. Hopefully, you don't know that drained yet really awake feeling. As soon as I was home, I hit the floor and took a very indulgent savasana. Following that 15 minutes I once again felt grounded and fresh. Mr. Iyengar notes that savasana is the most difficult posture. He likens it to a shedding of the ego, taking a rest from all of the labels and to-do lists that we carry around with us always. He states that while in savasana you have the opportunity to experience formlessness and timelessness. And since this is so hard, we get to lie down while we practice this!

Spring has sprung!

2010-03-25T10:24:00.000-07:00

You can always tell that the season has changed when your local produce changes. Here in Oregon, spring has sprung. For months the CSA box from Hood River Organics has been full of lots of root veggies and some braising greens. Today a big change happened! Today's box contained:

2 loaves of bread
1 block of farmhouse hard cheese
1 dozen eggs
8 fuji apples
8 Bosc pears
11 new potatoes
3 lb bag of mushrooms (mix of portabello and cremini)
Kale Rabe
big bunch of Kale Rabe
GIANT bag of arugula
big bunch of baby bok choy
Box of micro greens mix complete with edible flowers

I can't wait to switch my diet over from a staple of root roasts to a staple of salads! Eating locally is not only good for your health and the environment, but as you can see, you get put on a built-in diet around this time of year.

Working with what you have, सन्तोष

2010-03-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

While in Philly I was part of a buying club called Philly Winter Harvest. It was great! I got all local food, and I got to pick what I wanted on-line. However, now that I'm in Portland, I've joined a CSA (Hood River Organics). This is a fantastic CSA delivering veggies, bread, eggs, and cheese to my door. Most of our food comes from the delivered box. The 'problem' with the CSA is that you don't get to pick what veggies come to you. You get what the farms have to offer. This has led to pleasant surprises, like sunchokes, which are great. Unfortunately, it also brought turnips in a recent box. I hate turnips. I avoided them in the fridge drawer for weeks, but I hate waste and finally broke down and consulted my cookbooks. A note I had made next to a simple preparation spelled it out for me: 10/09-This taught me how much a HATE turnips. They taste like raw cabbage. Perhaps dressed with something sweet and tangy they could be good, kind of like coleslaw. This sent me searching in little used books, including a German cookbook in my possession, that gave me exactly what my earlier observation suggested. Although this might have not been exactly the healthiest way to consume turnips, I ate them and actually enjoyed the vitamin C-rich (who says you need citrus, where is that coming from?)vegetable with this recipe: Weisse Ruben 2 pounds small white turnips 3 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons sugar 1-2 cups stock or water salt 1 tablespoon butter +1 tablespoon flour, blended together Wash and peel the turnips and cut into round slices. Melt butter and stir in sugar; saute over low heat until sugar turns a rich caramel color; do not let it burn or blacken. Add turnip slices cover and braise 5 minutes. Add stock and a little salt. Cover and braise 30-40 minutes, until tender. Bind the sauce by adding the butter-flour concoction in lumps. Bring to a boil and simmer a few minute until sauce is smooth and thick. My new comment: 3/09-the ONLY way to eat turnips, creamy & delicious Another situation that has me working with what I've got is the fact that I owe the yoga studio money the next time I show up, and I'm broke until I get my next financial aid check (aw, the life of a student). This is forcing home practice on me, despite my desire to hit up the 7 AM practice every morning during spring break, I just can't afford it. Home practice is nice, but I really miss the studio for the shared energy and breath, the motivation to practice the whole way through, the security that comes with knowing if you get lost, the teacher will tell you what comes next in the series. The benefit is that I'm getting to experiment more. Working a little more with asana that aren't so easy, having some yin practice pre-Mysore, and adding some nice juicy twists right before savasana. I'll be back at the studio when I have the ability to hand over a $95 check, but for now I'll just practice santosha at home...turnips and all.

Ahimsa/Love practices of their own accord

2010-02-22T18:49:00.000-08:00

I generally have a pretty solid Mysore practice schedule: Monday, Wednesday, Saturday and sometimes Friday too. Things have sort of fallen apart in the past few days though. To say last week was rough on me is an understatement, chiropractic school really took its toll. Last Wednesday we did knee palpations on each other and after school I went to practice as usual. Unfortunately, all that poking around in the joint space showed up as I reached Marichyasana B. My knees were not feeling it, sharp pains in the front of the knee. I was not about to just take savasana then, but I did skip the rest of the Padmasana-like asanas in my practice and only took one breath in Bakasana. A super long savasana was necessitated and ice later that night too. I took the rest of the week off as a preventative measure as things were still a little tweaky. As Jill always reminds, practice in a way that lets you practice tomorrow. Saturday I intended to return to the studio, but three tests, two in super tough anatomy completely drained my energy reserves and I slept through the 6:00 alarm well into practice time. Today I was ready to get back on track, healed and rested. Much to my dismay, ahimsa reared her head again today. I traveled to school mat and clothes in hand looking forward to a fresh start this week until my wonderful boyfriend needed help. My sweetie just got a new job working as an assistant gardener in the West Hills, but he seriously needs rain gear. He had ordered a waterproof suit to pick up on Saturday, but it hadn't arrived. Last week was sunny and so was today, but the showers return to the rain forest tomorrow. Today the store called him and announced that his suit had arrived! Unfortunately they close at 6 and there was no way for him to get it. In an act of love, I gave up practice this day too in order to keep my boy dry and healthy tomorrow. I picked the suit up after school instead of heading to the studio. Pray that nothing stops me from getting to yoga club tomorrow, no rough palpations on Wednesday, and all in all practice is back on track!

Surprising sources of Local Food in Portland

2010-02-15T20:08:00.000-08:00

Since I've relocated to Portland, I still don't feel quite yet like this is my home, I've found two unlikely places for local food...and it got me to wondering why we DIDN'T have this in Philly? Surprising local food source #1: The school cafeteria That's right, the cafeteria at Western States Chiropractic College serves healthy, mostly local foods. This makes catching the 6:22 AM bus daily a little easier when the tupperware for my lunch isn't clean. Oh, and the food is fantastic, I'd pay a lot more for it. Matt, the cafeteria guy has real talent. His food is simple, but really good. It reminds me of things I would cook at home. He could open up a restaurant and I'd rather eat there any day than the over-hyped restaurant in my neighborhood. Surprising local food source #2: Burgerville Burgerville is a fast food restaurant that serves local food! They serve all local ingredients. (Local as in NW, but still pretty awesome for fast food.) I went once, they had three different vegetarian burgers, some fish burgers, and beef burgers. I think chicken too. According to their signs it seems that they also change their menu with the seasons. Although this makes me feel a little better about a quick burger and fries, the food must be pretty salty because it left me craving water like mad the rest of the day. Oh well, what do you expect from fast food? I hope that these examples can inspire others in other cities and cafeterias to make a change...all things are possible!

Long time no blog

2010-02-11T18:29:00.000-08:00

It has been a VERY long time since I posted, nearly a month! This is mainly to do with my trying to keep my head above water in chiropractic school here in Portland. Now a quick update with a promise of a 'real' post this weekend. Practice: I love Mysore practice. There is something so comforting about the self-dictated rhythm. Mondays are my long lecture days (7:30-4:30 in a chair in a dark room) and then I head to the studio. Every Monday I feel sick and stagnant but I force myself to stay on the bus past my home stop to the studio with the promise that if the 2 block walk doesn't make me feel better I can go home instead. This bribe gets me to the door, where I always need to go in just to use the bathroom I tell myself. Once I walk near the door of the studio however something about the energy inside draws me and I change and go practice. Those days are always long practices as my energy starts out low and my pace is slow. Wednesdays I'm there too, but it's much easier. Saturday mornings are my favorite. The studio is flooded with light instead of dimly lit and freshly awakened I'm breathing and moving much faster. My energy is up and I practice harder. These signs however are not how I tell if I've had a good practice or not. I have always known a good practice by it's savasana. This point continues, a good savasana is restful and deeply connected. But most of all the mind chatter is silent and content to rest along with the body. That incessant mind chatter! This is another reason my morning practice is best. After school all my mind does is run! I get lost in the breath and sequence because stuff keeps cluttering my mind other than practice! Food: I continue to search out local food and have some nice things to say about Portland, but for now, suffice it to say that my FIRST CSA shipment arrived today from Hood River Organics and I'm hungry so I'm going to go open it up!

What I did on my day off from school

2010-01-18T18:22:00.001-08:00

Today I had off from school. I promised my honey that I'd spend the entire day with him, so I caught the 6:24 bus to the 7 AM Mysore practice. It was much better practicing at this timeslot. The studio has skylights. When we started it was dark and lit by candles as the sun rose (after my sun salutes, perfect timing) the room started to light up, it was beautiful. Although I can 'do' almost all of these asana, thanks mostly to Jill weaving them into her vinyasa classes, it's so hard to remember the ORDER. The teacher is sweet, and I don't know how he does it. Keeping track of all the students in a class when they're all in the same asana is a lot at times; but Casey keeps track of everyone in their own place. Add to that the new people that pop in (2 brand new beginners today) which require more work (including me at my second studio practice) and you have tons going on. I'm thoroughly enjoying this learning process. I love the individuality of it, the way you can dive into your own breath. A great rule at this studio that keeps you practicing: new students cannot come to the weekend practices unless they show up on two weekdays. After the first month things loosen up, but I think it's great; and I think I'll let myself forget that the rule only applies to beginners. Now I find myself switching gears from student to teacher in the first time since leaving dear Philly. I'm teaching the yoga club class tomorrow at school. Then next Saturday morning I'm back at Yoga Space subbing. Thanks to facebook, I see the TTs are writing their class plans right along with me. Maybe I can ride that energy; I feel a little rusty with a month and a half off.

Day 1 of Mysore

2010-01-13T20:26:00.000-08:00

Tonight after class I boarded the bus and went to my first Mysore class. This really started last night as I had to pack my clothes and mat and get bus directions to/from. The hardest part of practice is showing up...and especially when you need to race out at the last word of Anatomy lecture and go USE your muscles instead of learning their names. The teacher's name is Casey. He is very sweet and explained everything wonderfully. I really like this practice of counting your breaths. I must admit that I occasionally would loose count and likely stayed in asana ~7 breaths or so instead of the prescribed 5. I learned a lot and wrote down the sequence when I got home so I could remember how to practice this. Casey recommended not coming this weekend as those are the busy days (obviously). He would like me to come in at least twice during the weeks and if I do that, then he thinks it would be okay to come in on the weekends. Anyone in Chiropractic school should do this practice! It's very soothing to move at your own pace, whatever it is at that moment. Casey gave me a written copy of the chant and it's translation to learn from. I'm heading back on Monday after class, hopefully with some of this practice cemented.

A new practice

2010-01-10T12:46:00.000-08:00

Long days at chiropractic school, far from yoga studios and bus-bound has me re-thinking my ability to practice in a group on a regular practice like my Philly life allowed. This week had only home practices. And they were VERY necessary after sitting all day in lectures. Home practice might be the most fitting in this new life of mine as my body cries out for very specific postures. I have never really CRAVED revolved triangle or handstand, but this week I was. If I had gone to a class and NOT got what I wanted, I would have been severely disappointed. Never-the-less, studio practice builds heat and builds more of a dream for me, so it is essential...plus I miss having yogi friends to hang out with, which requires more practice at a studio. This week, thanks to my financial aid check coming in I am going to start practicing Ashtanga yoga at a Mysore studio, scary but I think I need it, rhythm and breath are all I want these days. The week after next begins yoga club at school. This will be refreshing as it occurs on my longest day, the one I'm too tired to practice when I get home. Unfortunately, I think my teaching skills may have to go a little lax. School is intense. Much to do. Teaching more than occasionally may require that I sacrifice practice, and that is just NOT okay in my book; in fact it makes you a terrible teacher. Chances are I will teach at yoga club once a quarter and dive into practice. My teaching skills will likely be revived AFTER graduation for a more regular class or three. After all the bigger picture of being a teacher is leading by example. Putting practice as a priority is key. My study break today involves a restorational yoga class at my current favorite studio in Portland. Much needed after this week of swallowing a lot of information and opening up a cadaver for the first time. Trying to remember that this is only the annamayakosha and not a complete person helped immensely with that experience. And yes, fascia as it turns out, is crazy! It's everywhere, a rainbow of different colors, a wide variety of textures, and there is much more of it than you can possibly imagine. It's everything you hear about in yin and more.

New Arms & Legs

2010-01-02T18:50:00.000-08:00

I've always had funky angled joints, which Patrick found confusing when he adjusted me during TT. During my first class at The Yoga Space, Michele pointed out to me that the hyperextension that I'm expressing in my elbows in downward dog was something that could injure my shoulder joints at some point. She advised to practice having a slight bend in my arm, which actually would be 'straight'. Thinking this was wise advice, I adopted this. But this morning I noticed my knees hyperextend just standing! So I experimented with a slight bend, but then my knees don't line up over my ankles, lifting my foot arches remedied this. All of this leg action actually had me bending slightly forward, so I straightened myself out...which I really felt in my psoas. It's all connected. I practiced this new stance and a new way of walking all day. This afternoon I went to practice at The Yoga Space. Since my Tadasana is completely transformed, everything was different as you might imagine. This effect was expected in all the standing poses and in downward dog. When standing balances seemed more natural (but still super hard) I wasn't surprised. However, I never thought that re-teaching yourself to stand on your feet would help with turning yourself up-side down! I went up into forearm stand like I did it everyday, and I've never made it to the wall. When the variation to practice a scorpion was offered, I took it like I've practiced it a hundred times before. This is all crazy for me as inversions are my biggest challenge. I attribute this to two things: teaching my muscles how to support my body rather than my skeleton and perhaps with uprooting my life and dealing with many uncomfortable situations on this journey I've somehow become more comfortable with turning myself upside down. Happy 2010!

Practice #4 and Squash Pizza

2009-12-27T20:32:00.000-08:00

Today I looked in the fridge and decided to make a pizza for lunch, which with peeling squash was a bit of a labor of love. It was amazing. I suggest you give it a try: Acorn squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into half-moon slices Pizza dough, your favorite recipe Fresh mozzerella, sliced Olive Oil Garlic Thyme Rosemary Red Pepper flakes Salt Pepper Spread olive oil on your prepped, uncooked pizza dough. Sprinkle with chopped garlic, herbs, and spices to taste. Lightly dress your squash with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Distribute the squash all over the pizza and cook at 425 for 18 minutes. Top with cheese to melt and slightly brown it, 3-5 minutes. Tonight I went to The Yoga Space, which I instantly fell in love with. A good mix of yogis showed up for practice, all really nice people. The studio is very much like Wake-Up Fairmount in that the majority of the space is the studio (and about the same size too) and you walk directly into the studio space. Off to the side is a changing area with shoe racks, coat hooks shelves and curtained off spaces. The tiny bathroom is off of the studio itself near a door-less closet for prop storage. Since I've been here I've been craving communtity chanting and haven't even got three OMs in a row. In particular I've been living with the mantra 'lokah samastha' for some time now. Here at this class, that particular mantra was chanted which I took as a bit of a sign. Michele teaches and Ashtanga based Vinyasa class where the sun salutations are counted in Sanskrit. It was the best class I've been to yet in Portland. She gave incredibly intelligent and informative adjustments and everyone got some love in savasana. This was a great class, I'll certainly be back for more. I liked the place so much that I asked about subbing here, something I wasn't ready to commit to at either of the other studios at this point. This might be a good yoga home as they teach vinyasa, yin, and restorative yoga.

Practice #3 and Christmas food shopping

2009-12-27T11:49:00.001-08:00

Wednesday before Christmas I went to a Vinyasa class at Yoga Union. The pace was rather slow, although the class description had this as their most vigorous vinyasa class. The teacher taught a lovely class, which was perfectly fine, but the slow pace and long holds weren't jiving with me. My practice is rhythmic and constantly flowing, holds are only 3-5 breaths with the exclusion of inversions and raja kapotasana. I plan to explore at least two more classes at this studio to see if I fit in here. Christmas food shopping required some effort for us. We first went to ABC Seafood who gets fresh from the sea fish daily. Stop two was People's Co-op who have a farmer's market every Wednesday and a great bulk section including spices and herbs. No meat here, so I asked the check-out girl where I could buy a local ham. She sent us a few blocks away to New Seasons market. This place is AWESOME!!! It is your typical grocery store on the surface, but most of the items are local and labeled as such. The meat department crafts their own ham from pork raised on small local farms. This store is a dream, and the prices are good too which completely surprised me. Until I join a CSA, which is really the most cozy experience for me, I'll be shopping here. Yoga tour continues tonight at a new studio, The Yoga Space. I am still trying to decide to test out their yin offering or the vinyasa class. Maybe I'll do both, but I'm not the biggest fan of vinyasa followed by yin so likely not. Now that I have a school schedule I was able to craft a tentative studio practice schedule. I plan to take up an Ashtanga practice two to four times a week in the new year as I think this style will satisfy my craving for breath and rhythm. Ashtanga might be just the thing to balance the crazy chiropractic school schedule by resting in the repetition.

Practice #2

2009-12-22T08:17:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to what was quite possibly the most beautiful yin class I have ever taken in my life. Todd was substituting at Yoga Union and totally rocked it. Yoga Union's studio space looks like it was once a mechanic's garage, it's about the size of 2.5 Wake-Up Fairmounts and one garage door still remains that they open to let some heat out. The wall opposite the door is all windows and they wrap around to the neighboring wall for a short amount of window space. Underneath the big window is a ledge that they fill with candles. Everyone practices in the middle of the room here, lined up in rows. What could be more appropriate on the winter solstice than yin yoga? That was the theme, and someone should have tape-recorded all Todd had to say about it as he linked all sorts of aspects of nature at this time of year to the body and breath. He started out with a bit of a slow flow of the arms circling in a seated position instead of jumping right into the postures. As we worked through yin asana Todd gave his speech about yin and the solstice that I wish I could remember more of. Near the end of class we all moved our mats to the walls, now we were all in a big rectangle, for legs-up the wall. After that was a supported uttanasana with the back against the wall, a short squat and then my favorite part, savasana. At this point we are all on the outer edges of the room, the music is off and Todd turns off the lights and blows out the candles. After resting here for some time, Todd turns on the music softly...Here Comes the Sun by, George Harrison. We continue to rest for a few moments. As we emerge from savasana we notice an abundance of big candles all positioned in the center of the room. Todd reminds us that from this point on it's only going to only get lighter and that all tomorrows from here on out are indeed going to be brighter tomorrows. It was all very cute and put a huge smile on my face. Getting home on the bus at 9:30 however did not make it easy to crawl out of bed in time to catch a 6:15 bus for my morning practice today that I had planned. Yep, I have a lot of kappha in me an living in this moist city in a dark time of the year really encourages sleeping in these days. Tonight I'm exploring The Yoga Space for a vinyasa class. Wednesday I've planned to go three classes since Thursday and Friday are holidays and both studios I've visited thus far are not open on those days. We'll see if I'm up for that, and it might be logical to not start at a 'new' studio when they are closed for two days and I'm using unlimited deals. So it will likely drop to two classes.

Yoga Tour-Day 1

2009-12-21T11:35:00.000-08:00

I finally recovered the yoga mat from behind a pile of dusty boxes where it had been temporarily lost. Connie and I celebrated our joint birthday in style in Hood River, and she has a great CSA hook-up. I did a lot of studio internet research and found four studios that I'm going to check out, all with introductory deals. I'll be practicing twice a day with these deals: Bhakti Shop, $20 for a week Portland Yoga Studio, $20 for 10 days The Yoga Space, $20 for a week Yoga Union, $25 for two weeks Most of these are vinyasa classes, but 2 on my 'tour schedule' are yin. I'm planning on 15 classes in a week... but Christmas schedules might throw a wrench in the works. In the new year I'm thinking about jumping into an Ashtanga practice, at least trying it on for size. This morning I took my first class on this tour, Linda's vinyasa at Portland Yoga Studio. I don't think I'll be practicing with her again. Her style just didn't jive with mine at all: the pace was slow, and there was a lot of fru-fru language in place of breath and alignment cues. Tonight I'm going to a yin class at another studio.

Landed

2009-12-14T13:49:00.000-08:00

I have a new home in Portland, OR. Two things start this week amid unpacking of boxes: Portland yoga tour and Portland local food scene 101. People can't starve, so my honey and I had to go to the Fred Meyer (kind of like a bit classier Wal-Mart) up the street for some groceries last night. For me, a grocery store is a bit of a foreign experience. Why you should buy Peruvian onions or milk from Cincinatti is beyond me. I found myself checking all the labels for the words OREGON and WASHINGTON. California was acceptable, in lieu of Mexico or Florida. I did find some gems, a variety of squash from a farm right here in Portland for 79 cents a pound and a five pound bag of Oregon potatoes for 99 cents, yogurt from Eugene, OR and eggs from the Columbia River Gorge. Thank God for Tillamook dairy products with their hormone free cheese, butter, and ice cream all made here in Oregon; a big enough company that it's sold everywhere You can buy local in the grocery store, it's just more work. I prefer the coziness of a CSA or farmer's market. Speaking of Farmers' markets, there is one two blocks from my new house...but it only runs from June-October. That makes November-May pretty rough for a locavore like myself. Expect more posts on my explorations of both the local food and yoga scenes of Portland in the coming days.

A practice in non-attachment

2009-11-20T16:07:00.001-08:00

I am on my way out of Philadelphia, on my way to Portland. This will be the first year in a long time that I'm not cooking a Thanksgiving dinner and the first year ever that I won't be spending Christmas at home. I've found a ton of local food sources here and been able to share many of them with you all. Tomorrow I'll be moving all of my 'stuff' besides a few bare essentials in a pack. For a few weeks I'll be without it --very aparigraha; and homeless even as my sweetie and I camp out in my apartment, spend the holiday with family, and stay with a dear friend and his dog until we find ourselves in a non-homeless situation again. When I land in Portland, OR I will be going on both a yoga studio tour and foraging for local food sources. All of this is a great practice of unattachment to things, places, and routines. I'll miss all good things in Philly, but blogging will continue from the new home-base.

Is your McDonald's burger killing the rainforest?

2009-11-06T07:49:00.000-08:00

Recently I read that the main reason people are cutting down the rain forest, at a rate of 72 acres a minute, is so they can use that land to grow cows...to export to the USA! Who's eating all this beef anyway? This claim was targeting McDonald's specifically, so I wanted to investigate. My feeling is that big beef has big money, and they might 'have a cow' if McDonald's was importing beef. According to McDonald's website, their sole beef supplier is Lopez foods (it is also of interest that they only actually have three food suppliers total). Upon examining Lopez's website, they actually only process meat, they don't raise cows. They did not have a list of their suppliers on their website, but are themselves based in Oklahoma. This proved to be a dead-end. I decided to investigate with the feds, they always provide a lot of data if you have the patience to find it. As it turns out the USDA regulates imports of beef and poultry to the US. They have a list of who we imported beef and poultry from in 2008. Since I'm a fan of basic statistics, and the 'cumulative' column on this list lacked explanation, it looks like the statement from earlier just isn't true. According to my calculations, only about 5% of the US imported beef and poultry is actually from Central and South America. The US consumes nearly 20 billion pounds of beef annually (an excessive amount, averaging out to everyone eating beef once a day). Imports comprise only 3 billion pounds of this (this assumes that all imported meat is beef, so technically we import less beef), so Central and South American beef is actually less than only .003% of all US consumed beef. I think that we eat much more McDonald's in this country than that. This cutting down the rain forest for McDonald's burgers just doesn't hold water for me. But the source is actually from 1996, perhaps our food policy is improving. Why I bring this up is that, what IF your burger was literally destroying the rain forest? Would you do all this research to find out if it were true? Likely not. The real value of this questionable claim is that it makes you think about the impact of traveling food, and question where your food comes from in the first place. Truth be told, the CO2 output from transporting beef from farms in the US to Oklahoma and then to every McDonald's in the country is quite high as it is, it's a giant impact! Put that on top of the environmental impact of beef farming alone and it's ridiculous. Even if your burger isn't cutting down trees, it could have a significant impact regardless. I would urge you to choose vegetarian/vegan options when you're eating out and have no way to determine the source of that food, and therefore it's impact on the greater world. When and if you choose to eat meat, do so mindfully. Take it to heart that the higher on the food chain you climb, the more resources were used to produce this food. And if you ARE going to choose to have an increased impact by eating an animal, at least let the transport of that food be minimal. Most of all, think before you eat.

Philadelphia Winter Harvest, a life-saver

2009-11-06T07:21:00.001-08:00

It's certainly mid-fall. Temperatures are dipping and the days are getting shorter by the minute. Are you finding it hard to dredge up the motivation to go to the farmers' market or Reading Terminal...especially with the SEPTA strike in full swing? Me too. Thank God for Philadelphia Winter Harvest! If you haven't signed up, you should. Last night was the first delivery. Winter Harvest is a buying club, kind of like a CSA, but you choose what you get. They have a website (link is on the side-bar) that you choose exactly what you want for the next two weeks and pay for it via check or pay-pal. Every Thursday evening the wonderful delivery trucks make their rounds and drop off you and your neighborhood's goods to someone near you. When you get home from work you just stroll on over to a nice neighbor's house, load up your food and head home. The selection is amazing too! You can get vegetables, apples, cider, milk, butter, cheese, yogurt, meat, bread, granola, soap, chocolate....the list goes on and on. The best part is that all of this is locally sourced. If you ask me, Winter Harvest is a life-saver. Join now and order your Turkey for Thanksgiving. I have done this the past few years and recieve my fresh bird the night before the feast (the delivery is on Wednesday the week before Thanksgiving). You won't ever regret joining this wonderful buying club that runs from November to April. It will get you through the winter.

Simplicity OR lessons from New York City

2009-11-01T15:34:00.000-08:00

This weekend I traveled to NYC to visit my sister. She is so blessed to live within walking distance to one of the greatest farmers' markets in the world, Union Square Market. We went and wandered among many, many, many stands selling practically everything in triplicate! My sister isn't the most frequent cook, but we picked up a bunch of veggies, that she's preparing for dinner as I write this. My advice to her was to cook simply. Let the flavors speak for themselves. I gave her a simple scratch-pad recipe to follow: chop the vegetables, mix them together with a little oil, salt, and pepper, roast them at 400 degrees for 40-50 minutes. As Jill has always said, "great is simple and simple is great." This is how I typically cook, it's virtually mindless, but with great food you don't need a whole lot of pizazz. While I was in town, I took my sister to OM yoga. She has never practiced before, so we went to a basics class. To be quite honest, it was refreshing. Getting back to the basics I was able to delve deeply into the breath. Simple sequencing with no fancy peak poses or any frills can be quite eye-opening. If you've been practicing for some time, I suggest dropping in to a beginner-level class some time. It is wonderful to realize that it's not the bells and whistles that count, in all reality it's the simple asana, the simple flavors that are the most beautiful and substantial of all!

Pranic bang for your buck

2009-10-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

Recently I came across a magazine article detailing grocery store price comparisons of common food items: bread, apples, milk, and butter. I wondered how the local sources stacked up. All of the items cost more than any of the leading stores at the farmers' market and Reading Terminal Market. I wondered why local food was so 'expensive'. But despite the higher price point, I still believe that local food grown on small farms is the best value. These foods are just so much more filling than anything I've ever gotten at a grocery store. I also feel better on a different level when I eat these foods. I genuinely feel that these fresh, local items somehow contain more prana to nourish my system than industrially-farmed foods. Why is there more prana in local food? Namely, it's fresher. The produce I pick up at the farmers' market could likely have been picked that day; it's not been sitting in a cold room or on the grocery shelf for weeks. But also I think that it's the prana that goes into this food on the farm. Stephen Cope notes that prana is contained in fresh water, living plants, love, and inspiring words. I can't help but think the small farms where my food comes from are more nurturing environments than some giant industrial farm. Small, family-based farms, most not eligible for the government subsidies, growing chemical-free produce in great diversity must pour more energy and love into this food than the big companies. We are truly blessed in Philly to live so close to many of these farms, close enough to obtain virtually everything from them, vegetables, oats, butter, ketchup and mustard, eggs, meat, pickled goods, milk, and yogurt. The list goes on and on. Try and make the grocery store a foreign place, and see how much more fulfilling the whole food experience, from shopping to eating, can be.

Hearty Fall Recipe

2009-10-25T05:56:00.000-07:00

I recently made a really delicious bowl of food, from almost all local ingredients, excluding the rice, oil, salt, and pepper. 1 cup wild rice 2 T oil 1 small carrot, chopped 1 small potato, chopped 1 pint mushrooms, quartered 2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced 1 bunch kale, stems separated from leaves, everything chopped 3/4 cup white wine Salt and pepper to taste 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese 2 cups cooked red bean 1 tsp. thyme Cook the rice. Heat the oil in a large pot. Add the carrot, potato, mushrooms, and kale stems and cook, tossing occasionally until beginning to soften, about 5-6 minuts. Stir in the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Deglaze the bottom of the pot with the wine. Add the beans and season with salt, pepper, and thyme. Add the kale leaves on top of the vegetables, cover and steam the kale leaves for 5-6 minutes. Toss the vegetables and beans together and cook 5-6 minutes more. Serve the mixture on top of the wild rice sprinkled with the cheese. We are so lucky in Philadelphia to be able to get dried beans of all sorts grown locally. Take advantage of this opportunity and stop by the Lancaster Farm Fresh stand in Reading Terminal Market or to eliminate the trip for the winter, go sign up for Philadelphia Winter Harvest and pick up your food at a neighbor's house once a week, including vegetables, dairy, apples and cider, and BEANS!

Grand Opening of Fair Food Stand at Reading Terminal Market

2009-10-03T11:22:00.000-07:00

Fair Food Stand is one of my favorite Reading Terminal destinations. They recently moved to a new, larger space. I went down for the grand-opening festivities. The new space is three times as big as the old one and is located at the 12th Street entrance between Chinese and Ribs. The new stand will be open 365 days a year! A lot of wonderful things were said by many people. Channel 6 news was there covering the event. Two speakers stood out to me. A representative from the USDA introduced the 'Know your food, Know your farmer' initiative. Professor Marion Nestle of NYU addressed the local food movement as a social revolution. I would have to agree with her. I feel very small-town in this big city when I'm at the farmers' market or picking up my Winter Harvest order. There's nothing like local food to foster a great sense of community.

Locavore side-effect: appreciation of "waste"

2009-10-03T11:15:00.000-07:00

A side-effect of eating locally is that you start to appreciate all of the things you used to throw out without a thought.

Bones of cooked meats are fodder for stock. I never pitch a chicken carcass. Instead, it goes into a pot with an onion and garlic cloves, herbs, and spices to be boiled for quite a while. I'll strain this and the next day I'll reduce it and freeze the stock in ice cube trays for future use.

Fat also becomes a valuable resource. I don't know of a local oil, so I have to buy it from afar. I use this oil sparingly and buy it in bulk containers to reduce its impact. Butter is available at Reading Terminal, but I hate to go through it so quickly. Now I pour my bacon drippings into a small Tupperware after it cools a little. If a stock, soup, or stew forms a solid fat on top in the fridge, it goes into a container as well. Of course these fats are not good for eating on toast and bread, but they work well for cooking. They yield a great flavor to the food cooked in them.

Using these animal parts is an ethical and mindful way that I consume meat. Like the native Americans that used every part of the buffalo out of respect, I strive to waste less of this valuable resource. Local mat raised in a healthy, ethical manner is more pricey than industrial meat. I choose to incorporate this food into my diet, I also choose to use it completely.

Farmers' Market Loot 10/1/09

2009-10-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

Kale, cabbage, onions, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, apples...all for $19.50

Things have been a little buzy not leaving much time for blogging. Things have settled now, and I'll be back to more regular posts.

A sustainable diet and asteya

2009-08-14T14:16:00.000-07:00

The key reason why I eat locally is because it is a giant step towards sustainability. Sustainability is when your way of living can go on indefinitely within the bounds of asteya. I believe that at the root of asteya lies a prerequisite that requires us to be honest about our true needs and intentions. How much food can I consume without going over my allotment? The numbers are in: each person is allotted 1 ton of CO2 output, needs to survive on 1.16 acres, and not increase the world population. (Meaning a one child per person limit should be respected; that's two kids for two parents.) A ton of CO2 isn't all that tangible, but an acre is. One acre is 43560 square feet. This amount of space includes not only your living space, but also the amount of land needed to produce everything that you eat, wear, or otherwise consume. I can have more to eat when farmers plant diverse crops rather than monoculture and when I choose to eat more plants than animal products. If it takes too much CO2 output for the food to get to me, I'll be pushed over the 1 ton limit. If you need more land or CO2 output than this for you and everything you consume, you need to be mindful of the fact that you are A) pushing environmental crisis on us and future generations and B) stealing someone else's food. Yes, all of the hungry in this world are suffering because the lucky ones are using up their portion of farmland for housing developments and our "need" to eat from the large-scale food system. Those that somehow achieve living within their means, CO2 output and land-use included, will reap the benefits. Yoga Sutra II.37 says, "When abstention from stealing is firmly established, precious jewels come."

To eat organic or not to eat organic?

2009-08-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

So you've heard that organic food is good for you. It's true. Organic food has higher levels of anti-oxidants, flavonoids, vitamins, and other nutrients (Pollan, 2008). And I agree with Rachel Carson that "no poison is safe or desirable on food: and a large-scale conversion to chemical-free agricultural methods is needed to stop these intolerable practices" (1962). However, I would argue that organic is not the be-all, end-all of food decisions. First, if you can't get organic, eat produce anyway. The conventional tomato is better for you and the environment than the organic processed food. Secondly, after a few days of transport, the nutritional edge that organic produce has deteriorates and is no better than the conventional, so organic AND fresh is important. The environmental value of organic produce decreases with transport as well. If organic produce travels 250 miles by truck or 3.5 miles by plane all of the CO2 savings of growing that produce is now equal to that of its conventional counterpart (Pearce 2008). Lastly, let me point out that many local farmers do not have organic certification (it's an expensive process), but are using organic methods regardless. Sam at the farmer's market never labels produce organic, but he will mark it 'chemical-free' and that's good enough for me. So next time you're faced with the decision about organic or not, let that not only be the ONLY requirement in you mind.

References:

Carson, R. 1962. Silent spring. Houghton Mifflin Co., New York, NY, 368pp.

Pearce, F. 2008. Confessions of an eco-sinner: tracking down the sources of my stuff. Beacon Press, Boston, MA, 276 pp.

Pollan, M. 2008. In defense of food: an eater's manifesto. Penguin Group, New York, NY, 244 pp.

This is what non-local looks like

2009-08-07T12:48:00.000-07:00

I know where much of my food comes from. I either buy directly from farmers, or they are dropping it off where I shop. This fosters a certain amount of trust and familiarity. Many farms open up for farm tours too. But what's the deal with the non-local items we get? I'm reading a fantastic book about just that, which devotes a whole section to food items. It's made me really think about those farmers and other producers of things like gold so far-away living a completely different life than me. I'll fill you in on what I've learned about our food supply. Fair-trade coffee isn't so great after-all, but it's better than the big companies. Those farmers are only getting a few cents more than the bigger companies pay them, luckily they supplement with community improvement projects. They are not even making $1.50 for every $300 that Starbucks charges us. These farmers support their families for an entire week off of the price of a one pound bag of coffee. Wild fish and herbs are basically becoming extinct every day due to over-harvest. Vanilla is mostly grown in Africa, but outside of its native environment (Latin America, so why are we getting it from Madagascar?) it doesn't have its natural pollinator around and must be hand-pollinated daily. Shrimp, just buy it farmed in the US if you are going to, because abroad this is a scary business. Think a country over-run by the mafia, with musclemen threatening small farmers and taking almost all of their profits so they can't pay back the loan sharks. People are destroying the natural environment because shrimp is more profitable than rice paddies. Palm oil is becoming big business everywhere...it's in everything from Girl Scout cookies to soap, to my new sleeping pad for camping, even Ben & Jerry's is involved. But it's not all that pretty of a thing. It is marketed as a great sustainable product, but what they aren't telling you is that they replace rain forest with palm oil plantations, increasing the rate of climate change and driving the orangutan closer to extinction. I guess there goes the Cherry Garcia! I'm really sorry to continue to pick on the poor banana, but it's going extinct. It's still a cloned sterile freak that humans have been cultivating since the Stone Age and evolution has finally caught up with it. Evolution of soil fungus that is, since the banana has little to no genetic diversity of its own there is little hope for it. The banana is already the most heavily sprayed food crop in the world, leading to leukemia, birth-defects, and male sterility in countries that produce them. And the newest fungus is untreatable. All that it will take to wipe out this fruit is someone who picked up some dirt on their shoes in the eastern hemisphere to fly to Central America for vacation and then it's over for the banana. After all this bad news, the good news is that chocolate might actually be saving rain forest ecosystems in Africa. It can be better for the environment if you look for 70% or more cocoa, fair-trade, organic chocolate made in small batches...and then treat it as a special thing, not your typical mid-day snack. But it is sad that the kids living on cocoa farms have never tasted the product of their family labor. Reference: Pearce, F. 2008. Confessions of an eco-sinner: tracking down the sources of my stuff. Beacon press, Boston, MA, 276 pp.

The Power of Ten

2009-08-07T12:33:00.000-07:00

Fact 1: If all Californians were to buy 10% of their food locally, an extra $848 million would go to California farmers, and extra $1.38 billion would go to the California economy, $188 million in tax revenue would be created, and 5,565 jobs would be created in that state (Jones 2008).

Fact 2: If 10% of each of America's trips were taken on public transportation instead of in a car, we could eliminate 40% of our oil consumption, the same amount that we import from Saudi Arabia each year (Jones 2008).

Fact 3: If the average weight of a US citizen dropped 10 pounds, the airline industry would burn 350 million gallons less fuel per year (Jones 2008).

Maybe buying local could solve our economic crisis. I am sure that the effects of buying local food from California would be similar throughout the country. That's a huge impact! And if you buy as much of your food as possible from local sources, the impact could be even greater. Here in Philly, I think it is entirely possible for us to get at least 80% of our food from local sources, the variety is that great. You can even get local popcorn and butter here. Some areas of the country aren't this lucky, but if those in less diverse markets started shopping for what they could and getting to know their farmers, my guess is that those markets would start to expand. A good place to start buying locally is starting with buying things that are grown here instead of elsewhere, e.g. while you can't get a local banana; you certainly CAN get a local potato or tomato...so why are you buying the potato from Idaho and the tomato from Mexico? Start eating seasonally so you can work in more local foods, e.g. make strawberries a special treat for June and enjoy acorn squash and apples in the fall.

And take the bus to the market! If only 10% of our trips is all that it takes to cut our oil consumption nearly in half, we should do it. Imagine what could happen if we walked or rode our bikes, or increased that public transportation percentage. There are some places where public transportation just isn't available; I've lived in some of them. But the good news is that these are smaller towns, where you can take a bike easily. Further, it is likely that you could eliminate 10% or more of your car trips by planning ahead and carpooling. Buying local can reduce fuel consumption further because the food is taking a shorter trip.

If you buy local produce, and subsist primarily on that, overweight people are bound to drop a few pounds, reducing our country's overall weight. If obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and other diet related health problems were to decrease, imagine the decreased medical costs in our nation. That wouldn't be bad for the economy!

I hope that you reflect on your own potential to reduce your fuel consumption boost the local economy, and improve your own health. The impact of one person making small steps really CAN make a huge difference.

Reference: Jones, V. 2008. The green collar economy: how one solution can fix our two biggest problems. HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, 237 pp.

Farmers' Market Loot, August 6, 2009 and Yogic Diet

2009-08-07T12:07:00.000-07:00

It has been coming for some time; here is my first 'controversial' post. First I'll give you today's tally: 2 flat-breads from Wild Flour Bakery 1 honeydew melon, 1 cantaloupe, 1 pint blueberries, 1 quart green beans, and 1 quart tomatoes from the fruit farmer 1 dozen eggs and 1 pound of bacon from the local meat producer. The cash total was $29, $9 of that was the bacon. Yes, that's right, I bought bacon. The traditional Ayurvedic diet is ovo-, lacto-vegetarian, and Ayurveda is closely tied with yoga. I do consider myself a serious yogini...but I am not a vegetarian. I continue to eat all types of meat from pigs and cows to fish. To me the yogic diet is not strictly vegetarian, but is rather to eat mindfully, keeping ahimsa clearly on the mind while choosing our food and consuming it. Ahimsa is the practice of non-harming in thought, word, or deed; expressing love and compassion for yourself, others, and the world around you. Of course, this is an impossible goal. B.K.S. Iyengar points out in Light on Life (2005) that even Gandhi, a great example of ahimsa, was in violation when he went on long fasts, harming himself in order to prove his point. Many yogis practice ahimsa of diet via vegetarianism or even veganism. I applaud all of you, but this diet is just not for me. I do not eat a lot of meat, in fact the last time I ate meat was last Saturday where burgers were the only main course available. The fact is I love the taste and texture of meat. I realize that consuming it is harming not only the animal that needs to die, but also damaging the environment. American beef farms alone have a larger carbon footprint than America's cars. Further, the large-scale meat industry typically treats its animals cruelly and feeds them monotonous diets leading to the need to pump in the antibiotics...which can lead to resistant microbes. Our health is another consideration. Consuming a lot of meat and animal products can lead to so many poor health conditions like hear disease, cancer, and diabetes. It's a bad situation. All of this so I can have cheap meat on my plate? That is not necessary. On the other hand, tofu makes me sick to the stomach; I can only eat so many bean dishes. In my everyday life, about 10-15% of my diet is meat. If I don't eat meat once in a while, I begin to feel a little off and then get sick. I come from a very meat-based culture; there is typically meat for every dinner back home. However, if I were to go home as a vegetarian, I would be hungry and make my mom upset that I didn't even try the ham, turkey, or baked beans she lovingly cooked. My personal perspective on this is that I don't buy cheap, industrial meat. I buy local, pastured animals that aren't unnecessarily pumped full of medicines. If available, I will always choose a wild animal harvested by my relative or boyfriend. I choose my fish according to A) what is likely to be harvested near me and B) choose carefully along the lines of sustainable and mercury-level charts for fish. Buying these meats is more expensive and takes more thought. The trade-off is worth it for more nutritious and flavorful meat. Because its more expensive, I take care to use all of what I get. I boil bones to make homemade broth and I save my bacon drippings in the fridge for cooking. The higher price also encourages me to eat less, having a smaller environmental and karmic impact. When it comes down to the choice of eat meat, or eat very little or nothing at all, I will choose to eat the meat every time. These are mindful choices, and I think that they are in line with mindful eating...what I consider to be the 'meat' of the yogic diet. Reference: Iyengar, B.K.S. 2005. Light on life: the yoga journey to wholeness, inner peace, and ultimate freedom. Rodale, Inc., U.S.A., 282 pp.

Get the real dirt...

2009-08-03T12:44:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday I watched a movie, The Real Dirt on Farmer John. It is about an eccentric farmer, who is certainly open-minded about the future of farming. Although John is a bit strange, and seems to have a thing for dating much younger women, the overall story is good. If you are looking for something different for your Netflix queue, order it! John's story is like many a modern farmer, watching farmland being eaten up by housing developments, not being able to make ends meet, and struggling with emotional as well as financial burdens from all of it. But open-minded John turns to organic and diversified farming for something new...and a whole new future opens up. Today John runs one of the largest CSAs in the country, serving the Chicago area. I found this film a little less than polished, but truly reflective of the situation that so many small farms find themselves in today. John's mother is like every strong woman from my grandmothers' generation. She continues to have faith in the future, no matter what. She is by far my favorite cast member; an inspiration for all of a younger generation.

Local Food Shopping, 7/30-7/31

2009-08-03T12:09:00.000-07:00

On Thursday I went to the Farmers' Market. I purchased a quart of blueberries, a quart of mini eggplants, a quart of peaches, two cucumbers, 3 big squash (1 yellow and 2 zucchini), and a dozen eggs. The total was $17.00 My boyfriend and I went camping this past weekend and I was responsible for breakfast food...plus I needed honey so I went to Reading Terminal Market on Friday. There I picked up 2 pounds of local honey, a pound of locally made granola, a quart of vanilla yogurt, and a quart of peaches. The total was $25.10. The honey was $10 and will last a while. I returned with three peaches a bunch of granola and half the quart of yogurt. Total for the week: $42.10. Total for the month: $106.35. Percentage of my salary: $4.25% Can you afford to eat local? The question actually is, how can you afford not to eat local?

Eat Less

2009-08-03T11:33:00.001-07:00

The main point of this excellent chapter of Michael Pollan's book hits at the essence of yoga--mindfulness. Shopping, cooking, and eating mindfully is the way to eat less. If you are buying nutritious, local delights, you are likely not going to need as much to eat because these foods are, to quote my boyfriend, "more filling...not in a bloated, stuffed way, but a really satisfying full. If you cook mindfully, you're likely to enjoy the process instead of viewing your cooking/clean-up duties as an inconvenience and heading out for pizza. When you eat mindfully, aka not plopped in front of the TV, you actually taste your food. When you taste and enjoy your food, you are tuned into your body and know when to stop eating.

Mostly plants

2009-07-29T13:31:00.000-07:00

The second part of Michael Pollan's eating policy is 'mostly plants'. As with 'eat food', he breaks it down with a few guidelines: mostly plants, especially leaves, you are what what you eat eats too, if you have the space, buy a freezer, eat like an omnivore, eat well-grown food from healthy soils, eat wild foods when you can, be the kind of person who takes supplements, eat more like the French, tor the Italians, or the Japanese, or the Indians, or the Greeks, regard nontraditional foods with skepticism, don't look for the magic bullet in the traditional diet, and have a glass of wine with dinner. Eating leaves is basically a point that Mr. Pollan makes throughout the book that we have basically become a seed-obsessed culture of food, but so many nutrients and valuable anti-oxidants are found in other parts of the plant that we aren't consuming. Seeds like corn, wheat, and soy dominate our diets, but greens, roots, and stems are sort of rare, mostly because they spoil quicker. Don't miss out; pick up some lettuce and kale at the market! If you are not a vegan, this includes what the animals that you consume (including their milk and eggs). Cows should be eating a varied diet, mostly of greens; but industrial farms feed them mostly corn...that limits the amount of phytochemicals that transfer to you, like omega-3 fatty acids. Did you ever notice that the eggs at the farmers' market have brighter, almost orange yolks? That's because the local farmers let the chickens eat a more natural and varied diet instead of stuffing them with grain. The orange color comes from beta-carotene that the chickens are consuming. Freezers are amazing. They allow you to eat locally, even in the off season...and get a steal on local meats. Get a bunch of corn from the farmer now, cut it off the cob and freeze it. Come January when you want some corn on your dinner plate you won't be buying corn from some industrial farm far away. Eat like an omnivore is not anti-veg. This simply means to diversify your diet and consume as many species as possible...and vegans/vegetarians can do that too. This covers all your nutritional bases. Don't limit your options. Eating well-grown food from healthy soils is basically common-sense. If the soil is nutritious for the plant, the plant will be better for the eater, regardless of whether you eat the plant or the eater, you benefit. This is more important than 'organic' because that label can be slapped on a lollipop, and that's certainly not good for you anyway. Granted, it might help if you can ask the farmer who grew it how is soil is and what he's doing to his plants. Wild food is better because the evolutionary process has forced those plants to retain all of the antioxidants and phytochemicals they need to survive; any agriculture means that people have made at least some of those nutrients unnecessary for the plant to produce. Remember that not only does wild meat get more exercise, but it eats wild plants. The supplement guideline doesn't mean that you necessarily pop vitamins, but rather that you care about your health to the degree that you consider these types of things. Traditional diets, of any culture, are good guidelines for preventing disease. None of them include highly-processed food like fruit roll-ups, boxed mac 'n' cheese, frozen pizzas, and TV dinners. The reason you should be skeptical about these non-traditional foods is that they are really quite new to our systems. Along these lines lie soy products. Tofu has been around for a long time with no major diseases resulting, but soy additives to our food products are a new thing, and their entry into our diet (the typical western diet actually contains more soy than those of Japan and China) came right along with cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Further along the lines of traditional diets, is the warning to not look for the magic ingredient like olive oil, garlic, or ginger, but rather just look at the foods they are eating and how, it could be the food combinations, prep methods, or eating habits of these cultures that lead to good health. Having a glass of wine with dinner is by far my favorite part of eating plants! Mr. Pollan pretty much is making the point that having alcohol in moderation and with food has been shown to work pretty well, but he warns against abstaining and then going on the typical American weekend drinking binge. All in all, I think you can satisfy this mostly plants rule by stopping by your local farmer's market where you can get a wide array of plants. Better yet, join a CSA this year and you'll be forced to experiment with some new species!

Eat Food

2009-07-28T11:54:00.000-07:00

I have been reading In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan. This is a fantastic book and I would certainly recommend it to any of you who want to explore the issues of eating more. For those of you who prefer to direct your prana elsewhere, I plan to sum up the 'manifesto' for you in three installments. He sums up how to craft your diet with this statement: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." At the end of the book each statement gets its own chapter. Eating food seems simple, but really isn't when you are faced with the wide array of edible options available to us today. Mr. Pollan gives us a few guidelines to stay on track: Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food, avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup, avoid food products that make health claims, shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle, and get out of the supermarket whenever possible. Eating locally should help you identify food very clearly. I'm pretty sure my great-grandmothers would agree that everything I buy at the farmers' market or at Reading Terminal Market is food, and pretty good food at that. I think back to my great grandmothers and food, three of them were still alive when I was young. At my dad's grandmother's house my sister and I were fed peanuts, they had a garden and a huge blueberry bush in the yard. My mom's grandmother was in town once and she made some applesauce from fresh apples. Strange and numerous ingredients absolutely sound processed, and infiltrated by chemicals. The most 'processed' thing I typically get from the local sources is vanilla yogurt. It surpasses the 5 ingredient rule by two or three, but I know exactly what everything in it is without relying on my chemistry background, so I think that's pretty good! But beware of crazy ingredients that have you relying on your chemistry education to pronounce correctly for sure...and long lists of ingredients. That vanilla yogurt is a far cry from the ingredient label on the plain: cultured whole milk from grass-fed Jersey cows; it's likely not as healthy for me either. Avoiding health claims means basically those things that come in boxes and bags screaming things like low fat, low cholesterol, rich in omega-3, and full of anti-oxidants. Mr. Pollan claims that these companies have paid big bucks to find a way to cover up that a bag of chips will never actually be good for you and these things are highly processed so that they can come in a bag or box and not rot for a few years. I can't remember when that tomato from the farmer came in a package screaming I have antioxidants out the whazoo! The farmer a) doesn't have that kind of money, b) doesn't create waste by using packaging, and c) doesn't need to because we know tomatoes are good for us. I can't vouch a whole lot for the peripheries of the supermarket claim. When I go to the store it is typically for staples like flour, pasta, and rice that I can't get elsewhere, where my fresh food comes from. These staples actually are in the middle of the store. Getting out of the supermarket is exactly what I am all about! I find it so valuable not only for your health, but also for the economy and the environment. Reference: Pollan, M. 2008. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. Penguin Books, New York, New York.

Reflections on Greatness

2009-07-27T07:30:00.001-07:00

The Bhagavad Gita says, "Whatever a great man does, ordinary people will imitate; they follow his example." If the prerequisite of a role model is first to be great, how do you do that? Manorma says that "We must make a connection with ourselves and others through reverence." So perhaps you become great, and therefore a leader by example if you approach life with reverence. I see yoga as primarily a personal quest that then can radiate outward to the world. One person who I believe to be great is Jill Manning. This past Saturday was her last class at Wake-Up Yoga before she departs this city. This loss will undoubtedly be felt throughout the Philly yoga community. Jill is certainly a role model full of reverence. She approaches her practice and study of yoga with much devotion and this radiates from her as she teaches. She is often saying, "Simple is great, and great is simple." Today pick a simple thing, treat it with reverence, and perhaps you too can grow to greatness and see the effects radiate outward from yourself. In my attempt to radiate some simplicity outward I present this vegan recipe, that can be made from practically all local ingredients (as I did last night). Black Bean Casserole 1 1/2 cups cooked black beans (reserving the cooking water) 1 onion, diced 1 carrot, diced 1 cup corn cut off of the cob 4 garlic scapes, diced (or cloves of garlic in their absence) 1 T oregano (dried) 2 t. cumin dash cayenne pepper salt 1 can of stewed tomatoes 1/2 cup bread crumbs (I save ends of bread in the freezer, when they accumulate, I toast them and grind them up into crumbs) Olive Oil Extra Virgin Olive Oil Cook the onion and carrot for 5 minutes in some olive oil. Add the corn and cook for 5 minutes. Add the garlic, oregano, cumin, pepper, and salt to taste, cook for 5 minutes. Pour in the can of tomatoes (unfortunately mine did come from San Francisco, not local this time), cook for 5 minutes and taste for salt. Add the beans, correct seasoning if necessary, pour into a casserole dish. Slowly pour in some bean water until the mixture is almost covered. Top the dish with the bread crumbs, drizzle extra virgin olive oil over the top. Bake for 40 minutes at 350 degrees. I hope that you too will find this recipe great if you try it. Then contribute your own efforts toward greatness to the world!

Food Shopping, July 23-24, 2009

2009-07-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to the Farmers' Market. From Sam I bought a big head of chemical-free lettuce, six ears of corn and three squash, one yellow and two zucchini. From Wild Flour Bakery, I bought another sundried tomato and parmesan flatbread and a rosemary-garlic one too. They are so good! From my biggest temptation, the Bloomsburg fruit farmer, I picked up 2 peppers, a quart of nectarines, a quart of peaches, and a pint of blueberries. I certainly have a fruit problem. I think that was showing restraint on the fruit for some reason. Mostly because I didn't hand over the other $5 in my wallet to the man! For all of this, I spent $19.75. Last night's dinner was lots of blueberries, a nectarine, some chunks of each of the flatbreads, and a roasted veggie mix: yellow squash, zucchini, eggplant leftover from last week, green beans left over from my last visit to Reading Terminal. GREAT!!! As always, thank you so much Food Trust for bringing local food to my neighborhood. Unfortunately, there are no dairy products at my farmers' market. So this morning I treked down to Reading Terminal to pick some up. I bought 2 quarts of Pequea Valley yogurt , one vanilla and one plain, and a quart of skim milk, all local, from the Amish dairy stand near Arch Street, it was $11. Total food bill for the week, $20.75.

tropical carbon

2009-07-22T12:36:00.000-07:00

Everyone has heard that local food reduces your carbon footprint. But how much are you saving? Recently I read an article on Planet Green that summarizes the impact of tropical foods. I sum it up below:

4 oz. of banana..........8 lbs of CO2
4 oz. of mango...........8 lbs of CO2
1 lb. coffee..................1 lbs of CO2
1 cup of tea................20 g of CO2
4 oz. of mixed nuts...0.43 lbs. CO2

Since you can get about 32 cups of coffee out of a pound, it works out to about 14 grams of CO2 per cup of coffee. It feels good to get some numbers on this. To put it into perspective, the average American puts out 7.5 tons of CO2 a year, that's 16,800 pounds. For those of you having a banana and cup of coffee for your breakfast everyday, that's almost 3000 pounds already....17% of your carbon footprint. Maybe a small caffeine habit doesn't have an astronomical impact, but maybe we should lay off those tropical fruits and trade them in for what's in season around here. It's not so bad to enjoy some peaches or blueberries on your cereal instead of that banana tomorrow is it?

A local food date

2009-07-21T08:34:00.000-07:00

This Sunday morning my sweetie and I went to Northern Liberties for breakfast at one of our favorite restaurants, Honey's Sit 'n' Eat. Honey's is a great place, the food is incredible and they use a lot of local ingredients. I had the "special granola" and a latke. I can't resist getting their latkes! The granola was incredible with local berries and yogurt, some raspberry sauce and (clearly not local) grilled pineapple chunks. If you've never been to this restaurant, go soon, and see what you and your taste buds have been missing. After our meal, we wandered up a block to Almanac market. I needed some eggs. Almanac has everything you need to get by, and the bulk of their stock is local. I noticed some local hot sauce on the shelf during this trip, which was new to me. I also learned that Almanac will take back used egg cartons, and they will be getting mine from now on. I picked up a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, and a cucumber for $7.50.

Farmers' Market Loot, July 16, 2009

2009-07-16T16:01:00.000-07:00

From my favorite farmer Sam, I picked up ketchup, a bunch of carrots, a quart of onions, a pint of mushrooms, and a quart of mini chemical-free eggplants. That's right, you can get basics like ketchup at the farmers' market. There is a new bakery at our market, Wild Flour Bakery, and I love them. I was tempted by their sun-dried tomato and parmesan flatbread, which is basically a more delicious and better-for-you giant cheese-it. I also purchased a multi-grain baguette from them that will be going to Jill's party on Saturday. I have a fruit addiction. I can't get enough. The fruit farmer from Bloomsburg is a big, big, temptation. Just when I think I'll be getting a bouquet from the flower farmer, I walk by his stand and blow my budget. Today I got a pint of sweet cherries and a pint of blueberries. I also picked up 3 quarts of peaches; most of these will go into peach jam that I'm making this weekend, a jar that will also go to Jill's as an accompaniment to the bread. All of this cost me $33.50. I typically don't spend this much, but the jam pushed me over my typical limit of $25. The jam will be used throughout the year though, and thus the cost of the peaches stretches over the rest of the year. A big thank you to the Food Trust for bringing local food to my neighborhood every week.

A matter of life or death

2009-07-16T13:56:00.000-07:00

Corina mentioned something in class last night. "People perform better if they believe that what they do matters." I know that at my job, I can get pretty down, usually because I get the feeling that it doesn't matter if the deadline is met, or even if I show up tomorrow. Do you know what the leading cause of death among US farmers is? It's suicide. (Gorelick, 2000) Put yourself in one of our local farmers' shoes. Sam takes his time to grow delicious, nutritious veggies. It takes him a whole year to produce that succulent offering at the farmer's market. He packs up his precious produce and drives into the city every Thursday and lays out his wares in an orderly fashion. Two scenarios could play out here:

You, me, and the other guy all know that today is Sam's day. But we end up having a long day at work. It seems like a better idea to go out for happy hour, and then maybe end up staying until 9:00 because we're having in such a good time. The farmer's market closed at 7:00. Oh well, we can just pop by the grocery store on the way home and pick up some veggies from California, it's the same thing, right?
You, me and the other guy have a long day at work. Instead of heading straight to the bar at 5:00, we go visit Sam instead. We chat with Sam and he puts a smile on our faces as we pick up the week's produce. we totally score because this week Sam has peaches that we've been waiting all year to bite into! Hey, while we're at it, he has some pie...sounds like dessert to me.

How does each of these options make Sam feel? How do they make us feel? Maybe one person or one day isn't a huge deal, but if week after week you pass him by, Sam will start to wonder if his farm is really worth it. If he decides it isn't, the best case is that another development pops up in Lancaster county, and I need another post to discuss those ramifications. I know what you're going to say, "A farmer grew the California produce too." This is true, but let's see some rough economic analysis. for argument's sake let's say that tomatoes, Sam's and the California farmer's, both cost us 50 cents. Sam's costs: growing the tomato, crates for transporting the tomatoes (which he will reuse), transport from Lancaster Count to Philadelphia County (~78 miles) in the farm truck, and dinner (a quiche from another stand at the market). California farmer's costs: growing the tomato, crates for transporting the tomatoes (that get recycled at the grocery store, not reused), transport from California to Philadelphia (~2875 miles) via tractor trailer, and the grocery store shelf space. My bet, although I'm no accountant, is that Sam keeps the bulk of those 50 cents, where the California farmer makes pennies. The California only gets that much profit if he's selling locally in San Francisco. Who is more likely to be able to support a family and a farm from those sales? Who feels like it's worth it to be a farmer? And to bring it all home...who needs farmers to stay in business? You, me, and that other guy...because we like to eat. Reference: Gorelick, S. 2000. Facing the Farm Crisis - poor economic health of farmers. The Ecologist, June 2000.

Introductions are in order

2009-07-15T04:17:00.000-07:00

I can't tell you the moment my love-affair with local food began, because it was likely before I was forming memories. What I can tell you is that one of my favorite parts of summer as a kid was my mom picking up berries or corn-on-the cob from a farmer's truck, or better yet, picking my own wild strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, not to mention picking blueberries or apples at my family's homes. Back then it wasn't such a big deal though, it was just how things were.. Both my grandmas were canners. Our family spent a Saturday each fall making sauerkraut from the garden's cabbage. I knew the grocery store food wasn't as tasty. Life moved on and I kind of lost touch with that way of life. Out on my own I bought food in a grocery store. In college, as an ecology major no less, I rarely even went to the produce section, it was too expensive. I subsisted on Lipton noodles and instant oatmeal. maybe I would get some potatoes if they were on sale. My fruits and vegetables mostly consisted of bits of dehydrated carrots, peas, and apples. At 21 I found yoga as a new way of life. I credit my practice with making me more conscious to the state of the environment and my own health. I started eating more real food, fewer things from boxes and bags. I actually started to recycle for the first time in my life and think about conservation issues and how they applied to me. Yoga has taught me to start change with you and let it radiate outward. Once I entered what I consider 'adult life' I found the farmers market a block from my new apartment and loved the flavor...and the price. A woman at work pointed me to a local dairy selling yogurt and milk. At that time I couldn't stand yogurt, but when I sampled this, it was completely different. Instead of the putrid smell of Yoplait, there was a fresh, tart scent. They had fruit flavors that became my new dessert; the plain was a great mid-day snack! My fellow yoginis were involved with a CSA, this was a great concept, but I couldn't come up with the huge down payment at the beginning of the seasons to enroll myself. After two years of local bliss, I relocated to Philadelphia for a new job. One of the first things I did was scour the Internet for a CSA. Philadelphia Winter Harvest was a God-send. Fresh, local food all winter long delivered to a neighbor's house. There was no giant deposit, just an upfront charge each month that was really very manageable. No more winters stuck shopping at the grocery store for me! Don't let urban life fool you, this city is a local food mecca. Follow me as a I take my journey to obtain a near-complete local diet. I'm sure I'll fall prey to the convenience of later hours at Whole Foods along the way, and once in a while crave a mango, but my intention is tho live lightly on the earth. This is how I practice ahimsa; this blog will inspire me to play my edges. Eating locally became my way of life because of the flavor, but I also recognize the value of this lifestyle as good for my body and the planet. I invite you to join me and explore your town and seek our local sources of goodies for yourself.