Practice #2

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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!