Manifesto

I hope that I never make people uncomfortable when it's their moment and I'm in a bad mood.

Yogier than Thou

I read a quote I like the other day in the New York Times.

“The culture of judgment in the yoga community — I call it “yogier than thou” — is rampant, and nowhere more than around food,” said Sadie Nardini, a yoga teacher in New York.
Read the full article here.

As a community, I think yogis face a difficult conundrum when the are forced to reconcile their own beliefs with the actions of the rest of the world. As a yogi, I make decisions in my life because they come easily. Buy organic, recycle, talk softly and carry a big stick . . . well . . . you get the point. The difficult part is seeing my peers, my coworkers and my friends make decisions that do not mesh with my own.

But the important thing to realize is that all these decisions we make to lead the lives we lead as yogis are our own. Just as the decisions of our neighbors are their own. And preaching to the masses rarely does little but annoy those around us. The best we can do is lead our lives by example and hope the rest of the world falls in line. But if they don't - we have to be empowered by knowing that is OK too. It's takes all kinds, and our kind is special - but no special-er than the rest.

I eat ahimsa for breakfast

. . . which is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Ahimsa, the yama of non-violence, seems obvious at first. Don't start fights. Be nice. Make love, not war. But there are so many more practices this encompasses; a thought which I became familiar with at the Holiday Inn Express breakfast buffet on a recent business trip.

As a yogi, I am stereotypically yet happily committed to shopping at Whole Foods. So it comes naturally to buy cage-free eggs, organic milk and just about anything else that is respects the life from which is was pasteurized.

But walking up to the pre-made omelets and quart sized cartons of 2% milk at the Holiday Inn Express, I realized that the food I have become accustomed to eating has not yet made it's way to the breakfast buffets of middle America.

As Food Inc. as it sounds, I couldn't look at the hard boiled eggs and yogurt cups without imaging the farms from which they had been churned out. The images of chickens in their cages that appear in every Peta Pamphlet and cows who never see the light of day bounced through my head as I selected oatmeal and a coffee.

It's amazing the little ways I can and do practice ahimsa without even noticing. Consuming the foods I do makes me feel connected to this yama and safe from the violence that comes with the mass production of common foods. It's these little facets of my life where I can connect to and appreciate the living the life of a yogi.

And this little piggy stretched all the way home

Yoga Toes is the single best invention for feet. Well, I guess I can't claim brand-promotion here, since the "Yoga Toes" I bought came from CVS without any brand at all at the fraction of the price. But they still divide my toes; space them out and flex my soles.

Yoga purists everywhere, relax! If you can't spread your toes, you can slip every last one into the "Yoga Toes" and it will do the stretching for you. It feels great after walking around the city on your dogs all day.

When I first got them, I had difficulty getting my last little piggy in the slot, but the packaging suggested that was just fine. Just fit what fits and let the others hang out. 10 minutes a day for a few days and your feet will supposedly stretch out to accommodate even the last pinky toe to squeeze it's way in.

It's amazing how quickly it worked. But the third day, all of my toes were in their corresponding holes and sighing pleasantly after a hard days work. For all the city walkers, urban hikers and CTA commuters - do yourselves and your Chicago dogs a favor and pop those toes into a set of your own? Lazy about getting to the store? Buy them online at Amazon or CVS.com.

Daily Cup of Joe-Ga

Getting coffee is pretty much the first thing I do in the morning and one of the only things I do every single day. It's a part of my routine as much as brushing my teeth or eating lunch. I love the whole process of coffee. Brewing it fresh in the kitchen and listening to the steam escape from the top of the coffee maker; taking a coffee break with a friends only fifteen minutes after I have arrived at the office; stepping into a warm coffee shop on a cold morning; stirring silky white cream into the dark black coffee and watching the color shift to a light brown. All these little rituals make it my favorite part of the morning.

It's a quick hit of happiness and an energy boost in the morning that wakes me up and prepares me for my day. But what if instead of single-serving coffee, we could create single serving yoga. A quick hit sun salutation; a forward fold to un-kink your spine; a rush of blood to your brain and oxygen filling up your muscles. Instead of Starbucks on every corner, it could be big empty rooms where commuters could duck in, plunk their change on the counter and run through a quick vinyasa before heading off on their way to work. Afternoon coffee breaks could be spinal twists and quick shots of shivasana to revitalize us for the afternoon.

Yoga has been Westernized to fit so many of our idiosyncrasies so what's the harm in taking it one step further. A Yoga-Bucks on every corner and shot of Joe-Ga every morning! So until then, I will settle for sun salutations in my living room with coffee percolating in the kitchen.

Indended Intentenions

My favorite classes are the ones where the teacher sits us down and ask us to set an intention for the day. We sit on the mat cross legged and eyes closed, focusing our mind on the intention we want to achieve through our practice.

What if we could do that in our lives? Every time you were making plans, you could start the conversation by saying something like, "My intention is to go to dinner with you and have fun, but also make it an early night because I am tired." or "I would love to see a movie, but my intention is to see one I choose since you have such ridiculous taste in films."

Everything could just be out there right at the beginning of the conversation. No double speak, no white lies - just setting intentions and then following through with your conversation to achieve the goals you have made for yourselves. It would be so much easier to stay true to ourselves if we spoke openly, truly and to the point. Like our yoga practice, we should bring that intention and awareness to every day life, set the goal and use our time and conversations to make it happen.

This is obviously a little too black and white to be truly applied to our lives, but I see no harm in setting these subtle intentions with your friends in your life.

Between Yoga Class Yoga

I had a Bad Class the today. Distraction was coursing through my veins. It started with the way I got there - in a rush. It's amazing the parts of your body where you can feel the stress. It starts in your stomach, the need to hurry. And it creeps up your spine until it muddies up your thoughts. In a cab cruising down Michigan avenue on the way to Roosevelt, I could almost feel the tick of the clock over to the next minute. Like each little movement took me one step farther from pre-class meditative shivasana.

I got there in plenty of time to get a spot and relax for solid five minutes before class, but I couldn't turn off my mind. It was racing just like it was in the cab and wouldn't hold still. When class started, I could focus on everything around me but couldn't bring it back to my practice. I thought I detected a weird smell on my mat and spent every down dog sniffing to see if I was right. I had forgotten to pin back my backs and was obsessing about the amount of sweat pouring off my forehead and how it would affect my hairstyle. My mind drifting racing back and forth from one detail or another with a lack of focus which aggravated me even more.

After class, I still felt frustrated and found I was beating myself up for not being able to relax. I immediately realized how ridiculous I was being, stressing out that yoga didn't fully de-stress me. Yoga class are amazing, but the things that go on in my head when I am not in class is ultimately the governing principle. Practicing between-class yoga is almost better than making a class on time at the risk of a stressed out cab ride.

Spinal Twisted

In this post-penicillin Western culture of ours, there's a pill for everything. There are so many pills for so many things that saying there's a pill for everything is cliche. Health is more about curing illness that creating wellness. Which brings my to my spine.

Every morning I wake up and it feels tight. It is infuriating. In the shower, I feel out the stiffness. Reaching up to shampoo my hair, I think about how I must sleep funny or my spine must be out of whack or something is wrong with me. Every morning I take a forward fold to pull that familiar comfort back into my back wondering why it is that I need this to make me feel better.

And this morning with my neck a little sorer than usual after a on-flight nap involving using my shoulder as a pillow, I realized what it is that is wrong with me. I am looking at yoga like a pill. Thinking of the forward folds the way any good American would; a shot to the arm! A vaccine against a stiff back! What I am failing to see is that my morning down dogs are no remedy to my pain. Sure they make it go away - but it is more about the maintenance of balance that is kept up through every small yoga posture or pranayama breath.

So often in yoga we talk about balance that the word can sometimes fade away into the background noise in the class. But it's important to remember that balance isn't something that is achieved with a pose or a class. It is a living breathing thing that shifts and changes with you every day. Yoga isn't a "cure" for imbalance; it is a tool to continuously shift and move the balance toward a peaceful place. A sore back is nothing that can be cured; it just small adjustments everyday that will bring it back to that balance.

Wrinkles and Lovehandles

I am already completely obsessed with the wrinkles on my forehead. Surely they are barely visible to everyone else, but I have maintained the trendy bangs haircut about a year after it quit being trendy because I am so paranoid about it.

There are other things too. I think no matter how "skinny" my jeans are, they always look sloppy when I tuck them into my boots, rather than "put together." I have a closet full of clothes that I believe make me feel frumpy. I am six inches taller than all my friends and catch myself slouching in pictures to be their height.

But when I am doing yoga - I feel beautiful.

I read an article in Glamour asking women when they felt the sexiest. When all the stars aligned and everything just felt right and confident. For me, the time is the 75 minutes I am in Yoga class. I can feel breath running through my body and all my muscles are alive and working. When I kick back my foot into the palm of my hand and lean forward into Cosmic Dancer, balancing on one leg and aligning my foot above the top of my ponytail in the mirror as sweat rolls of the tip of my nose, I am gorgeous.

I wish I could bottle up that feeling and take it with me when I leave the studio. When I have trouble pulling my jeans on in the morning - to know how powerful my legs are. Or when my arms look chubby in a tank top - to remember how each one can support me in Side Plank. But even though I can't recreate that feeling outside the studio, I still carry it with me, a secretive strength in the back of my mind.

Post Vacation Blues

I got in this morning after spending the most amazing weekend in Puerto Rico. My friends and I found cheap plane tickets and took off! We drove around exploring beaches, swimming in clear blue ocean water, snorkeling alongside turtle and rays and eating mufungo, pressed french bread sandwiches and seafood. It was truly amazing.

Our flight back was a bit of a horror after some serious delays leaving us in Miami for the night in a Holiday Inn supplied by American Airlines to catch about five hours of sleep before hopping another plane back home to Chicago.

But none of that really bothered me; it was when we stopped on the pedway at Au Bon Pain for some soup heading back towards our office in the Prudential Plaza that I truly felt annoyed. Trying to pick out soup from the kiosk in the middle of the restaurant, people pressed around me through our "excuse mes" and hurried side step maneuvers to get around me since I was obviously not choosing quickly enough.

The hurry of busyness of everyone around me was astonishing! It was reverse culture shock, moving at a Carribean pace in an American city. It's amazing how quickly you adapt to a new way of life that truly exposes what your original way of life means.

It's impossible to truly move slowly and survive in Chicago; this I know after two years of living here and feeling the cold lake breeze hitting my cheeks when I miss the bus or getting home an extra hour late because I dawdled and got stuck in rush hour traffic or missed the one open spot on the El. But there is little or nothing to be said for how quickly you can get a bowl of soup or who you can push past to check out fifteen seconds quicker in the line.